A Sample Case of Leadership Development Using Direct ActionÔ
Senior Vice President for Operations in a computer company concludes that his reports at the Director level are brilliant functionally and lacking in leadership qualities. He defines leadership as the abilities to efficiently and effectively see the big picture, think strategically, communicate fully (including picking up on opinions and perceptions of front line employees as well as influencing peers and other colleagues), collaborate across functions, and frame problems.
This is troubling to the SVP because he knows that success in achieving strategic objectives is due to a complex process of interaction between leaders, organization, and environment. Preparing Directors to be better leaders is an important task of high performance companies. More concretely, the company runs on its customer commitment. That will require managers at the Director level to go beyond implementation of plans devised by senior executives. They have to figure out how to serve the customer now. Directors must simultaneously obtain their present objectives and continually build their capacity to think and act strategically. They must be able to read situations accurately and insightfully, choose priorities for their efforts, develop concepts of operation, powerfully articulate their purpose to their subordinates, collaborate across functional domains, and select solutions to problems that they have correctly identified. They must also improve their ability to learn and, consequently, the ability of the organization to do the same. To remain competitive within their industry requires top leadership talent to exercise innovation and excellence in all endeavors. How will the SVP make sure that top leadership talent exists?
He decides to use Direct Action™
¾ a program from Cavanaugh Leahy & Company¾ as an opportunity for the company's second tier managers to learn and grow in action.A team is assembled that includes players from HR, senior management and some prospective participants in the learning. They learn the principles of action learning cycle up front ¾ act on current urgent business challenge task, experience results of that action, reflect on effectiveness of approach used, and revise theory of action as necessary ¾ and practice them in their own 2 design sessions. They conduct a more thorough needs analysis of the missing or underdeveloped leadership competencies in the target group. They do this through interviews with senior managers, perusal of performance management records, and other HR recruitment and exit interview data. Their design team output included a master schedule for the sessions, the choice of the tools of reflection (prisms) that the participants will experience, and the communication about the session and pre-work for the participants. The criteria for the selection of the business issue that are at the core of the action learning project also emerged from the design team's work.
Action Learning gives teams of executives real live business problems to solve with the objective of gaining a new way of looking at the world that allows more effective action, insight that facilitates competence. Numerous studies and business cases have found that action learning is without peer in helping to develop executives. For example, almost 3/4 of top executives in Fortune 100 companies state that their best development experiences stemmed from action learning type frameworks.
Action Learning is a method that relies upon a cycle of
The phases are repeated throughout the course of a learning experience. Building Theory entails participants creating and subsequently revising personal and group theories (models or views) of how to get something done in the business context. Theory includes the sort of problem the learners face and the best way to attack it. Theory is in short what the dictionary says it is "a mental view, a particular conception of something to be done or of the method of doing it". In the next phase, Planning & Taking Action, participants plan and take an action that will test that theory. Participants therefore learn in action -- not through lectures or reading. They are urged to remain alert to the way in which they (and their colleagues in this group learning environment) plan action so that they can reflect upon it in a later phase of the cycle.
The subsequent phase, Experiencing Results, simply allows participants to heedfully encounter the results. This experience not only tells them how their theory held up but also conveys knowledge about the effectiveness of their approach to the overall circumstances of the business issue that they faced. The final phase, Reflecting, is the one in which the participants digest those results. Reflecting allows you to test and question your assumptions. What gets evaluated (or reflected upon) is NOT just the work but also the approach and mental models that you applied to resolve the situation.
The conclusion of the Reflecting phase starts the cycle all over again as participants then revise their theory based upon what emerged from reflection. The cycle fosters examination and improvement of the information that learners use, the method that they adopt, and, ultimately, the choices that they make to generate the outcomes that they and their colleagues desire.
The Senior Vice President worked with his peers on the Senior Management Team to select a roster of possible Business Challenges for the groups of directors to tackle. They included 'fixing' the customer service support function, expanding services geographically into Latin America, and developing a plan to better manage existing knowledge and intellectual capital at the company. The criteria for selection were that the projects chosen should require cross-functional effort, matter very much to the organization's mid-term success, and have enough flexibility so that participants could to some extent 'shape' the project. They were to be projects that would stretch participant's capacities to think critically, communicate powerfully, in short – to lead
Managers selected by their company in groups of 15 to 20 worked on first selecting and then solving these pressing business problems. They were not simulations or business cases. The participants were told that their eventual solution would be presented for possible approval and adoption to senior management. They worked off-site in two discrete sessions six weeks apart. They were facilitated in their process by one internal and one external consultant. Two mentors who are members of senior management are also present to help the participants reflect on the content of their work in the sessions. Audio and video equipment were used to record some of the discussions to aid reflection. Three groups moved through the session in total.
Each group cycled through working on their selected problem, reflecting on their approach, and consolidating their learnings. Their reflection focused on how they saw and set the problem, and how they engaged others in solution creation. In this way, they challenged their own and others’ thinking. They shifted between addressing this problem and stepping back to look at how they might get better at problem solving itself!
Participants tested first their selection of the business issue and then their proposed approaches and their solution to it by presenting their thinking to senior managers. The first presentation of why they chose one issue on the list over the other candidates was made to the mentors. The mentors than ask questions to help identify things that the participants might not have considered or sufficiently weighted. This same sequence is repeated with the sponsor of the leadership development, the Senior Vice President, at the end of the first session when the participants reveal their approach to the selected business issue. It is repeated again at the end of the second session when they present their proposed solution to that business issue. They engage in honest give and take with superiors as well as peers. If their proposal is approved, they then attempt the solution and come back together to learn from implementation.
In this instance, the first group chose the business challenge of 'fixing' the customer service support function. Their final solution involved innovative data warehousing methods not previously considered as well as the institution of a different reward and recognition system for the employees. The Senior Management team accepted their solution, which within six months had resulted in measurable improvements in employee morale and retention as well as decreases in customer complaints about customer service.