12th July - Professor Nelson Phillips at Citibank

Thanks to everyone involved, a really good session with some interesting topics discussed. Special thanks to Professor Phillips for his excellent insight into the world of digital and to Kate at Citi for hosting.

Three topics covered:

* How we develop learning

* Leadership development approaches

* The opportunity of digital (ironically pics of flipcharts)

How we develop learning

Recommendation - brainstorm

• Adopt the business current tools and ways of working

• Have a design session with someone from one of the current squads and potentially have him/her as a coach

• Use current team tools, e.g.:

• Have a slack channel for managers, from the beginning to understand needs. No need to set strict guidelines, it is often self-regulatory.

• Build an app with key management concepts

• Get people together to share challenges, have most training face-to-face

• Potentially have a virtual coffee club, e.g. 45 min once a month on google hangout, during which we explore a theme, for example by inviting a speaker in

• As some content will be basic for some leaders: get them involved and ask them to share experience, get their views on how we want to do things here.

• Involve training participants in the design: more engaging. Then iterate the process as we go along

• Pilot training when we are 80% there content-wise. Be honest with the group: ‘we don’t exactly know where we’re going with this, we’re open to your input’.

• Either get the most senior team to input, or create a group of volunteers to pilot the training and input

Recommendation – how we pilot

• Option A: get the most senior team to experience the training first and input:

• Benefits:

• Most experienced team so great to get them involved in the design.

• They can shape how they would like management to look like here

• They will be familiar with the content & become advocates of the programme.

• Drawbacks:

• Not a varied group of people, can miss out on things inexperienced managers need the most

• Option B: get a group of volunteers to experience the training first and input.

• Benefits: more representative group of individuals

• Drawbacks: might not benefit from the best version of the programme

Recommendation – when to pilot

• It was mainly recommended to pilot sessions as we go along to:

• Test the format: bitesize sessions every month with opportunity to practice in-between

• Inform future sessions design

• In practice, that means the first two sessions (of a 5-session programme) would be designed when launching the programme, but the other sessions would only be 50% ready

Leadership Development Programmes

The world of work is changing:

• Leaders are being challenged to be more agile, resilient, engaging and creative whilst at the same time executing flawlessly, managing risks and developing their people who now define themselves by the life choices they make and not just by the work they do.

• The critical focus is ensuring sustained behaviour change and transfer of skills to the workplace and this is best delivered through experiential real time leaning.

• Globally the world of work is changing, impacted by downturns in the economy, advances in digital and the changing demographics of the workforce.

• The cost of poor leadership is significant, with an estimated 32% employee turnover and 8% annual revenues attributed to this cause (Deloitte 2016, Brandon Hall, 2018).

Trends Observed

• Leaders need to become facilitators

• Coaching based programmes

• Goal based intentional behaviour changes

• Minimum viable product approach

• Rapid experimentation

• Different modalities e.g. 5 min podcasts

• Focusing on the critical few

• Shift to ‘emergent’ approaches – using expertise to unlock thinking

• Organisations are set up for steady state quarters – this does not fit the new business models that require quick decision making

• Re-focusing on management skills alongside leadership

• Lots of digital content

• Lots of people running around trying to develop ‘digital’ skills

• Social purpose and impact

• Talent skills market in a ‘gig’ economy

• Resilience

• VUCA environment

• Demographics and generational differences and how to manage this

• Less is more

• Need to fit with how people learn

• Outside work they use YouTube and Google

Leadership Development Trends

• The leadership succession model remains in widespread use, with additional focus on rapidly upskilling new leaders

• Some companies are moving towards development for all

• Blended approaches and technology being leveraged to enable personalised learning, flexible in time and space.

• There is also a trend away from the traditional exhaustive approach to leadership development, with a renewed focus on being brilliant at the basics.

Observations from Talent and Leadership Club members

• A large supermarket and a confectionary company are working together to build leaders

• Line managers being actively involved

• Cross-system networks – having big conversations

• ‘Tilt’ system has been used by some for content

• Face to face still exists

• Buying in content

• Bringing in external speakers to provide a different perspective

• ‘Nomadic’ has been used for self-paced integrated learning. New sessions are released each week and this also contains as social aspect.

• Competitive elements – leader boards and badges. For some using digital solutions did not deliver sustainable recall of the information shared.

• Experience of dissatisfaction with virtual delivery mechanisms.

• Emergence of the use of scaffolded projects to support learning.

• Increasing use of virtual reality

• People need time to fully pay attention

Do you segment your population?

• No – all self starter and skills networking.

• Not attached to hierarchies

• Yes – exec, senior leaders, FLLs, graduates – status and hierarchy still have weight.

• High potentials are identified, tracked and supported and are regularly reviewed.

• Targeted populations – learning moments that matter by grade, sector, industry.

Skills for the future

• Inclusion in everything

• Creating real connections through development

• Coaching

• Objectivity

• Facilitation

• Agility and redirecting silos

• Career development

How do you measure success?

• Psychometrics as catalysts

• Employee surveys

• Improvement in 360 feedback

• Appraisals

• Evaluation of learning outcome

• The Opportunity of digital