| The approaching millennium
prompted us to put pencil to paper and think about the opportunities that lay
before us as we transition into the 21st century.
Managers and
Developers in the Information Age
As organizations move
toward the new millennium, they are more keenly aware than ever of the primary
challenge of our age: mastering "permanent white water" (i.e., change) in order
to remain competitive. Key to this challenge is the design of increasingly
powerful human performance technologies. One of the most striking examples of
these changing technologies is the evolution we're seeing from the heroic
model of management (which emphasizes planning, motivating, controlling,
and coordinating employees) to the manager-as-developer model (which stresses
empowerment and which is more interpersonally intensive and consultative in
nature). The manager-as-developer is counseling team members who are in
the process of self-assessment, goal setting, and self-development and is
encouraging them to change, instead of just reacting in short intense bursts to
"critical incidents" or to a performance appraisal imperative. This is a
significantly more leveraged management technology and represents a less active
(i.e., less heroic) management style than the reactive,
I'm-the-leader-you're-the-follower model of old.
A second human performance
technology that is being powerfully impacted is the whole approach to the
management development process itself. In the past, the sole function of
management development was to facilitate advancement (i.e., "training" prepares
people to do their current jobs better, while "development" prepares them for
their next job). However, in recent years, management and executive development
programs have begun to drive a number of other key business objectives, as
well:
Key Objectives For
the Organization
- Identify reservoirs of human
resource talent and channel them appropriately (career tracking and succession
planning)
- Groom high potentials
- Help minimize mismatches
between what the employee wants and what the company needs
- Assist employees in
developing and increasing their self-awareness and in better understanding
their own strengths and limitations
- Create leaders and increase
individual autonomy at lower and lower levels within the company
- Design, integrate, and
implement the HR strategy as a core component of the organization's overall
strategic business objectives
- Train managers to be potent
mentors
- Integrate your approach to
management development with other human resource products: performance
management, career development, recruiting, transfer/promotion, forecasting,
and compensation
Key Objectives For
the Individual
- Be more proactive about
self-development
- Take more control of your
own career (i.e., be more questioning; plateau by choice; create more degrees
of freedom)
- Pursue self-development for
its own sake and as the motivational driver of goal achievement
- Participate in an active
partnership with your employer
- Find more varied paths to
personal satisfaction
- "Retool" yourself for the
information age: enhance your ability to manage change, take risks, handle
ambiguity, exhibit interpersonal finesse, collaborate, build partnerships and
teams, and so forth.
Finally, one of the most
powerful ways to realize the extraordinary potential of these two new
orientations - the manager-as-developer and the broad impact of development
experiences - is to integrate managers into the development program of each of
their people. This approach yields any number of benefits to both the
individual and the organization (and the manager, too), as well as maximizing
the changes made by the individual who is participating in the development
process. In this way, learning leaves the limiting confines of the classroom
and becomes much more like a real apprenticeship experience. Substantive change
is much more likely to occur and to be integrated into a person's day-to-day
functioning when that change process is both experiential and linked to key
others in the person's workaday life. Apprenticing is an age-old concept, but
it remains a highly potent approach to development.
And, yes, managers will
also need to become adept at this new role of partner/coach/advisor/consultant
to the "apprentice." But, of course, these are roles that are now increasingly
central to the overall successful functioning of the contemporary manager. So,
it is striking how holistic the new approach to human performance technology
is. If this potential for integration and consistency across human resource
initiatives is tapped to its fullest, then organizations will have a tremendous
opportunity to achieve the kind of key objectives they're striving for in the
90's:
- Enhanced
competitiveness
- Innovation and corporate
agility
- Ownership and
alignment
- The attraction and retention
of top talent
- Quality, value, and
service
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©
Copyright 2000, by The Global Consulting Partnership |
