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Improving Product Development competencies in designers and developers is a concern for senior leaders in the manufacturing sector.
The approach most organizations take in developing Human Resources does not go beyond staffing the cream of the crop from leading global educational institutes. Talent Development to them is, typically, sending their people to attend workshops and keeping up with employee annual training hours’ goals, and that’s it. Companies usually spend more on acquiring latest manufacturing equipment or modern collaboration tools than they do to develop their greatest asset—their people.
Research on manufacturing practices unequivocally suggests that it’s primarily the inspiration to adopt a culture of Continuous Improvement in people that results in operational excellence. This Continuous Improvement Culture has more significance than implementing Lean practices across all processes.
The “Lean Product Development” concept isn’t a new notion. The practice has been around since the 1980s. An MIT study in the 1980s revealed that manufacturing practices in Japanese automakers were totally opposed to those of auto manufacturers in the rest of the world. These approaches were referred to as “Lean” practices. Research into manufacturing practices of Toyota has spread the knowledge about Lean Product Development globally.
Lean concept is strikingly opposing to the philosophy that emphasizes on delegating the responsibility of developing the designers’ / developers’ capabilities to the Human Resources Department. In order to develop and deliver superior products, Lean Product Development focuses on enabling the developers build “personal dexterity” as the key element of success. The concept necessitates technical training and collaboration between developers.
Before embarking on the Lean Product Development and Innovation journey, organizational leadership should work on finding answers to these 3 fundamental questions:
- In order to design better products, which critical insights do we need to develop regarding customers, products, and processes?
- Which mediums, organizational knowledge, and tools are required to develop these insights?
- Which organizational structures and ways of doing businesses are ideally suited to develop these valuable insights and improving the expertise of developers?
Pondering over these critical questions and answering them facilitates in creating a pool of skilled Product Designers and developers.
Let’s dive deeper into these questions.
Question 1
Lean Product Development emphasizes on developing a steady stream of products at an even pace—referred to as “Takt.” iPhone 1 and iPhone 2 are examples of a steady stream of products released at regular intervals in Apple’s iPhone value stream.
Takt has evolved the way products are designed. An initial product is developed as a means to validate an idea. Products are progressed from the initial product based on stakeholders’ feedback. The purpose of a value stream of products is to improve the current product offerings, inspire the existing customers to upgrade, and tempt potential customers to try the product. In these evolving value streams, every product release serves as an opportunity to gain insights into the market.
The value enhancement through Takt has 2 broad objectives:
- Fixing problems in existing products and creating offerings meeting the customer needs.
- Lowering manufacturing costs and improving quality.
Question 2
Lean Product Development underscores the significance of the medium through which developers should learn in order to create superior products. Developers’ capabilities in technical Problem Solving and learning what the others are doing helps enhance the quality of each new release. Development teams should have quick access to accumulating a thorough knowledge of the entire supply chain and the effect of their decisions on manufacturing. This assists in improving the efficiency of the developers.
Instead of learning and gaining knowledge through traditional ways, Lean Product Development encourages the developers to learn through Action Learning—the process where teams are continuously mentored and encouraged to learn collectively on the job, solve problems creatively, and test models to cope with real-life issues.
Interested in learning more about the key elements to consider before enabling Lean Product Development & Innovation, and the phases of the Lean process? You can download an editable PowerPoint on Lean Product Development & Innovation here on the Flevy documents marketplace.
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Although organizations invest heavily in Learning and Talent Development, most CEOs when interviewed complain about the shortage of learned managers, leaders, and skilled workforce.
The capabilities of knowledge workers, not technology or capital, is often a key constraint for organizational growth. Research reveals that a number of managers consider employee performance to remain the same even if their organization’s learning function is totally abolished. Studies further indicate:
- Ineffectiveness of Corporate Learning.
- Wrong investments in Learning and Development.
- Lack of linkage of learning with strategic goals.
- Focus on learning but not on employees’ development.
Investments and efforts on learning are concentrated towards wrong things. Abundance of online courses and mobile knowledge apps are triggering organizations to revisit their Corporate Learning Strategies. Utilization of innovative learning techniques—and modes—for leadership development has become the top agenda for senior learning leaders.
Learning and Development is important for organizations as:
- Employee engagement and leadership sets the right impetus for the organization.
- Competencies of knowledge workers makes the difference in achieving organizational growth.
- It delivers value, critical to survive—and outperform—competition.
- Effective learning experiences engage the emotional and cognitive centers of human brains, making employees appreciative of their organizational learning efforts.
Leadership, today, is more aware of the significance of Corporate Learning in Organizational Development and profitability. Leaders are now proactively striving to align their Corporate Learning objectives with demands of knowledge workers and strategic organizational goals.
The following learning practices represent 4 key phases of the process for defining and executing a research-substantiated Corporate Learning Strategy:
- Formulate the CEO Agenda
- Align Learning & Development (L&D) Resources
- Gain Buy-in from Key Stakeholders
- Activate the Learning Agenda
These learning practices have been grounded on senior leadership interviews and surveys on company strategy and decision-making rationale to develop corporate learning initiatives.
Let’s dive deeper into these 4 phases of Corporate Learning Strategy.
Formulate the CEO Agenda
Corporate Learning Strategy is much more than top management attending training events. It warrants making the corporate learning agenda an extension of the CEO agenda. Learning programs typically entail doing a Training Needs Assessment by interviewing mid-level management, who aren’t part of the organization’s strategic management, which makes the assessment flawed. Outsourcing the training function further compounds the problem.
The first phase of the Corporate Learning Strategy warrants gathering data from company reports, websites, and leadership interviews to enable documentation of senior leadership’s pain points, key issues, and strategic priorities. Mapping the CEO Agenda—uncovering the leadership priorities—should be the foremost element of aligning learning with strategy.
The step necessitates extensive meetings to identify leadership needs and attributes essential for future leaders and incorporating feedback of business leaders to develop new corporate learning initiatives. Chief Learning Officer reporting directly to the CEO facilitates the process.
Align Learning & Development (L&D) Resources
The matter as important as creation of a learning inventory is typically skipped at companies. The executives, there, find it difficult to track expenditure on learning programs carried out by scores of external consultants. Preparation of a repository of current Learning and Development resources has to be done regularly to make sure that the learning portfolio aligns with the organizational learning strategy.
Business units should align priorities and investment with top-level strategy. L&D leadership has to ensure that their interventions are tailored to the needs of the business. There should be regular reviews and calculated reorganization of the development infrastructure and processes (e.g., promotion and succession planning). The approach should focus towards strengthening the on-the-job learning experience, busting silos, and developing collaboration.
Gain Stakeholders Buy-in
Reorganization of Corporate Learning initiatives necessitates gathering input and support from all levels of the organization.
Interested in learning more about the other phases of Corporate Learning Strategy? You can download an editable PowerPoint on Corporate Learning Strategy here on the Flevy documents marketplace.
Do You Find Value in This Framework?
You can download in-depth presentations on this and hundreds of similar business frameworks from the FlevyPro Library. FlevyPro is trusted and utilized by 1000s of management consultants and corporate executives. Here’s what some have to say:
“My FlevyPro subscription provides me with the most popular frameworks and decks in demand in today’s market. They not only augment my existing consulting and coaching offerings and delivery, but also keep me abreast of the latest trends, inspire new products and service offerings for my practice, and educate me in a fraction of the time and money of other solutions. I strongly recommend FlevyPro to any consultant serious about success.
– Bill Branson, Founder at Strategic Business Architects
“As a niche strategic consulting firm, Flevy and FlevyPro frameworks and documents are an on-going reference to help us structure our findings and recommendations to our clients as well as improve their clarity, strength, and visual power. For us, it is an invaluable resource to increase our impact and value.”
– David Coloma, Consulting Area Manager at Cynertia Consulting
“FlevyPro has been a brilliant resource for me, as an independent growth consultant, to access a vast knowledge bank of presentations to support my work with clients. In terms of RoI, the value I received from the very first presentation I downloaded paid for my subscription many times over! The quality of the decks available allows me to punch way above my weight – it’s like having the resources of a Big 4 consultancy at your fingertips at a microscopic fraction of the overhead.”
– Roderick Cameron, Founding Partner at SGFE Ltd
Enterprises worldwide face problems selecting, staffing, developing, compensating, motivating, and sustaining their key talent. Building a sustainable Talent pipeline is quite strenuous even for large multinationals.
Replicating best practices from somewhere and applying them alone isn’t sufficient for organizations to build a Talent pipeline and achieve Competitive Advantage. This warrants overcoming arduous challenges associated with this digital age, including:
- Adjusting to varying dynamics in global markets
- Handling the expectations of varied customer segments in different geographies
- Managing the preferences of key Talent
- Acquiring new technologies
- Building novel capabilities
- Achieving Operational Excellence by streamlining operations and improving processes
- Exploring new markets
- Devising strategies to attract, select, develop, assess, and reward top Talent.
Developing Talent Management practices helps the organizations build and retain talented people available in the job market. The term was first used by McKinsey & Company in 1997, and it pertains to planning and managing strategic Human Capital through activities, i.e. attracting, selecting, developing, evaluating, rewarding, and retaining key people.
Executives use diverse Talent Management strategies and career pathways based on various departments, levels, and roles in their Talent pool. Multi-year research on Talent Management practices conducted by an international team of researchers from INSEAD, Cornell, Cambridge, and Tillburg universities studied 33 multi-national corporations, headquartered in 11 countries. The study revealed that successful Human Capital practitioners and workforce planners adopted 6 core principles. These principles act as the 6 pillars to effective Talent Management implementation:
- Alignment with Corporate Strategy
- Consistency of Talent Management Practices
- Integration with Corporate Culture
- Involvement of Leadership
- Global Strategy with Localization
- Branding and Differentiation
Let’s discuss the first 3 pillars in detail, for now.
Alignment with Corporate Strategy
Integrating Talent Management with Corporate Strategy is imperative as the need for future Talent depends on the company’s long-term strategy. Corporate Strategy should guide the identification of Talent required to accomplish organizational goals, since it’s the right Talent that drives the key strategic initiatives rather than strategic planning.
For example, GE’s Talent Management practices have been a great assistance in implementing their strategic initiatives. The organization regards its Talent Management system as their most potent execution tool and has integrated TM processes into their strategic planning process. To sustain its image as an innovation leader, GE targets technical skills as a priority in its annual Strategic Planning sessions. Individual business units lay out their business as well as the Human Capital objectives in GE’s annual strategic planning sessions. Significant time is spent on reviewing its Innovation pipeline, its engineering function’s structure, and Talent requirements. To achieve its vision, GE promotes more engineers in its senior management than its rivals.
Consistency of Talent Management Practices
Talent Management practices must be consistent and synchronous with each other. It is critical not only to invest in advancing the careers of key Talent but also to invest in processes to empower, compensate, and retain them. Human Capital practitioners utilize various tools to ensure consistency of Talent Management practices, including Human Resources satisfaction surveys and qualitative and quantitative data on TM practices implementation.
For example, the success of Siemens is based on consistent monitoring of its systems, processes, and key performance metrics across its subsidiaries. Every element of Human Capital Management is connected, continuously assessed, and linked to rewards. This goes from recruitment of graduates each year, to their orientation, to mentoring and development, to performance evaluation and management, and compensation and benefits.
Integration with Corporate Culture
Corporate culture is regarded as important as vision and mission by renowned global organizations. These companies hold their core values and behavioral standards very high and promote them among their employees through coaching and mentoring. They strive to embed this into their hiring, leadership development, performance management, remuneration, and reward processes / programs. So much so that they consider cultural adaptability a crucial element of their recruitment process—as personality traits and mindsets are hard to develop than technical skills—and evaluate applicants’ behaviors and values rigorously.
For example, among other leading companies, IBM has a special emphasis on values while selecting and promoting people. To ensure consistent values across the board, it organizes regular values jam sessions and employee health index surveys. These sessions encourage open communication and debate on values and organizational culture and their importance among employees.
Interested in learning more about the other pillars of Talent Management, the various approaches to TM? You can download an editable PowerPoint on 6 Pillars of Talent Management here on the Flevy documents marketplace.
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