Bite-sized learning
By Lee Xieli
The biggest challenge in helping leaders to learn and grow effectively is the lack of quality time, says Ed Marsh, Nestlé Switzerland’s corporate human resources’ head of talent and organisation development. “Everyone has less and less time, more and more ways to be interrupted.”
Especially if the leaders are in businesses which are “lean and mean”, says Bunge Asia’s regional L&D director Benson Sim. “The truth is businesses today usually have no time. Leaders are constantly being challenged to bring in money at high efficiencies.” A structured development course would require employees to take time off work to attend the sessions, an obligation which might not be practical in the current economic environment.
“The two-week off-site programme at the luxurious management training centre, or even the one-week programme, seem too much of a luxury for time-starved executives,” says Marsh. Yet, he believes there is a need for “introspective reflection” if HR professionals want actual learning to take place for their leaders.
The solution may lie in making learning into “chunks” more digestible for executives, says Marsh and he offers some examples for HR professionals who are considering using “more flexible bite-sized” development programmes.
One, HR professionals can introduce a 30-minute webcast of an academic with senior executives every week, similar to IMD’s Wednesday Webcast. Follow it up with 30 minutes of web-based Q&A for executives who want to interact. “Some managers I know schedule their team meetings around this time in order to learn as a group with their team,” says Marsh.
Two, distribute short podcasts to executives’ iPods or PDAs over the corporate network just before the end of their workday. This enables them to listen and learn from the sessions on the way home and to the office in the morning.
Three, run a full workshop of global participants conducted by a speaker in 60 to 90-minute virtual classrooms, followed by telephonic small break-out groups and capture discussion points on virtual whiteboards for sharing-back purposes.
Four, organise peer-to-peer coaching over lunch between two executives of similar levels. While this may need facilitating by HR at first, says Marsh, eventually the 60 to 90-minute lunch would be a rich discussion for the executives as they can help each other with mutual challenges.
