As I said in my last post there are many ways to Create a Developmental Culture for your employees but how do you know what’s right for you and your organization? Where do you begin on your journey of creating a culture of development? What should your strategy be?
Step 1: Evaluate Organizational Goals
The first step is to look at your organizational goals. Are you looking to grow? Are you looking to expand into new markets? Are you looking to create new products or services? Do you need to develop a pipeline of future leaders? Or are you looking to get more efficient at what you’re currently doing?
Step 2: Assess your Employees
The second step is to look across your workforce. Do your employees have the skills and competencies needed to meet your organizational goals. If not, what’s missing?
Step 3: Strategize
Once you know these two things, you can begin to identify the developmental strategies you wish to roll out first and the employees who need to receive them. In an organization with a learning culture, all employees are offered development opportunities but at the beginning of your journey, you need to pick a place to start or the process will become overwhelming. Typically, the best place to start will be with your people leaders; however, depending on your organizational goals, you might identify some roles that are even more important to start with.
When you have the critical roles identified along with the correct developmental strategies, ask yourself, what’s the next most important area and so on. Repeat the process until you have identified developmental strategies for everyone in your organization.
As I said in my prior post, development for your employees is a journey and so is the process of creating a culture of development. You need to pick a place to start and then you need to keep moving forward while at the same time asking yourself, what are our organizational goals because the answer to this question may alter the course of your journey – and that’s ok – as long as your still moving forward.
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About the Author
Margaret Uhrich’s approach to life is a combination of “anything’s possible” and “let’s see what happens when we do this,” making her the ideal leader for the Talent Development function at MEA. As a consultant and leader, her creative solutions and “can do” attitude inspire others to take action and bring about the changes they wish to see.
