Invest In A State-Of-The–Art Workforce

I was flying across the Atlantic for a series of engagements with European Community businesspeople, and my seatmate happened to be the CEO of a medium-sized American manufacturing corporation

"I can't understand it," he said. "We've invested heavily in state-of-the-art equipment and well-designed physical facilities, but for some reason the profits haven't followed the investments."

I smiled as the flight attendant poured our coffee.

"Have you invested in a state-of-the-art work force?" I asked him.

"Oh, we've trained them to get the most from the new equipment we've bought," he said.

"But have you educated them to get the most from themselves?" I asked.

"Are you kidding?" he replied. "When I look at my work force, I see a sponge absorbing all my profits. Why should I send more money down the drain trying to educate them?"

"Let me tell you what I've learned from working with corporate leaders on four continents," I told him. "Every business consists of three major elements: a product, a process, and a person. You spend a substantial portion of your budget on developing, advertising and selling your product. You spend lots of money on the building and equipment that are vital to your process. Doesn't it make sense to invest heavily in your human element as well?"

"When I spend money on equipment, I get a payback in the form of longer life, fewer breakdowns, lower operating costs, and higher productivity," he said.

"And when you spend money developing your work force," I replied, "your payback comes in the form of higher productivity, higher quality, greater innovation, and more competitiveness in the marketplace. How would you like to turn your employees into profit-generating assets instead of profit-absorbing overhead?"

"I'm running a business, not a university," he protested. "My budget won't support a Harvard Business School or an MIT on site."

"You don't need a Harvard or an MIT," I told him. "You can have a successful corporate education system under your own roof, using your own personnel, if you build it on seven solid pillars." I then explained to him the seven pillars on which I base the learning systems I've conceptualized and implemented in business organizations on both sides of the Atlantic and the Pacific.

THE SEVEN PILLARS OF CORPORATE EDUCATION

1. Education for the whole individual. A good corporate educational system improves the whole individual -- the mind as well as the hands.
2. An integrated learning process. A good corporate education system educates the entire organization through an integrated approach.
3. Education for partnership between management and employees. Effective education eliminates the adversarial relationship between management and employees, and guides them into a mutually beneficial partnership.
4. Education for congruence. Your educational process should enable your employees to form personal visions that are congruent with the corporate vision, creating a powerful synergy for individual and corporate success.
5. Education for a quality-based culture. A corporate education system should lead to a quality-oriented mindset. In the quest for excellence, this is far more important than the learning of mechanical techniques.
6. Education for The Three P's. A good corporate education process will enhance employee output in proportion to input, and thus promote The Three P's: performance, productivity, and profitability. The Motorola Corporation estimates that each dollar it spends on educating its employees delivers $30 in productivity in 3 years. That's dramatic payback.
7. Education to reinforce your differential advantage. Education should help your employees identify and exploit your differential advantage and thus achieve maximum effectiveness in the marketplace.

 By now my seatmate was calling for a fresh cup of coffee and asking, "Where do I begin?"

As I told him, you begin the building process by first deciding where you want to go with your company. Then you devise a plan for developing in your people the qualities and attitudes that will take you where you want to go.

What should you be looking for in an educational and development process?

Here are some necessary characteristics I've identified after more than 20 years of involvement in corporate education:

• A comprehensive curriculum. Don't concentrate on a narrow range of skills. Help all individuals in your organization to grow to their highest levels. Engineers, for instance, can be educated in such non-technical areas as selling, presentation skills, and human behavior. When this is done, the engineers can be available to help salespeople with technical presentations.
• Learning as a contiuum. Hit-and-run programs won't equip your business for today's competitive climate. Your education and development process must follow a clear plan that shows how to get from Point A to Point B efficiently and profitably.
• Teaching that is integrated, not segmented. Companies commonly make the mistake of training one segment of employees but not training another. For example, they may train their salespeople but not the sales manager. When this happens, the salesperson comes back from the training full of new ideas and brimming with enthusiasm. But the sales manager has received none of this input, and therefore is not ready to encourage or even to accept the new ideas and methods.
• On-the-job application. A good educational program must show participants how to apply on the job what they learn in the classroom. Learning is no good unless it is applied on the job.
• Content equity. The educational system should be your system, and not some generic, off-the-shelf program. It must communicate to your employees who you are and what you do that makes you unique. It must provide learning that is in keeping with your philosophy, vision, and corporate culture.
• Credible leadership. It is critical that any educational undertaking be led by a person who can command the respect and the commitment of those being taught. Senior managers often find it hard to take seriously the learning they receive from people several steps down the corporate chart from them. If you have a $30,000-a-year member of your training staff teaching a class of top executives, you may have problems of perception. If you have no one in house who is capable of dealing with senior management as a peer, it may be advisable to hire an external consultant who has the needed stature and prestige.
• Repetition. Simple tasks may be taught in one session. If you have an employee who needs to master a simple technique, a one-time seminar may be all you need. But if you're trying to modify behavior through a change in mindsets, the one-time seminar won't do it. You will need to institute a process that continually reinforces the attitudes you want to inculcate until they become a part of the work-place culture.

By the time we descended to Luxembourg, my new friend was sold on the concept of turning his company into a learning center. As former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich commented: "American companies have got to be urged to treat their workers as assets to be developed rather than as costs to be cut."

America's pace-setting corporations are doing just that. They're spending at least 3.2% of total payroll on continuing education and development, and some are spending significantly more. They're doing it because they know the investment pays off.

You can't invest in anything more valuable than the people who work for your company.