Why use Strategic Developments International?

Here’s a CEO talking to himself:-

1. "We need to be better at achieving our goals (or our vision, mission, purpose if you prefer)."

2. Our people are key to doing this – we can’t achieve what we want to without our people being more effective.

3. At the same time, many people are performing OK - some very well. How were they able to do that? Well, they learned it. That has to be the only answer. But most of their learning didn't come from education or training. Indeed, if I think back, the things that make me effective were learned from quite a wide variety of sources - previous managers, stretching projects, colleagues and so on.

4. So if we want to improve our people we must find a way to help them to learn more effectively.

5. But, then again, everyone is different and they are all in somewhat different roles. So sheep dip training wouldn't work. (And neither would e-learning. I've tried that. I found the mechanised material too boring and not related to my needs.)

6. What we need is to provide support for each person to learn what they, uniquely, need to learn.

7. But we can't just leave it to chance. People don't necessarily learn well if they are left to sink or swim. Some sink - and there's no point in that.

8. Therefore, what we need is structured learning which responds to each person's needs.

9. And it can't just be a short term, quick fix approach. We need to develop people for the long term and as well as looking for short term gains. If I think back to my own learning some of that took time and only paid off later in my career.

10. We also have to consider that people will have their own career objectives, so we need somehow to integrate these with the organisation's needs.

11. How can we do all this? It seems a pretty tall order.

12. Even if we help individuals improve, this isn't the total answer. We've had talented individuals who just couldn't collaborate with others to the benefit of the business. They just went off in their own directions. Some of our most ambitious managers seem only to have been interested in their own progress and have not supported colleagues. What we need is better team working.

13. Then again, we tried team building and that didn't work. People would support others in their team but they still didn't share ideas and information with the other teams. Our knowledge management initiative has floundered on just this issue.

14. So we need to get people collaborating across the whole organisation. But that doesn't seem to come naturally for most people. They tend to think only about their own jobs or, at the most, of their department. How can we change that?

15. Recently, I came across the idea of developing the social capital of the organisation. Rolf Huppi, the CEO of Zurich Financial Services, says that this is the key to developing trust and sharing across business units. But he doesn't seem to know how to do it? So what next?"

Our clients tell us that we have the answers. With organisations as diverse as the NOP Research Group, Birmingham Midshires, Finland Post, the NHS and local authorities we have implemented approaches that develop the human capital and the social capital of the organisation. We bring to bear many years experience of working with organisations all over the world. And we've developed methods that have been rigorously evaluated.

For an example of a couple of methods which, when put together, work brilliantly click here.