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Executive GuideA Summary of the Basic Steps to Developmental Planning

STEP 1: Find and Use Organizational Support for Creating a Process, Not an Event

When initiating a program for development, recognize and respond to the catalyst for the program. Design a development process that may include a training event but is not, itself, the sum total of the program for development. Find a champion. Pilot your efforts. Solicit and use feedback. Move in a timely fashion. Take organizational readiness into account as you design the process. (See pages 3-7.)

STEP 2: Define the Program Purpose and the Behaviors to Be Developed

Program purpose should align with the business needs of the organization. Skills targeted for development should be appropriate to time frame, level, and program purpose. When managers need to acquire the basic skills required to coordinate people and resources to accomplish an organizational goal, the skills being developed will speak to the here and now of the manager’s job. Identification of these skills requires a content-validation strategy or the adoption of an existing research-based model of managerial effectiveness.

The targeted skills for the development of future leaders need to be based on a predictive validity strategy, an approach that defines needed skills in light of anticipated business direction, and should reflect the best thinking of senior management about the conditions that will prevail at the time these managers will take on the responsibilities and accountability of executives. What needs to be learned will dictate how it is learned. (See pages 8-17.)

STEP 3: Use Feedback as the Baseline for Executive Development

Feedback is one of the events that make up the program of development. Our feedback guidelines are designed to increase the odds that you will succeed in generating energy and direction for change from the feedback element in your program. Our emphasis is on credibility. To be credible feedback must be meaningful, aimed at potential, confidential and anonymous, and timely. It can be provided from simple interviews or professionally developed instruments, each of which has its advantages and disadvantages. The effectiveness of any feedback process depends on the skill of the feedback-giver.

Although our goal with feedback is to provide direction and energy for change among participants, inevitably some will attempt more change than others. Those whose feedback is much different than their own self-evaluation are more likely to change. More change takes place where there is a supportive boss and a supportive organization. (See pages 17-22.)

STEP 4: Define and Communicate the Critical Role of the Manager

Managers are critical to the development process. They have a number of key roles that they must endorse, understand, and have the skills to carry out. These include: making development real, providing developmental experiences, providing support and feedback, and accessing organizational resources. Bringing the managers on board to their roles and the program is a critical task of the human resources professional. But the task does not stop when the program begins—managers require continuing support to fulfill their developmental roles. (See pages 22-24.)

STEP 5: Write the Development Plan

The elements of the process of writing a development plan provide a checklist for the program developer, but the process itself takes place as a whole. It can be simple or complex, brief or lengthy, committed to paper or largely in the head of the participant. The elements of the process (a goal, action steps and milestones, and standards) and the roles (executive, manager, and facilitator) must all be in place within an organizational context that supports development. We realize that development planning usually takes place without having all these elements in perfect harmony. At the same time, these elements have a major impact on the success of the development-planning effort and your success in making it happen. (See pages 24-34.)

STEP 6: Make the Program Accountable

Providing a regular stream of evaluation information is critical to maintaining the credibility and continuation of the development program. Two types of evaluation are needed: First, is the program being followed as laid out—are the development plans active? Second, are participants developing? Evaluation can be conducted at many levels, depending on the types of information needed and the resources available. The most important point is to feed from the beginning a regular stream of evaluation information back to the organization to demonstrate the value of the program. (See pages 34-36.)