A German silent film melodrama depicts an airship bombing
London during World War I. Lit up by searchlights and strafed
by fighters, the crippled airship loses altitude as the captain
frantically jettisons dispensable gear to lighten weight.
Eventually, the only weight left is human. So the captain
orders members of the crew overboard. A grisly scene unfolds
as the airmen, one by one, without parachutes, step up to the
hatch, salute the captain and the first mate, then jump to
their deaths. Lightened, the airship returns safely to Germany.
That scene is not a relic. It's happening in corporations
frequently these days, clearly not as fact but metaphor.
Companies, shot up in the cross fires of increasingly
competitive markets, must lighten their loads to get earnings'
growth buoyancy. The captains are jettisoning all but the
indispensable employees. Commonly, one of the first functions
to be ordered out is the training function in particular,
leadership training or leadership development.
Many company heads view such training as dispensable as the
airship crew in the melodrama.
Yet leadership isn't dispensable to business success. It's
absolutely indispensable. Good leaders are far more important
to the long term success of companies than good products. All
organizations that fail to get, keep, and develop good leaders
eventually founder. This isn't a secret. Most leaders know
this.
Here's the secret: The fact that leadership development is
viewed as dispensable is not the captain's making. It's the
crew's making. The blame lies with the people in charge of the
leadership development. They simply have not defined leadership
development in indispensable ways for results. Sure, they have
defined such development for training results but not for the
results that really count, business results.
And when training people focus on training results not
business results, they are always put at the front when the
superfluous are told to line up to leap.
What is leadership but results not training results,
business results. If leaders are not getting their business
results, they are not leading. Results can be defined in many
ways, productivity, operating efficiencies, sales growth, cost
reductions, etc., but leadership development has no real value
unless it is helping the leaders get those results.
Here are two simple ways to position your role to notably
increase your value to your company.
1. Define results.
Forget about training results. Forget about training
objectives. They're dispensable gear. Throw them
overboard. What are the business results of the leaders
you are developing? If you are dealing with people in
manufacturing, then focus on having your development
programs help improve operating efficiencies. If you
have sales people in those programs, focus on their
getting increased sales results within a certain time
after they complete your program. Whoever has signed
up for your programs, challenge them to use the tools
you give them to get results short and long term.
For instance, at the beginning of your programs, ask
participants, "What results do you have to get? And
what are the most important challenges you have in
getting them?"
Then bring them the tools to help them get those results.
What they learn is worthless unless it is tied to what is
most valuable in their jobs and careers. It's worse than
worthless, it's a downright stumbling block since that
learning demands that they spend their time away from
pursuing their real job objectives.
2. Measure those results.
There is no value in business without measurements.
Trainers who ignore this truth are put in the line before
the open hatch when the company starts going down. Those
trainers typically show their value by demonstrating the
cost effectiveness of their programs.
Cost effective, baloney! I don't know of any organization
where "cost effective" ultimately doesn't mean "cheap."
Cost effectiveness is the worst way to position leadership
development programs. Cost effective programs are the least
valuable programs of all. Once we start defining our
programs by how cheap they are, we show that we don't
understand leadership or development and so cheapen our
value to the company.
Don't make leadership programs inexpensive. Make them
expensive! ...expensive to the company if those programs
are not instituted. We can only show their true importance
by demonstrating the hard, measured, business-focused
results participants achieve after taking the programs.
At the end of your sessions, have participants write a
"value received" letter in which they detail the hard measured
results that they intend to get when they use your leadership
tools.
Follow up 35 days later to insure they have gotten those
results or are about to get them.
If participants in a leadership course don't receive an
R.O. I. that is at least five to ten times greater than the
investment they made in that course, give them their money
back. And why not? If they can't get big increases in their
hard, measured results, it's the course's fault. It hasn't
helped them develop as leaders. Without results, leadership
has no meaning.
Leadership development is too important to be demeaned by
having it fulfill training objectives. Enhance its importance
by having it fulfill business objectives. In doing so, we will
change the scenario on our metaphorical airship. Instead of
ordering the crew out, the captain will say, "We can't afford
to lose this crew member. Stay here! First mate, jump!"
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2004 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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