b est p ractices c onference 2013 r apid s kill d evelopment : m eeting t omorrow ' s n eeds b...

BestPractices Conference 2013

Rapid Skill Development: Meeting Tomorrow's Needs

Before Tomorrow ArrivesPresented by Sam Allred

Director at Upstream Academy, LLC

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“Since professional firms sell skill, talent, knowledge, and ability, it follows that any firm that can outperform its competition in building and creating skills will gain a significant competitive advantage.”

David H. Maister

WHAT DOES THIS QUOTE MEAN?

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“Competitive advantage does not come from an ability to hire better people than your competitors do, but from a superior ability to develop them.”

David H. Maister

WHAT DOES THIS QUOTE MEAN?

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Is it possible to outperform your competitors in building and creating skills?

QUESTION

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What advantages would you get if you outperformed your competitors in skill-building at all levels?

Take 7 minutes and discuss this at your table.

TABLE DISCUSSION


OBSERVATIONS ABOUT TRAINING

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While we generally do a good job of providing technical training, we often do a poor job of training our people in the skills that will have a significant impact on their personal success.

Few firms have a process for training their people in the vital leadership skills.

OBSERVATION #1


“Most firms are pretty good at training their people in the technical core of their profession, but few work actively at developing some of the critical skills that determine the professional’s success.”

David H. Maister


What are “some of the critical skills that determine [a] professional’s success?”

QUESTION

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One of the fundamental goals of every firm should be to retain its best and brightest people.

One of the best ways to earn loyalty is to help your people make the most of their careers. Great training helps to do this.

OBSERVATION #2


How can great training help your people make the most of their careers?

QUESTION

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Too many individuals view meeting the annual CPE requirement as synonymous with meeting an individual’s training needs.

In some ways this has cheapened the overall training experience for many within our profession.

OBSERVATION #3


Too often, firms commit significant resources to annual or semi-annual training marathons that seem to ignore all we know about the ability of the human mind to process and retain new information.

OBSERVATION #4


Most firms have not established written training standards and, as a result, the quality of the training experience can vary greatly and is at a much lower level than it should be.

OBSERVATION #5


Too often, we send individuals to CPE courses or conferences with very few expectations regarding what they are to learn, do, and bring back.

As a result, we often have minimal results to show for the firm’s investment in training.

OBSERVATION #6


We do very little testing within our firms and so we really don’t know how effective our training is.

We seem far more content to comply with the CPE hour requirement than to help team members move to the next skill level.

OBSERVATION #7


KEYS TO RAPID SKILL DEVELOPMENT

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1. Increase expectations. Be more appropriately demanding early in an individual’s career that they become an expert in one of more areas.

2. No tolerance for under-delegation. No one in the firm should be working below his/her pay grade. All work should be pushed down to the appropriate level.



3. Willingness to move someone out of his/her comfort zone. Comfort zones need to be viewed as career anchors.

4. Proactively schedule your best people on your best opportunities.

5. Ensure one-on-one shadowing occurs.



6. Insist on an effective client screening process as part of a well-organized, constant push to upgrade the caliber of work brought in.

7. Use technology more effectively to teach critical skills. Consider video on demand training.



8. Focus as much on the necessary transfer of knowledge as you do on the transfer of clients.



QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

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Thank You!

[email protected]

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