8

Iteration, Not Perfection

Suzanne Frawley

Dee recently joined a midsize organization to lead the talent development team. One of the goals her team committed to delivering this year was a foundational management program for new leaders who have direct reports for the first time. The need for this program was based on feedback from senior leaders and department leaders within the organization, observations from HR business partners, and a longtime member of the talent development team.

To better understand the big picture, as well as the organization’s culture, leaders, and employees, Dee met with business leaders across the organization. The HR business partners told Dee they were spending too much time investigating employee complaints and coaching leaders on basic management skills. They asked Dee and her team to immediately begin working with new leaders who were early in their careers. To help speed things along, the business partners drafted an agenda for a five-day, face-to-face training program for Dee and her team to implement.

Dee also found out the following:

• An operations executive was considering a third-party vendor to train his leaders in ownership and accountability.

• New leaders were frustrated in their roles—unsure of what was expected of them and how they were supposed to do their jobs—and felt they had been “thrown to the wolves.”

• Training for new leaders had never been offered within the organization.

• Exit interviews showed that employees believed they were not being coached or developed, received little to no feedback, and their work was not appreciated.

From prior experience, Dee knew the benefits of building the skills of new leaders. The organization was growing, and increasing new leaders’ capabilities would contribute to the growth of individuals and company performance. With the current competitive landscape, retaining and developing internal talent was a primary focus for HR and the talent development team. Dee also knew that training new leaders to feel competent and confident in their roles would take more than five days. However, in speaking with the business leaders, she learned that four or more consecutive days in a face-to-face training would not be possible due to business needs, potential downtime, and travel costs for 60 percent of the participants. Operations stressed they could not afford to miss growth opportunities or production targets. For the remaining new leaders who occupied various roles in the corporate office, time away from a heavy work schedule was also a concern.

Dee knew that if new and existing leaders were not involved in developing the program she proposed, it would not be endorsed, attended, or reinforced. She estimated that to effectively and efficiently deliver a pilot and launch a sustainable program would take six to eight months.

Where to Begin? Big Project, High Visibility, Critical to Business Success

With all the advice, predetermined solutions, suggestions, timelines, and skepticism from the business side, it can be overwhelming for talent development professionals to know where and how to start. While it is tempting to jump right into program design and development, Dee knew that it was more important to first try to understand the challenges of a new leader. Her TD team needed to walk in the shoes of a new leader to learn the demands of the business and what senior leaders expected of them.

The Process

Dee understood that the business was not concerned with how her team designed, developed, or delivered the leadership development programs—nor was it appreciative of the language that talent professionals use—it simply wanted to meet its business goals. So, she began the project by meeting with her team to outline the big picture. She summarized the needs she learned by speaking to the business and listening to feedback from her team. Then, the team brainstormed next steps, including contacting peers in other organizations and reviewing research on what new leaders needed to be successful, including key capabilities.

They recognized that there were multiple ways to tackle the project, so they focused on the question, “What is the business problem we are trying to solve?”

Dee wanted a solution that provided impact to the organization and simultaneously ensured the buy-in and involvement of all stakeholders. Given this situation, she outlined an iterative approach for the TD team and drafted a high-level design thinking approach and timeline for the project (Figures 8-1 and 8-2).

Figure 8-1. An Iterative Approach

Figure 8-2. High-Level Project Approach

Dee knew that she and her team needed to be clear on the problem, so she outlined an approach that included a blend of project management and design thinking tools.

Design Thinking, an Integral Part of the Process

Dee suspected that using design thinking tools would accelerate the design, development, and testing process. To ensure she was selecting the most effective tools, she reached out to Michelle Webb, learning strategy manager with Accenture, who recommended asking the following questions:

• Why does the business want what they are asking for?

• Why are the leaders and HR business partners asking for particular models or approaches (such as training on ownership and accountability or five days of face-to-face training)?

• How will you document and fill the current gaps to solve the problem?

• How will you determine that you have the best mix of end users during the design phase?

• How will you persuade participants in the design and development phases to think more broadly and focus on the needs of new leaders instead of jumping to preferred solutions (for example, proposing a training agenda for new leaders before understanding what new leaders need)?

• How will you encourage participants to have empathy for the end user, so they see the new leader’s problem as their problem?

• Will you be able to trust the design thinking process to determine the best solution instead of using it to fit a predetermined conclusion?

As Dee began preparing for the design thinking session, she identified the challenge: “How to help a new leader quickly gain competence and confidence in their role while keeping time away from their jobs to a minimum.” She listed the needs she’d identified in her research, which included having “tough conversations,” accurately documenting a counseling session, setting clear expectations and goals for the team, coaching, and giving feedback to employees.

Michelle told her that she should invite those who would be delivering and receiving the training to these sessions. She also mentioned that these participants might have a different perceived view of what is needed, but that was OK. To ultimately determine the problem that actually needed to be solved, they would have to display convergent and divergent thinking.

Convergent thinking is the tendency to move toward one point within groups or organizations. However, the benefits when working with a group is to leverage different viewpoints—if a group working together thinks the same way, it may be difficult to come to the best approach or solution. On the other hand, when the group determines the best approach, the benefit of convergent thinking is the group has a consistent message that they are committed to. Divergent thinking is moving in the opposite direction from a common point. When groups first begin to work together on a problem, they often display this kind of thinking because the problem they are trying to solve is not clear or has not been agreed upon. It is important for the facilitator of the design thinking session to listen to each member of the group and understand their thinking.

Michelle encouraged Dee to take time to speak with end users (leaders and new members of management) and recommended that she start with simple problem-framing methods called Rose, Bud, Thorn (RBT), and affinity clustering. These tools helped Dee and her team understand the issues involved in a large amount of data. The session began with the team generating all the known information about a topic using a trigger question; for example, “What are the critical issues associated with current new leader development practices?” Each team member responded by writing their ideas on paper and transferring them to different colored sticky notes:

• Roses (pink sticky notes): Issues or ideas that are positives or successes.

• Buds (green sticky notes): Issues or ideas that have potential to be more positive than negative.

• Thorns (blue sticky notes): Issues or ideas that are negatives or challenges.

Once this step was completed, the team posted their ideas using an affinity process to cluster and label all like topics. Then, they reviewed the trigger question, and if needed, reframed the problem question to reflect what was discovered in the exercise.

Rose, Bud, Thorn helped Dee and her team understand the business goals new leaders needed to achieve, the areas they needed to learn (process, procedures, leading themselves and a team, and developing people), and the time needed to develop competence and confidence in these areas. Dee’s team enjoyed the collaborative process and said it helped them move away from quick problem labeling and offering solutions to ideation.

After reviewing the roses, buds, and thorns, the team discussed how they could turn the buds into roses, and how to eliminate thorns (Figure 8-3).

Figure 8-3. Turning Buds Into Roses and Eliminating Thorns

At the end of the session, the team realized that when a problem was framed accurately, they had a better chance of uncovering the root cause and improving the current practice.

Managing the Project

After the problem was well defined, Dee used several project management tools to keep things on track. First, she drafted a project charter for her team to use as a road map. The charter provided the initial requirements to meet stakeholder needs and expectations and defined the business needs, the high-level deliverables, and the overall timeline. The team referred to the charter often, which helped them stay focused on the project’s critical components:

• business need and impact

• budget

• project scope

• criteria, constraints, and assumptions

• sponsors, project lead, and team members

• out-of-scope items

• deliverables

• key performance indicators

• key milestones.

Once they created the project charter, the next step was to draft a work plan and determine who would do what by when.

There are numerous options for work plans; the key is to find one that works best for the project team and the project. Work plans that are easy to use, update, and access work best. For this project, the team opted to combine a work plan with Bain & Company’s RAPID Decision Making Model, which works by clarifying who should do what for each decision that needs to be made (Figure 8-4).

Figure 8-4. Example of a Work Plan Combined With a RAPID Model

The team wanted to be clear on who had the final decision, because the project had high visibility and multiple people were involved in implementing the decision. According to Bain & Company, a RAPID model is best used when there are two or more functional units or teams involved and big decisions need to be made.

The RAPID acronym represents five roles:

• Recommend. Create the initial proposals and recommendations.

• Agree. Must agree with the proposals from the recommend group.

• Perform. Execute the work after the decision is made.

• Input. Provide information and facts to the recommend group.

• Decide. The person who has the authority to make the decision.

To complete the work plan, Dee and her team needed to understand what was important to their stakeholders. To do this, they completed a stakeholder mapping (Figure 8-4).

They began by identifying their main stakeholders and writing those down on a whiteboard. The stakeholders included functional and department leaders, HR business partners, IT, employees, and the TD team. Then they wrote down each groups’ perspectives regarding new leader onboarding. The team considered the following questions and perspectives:

• What concerns would each group have regarding implementing new leader training?

• What challenges could result from having new leaders not in their role for a few days?

• What are the biggest challenges for new leaders?

• How will we ensure the training is consistent?

• What is the best way to assign and track the training?

• How will we reinforce and sustain this training?

The team then contemplated how each group could influence other groups and used the following criteria to determine influence:

• Contribution (value). Does the stakeholder have information, counsel, or expertise on the issue that could be helpful?

• Willingness to engage. How willing is the stakeholder to participate?

• Influence. How much influence does the stakeholder have? Who or what do they influence (for example, strategic decisions or budget allocation)?

• Necessity of involvement. Is this someone who could derail or hinder the change process?

• Blockers. Is there anyone who could block the development and implementation?

Next, team members drew a circle around any role that was related and drew solid arrows between roles with tight or significant connections. They also drew a dotted line between slight connections. This gave them a clear picture as to the level of influence one group may have on another.

The team felt it was critical to identify the top influencers and blockers, so they placed a green dot on the sticky notes for the top three to five influencers and a red dot on the top three to five blockers. Top influencers were frontline leaders and HR business partners; top blockers were midlevel leaders and IT.

As a result of the stakeholder mapping, the team realized if they were going to minimize travel, prepare new leaders for learning, and make the learning stick, they would need to use technology that was not currently in use within the organization. An interactive virtual learning platform and a sustainability tool would enable remote employees to have easy access from their computers and mobile phones.

To sell these needs to IT and the business, they developed a business case. The purpose of the interactive virtual learning platform and sustainability tool was improved performance and retention of learning, reduced travel costs, and increased leader engagement. The business case summarized the business reason and included these components:

• the summary

• background and project description

• strategic alignment (how the needs align to the overall organizational goal)

• impact (benefits) to the business

• alternatives

• environmental analysis

• risk assessment

• cost/benefit analysis

• conclusion, recommendation, and implementation.

After Dee presented the business case, IT thanked the team for making it easy to make the decision and agreed to implement their request.

At this point in the project, Dee and her team had reviewed exit and engagement survey data and interviewed senior leaders, HR business partners, and leaders with one to two years of experience. They also benchmarked against large and midsize organizations and reviewed research from ATD, Bersin, and Gallup. However, they felt overwhelmed by the amount of information they’d collected and struggled to see how it all connected. Some team members even suggested they needed to uncover more information and conduct more interviews.

To help the team feel more certain about moving forward, Dee suggested they create a mind map so they could visualize the data’s frequency, patterns, and relationships (Figure 8-5).

Figure 8-5. Leading Teams Mind Map

Mind mapping enabled team members to capture all their thoughts and use color, fonts, and icons to show the needs of those new to management and prioritize key areas of focus.

Throughout the entire project, Dee reminded her team, “It’s not about us; it’s about them”—in this case, the end user or new leaders. To keep their focus on the end user, Dee and her team developed persona profiles based the different levels of leaders, time in role, and whether they were corporate or field based (Figure 8-6). The persona profile is part of the design thinking methods toolkit and originated in the work associated with user-centered experience. The team outlined three different categories:

• new leaders with less than six months in role

• leaders with six months to two years of experience

• leaders with more than two years’ experience.

Figure 8-6. Personal Profile for a Business Learning Advisor

The team then applied those profiles to new leaders in the corporate office and those who were in the field. The result was six persona profiles.

The team believed that creating personas for those with two or more years of experience would make the program attractive to leaders who had never had formal management training. By incorporating this exercise into the program’s design and development, the team was able to develop empathy; identify characteristics, values, goals, skills needed; and gather knowledge of how leaders like to learn. The personas enabled the TD team to have a deeper understanding of the role and an increased perspective of a new leader. As a result, the team was able to provide a more tailored design and development approach.

It was time for Dee and her team to gain a deeper understanding of the new leader’s experience managing a team and developing people. They pulled the data and information they had learned and used an experience diagram, which illustrates the experience in detail using a series of prompts or triggers. The team used a new leader’s first six months in their role as the goal for the experience. In preparing for this session, Dee reviewed the components of an experience diagram to see the best way to capture a new leader’s first 180 days:

• Formats. An experience diagram can take a variety of formats. It can be a flowchart, matrix, timeline, or a simple map, similar to a typical journey map or user-experience map.

• Symbols. Within any format, a variety of symbols can be used to describe and illustrate the experience. These include icons, graphs, pictures, words, sentences, quotes, sticky notes, or documents.

• Prompts or triggers. There are numerous prompts or triggers that help groups delve into a common experience to diagram and illustrate deeper details and further layers of granularity. These prompts include goals for the experience, critical waypoints, significant touchpoints, stakeholders, interactions with people, and tools, tasks, and technology.

They chose a timeline. Using a large whiteboard and large sticky notes, the team broke down the experience by time and category. They wrote timeframes horizontally across the top of the whiteboard: before start date, day 1, days 2–7, days 7–30, days 30–60, days 60–90, and days 90–180. Then, horizontally, they wrote the four main categories: systems, policies, and procedures; managing myself; managing my team; and developing people. The team then referred to their data and research, mind map, and personas as they wrote steps on the large sticky notes and placed each step on the timeline corresponding to the appropriate category where they thought new leaders would need that experience. By doing this, the TD team gained further insights and empathy for new leaders in their first six months in the role.

Summary

The days of taking a year to conduct a needs analysis and then design, develop, and implement a learning program are gone. Businesses and needs change quickly and when the rollout of a program occurs, it usually needs to be updated, changed, or modified to keep it from becoming obsolete. Talent development teams need to be flexible and anticipate the needs of the organization. In addition, they can no longer lock themselves in a room to design and develop a program and have the pilot be the first time the organization sees it. When TD professionals take this approach, the business often pushes back—not because the team missed the mark, but because the business thinks they have much to offer and were not a part of the process.

The project charter and RAPID model are excellent tools for managing the project and outlining specific work that needs to be done and who is involved at each step. Iteration throughout the design and development provides the flexibility to update, refine, and confirm the work in real time and involves members of the organization along the way. The Rose, Bud, and Thorn and affinity clustering tools give a clear picture of what is working, the current challenges, and where opportunities existed. It only takes 90 minutes to complete this exercise and the outputs are extremely valuable. Using the mind mapping approach helps show patterns and connections in the data and increase confidence in final recommendations. Adding personas facilitates stepping into the shoes of the end user, resulting in deeper understanding and perspective.

These tools were combined using the Experience Diagram exercise, which helps show the program and the journey through the eyes of a new leader. The exercise shows the big picture, helps build empathy for how overwhelming a new leader’s role can be, and results in a realistic timeline for new leaders to feel competent and confident in their role. It also helps confirm which learning opportunities could be done virtually, self-paced, or face-to-face.

Involving members of the organization is critical; however, there is a delicate balance between involving the business enough versus too much, which has the risk of slowing down progress. Some will see a program as risky if they are concerned it will keep leaders away from producing results. They may also fear criticism if the program is not perfect or doesn’t guarantee which performance results the program will deliver.

Talent development leaders understand that organizations want results faster, cheaper, better. By involving the organization early and often, and guiding them in the process, their needs can be addressed immediately and they can give input, become advocates, and own the outcome.

What Happened?

Dee, her team, and leaders from the business gained realistic expectations of new leaders after a review and debrief of the experience mapping. The team then proposed the program design and committed to launching a pilot in three months. Business leaders agreed with the design, the proposed content, and overall timeline. As the team prepared to pilot the program, a senior vice president asked if he could kick off the program by sharing his leadership experience, why the company was offering training for new leaders, and how critical their role is, as well as why the company wanted to focus on setting new leaders up for success. In the first three months, 50 new and seasoned leaders actively participated in the program, different vice presidents kicked off every session, and senior leaders made the program mandatory for all members of management.

Key Takeaways

Talent development professionals can demonstrate to the organization that they are agile, and they listen and work to understand the needs of the end users. It is critical to involve the business early and throughout the discovery, design, and development process. When they do this, it builds trust and confidence in talent development and reduces the suspicion of rolling out a program that is too complicated, does not meet the needs, and takes too much time, causing a reduction in performance

Talent development and learning professionals need to understand how things get done within the organization. Call it politics or organizational savvy; key members of the company need to be involved. Socializing with business leadership and management is one way to involve them; another is to include them in the design thinking sessions. Asking leaders to review the content or designate a SME from their area to provide ongoing input helps them feel more comfortable and confident in the end product.

Iteration, iteration, iteration—those in the TD profession who were taught ADDIE, ISD, or other design approaches need to embrace an iterative, Agile approach to designing that is human-centered and starts with the customer. Make it an expectation: Iteration, not perfection. TD leaders need to balance iteration and input with the need to move forward and make a decision. Be a champion of getting better at getting better.

Combining traditional project management with design thinking tools gives the flexibility to iterate, empathize with the end user, and produce the desired business outcome. Rose, Bud, and Thorn clarifies the problem and the project charter shows the big picture road map and project focus. RAPID outlines the work that needs to be completed, who needs to be involved, by when the work needs to be completed, and who has the final decision every step in the plan. Mind mapping helps bring structured chaos to vast amounts of data and ideas, and helps individuals and teams see patterns and connections. Personas summarize the mindset, needs, and goals, and make the data meaningful, memorable, and visible. The experience diagram gives visibility to the needs assessment, the topics that need to be addressed, who needs to be involved, and the amount of time new leaders need to complete the program.

Get members of the TD team and the group that will be affected by the decision the opportunity to experience the design thinking approach. Say, “Let’s solve this problem fast by looking at the issues: understanding all of the components, people, and so on, and iterating using prototypes; in other words, learn-build-act, learn-build-act.” This approach also increases the partnership between talent development and the business, and results in exceptional performance. Michelle Webb from Accenture encourages talent development professionals to learn by researching internally and externally, reviewing the science and technology. To research:

• internally, ask what new leaders coming into the role think they need to know

• externally, learn what other companies are doing well and what insights they have

• science, discover well-respected sources with unbiased and objective methods

• technology, find out which technology works best—virtual reality, augmented reality, collaborative tools, or mobile.

Here are some of the common questions about design thinking that Michelle asks:

• How much do I need to get people involved in the process?

• How do I make it agile?

• How much will this cost?

• How much time will it take?

• How do I estimate and budget for this process?

• How do I make this agile and still meet the deadlines?

Questions for Reflection and Further Action

1. What ideas from this chapter might you want to explore further?

2. What ideas in this chapter resonate with your thinking?

3. What is your current practice when you are asked to build a program that is identified as critical to the future success of the business?

4. How might you incorporate some of these project management and design thinking tools and techniques into your team’s work?