In the previous article I spoke about the challenges of ensuring L&D engagement in the strategy and planning process, and, if that’s not to be undertaken internally, how an external partner might be able to help.

The big gap in terms of strategy and people is often around capability assessment. If problems occur here they’re generally at one end or other of a typical business spectrum.

Beware of internal perceptions

To my left, the decentralised, advisory head office who have ‘inverted the pyramid’. Here we have an organisational design framework in which the role of head office is to support the people who actually do the job rather than to direct. In some cases, this works like a charm and the customer service based central management process is at pains to understand the realities of life at the coal face and provide resources and guidance as appropriate. Most often, though, this lofty ideal is not achieved and what actually happens is a kind of Micawber-ish humility in which local fiefdoms spring up in outlying offices and central teams lack confidence to challenge local activities which add little value. In my experience, these hands off teams often feel that the ‘do-ers’ in the district offices are actually more able than they are. Here the strategic direction is based on the shifting sands of an un-validated belief in the skills at the front line. More often than not, this leads to a major disconnect when the high falutin’ business plans hit the executional mediocrity away from the centre.

To my right, the centralised, directive approach can also be undermined but in a completely opposite way. Here, climbing the greasy pole to central HQ is a lifetime’s work. One’s skills and abilities finally achieve the long overdue rewards of elevation after shining in your humble backwater. The big fish in the little pools are freed to swim in the shark infested oceans of commerce.

The attitude to the front line they have left behind is often uncharitable, I find. Here the one’s left paddling in the shallows are thought of as being unsophisticated, incapable and – overall – not very bright.

As with the lion-ising of the humble workers in the first scenario, this elevated arrogance is also misplaced. I remember working with a major retailer on an induction programme. The Head Office staff constantly reiterated that the messages must be simple, the language aimed at the barely literate, and the instructions clear and unequivocal. I expected that the shop floor staff they had employed were all on a par with a particularly truculent Year 11 group, forced against their will to learn quantum physics.

When I spent time in store, I found most of the target audience were undergraduate students or those studying for A levels in exalted subjects such as Art History and English Literature. There were even two PhD students needing to supplement the meagre savings which were funding their studies. The programme I’d been asked to create would have been an insult to these temporary, part timers and yet temporary, part time staff made up the bulk of those recruited.

Not understanding the capability of staff that will be involved in carrying out the company plan, has to undermine the integrity of that plan. This, I would argue, is one of the most serious reasons why strategies and plans are often watered down when it comes to them being carried out. Quite simply, the employees don’t know what they should be doing, if they do, they don’t think it can be done, and – even in those situations where everyone gets what has to happen – no one has worked out accurately what training and capacity building needs to happen for it to become a reality.

Ensure that the organisation is equipped

That’s where outside help can be useful. What do these external teams do? Well the process should follow a fairly simple critical path process. First, sorting out front line competences; next, assessing training needs and capabilities against those competences; and third designing a programme of training, education and work-based reinforcement which ensures that the organisation has the capability to implement the plans and strategies which will deliver the desired results. Of course, the competence assessment needs to be based not on business now, but on the commercial realities envisaged in the grand plans of the board room.

There’s another often unacknowledged area of benefit too. Often the external team – in the process of reviewing capability – identifies major strategic opportunities. By talking to people about what they do, you also find out about the things they don’t do, but think they should. This bottom up job design can be a really useful input into any strategy piece. OK, the employee in the shop and the person on the production line may not always enjoy an unfettered view of the big picture, but their insights and perspectives are important nonetheless. In fact, the views of the people who do things about the things which get done are often a good deal more informative than the sunny day strategising from on high.

Not only is this process of review, consultation and analysis useful to help shape strategy it can of course provide great insight into how to deal with performance and skills gaps. I work with a number of head office staff who focus on content. That is after all their job. “We need people to know this and doing things in this way is most efficient.” Fair enough.

But then they start to determine not only what people should learn but how. Rarely is this done from any perspective other than “If I were learning this, I’d learn it this way” or – somewhat worse – “When I learned this, I learnt through this mechanism”. Chances are those who have risen to the exalted heights of a corner office in headquarters, learned in a very different environment from those they now seek to organise training for.

This leads to two problems. The first is a belief that “they’re all the same”. While one size fits all is often rejected as a training approach by organisations in theory, in practice there’s rarely the budget or enthusiasm available to develop a programme that meets different learning needs. Imagine the complexity of the potential audience. There’s those who know quite a bit, but need a top up, as well as those who know next to nothing. There are those for whom the classroom works and those for whom it’s just a day off. A few for whom learning on the job is great and those who’s line manager couldn’t coach their way out of a paper bag, soaked in the tears of the previous unfulfilled and confused team members who have gone before.

Secondly, let’s not forget that the internet has only been with us for around 20 years now and its widespread use in most homes and businesses somewhat more recent than that. Certainly, its effective use as part of the training mix is still a foreign land to many. Most of the strategisers, with their long years of experience, still have their secretary print out their emails. Do they fully appreciate blended learning based on multi-media inputs? Of course, but only if someone tells them it’ll save them money.

There’s a simple maxim which applies to this stuff. “If you always do what you’ve always done, you always get what you always got.”

Strategy is about organisational change.

Training is about individual change.

Most individuals work for organisations.

Can you change an organisation without enabling the people within them to change? Can you change individuals without changing the organisation that employs them?

These are genuine questions, but ones to which most organisations don’t know the answer and it seems one rule of business we’re stuck with is: “Never ask a question to which you don’t know the answer.”