Are you feeling the squeeze? With so many companies bracing
for a recession, leaders find themselves under pressure to
stop investing in organizational improvements. But we all
know that acting rashly causes problems. Morale goes down,
and when the economy improves, you've got to start over
from scratch.
It amazes me how otherwise rational leaders will just start
hacking away at an itty bitty leadership development or
training budget with more attention than they devote to
other operational expenses 20, 30, or 100 times higher.
Here are five ways you can intelligently s-t-r-e-t-c-h that
development investment during a downturn, and avoid all of
the problems caused by indiscriminate budget cuts:
1. First things first: get crystal clear about the
competencies your organization needs in order to execute
the business strategy. Let's say your organization is
shifting from being a profit center to being a cost center
in support of bigger business units. This is not an unusual
scenario in a downturn, as leaders ask their organizations
to line up around the biggest bets instead of experimenting
with multiple, smaller, and unproven bets. There's probably
a gap between your organization's current ability to
collaborate cross-functionally and what is now needed,
since they've been encouraged to work independently in the
past.
Check to be sure that's true, and if it is, focus your
organizational improvement efforts on enablers of
cross-functional collaboration such as creating
interlocking processes, establishing clear lines of
accountability, and honing your leaders' ability to
collaborate with other leaders.
Note how modest this line item can turn out to be, if you
play it right. You may need a process redesign pro to help
with the development of interlocking processes, an OD or HR
consultant to help think through how to establish clear
lines of accountability in a cross-functional environment,
and an OD consultant to hone skills in collaborative
leadership. You'll also probably need someone to handle
internal communications about the change.
All of these people could work behind the scenes as
advisors if your internal people can take the advice and
run with it, saving a lot of consulting fees. Maybe you
even have one or more of these internal resources available
and need no line item at all.
Either way, the return will be huge relative to the
investment, because you're focusing very specific and
limited resources to address an essential business need. In
this particular situation, we're not even really talking
about solving a problem, we're talking about raising the
bar and enabling significant change, which is an exciting
place to be. Who knew you could actually have exciting
organizational development during a recession?
2. Identify the root causes of any significant problems
before agreeing to a budget number. Do not settle for, "Cut
the technical training budget by 20%," which is a silly
request because it has no bearing on the business. Figure
out if your internal training is solving -- or at least
helping to solve -- the most critical problems of the
business. If it's not, chuck all of it, not just 20%.
Believe me, you'll be the CFO's new best friend and
employees who have been stuck in irrelevant training
classes will cheer. Then figure out which training, if any,
will help address critical business needs, and rebuild your
budget from the bottom up. It's never too late to get this
right. If you're too late in the game for this year, start
the process with an eye on setting next year's budget based
on real need, not just the previous year's number.
3. Get creative about continuing your business-critical
organizational development investments, with the goal of
sustaining and moving forward until better times allow you
to take bigger leaps. For example, it's essential to
develop your high-potential leaders on an ongoing basis,
during good times and bad, but do you really need to fly
them all to Tuscany, or would an easy-in/easy-out business
center like Frankfurt do? How about focusing on local
rotational assignments instead of bigger development
"events" that increase opex? How about utilizing other
technologies to develop them? Even something as dirt-cheap
as a quarterly book club is a way to keep the process
moving forward until better times. You could host it via
Webex, or a conference call, or a blog, or a wiki (o.k.,
maybe a wiki is a stretch...).
4. Don't compare apples to oranges. The $25,000 investment
to coach a new senior leader in a mission-critical role may
create more return than a similarly priced generic training
program for the masses. Be relentless at evaluating the
return you can expect from every organizational development
investment.
5. Where possible and feasible, switch from individuals to
groups. Again, in the leadership development realm, group
coaching can be quite effective, and costs less than
coaching 15 or 20 leaders one-on-one. You won't reap the
full benefits of 1:1 coaching, but you'll have the benefit
of building relationships between up-and-coming leaders and
you'll keep the process moving forward. Nothing kills
credibility like a repeated pattern of excellent programs
that launch with a big bang during good times and then
unceremoniously get the ax during bad times. Far better to
keep it going on a shoestring than to let it die.
----------------------------------------------------
Jennifer Selby Long, Founder and Principal of Selby Group,
provides executive coaching and organizational development
services. Jennifer's knack is helping clients navigate the
leadership and organizational challenges triggered by
change and growth. She knows firsthand that great plans
often fail because companies don't take into account the
human factors that come into play when implementing them.
Visit Jennifer at: http://selbygroup.com
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