I have realized that there are several reasons why development plans are so vexing for people:

1) “Development needs” tend to be identified in terms of personal competencies; qualities of the individual to be improved or leveraged.  They ultimately involve descriptions individual skills, abilities, characteristics, orientations, outlooks, mindsets…or whatever other term you want to use.

2) The most easily identified and packaged solutions for “development needs” are training  programs.  If you have a need to improve on communications skills, take a communications class. Problem solved. But these solutions are very limited.  They don’t address the important development needs of high potential employees.  So, you are going to put him or her into the company’s leadership development program. That is great, but will it really help them to make a larger contribution to the organization? To be more effective on a larger playing field? Probably not.

3) Real development comes from having experiences. But, we don’t know how to identify the right experiences for a given individual, and we are hard pressed to explain why we think a given experience is the right one in the first place.  When asked to describe why a particular experience will be useful, it is hard to get people to go beyond “It will just be a great experience–they will learn so much, and see different parts of the company, etc…” The point is, we don’t have a simple method of unpacking the learning potential in potential developmental assignments. And, if we don’t really understand the key lessons we want an experience to teach a person, why would expect them to?

So, I have developed a process for creating what some have described as an “experience-based development plan on steroids”–a robust process that guides the individual through a thought process that yields an insightful development plan.  The basic steps, which are supported in the FrameBreaking Leadership Development Workshop with a mixture of online and print tools and exercises, goes like this:

1) Clarify your long-term career aspirations.  While this can be a tough step for some, it’s an important that one’s development plan is put into a larger, career context.

2) Conduct a personal experience audit

4) Ensure your passions are aligned with the experiences you are having and need to have to achieve your long-term career aspirations

5) Document your plan in a simple form and approach it with a Learning Mindset. Adapting a simple reflective practice that I can an “ActiveLearning Routine” can help you to keep learning top of mind once you are embroiled in an experience-based development opportunity.

If you are interested in learning more about this robust approach to experience-based development, check out the workshop description or attend a free webinar on January 18. I have just recently finished a book on this subject, and will post details once it is available for purchase.

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet;” 

-          Juliet, from Romeo & Juliet

In this excerpt from Romeo and Juliet, Juliet makes a simple, but important point: the name for a person, or anything at all for that matter, does not determine the fundamental properties of the thing itself.  Names, as with all words, are mental constructions that we create, and imbue with meaning. And real objects, or in this case, people, are real entities that have an existence separate from our experience of them. Thus, Romeo should not be defined by his name.  Seems obvious enough, right?

What Juliet is somewhat exasperatedly decrying is the fact that our naming of a thing does significantly affect our experience of the thing.  So, while it may be that Romeo’s qualities would remain unchanged if he were to have been named something other than Montague (“Smith,” perhaps?), his being named Montague carries certain meaning, shared by others, with which she must now contend.

A rose by any name…

Taking Juliet’s observation one step further, I suggest that “a rose by any name” ceases to be a rose at all.  Not that the rose somehow disappears, but the introduction of language transforms our interaction with the rose from a sensory experiencing of the rose to a categorizing, classifying, or describing of our experience of the rose. The assignment of a name or description to the thing, in this case, a rose, takes us out of the external realm of physical realities and into the inner world of the mind–an artificially constructed world of symbolic representations, networks of associations, and, importantly, meaning.

So what does any of this have to do with the regular topics of my blog–learning from experience or being a more effective leader?

The point here is that because we live in this inner world of the mind, it is critical to understand how we have been hardwired to represent the complexity of our experience.  Developing this understanding has concrete, practical implications for our effectiveness. The way in which we process information and the quality of our mental representations of that information can have a significant impact on our actions.

Put simply, bad mental models lead to bad judgments.

To make this philosophical musing practical, it helps to recognize that there are certain common and regularly-used shortcuts in how we all perceive and think about the world; Being aware of these shortcuts, or perceptual biases, can help you to avoid potentially costly mistakes.

A simple illustration

One of my favorite perceptual shortcuts is so deeply engrained in our thinking that it is referred to by psychologists as the “fundamental attribution error.” When we observe the actions of others, we naturally make attributions about why they are doing what they are doing.  The driver who cuts you off on the freeway is doing so because, “he is an idiot!”  The co-worker who shows up to the office late is viewed as probably “not committed,” or, perhaps “lazy.” 

These examples highlight our deeply-seated tendency to attribute the behavior of others to internal, stable qualities of the other person rather than to external factors.  We don’t pause to speculate about various explanations for the driver’s behavior:  “perhaps he didn’t see us,” “perhaps he was avoiding a road hazard,” or “perhaps he was pre-occupied because he just learned of the death of a family member.”  

While you may quickly dismiss these explanations as far-reaching (and you would be right), the driver’s behavior provides just as much evidence for any one of these external causes as it does to suggest that he or she possesses a character flaw.  Yet, we consistently make internal attributions such as this without a second thought.

So, what to do?

Perhaps the most important take-away from this post is to be more thoughtful.  Especially where the stakes are high.  Are you operating on good data, or are you operating on your own assumptions, biases, and unexamined interpretations of the situation?  Leaders, who hold influence over the careers and lives of others, have an extra obligation to act with appropriate information.  I am not encouraging analysis paralysis, where the leader is always looking for more infromation before making a decision.  Rather, I am merely reminding you to get the other side of the story. Especially when the stakes are high.

I drew the cartoon illustration for this post in 1990, while taking a course on organization theory as part of my master’s degree.  Originally, I labeled the rose drawing as “CHAOS” and the word “rose” as “ORDER.  I had intended that to be a cynical commentary on a reductionist view of the world.  I later reversed these labels to make the point more directly: if we operate without constantly trying to improve our mental models of the world, we are living in a world that is increasingly disconnected from the real complexity around us. And, increasingly dysfunctional.  I am not sure which label fits better for which figure….maybe that’s the point?

If you have achieved chess master status, these patterns are pretty useful. If however, you have not achieved grand master status and want to play chess well, the patterns that you have in your head may not be that useful. You may, in fact, need to unlearn them.

But what patterns are you carrying with you that might be hindering your game? Probably not long chains of chess moves.

The patterns that I am referring to are patterns that are not directly related to chess. For example, some common patterns that may need to be addressed cover behavioral patterns such as, “How do I respond when attacked? ” “How do I act when I have a valuable resource (e.g., the queen); do I hold it tightly, or, am I willing to sacrifice it to achieve a larger aim?”

These patterns can be dysfunctional because they limit how we approach the world, and they constrain us without our being aware of it. We become overly cautious, or overly aggressive; unwilling to give in order to get.

In an organizational context, the question becomes, “are you stuck in ways of thinking that worked for you in the past but may not be the most effective for you today or into the future?” For us to continue learning, it is often critically important for us to unlearn perspectives, behaviors, or routines that have become habitual because they have proven successful in the past. This requires a learning mindset–a continual habit of curiosity; questioning, and seeking meaning from the world around us.

For the individual, the organization is a potential source of accomplishments; a playing field on which they can score points and demonstrate their prowess as a top talent individual. If the high potential has high aspirations, these accomplishments need to be accumulated rapidly, in order to move to a larger playing field a step closer to the ultimate goal. They seek opportunities to tackle larger problems, achieve bigger results, and gain increased reputation.

For the organization, the individual is a potential source of capabilities. As the organization grows and struggles to compete in increasingly complex, global markets, the demand for increasingly capable leaders continues to rise. Developing leaders who can perform on larger playing fields is a prerequisite for survival.

This would seem to be a perfect match–individuals striving for rapid achievement and organizations striving to develop capabilities as rapidly as possible. The actual outcomes, however, are sub-optimized. Mostly because organizations are also really obsessed with results, and their need for future leaders is never felt as intensely as their anxiety about not achieving short-term results.

So, when the next great opportunity comes up, rather than seek a high potential individual who could learn from the assignment, the tendency is to turn to the individual most likely to get results. In many organizations, this is the default approach because there is not a clear understanding of the developmental potential of on-the-job experiences. Development is viewed as something that can be done to the individual in relatively safe, learning environments that are disconnected from the workplace. Sure, we may use some action learning projects to extend the learning into the job, but there is typically not a second thought given to using naturally occurring work as a tool for development.

So, the individual’s focus on accomplishing, combined with the organization’s focus on development as a personal process, means that nobody is focused on understanding how well high potential individuals are learning from experience–What lessons could they be extracting for the challenges they are struggling with on the job today? Ultimately, it is an individual’s ability to learn from their experience that is one of the most important factors for their success. Recent research on learning agility suggests that this one characteristic may be the most important personal characteristic.

So, how do we effectively accelerate the development of high potentials? Here is my simple formula:

Accelerated leadership development = f(raw talent, access to opportunity, learning mindset)

Perhaps I will elaborate on this in a future post.

In addition, I had the honor of presenting to the group my research and insights regarding “Frame-Breaking Development for High Potentials.”  Over the last fifteen+ years, I have been exploring ways of developing people more effectively through on-the-job experiences rather than just through formal classroom programs. In recent years, I have distilled my insights down to a simple framework for helping people to think about experiences (see some information about the framework here.)  So, this was a great opportunity for me to engage top HR leaders in a dialogue on a subject which is a personal passion. 

Thanks to all who attended!

Yet, when you talk to most business leaders, the general sense is that that is only one small part of the picture. People actually learn much more from experience (e.g., 70-20-10…).  While that is an important starting point, that is not, in itself, very helpful.  Which experiences? How can I recognize them? When should I seek them? What am I supposed to learn from them?  etc., etc., etc… This insight raises far more questions than it answers.

These are the questions that I have spent the last 15 years exploring.  By poring over the literature and conducting several studies myself as a consultant, where I interviewed over a hundred successful leaders, I have explored the question–”what are the most developmental experiences in the career histories of successful executives?”  While that research has yielded some very valuable insights and development resources, I recently revisited my research and had a more significant insight.  I can boil down the 40-50 key work experiences that I uncovered in my research into a much simpler set of experience categories: Delivering, Mastering, Broadening, and Frame-Breaking. 

It turns out that most rhetoric in organizations focuses on the category that I refer to as “Frame-Breaking Career Moves,” while most of what organizations actually do is push “Delivering” experiences.   

What are Frame Breaking Career Moves™?
Simply put, Frame-Breaking Career Moves™ are assignments, roles or jobs that provide an opportunity to dramatically develop or advance your career. They are unique opportunities that allow you to catapult yourself forward by learning new skills and new ways of thinking. At the same time these special opportunities allow you to accomplish something that will cause others to take notice. You can think of Frame-Breaking Career Moves™ as combining two types of on-the-job challenge: Intensity and Stretch.

Intensity describes the extent to which work demands the most of you. When you are put into an assignment that pushes you to develop new skills and think differently, success demands that you be fully engaged and in a high learning mode.

Stretch describes the extent to which work pushes you outside your area of expertise. For example, ask an IT manager to participate in a sales call that would be routine for a sales professional, and he or she is likely to feel outside of their comfort zone.

If we combine these two dimensions together, we create a

Copyright 2011, Mark Kizilos. All rights reserved.

useful framework for looking at our jobs, careers, and personal development. We can use this framework as a tool to explore four broad types of career experiences: Delivering, Mastering, Broadening, and Frame-Breaking.

Frame-Breaking Career Moves™ push on both Intensity and Stretch dimensions simultaneously – they involve high levels of challenge; success requires one to develop new skills and perspectives in areas where prior experience does not apply. As such, Frame-Breaking experiences are rich learning opportunities. But, spotting them in advance isn’t always easy, learning from them isn’t guaranteed, and failure is a distinct possibility.  The inherent riskiness of these moves makes most organizations reluctant to use them.  Which is why I find it interesting that organizations often talk about developing people through “stretch experiences” (by which they mean Frame-Breaking Career Moves) yet they do everything they can to avoid using these experiences, instead preferring to keep people in a Delivering mode.

Frame-Breaking Leadership Development

On September 21, I will be teaching a four-hour seminar at the Carlson School of Management to help people learn from all four types of experience, especially Frame-Breaking opportunities.  The program will focus on understanding the basic dynamics of on-the-job learning opportunities, and developing the ability to learn more effectively from the full spectrum of experiences. The program will also engage participants in thinking about their own experience with a learning lens by providing participants with the tools needed to create their own  Learning Resume™, as well as an experience-based development plan.

If you are interested, you can find additional details and sign up here: http://www.carlsonschool.umn.edu/executive-education/frame-breaking-leadership-development.html

Also, I was quoted in a story on MBA Alternatives.  A digital version of the story can be accessed here.   Carlson Executive Education’s Minnesota Management Institute, a trhee-week program targeted to high potential managers and directors, is often viewed as an alternative to a traditional MBA.  The mini-MBA market has been very hot lately.  So much so, that some are overselling what you can accomplish in a very short time (e.g., some mini-MBAs are just 5 days…!).  We have takent the perspective that it is better to offer a strong program to build skills that high potential managers and directors need than to offer a sampler of MBA topics.  Our MMI program is an intensive, three-week transformational program.  You don’t get a “mini-MBA” credential from the program, but you do get a powerful, perspective-shifting experience that can accelerate your career.  Enough said.  you can check it out on our website if you are interested…

1. Strategic Talent Management starts with top management understanding that having the right people with the right skills in the right jobs is vital to the accomplishment of organizational objectives. Now this is nothing new.  Just about every HR, talent, or learning and development person will start by talking about how important top management support is.  Without top management support, it is hard to create a culture that values development of people.  But in the case of talent management, the importance of top management engagement is particularly vital.  This is because it is the only way to get a meaningful linkage between the strategic goals of the enterprise and the talent management effort.  It is usually not enough to “link” to a strategy after the discussion of the strategy is over and decisions have been made.  Unless the talent management agenda is explicitly considered during the strategy discussions, the talent discussion will start out behind the eight ball.  The focus will need to be on trying to fill in essential gaps in understanding about the implications of strategy for specific jobs, skills, people, and timing.

Unfortunately, in many companies, the political realities of the strategic planning process are such that HR (and the owners of the talent management process) have to struggle for a seat at that table with a meaningful voice.  Forward-thinking companies give HR that seat, but many do not. (for an interesting side-bar on this discussion, you may be interested in this article by Bob Bogart, my former boss from Thomson Reuters who published a piece on getting HR a seat at the board room table).

2. There are 2 aspects of “Strategic” when thinking about talent management: 1) the linkage to strategy, which was referred to above; and, 2) adopting a strategic approach in the management of talent once that linkage has been made.  Both meanings of word “strategic” are important.  The second meaning, taking a strategic approach, is all about investing in the development of the right talent.  Which jobs in the organization are the most critical for success?  If you were to invest a dollar in getting the right talent into those jobs, either by hiring the right person or developing an incumbent’s skills, would you get a big return?  I have blogged about this notion of “pivotal jobs” before.  A great concept developed by Pete Ramsted and John Boudreau.  Identifying these jobs requires a segmentation approach.  Then, investment can be funneled into those most important segments.

That is all for now…

Drum roll, please………….

“Companies with Integrated Talent Management Strategies See 26% More Revenue Per Employee and 41% Lower Turnover among High Performers, According to New Bersin & Associates Research.” 

This is a pretty significant result, and came from a sample of 773 HR managers and executives. 

If you dig into the report (or at least the press release, since I am not shelling out $595 for the full report!), development plans were a particularly important indicator of success: 

“Employee development strategies are critical to success. High-quality development planning is one of the practices most highly correlated to reduced turnover and increased revenue per employee. Unfortunately, today this process is very immature. Only about half of respondents widely use development planning and only 8% said plans were effective. ”

If you saw my last post on development planning, you can probably guess that I am smiling.  Without solid development plans, all of the good work done to identify and develop talent falls short. 

I also found it interesting that online systems are increasingly being used to underpin talent management efforts.    Some will say, “it is not about the technology, it is about having good discussions about talent.”  My reponse is that it is hard to have good conversations without good information, and good information means up to date information that is readily available…and that requires a system of some sort to store and manage it.

This would seem to be a reasonable request, right?

Actually, I don’t think that providing examples of “good development plans” is the best way to help a person guide their own development.  Why?  Well, a good development plan doesn’t necessarily look much different from a bad development plan.  

The most critical components of a good development plan are all those things that don’t make it onto the development plan form–the quality of the process used to get meaningful feedback on strengths and weaknesses; the effort invested in reflecting on where you are trying to go in your job and career; the extent of personal insight and self-awareness behind the plan, etc… Of course, the problem is that all of this other work is the hard work of development that many people aren’t ready to do. 

So, the interest in “well-written development plans”  can be a sign that there is too much emphasis on the talent development process and not enough on the hard work of actually helping to develop capability. 

Don’t get me wrong.  Development plans are important and useful tools, and it is good to have one that is based on a thorough self-examination.  My point is simply that the writing of the plan is actually pretty easy when you know what you are trying to accomplish. It is every other part of the process that is difficult. As a result, looking at “well-written development plans” is not that instructive for the individual wanting to drive their own development in the most effective manner.

This reminds me of something once told to me by a college classmate that has stuck with me through the years.  He was describing his experience in trying to write a paper for our philosophy class:   

 ”At first, I thought I knew what I wanted to say, but I just didn’t know how to say it.  Then, I realized, that’s just another way of saying I really don’t know what I want to say.” 

It’s not that people don’t know how to write good development plans. Its that they don’t really know what they need to develop and how to develop  it.  Unfortunately, that is a much harder problem to solve.