July 2007
Executive Summaries
Growing Talent and Sales at McCormick
By Tony Bingham and Pat Galagan
McCormick & Company had a tough year in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina and a collapsing market for vanilla took their toll, but during Bob Lawless’s tenure as chairman and CEO, the spice company’s recovery has been remarkably strong.
Net sales and the gross profit margin both increased in 2006, and the company expects to increase sales by 4 percent in 2007. T+D talked with Lawless about how the company’s learning efforts support its key strategies.
One ambitious growth initiative is a leadership development program known as multiple management boards (MMB). “It’s an action learning program that combines developing talent with achieving actual company goals,” says Lawless. “The people in the MMB group learn how to lead while working on projects for the company around the globe.”
According to Lawless, the company invests “every penny we can” in learning. “There isn’t a benchmark,” he says. “Money is not a restriction. Learning is driven by only one thing: strategy. We do business in China and Europe, and we are going into India. So we have a training and development strategy and a process for that. That’s not a place to cut investment.”
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The Company That Teaches Together Performs Together
By Rick Frattali
At McCormick & Company, the organization’s learning philosophy is rooted in The Power of People, written by Charles P. McCormick who led the company from 1932 to 1969. In 1949, he wrote, “Business is primarily a matter of people,” and “My greatest satisfaction as president of a company has been in watching people who work for me grow as the business grows.”
While performance-based training and development has always been a key business strategy at McCormick, the goal of an adaptable learning organization and the potential loss of expertise from baby boomer retirements led the company to identify a new need: to create a teaching organization in which knowledge and expertise are shared at all levels globally.
As a result, the mission of the global learning and development function was modified five years ago to reflect the idea that a teaching organization is a key driver for a learning organization.
McCormick is currently implementing high performance work systems at its manufacturing locations. The concept is a team-based operating philosophy that focuses on six systems: goal setting, performance management, problem solving, training and development, information systems, and rewards and recognition.
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Leveraging the Learning Space
By George A. Wolfe
Changes in the way people work, coupled with the explosion in technology and a mind-boggling amount of new knowledge, demand changes in the way people learn at work.
The good news is that corporations have put a lot of effort into developing quality learning programs, ensuring facilitator excellence, and using technology when possible. The bad news is that the same 100-year-old grid of desks facing the instructor still dominates today’s learning spaces.
Steelcase University has put many years and significant resources into researching how space is used. Under the guidance of CEO Jim Hackett, the company that built its reputation as a leading office furniture manufacturer has spent the last decade making the transition into a knowledge company with cutting-edge expertise in work environments.
Using ethnographic and observational methods known as user-centered design, Steelcase researchers study groups of people as they solve problems, share ideas, and engage in work. The research is conducted in the space where participants actually work and learn, not in a separate research facility. At Steelcase, cameras and contextual interviewing techniques are used to gather data.
The diversity of teaching and learning styles today demands a range of learning environments for individual and organizational growth. For corporations, there is still a place for traditional classrooms and conventional lecture halls, but new learning environments can propel thinking to new levels.
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Catering to a More Sophisticated Clientele
By Jenni Jarventaus
Consulting clients are taking steps to ensure that the advisors they employ have the competencies and expertise necessary to produce the desired results.
Such awareness is becoming more commonplace, especially in dealings with management consultants, who wield considerable and increasing influence in both the public and private sectors as industry experts, business advisors, conflict resolution mediators, external analysts, and change facilitators. The field is predicted to grow 18 to 26 percent through 2014, according to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The clients’ growing zeal to demand better results from consultants stems from simple necessity. Rare are the organizations that can afford to spend millions of dollars on consulting engagements that fail to produce tangible results—or worse, result in costly fiascos.
As clients become more demanding consumers of consulting services, some analysts are calling for the restructuring of the current consultant career model.
According to Ray Manganelli, senior managing director at Tunnell Consulting, the traditional pyramid model—where consultants gradually gain more experience by moving up in their organizations—does not work anymore.
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Mentoring Makeover
By Laura Francis
Traditional mentoring is getting a new look. The age-old developmental process now boasts a streamlined strategy fit for today’s fast-paced, caffeine-hyped, and technology-addicted world.
As they have with other learning and development programs, many organizations are modernizing mentoring by using the Internet to spread the practice to everyone. Not only does this allow participants to easily create and manage relationships on their own terms, but it puts them in the driver’s seat of their career development.
While some practitioners may still balk at the idea of web-based mentoring, there is no denying the benefits technology provides to the practice of mentoring.
From mentees and mentors who can find their own matches, to administrators who can offer mentoring to scores of people, to organizations that can create pervasive cultures of sharing and learning, the impact of technology can be felt in every facet of modern mentoring.
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OnRamp to Success at Network Appliance
By Sanjiv Varma and Brian M. Collins
As most training and development professionals know, good talent is hard to find.
What can be even more difficult is developing new talent to meet organizational needs and to quickly assimilate them into the corporate culture. For technical and highly specialized organizations that are experiencing explosive growth, the challenge of finding and developing new staff increases exponentially. Faced with this challenge, Network Appliance (NetApp) developed a comprehensive and innovative new hire training curriculum: the Global Services (GS) OnRamp New Hire Training Program.
The onboarding project began with a thorough needs analysis. Gathering its best GS performers into focus groups, NetApp asked them, “What is it that support engineers need to know and do to do their jobs?”
It includes a troubleshooting workshop, which is designed for experiential learning in advanced technical training. Students receive hands-on training that emphasizes active learning.
The new hire program will continue to address the company’s business needs. There is already talk of adding new courses to the program to address gaps resulting from changing business requirements and new products.
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