MANAGEMENT DEVELOPMENT - MAKING IT WORK?
The business requirement to provide evidence for the link between management
development and organisational performance has never been stronger. How can your
organisation calculate, in visible terms, the return on investment claimed for management
development?
By Peter Graham - Management Development Consultant
" The quality of management – that is
where sustainable advantage lies", so
says Matt Barratt, CEO, Barclays.
The subject of management
development provokes a variety of
responses. Some will support it almost
without question, some want to closely
examine its benefits, and some think it
is just too expensive, invented by
consultants and business schools to
exploit HR budgets.
I suggest the following questions are
addressed when embarking on a
management development programme,
as doing so will contribute to a
successful evaluation of the
investment:
business is and where it is going.
Some clarity about what the future
may look like is key to defining the
aims and even the content of any
development programme. At Cranfield
we use a number of tools to help
clients visualize this future.
The key questions to explore
would be:
• What implications does the
business strategy have for
organisational development (OD)?
answers for most of the above
questions then it will fail and will be a
complete waste of money and effort.
Many development programmes are
started without much quality debate
or research on these questions
precisely because they are difficult.
The HR director, who typically owns
these programmes, needs to get this
debate to happen.
What should come out of these
questions is a clear list of objectives
Ideal evaluation design process
• What gains are expected from the
programme?
• What partner will you work with
and what process will be adopted?
• How wii you know that the
relationship has worked?
What gains are expected from
the programme?
This is the first and most crucial
question to ask. Many organisations
do not fully engage with this question
and later meet problems. Many HR
managers do not have a clear
articulation and fully thought through
answer here and can be guilty of doing
management development because it
is generally felt to be ‘a good idea’ or
because “major competitors are doing
some so we better do some as well”.
As Sandy Birnie, head of
manufacturing at Geest says: " If it
isn’t linked to the business strategy it
isn’t worth doing and the board will
never sign off the money anyway".
It is essential to understand where the
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• What implications does OD have for
management performance?
• What is the relationship between
competitive advantage and
management capability?
• What are the gaps, if any, between
the present management capability
and some future desirable state?
• How convinced and supportive are
senior management?
• What outcomes do the various
stakeholders require?
• What is it ‘reasonable’ to expect
development activities to achieve?
If a proposed development initiative
does not have robust and coherent
for a development programme. This
demonstrates why it is being carried
out and the criteria against which it
must be judged.
Choosing a partner
To suggest that business and personal
relationships are the same would be
facile, but the general principles do
apply. We all want to be listened to
and valued. No client wants to be told
‘what they will get’ and to feel they got
the ‘same as everyone else’. A good
management development partner
should bring:
• Experience in designing and
delivering development
Having said all this, organisations and
the people in them must have some
rational criteria in order to get an
understanding of spending and
investment appraisal. Clearly a DCF
model for management development is
inappropriate but there are some
clear things that can be done. A useful
underpinning framework can be taken
from a model (below) by Professor
Donald Kirkpatrick, which is generally
accepted as the standard in the field.
This has four levels involving reaction,
learning, behavioural change and
return on investment (ROI). Most
organisations are comfortable with
measuring at level 1 and 2. Level 1 is
the feedback or ‘happy sheet’ and
level 2 is about pre and post
questionnaires. The behavioural
changes at level 3 are about on the job
differences as a result of the
development and can be seen via the
HR performance management system,
pre and post questionnaires and
organisation climate surveys. All of
these techniques should relate back to
the original objectives of the
development which were in support of
business strategy.
• Expertise in some particular
subject areas (strategy, business
functions, interpersonal skills)
• Best practice but also leading
thought
• A challenging perspective
• Clear ideas of how learning can be
transferred and embedded within
the client organisation
• A real enthusiasm for the
experience
In addition, most clients want to form
some kind of partnership/relationship
which can work over a period of time.
This is because development is a
process not an event. It is also a
subtle and complex activity closely
interwoven with the client
organisation’s culture and industry
pressures. For all of these reasons it
requires a sophisticated dialogue
before, during, and after any specific
programme to ensure a successful
outcome.
The best approach is one of
collaboration throughout the whole
process which means joint design,
regular reviews of progress during
execution, and planning how the
process will continue for the client
organisation after the formal elements
have finished.
The fourth level, ROI, is clearly a
difficult one and
most
How will we know it has
worked?
The horrible reality about
evaluating management
development, of course, is that it
is really rather tricky. It is
tempting to see ‘people stuff’
as woolly and unmanageable
but many areas of business
are difficult such as valuing
telecoms companies, or new IT
projects which change services
and therefore revenue streams.
But the situation is certainly
complicated because for example
it is impractical to carry out
controlled experiments and of course
the development activity takes place
within the shifting sands of a changing
organisation and/or industry.
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2
3
4
organisations make no attempt to do
this. Because calculating ROI is more
complex and requires a greater level
of resource to implement than the
other levels of evaluation, it should
probably be confined to programmes
which represent a significant
investment in volume of managers, the
programme’s frequency and length, as
well as its strategic importance.
Conclusion
Management development is difficult
to do well and it is clearly difficult to
measure. However, a good place to
start is defining what you want from it
and how this contributes to the
organisation’s strategy. It is wise to
be realistic about what it can and
cannot achieve. If this process is done
well the execution becomes easier and
the evaluation has a focus. It is
difficult to relate management to
organisational results in a linear way
but the challange to all of us who
believe in the tangible, intangible,
process, and attitudinal progress it
can deliver, means that careful
consideration must be given to the
most appropriate approach to
measurement. What type of
organisation are you in, what
initiatives should be evaluated
and which criteria are
important to measure?
As a European
Foundation for
Management
Development
study concluded
on how
European
companies
could improve
their ROI
approach, the
successful
measurement
must rely on
“both Science
and Art”.
email: peter.graham@cranfield.ac.uk
The Kirkpatrick Model
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