“An organisation’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage”
– Jack Welch
Being able to do what your competitors can’t demands a unique set of capabilities. But these skills don’t just grow on trees. They demand:
- Tough choices: you can’t be good at everything.
- Long-term commitment: it doesn’t happen overnight.
- Motivated people: learning new skills demands effort and a change of behaviour.
So in order to succeed with this triple challenge, organisations need a solid capability development approach.
But have organisations adopted such a way of working?
Unfortunately not. The study clearly show that skills development is an issue. In fact, it’s a major one, as training, coaching and other development related actions receive poor scores within most of the 1100 organisations we benchmarked.
28 percent of all respondents don’t even offer development support for basic skills – those that should belong to the repertoire of any manager. One other striking fact: 40 percent of all participants don’t evaluate the business impact of their development effort.
The best-in-class
The figures above give you a view on the bad perfomers. But what about the secret of the best-in-class? Well, top performers in the ‘skills building’ category set themselves apart by constructing strong, long-term development foundations in their organisation. They approach capability improvement as a marathon, not a sprint. Their foundation building focuses on the following 6 fundamentals:
- Link skills development with the overall strategy
- Manage the development portfolio – the collection of all development actions within the organisation
- Design world-class learning interventions
- Execute flawlessly
- Set development objectives for everyone in the organisation
- Measure success
