From insight to impact: this is how to create development paths with impact

Challenges to face

To keep up in the current economic climate and keep your organisation thriving, it is important that your employees continue to have the necessary skills. However, this is easier said than done.

• Challenge 1: Companies often have a lot of initiatives running simultaneously, which does not actually leave enough room for growth and development. All too often, over-questioned employees indicate that they simply do not have the time to follow training, let alone to put the knowledge and skills they have learned to work afterwards.

• Challenge 2: Managers play an important role in capability processes. They are key figures in communicating change, they are good at assessing their team's current capability and which levers can lift the team to a higher level. Moreover, if an organisation changes course and goes through a strategic transformation, its leadership style needs to evolve along with it.

   

How do you start capability building?

There is no way around it: you will first need to set aside time to enable growth and development of skills. We like to work through the formula of a bootcamp, setting up a micro-process for capability building, so to speak. Very deliberately choose a process in the organisation that
1) currently creates quite a lot of frustration,
2) spans a limited number of departments and
3) whose output is easily measurable.

Together with the manager of the department, we conduct a mini-assessment to identify the bottlenecks and identify the potential for improvement. We then write a transformation plan, including the capability building process.

Time for the bootcamp

Count on 3-5 consecutive days for the bootcamp. Each bootcamp consists of short training moments with immediate application to the selected process. In this way, we ensure that teams improve their own processes and experience immediate success, not only in applying the knowledge and skills they have learned, but also because they realise directly measurable efficiency gains. Think for example of a decrease in complaints, a reduction in throughput time, faster decision-making, ...). Moreover, you thus guarantee that the cost of the bootcamp is immediately regained through the process optimisation achieved.

Sustainable development

Every subsequent initiative realised by this team is pure profit. Because the capability building process immediately thinks about the next opportunity in which they can apply these capabilities again. Because the first selected process is effectively optimised, you immediately free up capacity for the next improvement opportunity and anchor the new skills learned and applied.

Dare to put an expiry date on skills

We reinforce this embedding by providing the necessary guidance during the bootcamp and subsequent improvement rounds. We also encourage organisations to issue certificates. If teams stop making process improvements for a long time, they can no longer claim their acquired capabilities. This obliges your organisation to establish a long-term capability building plan in function of the strategy to be realised, including a portfolio of improvement opportunities and initiatives. At the same time, teams and managers then continue to look for opportunities to keep developing their capabilities. Everyone benefits from this!