Leadership Training – How to Multiply the Benefits

With "leadership" emerging as one of the top priorities for Shared Services Organisations around the world (witness the numbers that regularly crowd into "talent and leadership" sessions at our conferences around the world), we are always on the lookout for companies that are taking an original approach to talent management. Barbara Hodge received a tip that something interesting was going on at NSW Businesslink, a government Shared Services company in Australia, and placed a call to its Performance Manager, Greg Glynn, to find out more. What she discovered was an innovative approach to talent management, and learning – complete with an all-singing, all-dancing rendition of "Sister Act". Businesslink is a shared services organization that services a range of NSW State Government Agencies, NGOs and significantly, the 20,000-strong Department of Family and Community Services (FACS). FACS is responsible for servicing some of the most disadvantaged people of New South Wales, including children, people who are homeless and people with a disability, their families and carers Businesslink has 600 staff and covers payroll, IT, infrastructure, fleet car, grant applications as well as AP and AR services for the public servants in this sector. Training is an integral part of Businesslink’s modus operandi. It has set up an initiative called LeaderLink ("Everything is ‘linked’," explains Greg Glynn, Performance Manager at Businesslink), which is a leadership development course. Now in its second year, LeaderLink leverages SSON’s SSO Pro online training program, matching the 10 subjects of this course to provide a framework and roadmap. LeaderLink was launched in 2012 with a group of 20 staff hand-picked by the executive team and chosen on the basis of their first or second tier placement within the organizational structure. In its second year, as Greg explains, the course was opened up to the general company. "We invited anyone to apply by sending us a one-page expression of interest, explaining why he or she thought they would be a good candidate," he says. "We took this route the second year because we’d already identified high-level individuals in the first year, and now wanted to expand the opportunity to up and comers, and self-starters." Groups are split into five syndicate teams of four people each, put together based on Myers-Briggs personality tests with no regard to functional expertise. As Greg explains, "we were focusing on leadership style and quality, not technical capability so we wanted to get the kind of mix into our syndicate teams that you would find in a normal project team. This meant that we had some dominant types, some worker bees, some delegators, etc." The teams generally functioned well, said Greg, "Though we did have to step in from time to time to help them when personalities got in the way of the work. As with any team project, it was about identifying the problems and providing help to find resolution." To kick off the year, teams were encouraged to develop a name and logo. This injected a bit of fun into what was otherwise a fairly challenging endeavour. Team members were expected to work through the course in their own time, with approximately one month for each subject (each subject contains between five and eight modules). Although this was at times arduous, it was framed from the start as a leadership development program and staff were challenged to step up and deliver. As such, just taking part became part of the education. Importantly, the course was not framed as a "shared services knowledge" programme, but as a leadership programme and as such it became part of an individual's career plan which further encouraged participants to complete it. From a company perspective, Greg explains it was important not just that the individuals gained skills developed their leadership ability, but that this learning was distributed beyond the LeaderLink programme, and across the Businesslink’s other 580 staff. Knowledge Sharing "Every eight weeks, all the teams came together and each gave a 10 minute presentation on a topic of their choosing, based on the two subjects they been studying," says Greg. "These presentations were pitched at the executive team [the Chief Executive and five Directors] who followed up with a five minute rebuttal or questioning of each team, drilling a little bit deeper into the implications of their learnings for Businesslink, and drawing direct connections to business performance. While in year one most of the presentations were based on PowerPoint slides, the teams in the second year were challenged to use more innovative approaches for their presentations. As a result the formats covered became increasingly creative, including game shows and videos. This made learning more fun, and at the same time engaged audiences. The syndicate forums occurred five times over the year, and were followed up by a "Major Group Activity" at the conclusion of the program. As part of graduation each team was required to provide a group project: either a piece of research or other original work that distils the broad learnings of the course material into a format that directly benefits the business. These graduation projects have resulted in a number of toolkits branded with the LeaderLink and SSO Pro logos. What is significant, Greg emphasizes, is that these toolkits benefit the entire business and are available to everyone. They include, for example: A Toolkit for evaluating New Service Offerings/Business Requirements [see below]: what to consider, pros and cons, time line, identifying the customer and their needs, success metrics, etc A Decision Making Support Toolkit: this identified what to consider, how to evaluate risks, how to evaluate financial opportunities, etc A Change Management Toolkit [see below]: giving spreadsheet templates, decision making workflows, and conceptual diagrams to non-change managers to assist in decision making and communications planning. A Make or Buy Decision Support Toolkit: to help evaluate whether to outsource or keep a service in-house, including: implications of ownership, how to evaluate the true cost of ownership, etc A Customer Value Driver Analysis: this measured the gap between customer expectations and the actual delivery of services. The analysis report was provided to the executive Team for consideration and inclusion in the corporate strategy. Some of the presentations from the syndicate group activities are also included in the online reference library; for example a presentation on talent management used the movie Sister Act as its source of inspiration. This team reinterpreted the scene where Sister Mary Clarence is shuffling choir members around to illustrate in-house skills assessment activity. The result was hysterical, very popular, and has been viewed time and time again. You can see it below. Note: Businesslink has kindly agreed to share some of the Toolkits it has developed through the LeaderLink programme with SSON’s readers. [These tools are also shared across SSO Pro’s resources, where participants swap useful material with each other.] Business Requirements Toolkit (click below to download) Data Gathering template Process Model template Sequence Questionnaire Change Management Toolkit: (click on images below) Overview Decision Tool Assessing Extent of Change Dimension of Change Change Management Resources Implementing Change Process Guide Change Management Toolkit Overview: Decision Tool: Assessing Change Elements: Change Management Resources: Quality Business Requirements Toolkit: Process Model Worksheet: [eventpdf]

Leadership Training – How to Multiply the Benefits

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