Personal Development Through the Downturn Professor Mike Bourne Steve Macaulay With learning and development budgets being cut in many organisations, how do you ensure that development still continues? Joining me in the studio today is a man that has spend many years looking at organisational performance, Professor Mike Bourne. Now, Mike, you have recently turned your attention to self development and you have written a book Achieving High Performance. So why self development? Why are you looking at this now? Mike Bourne I think it is always important to look at self development. Your company, your organisation may look after you, but actually you have got to look after yourself at the end of the day. You have got to create your own visions and goals and what you want to go for, and then you have to look for the opportunities, chances to take to get there. Your company, your organisation, may help you, but at the end of the day, it is down to you. Steve Macaulay So OK, that is the theory, everybody would applaud that and say yes, that is true. But you have some suggestions, I think, about how you actually do this in practice? Mike Bourne There are a lot of things that you do in your job, but opportunities appear in your job. You get the chance of volunteering for a project team, you get the chance to get involved in an audit, you get the chance to give feedback to the chief executive – or whatever it is. Those are all opportunities for you to do things. And the people who do it stand out; they get the experience from doing it and it really takes them forward. So even with training budgets being cut, there are a huge number of opportunities for people to do things within their work and to develop the skills they need for their future. Steve Macaulay One of the things that I think you suggest is doing some kind of formal audit: looking at formal strengths, at weaknesses, setting out some objectives, devising a plan. That all sounds maybe a bit too formal: some people say, I have got a busy job to do here, can’t I just get on with it? That’s what I am paid for. Mike Bourne Well, you are paid for doing your job, but you go home at night and if you are going to expect your career to develop you have got to sit down and think, well, what is it I really want to do? What are the skills that I have got currently or I can develop which will enable me Knowledge Interchange Online© Cranfield University December 2009 1 Professor Mike Bourne
to get there? That is really what it is all about: am I good with people? Do I interact well? If I don’t, how can I get the opportunities to learn how to do that? What are the things that people need for people at the next level in the organisation? And you can just open the job pages of a newspaper or you can look on the web and you can see the types of things that people are looking for, the qualifications, the experiences. And then just put that down on a piece of paper and say well, if in five or ten years time I am going to have a job at that level, what are the things I need to do now to get me there? And then plan accordingly. Steve Macaulay So that is a kind of portfolio, a kind of toolkit really, I guess. One of the things you talk about in your book is the high level leadership skills‐setting a vision, ensuring team cohesiveness, looking at individuals. How do you suggest that people develop those leadership skills in practice? Mike Bourne You start off being part of your own team – and this is where it begins. Do you actually support the team within which you work? Are you an asset to the team; or are you a problem for the team? So that is the point at which it starts. Then within the team environment you can take on responsibility for various parts of the task; you can start to coordinate the work for other people. And then you may get to a team leadership position. Once you get to the team leadership position, you have got to think of two things: firstly, what it is you have got to deliver through the team for the organisation; but secondly what the team needs to deliver for the team itself – for the individuals within it, their own aspirations, their own development, but all the capabilities and things they need for the future. So there are two heads to this: the performance, but also the people aspects as well. Steve Macaulay Now one of the things I was intrigued about were two words that you use – one was networking and the next one was mentoring. So let’s explore both of those. Networking, lots of people talk about that, what does it actually entail? Mike Bourne That is a very good question. Networking means very different things for different people, but it is creating your own networks within your own organisation for a start off. Understanding who the people are; who are the gatekeepers. I was talking to one of the secretaries this morning, she was saying look, people need to understand that secretaries are the ways to get into meetings – so that is the first step. © Cranfield University November 2009 2 Professor Mike Bourne
Talking to people and getting the chance to network with people within the organisation – different functions, different areas, so you have got somebody to call up when you have a problem. But going outside too is, I think, critically important. Being able to have people in other organisations that you get to know through conferences, through supplier relationships, through customer relationships, again, gives you another basis maybe just to have new ideas from, maybe a chance for another job. Lots of opportunities from people you know to take you forward. Steve Macaulay So networking is about opening up some possibilities, new ideas, information, people to call on and maybe that might pay off in the future? Mike Bourne Yes, and it is quite surprising that people in networks help each other particularly well. If people ring me up and I have got a relationship with them, I give them a lot of time and support – and people do that for me. And it is really good and really useful and really beneficial for both of us to do so. Steve Macaulay Let’s talk about mentoring; say some more about that, because I think that is one of the areas that you feel people can get a lot from. Mike Bourne Mentoring is important because people at different levels and different stages in their career see things that are happening in the organisation very differently. So if you can get access to somebody who is more senior, maybe a little bit older in the organisation who has been round the block once or twice, then they can put the problems and issues that you face into context. They may be able to help you by pointing you in the direction of somebody else who was having the same problem or needs this problem to be resolved and therefore can give you political leverage. They may help you by talking through the issues that you have got in a way that makes you ask the questions that gives you the answers. I talk about mentors not being necessarily specialists in the areas that you are in in the organisation, because a good mentor is not somebody who gives you the answers, but asks you the questions that helps you to answer the problem yourself. And probably what a mentor does most effectively is get people to think about a problem in the right way and to structure it and then to resolve it correctly. Steve Macaulay If you were to leave people with a key message about self development, about achieving high performance in your own terms, what would it be? Mike Bourne Two things: think about your strengths and weaknesses to © Cranfield University November 2009 3 Professor Mike Bourne
understand what you are good at and what you are not good at. Then build on your strengths, not on your weaknesses. You have got to find other ways of getting round your weaknesses. If you are a particularly good sales person, but you are not good at administration find yourself a good administrator; that’s what I have done. Do that because that is what takes you forward. I would then plan your own future because if you don’t the organisation won’t necessarily do it for you. Get the correct things that you need to go ahead, get yourself the experiences – if it is training you need, get the training, but it is more about taking the opportunities that are around you every day. Steve Macaulay © Cranfield University Mike, that’s some very useful reminders. Thank you very much. November 2009 4