Strategic Issues

Industrial and Commercial Training
Volume 29, Number 4, 1997
ISSN 0019-7858
The Guest Editor Eric Sandelands Chairman, Virtual University Press, URL http://www.openhouse.org.uk/ virtual-university-press
Strategic issues for training
Contents
98 Editorial
Section 1: Tomorrows executive challenges

101 What living systems can teach the learning organization 103 Individual and organizational learning: an interview with Sir Leonard Peach 107 Managing out of bounds
Section 2: Effective organizational learning

111 Self-managed learning at IKEA 113 Making the most of mentoring 116 Brighter Futures shines for Whitbread 118 Polaroid develops through reection 120 Multimedia training system shines in the showroom
Section 3: The virtual university model

125 Lifelong learning and the virtual university 127 Corporate virtual university: BAA 129 Corporate virtual university: Sema
Subscribers to the full journal service can, at no extra cost, access current and archive material via the Internet from January 1997 at http://www.mcb. co.uk/journals-online/ and will receive a CD archive in April 1997. Please note that two issues of the journal are bound together consecutively within these covers.
Group 131 A wider view of training effectiveness
Section 4: Effective training capabilities

135 What makes training pay? 137 Starbucks investing in people as a route to prot and growth 139 McDonalds serves up HR success in 91 countries around the world
Editorial
Strategic issues for training new challenges/ new opportunities

Creating this special issue of Industrial and Commercial Training has been a real pleasure. Many of us spend our lives head down, pushing for progress in a wide range of areas. The challenges are numerous, and the immediate personal challenge is to grind on and on to get results. The pleasure in creating this journal issue has come from the absolute requirement to sit back and reect for a while to consider just what are the strategic issues for training. In putting this selection of briengs together I have trawled, scanned, interpreted and absorbed a number of ideas from published literature, conference presentations and reports. My own learning has been enhanced by this experience. I hope that you are able to benet similarly. I have grouped material under four headings. These are: (1) Tomorrows executive challenges; (2) Effective organizational learning; (3) The virtual university model; and (4) Effective training capabilities. Seeking out themes and emerging issues has been a key part of the fun of this editorial role. I have chosen to cluster briengs as Tomorrows executive challenges in order to set the context for the challenges facing trainers at a strategic level. The rst question to ask, of
course, is just how can executives be developed to deal effectively with these emerging paradigms? Effective organizational learning is, I guess, what is at the core of all that trainers are seeking to achieve. This section has a wide range of case studies so that strategies can be compared at, say, IKEA with those of Polaroid. I have separated out The virtual university model as a separate section, although within a year or two it will simply be one of the major methods for delivering managerial learning and building up the corporate IQ. I have to admit a slight bias as developing this model has become a major part of my working life in recent years. Luckily the excitement of seeing what it can achieve more than compensates for all those late nights at the ofce. The nal section proposes ideas for Effective training capabilities. The material included in this special issue is deliberately brief and to the point. The briengs have been designed in order that a range of issues and ideas can be quickly taken on board by the reader. The aim is not to explore each issue in depth such learned papers will be published in this journal throughout the year. It is to look at the plethora of changes facing trainers at a strategic level in the interesting times which lie ahead. Eric Sandelands Guest Editor
Industrial and Commercial Training Volume 29 Number 4 1997 p. 98 MCB University Press ISSN 0019-7858
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Section 1 Tomorrows executive challenges
Industrial and Commercial Training Volume 29 Number 4 1997 pp. 99108 MCB University Press ISSN 0019-7858
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What living systems can teach the learning organization
A number of leading US rms have gained substantial benets from process-redesign efforts; global best practices are in place and efciencies have been won. In recent years, process management has been maturing at rms like Corning, Du Pont, the Gartner Group, Hewlett-Packard, Marion Merrell Dow, MCI, PHH Vehicle Management Services, Texas Instruments and Xerox. They are moving to a new cycle, the creation of learning organizations. Here, Arun N. Maira and Robert M. Curtice, both vice-presidents at Arthur D. Little, Inc., assess how these companies are preparing for the future and how the study of living systems can benet the business organization. US retailer Nordstroms one-paragraph employee handbook concludes: Use your good judgment in all situations. There will be no additional rules. The basis for this minimalist approach is the scientic discovery that complex systems need very few rules, and that all successful systems engage in a continuous process of learning better (but not too many) rules to improve performance. Du Pont realized that hierarchical organizational structures (with companies divided into functional areas) isolate both functions and people and diminish the vital exchange of ideas. The rm also realized that value-adding business processes cross functions. The company therefore decentralized itself into 19 strategic business units. The reported benets include increased speed, compressed cycles with less rework, improved cash ow and higher quality. Reduced cycle time and improved cash ow have also marked PHH Corporations
process-improvement efforts and Texas Instruments has wrung a 60 per cent reduction in cycle time out of its $5 billion semiconductor business. Similar modest beginnings have characterized process redesign at Corning. To turn around an alarming trend of plant closures, it redesigned discrete processes from the bottom up and is now working on an overhaul of company-wide processes. While companies like Corning have approached process improvement somewhat mechanistically, others have taken a more organic, less structured approach. According to Richard LeVitt, director of corporate quality at Hewlett-Packard, the rm is managed more by culture and values than it is by policies and procedures. Whether the approach is unstructured and organic, or programmatic and mechanistic, it is clear that process redesign is necessary for all companies that want to stay ahead. While business process re-engineering works well for processes with regular and predictable inputs and outcomes (manufacturing or the supply chain), every company also engages in processes which are not predictable or linear (strategy development and innovation). Also, managing by process rather than by function often just substitutes one way of dividing the organization for another that is not radically different. Whether you manage by function or by process, you are still managing only parts of the organization. How, then, do you manage a whole organization and accommodate both the linear and the nonlinear activities? You would need an organization that is both efcient and adaptable, capable not only of optimizing regular processes but also of approaching and solving problems creatively, accepting occasional chaos as the price of originality and adaptability. It would be structured enough to be stable, but not so structured as to be rigid and unchangeable. It would be uid and loose enough to experiment and try new ideas without worrying too much about breaking rules (or even failing at the experiments). Enter the emerging science of complexity and the study of living systems. Much of the pioneering work in this area has been done at the Santa Fe Institute, where cross-disciplinary thinkers agree that complex, living systems biological, ecological and immunological may have much to teach us because of their capacity to learn and grow despite radi-
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What living systems can teach the learning organization
Industrial and Commercial Training Volume 29 Number 4 1997 101102
cal changes in their environment. Arthur D. Little has been exploring the business implications and its research suggests that there are three underlying conditions which are critical in self-learning systems. These underlying conditions must be tuned, both individually and collectively, to the point at which they balance the organization between chaos and rigidity, creativity and order: (1) Minimal critical process specication and the freedom to experiment. Put more simply, minimal rules. To accelerate the rulelearning process, a system or organization needs freedom to experiment in such a way that the failure of the experiment which is often likely does not jeopardize ongoing operations. (2) Flexible resource architecture. This embraces the information and communication systems, equipment and other technologies which are structured to attain rapid and efcient information transfer, maximum manufacturing capacity and so on. Flexibility is crucial. A major confectionery company with many franchised outlets ran foul of its own information system. The system was highly automated to ensure that every store operated exactly the same way as the agship but, when competition intensied, the company could not change with the times and began to lose money. The culprit was the information system, which kept each store relentlessly plugging away at the same things in exactly the same way as it had always done. The system had no room to accommodate input from employees or customers and was not exible enough to change. (3) Permeable organizational boundaries. Within the organizational boundaries that contain them, individuals, teams and larger groups can function quite effective-
ly. But as the boundaries become more rigid and well dened, communication across them lessens and nally ceases, thus stiing the rms ability to learn and grow. As with minimal rules and exible resources, an organizations boundaries and structure offer it the opportunity to strike a balance. Managers must be conscious of the need to nd a middle way between a structure so loose as to be vaporous, in which people lose their sense of organization, and one so tight as to be restricting. In addition to these underlying conditions, businesses are distinguished by a unique capability: self-awareness. They have the ability to plan, to dream and to take advantage of the fourth parameter of success: a strong shared vision that guides and inspires all the rms stakeholders. The vision complements and catalyzes the other three underlying conditions by guiding the company through change, and it shows the people in the organization what they are aiming for. The constant tension between the ideal reality of the vision and the concrete reality of the here and now helps to keep the organization in the middle way, between accomplishing its day-to-day tasks and moving forward to its dream. Any organization that wants to stay ahead in the future will strive to incorporate all four of these underlying conditions into its operating philosophy. The idea that complex, living systems have much to teach the business world because of their capacity to learn and grow despite radical changes in their environment has much to commend it. But is there a danger that the principle of modelling companies on these exible systems may itself become a new and, ironically, rigid orthodoxy for the years ahead?
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Individual and organizational learning: an interview with Sir Leonard Peach
Sir Leonard Peachs biography appears at the end of this interview.
How important is managerial learning in organizational effectiveness? And why?

The short answer is very important though there may be successful entrepreneurs who would not agree. Initial success in small organizations may be due to exceptional professional abilities at trading or manufacturing, doing deals or spotting niche markets for goods and services. With growth and in the longer term, survival and success depend on the owner or managers ability to learn in a variety of ways and to improve on the organizations performance. Competitors will certainly do so within their own enterprises. I believe that there are two main aspects to managerial learning. The rst relates to the professional functional area in which a manager is operating. It is crucial for a manager to stay in touch with developments in his own specialist area, whether accountancy changes, major changes in production processes or changes in the law. There is a specialist basis to most managers work. I therefore welcome the current emphasis on CPD or Continuous Professional Development which is being encouraged in many institutions. The second point relates to the nature of management itself. It involves acquiring an initial understanding of the principles, practices and competences, applying that knowledge and then building and modifying behaviour by interpreting ones own experience and that of colleagues and researchers who have codied, extrapolated or interpreted the experience of others.
Continuing professional development requires both the updating of professional knowledge and the development of management knowledge, skills and aptitudes. To be effective, individual managers should recognize their own strengths and weaknesses, then build a team based on this analysis which enables them to use their strengths and compensate with the talents of others in areas in which they are less strong or interested. Effective managers combine sensitivity with good management learning. Sensitivity is clearly an attribute that some people have and others do not although it can be acquired. There are many instances of failure through managers simply not listening. While one should not seek to create managers who are so sensitive they cannot make a decision in conict situations, it is important that managers can adjust their approach, decisions and actions, in the light of new knowledge and experiences from within their team.
How can a learning culture be encouraged?

In answering this question one must reect on the nature of learning. Learning from experience is something which we all do although some are better at it than others. If mechanisms or processes are created which enable employees to learn while performing their job then that is the beginning of creating a learning organization. Many managers spend one or two weeks a year learning on programmes. The remainder of their time is spent in the workplace, so if a learning environment can be created there it will have a correspondingly greater impact. Effective learning requires managerial coaching. A process which starts with senior executives and cascades through the organization. It creates a climate which encourages shared experience among managers. Organized, facilitated learning enables managers and others to reect on key requirements and issues away from the workplace, although possibly in an in-company selflearning centre. Training courses add value by providing managers with the opportunity to develop their skills and increase their knowlThis interview is reprinted with permission from Continuing Professional Development, available at: http://www.openhouse.org.uk/virtual-universitypress/cpd/home.htm
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Individual and organizational learning
edge, testing their views against those of others be they managers from their own company, from other organizations or academics. An organization can encourage a learning culture not only by providing the facilities, systems and opportunities but also by ensuring that the reward structure recognizes those who develop themselves and develop others. Achievements in gaining knowledge or new skills or enabling others to do so should be publicly recognized. A current debate is whether the organization of additional competences should be acknowledged by pay increases. My view is that they should be, when used or available for use, in other words when an individual has new skills or knowledge which enlarge his or her potential job contribution.
ing of knowledge or skills is also a requirement to be supported by professional bodies. Distance learning provided through electronic media is proving increasingly important and can be a highly effective method for a dispersed population. However, the size of the investment is such that institutions are required to look carefully at the costs and fees for such a provision, recognizing the sensitivity of members to the nature of increases in the annual subscription!
What are the triggers which cause managers to seek information?

The triggers are actually quite straightforward. There are at least three basic motivators at work. First there is the desire for security. We are told that people at work today have become more insecure as a result of the changes in industrial structure over the past 15 years. They are encouraged to believe that by adding to their knowledge, skills and qualications they have a better chance of keeping their jobs or obtaining new ones. The second is ambition. People seek information when competing for internal or external promotion. The organizational reward structure, as I have emphasized, can encourage this behaviour. The third is the search for job satisfaction or self-actualization. I continue to believe that the vast majority want to maximize the use of their abilities to the benet of the organization and its objectives, and to their own benet. Information is a means to these ends. Any manager undertaking a project has to establish the information base on which to build plans and measurements. Any consultant requires access to a wide spread of information to build his views and report. It is, of course, argued that information is power and that statement is frequently interpreted in a threatening, self-seeking way. I prepare to regard the accumulation of information and the sharing of it as an essential part of the management task.
What is the role of professional institutions and associations in facilitating managerial learning?
I have stressed that managers must have both managerial and functional depth and must be up-to-date. Bodies such as the Institute of Management (Inst.M), the Institute of Personnel and Development (IPD) and the Institute of Directors must facilitate and provide background and courses for development of managerial competences within their own specialities. But we must consider not only the providers but also those setting or contributing to standards. In the UK the Management Charter Initiative (MCI) is having an increasing impact in this area. Setting standards for individuals and industry for organizations is important for the creation of a learning culture. MCI is an exemplar as the Lead Industry Body for Management but other lead bodies are making a similar contribution in their specialities. Qualications should not be ignored. They result when the appropriate standards have been attained and are important motivators and badges of achievement. The professional bodies have a role to play in ensuring that appropriate qualications are created and that the standards are relevant and stretching. Mechanisms have to be put in place to enable managers attain them. Long courses with a variety of delivery mechanisms are the normal nature for such a progression but the provision of short courses for an immediate updat-
What are some of the sources of information managers use to keep upto-date?
There are a number of basic tools which many managers use some well, some badly. Most companies produce internal publications and
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have external information systems which keep managers up-to-speed and provide a context for their work. The news media, TV or the press provides further contextual background, while scientic and management publications provide technical or professional data. As I have said, company courses and external education training are also helpful. The problem for most of us is the retention of knowledge and the identication of further sources and this is where electronic databases come into their own. They make material readily accessible and are a great aid for pointing the way to obtaining more relevant information.
What are some of the information sources managers use for more thorough research?
For project and research the onus is an effective use of electronic databases. Relevant databases need to be available either for immediate personal use or through an information specialist. These are essential in order to retrieve relevant research and work in ones eld.
How do you judge the quality of information once you have sought it out?
All of us make qualitative judgements in assessing the value of information. Some of us hear only what we want to hear. If we nd errors or omissions then we question the whole piece, and are much more likely to seek other sources. We should bring to bear a whole set of experiences in making judgements while recognizing from time to time that some ideas are so original that previous experience is not a criterion. There is the problem of the context of the time in which the material is published. Some of Charles Handys work was readily available in the 1970s but the ideas in it did not take root until the 1980s. In the late 1970s, employers were obsessed with the problems of running their businesses against a background of poor industrial relations and dominant trade unions. When the Conservative Government of the early 1980s freed up the labour market then Handys ideas could ourish and be utilized. Tom Peters, on the other hand, had immediate success and appeal with his In Search
of Excellence, since he was systematizing and spreading good ideas and practice drawn from a number of successful companies. But within a few years many of his chosen illustrative companies were in trouble and so he produced Managing in Chaos with its relevance to the troublesome economic conditions of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Reecting on the history of good companies and their practices can be valuable but managers must judge the relevance of theories and practices within current contexts. Networking relationships have had a significant impact on these judgements, too. Many qualitative assessments are based on the feedback from the network. The establishment of groups of people with like problems can be very helpful in providing an intelligent and shared view of mutual concerns and information sources, while providing the encouragement to take the appropriate steps. In summary, in testing the quality of information with which one is presented, one brings ones own experience to bear, that of colleagues and networks and compares the information with that obtained from other sources. It is very important to dene the context in which such judgements are being supplied, though we have to recognize that each situation, while it may have obvious commonalities, also may have unique elements. Thank you.
Biography
Sir Len Peach is currently the Commissioner for Public Appointments. He is independent of the UK Government and his role is to monitor, regulate and provide advice on departmental procedures for ministerial appointments to executive non-departmental public and NHS bodies, popularly known as Quangos. Len Peach holds a separate appointment as Commissioner for Public Appointments for Northern Ireland and, in addition, he is a Civil Service Commissioner. Sir Leonard Peach was knighted in 1989. Prior to taking up post as Commissioner, he was Chairman of the Police Complaints Authority. He has been Chief Executive and Personnel Director of the NHS Management Board, and Chairman of the NHS Training Authority. He is also a former President of the Institute of Personnel Management. He was a Group Director of Personnel for IBM
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Europe, Africa and Middle East and for IBM UK Ltd. Sir Len has been associated with a range of other bodies and organizations. His current posts include Chairman of the Policy Studies Institute and Chairman of the University of Westminster. He was educated at Pembroke College, Oxford, is an Honorary Fellow
of that College and also at the London School of Economics. In addition, he holds an Honorary Doctor of Science degree from the University of Aston, is an Honorary Fellow of the University of Greenwich and an Honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Occupational Medicine, of the Royal College of Physicians.
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Managing out of bounds
The language, tools, roles and responsibilities of management in the new information age are only now being reinvented, according to Professor Gary Hamel, of the London Business School, and chairman of Strategos. Traditional management practices and precepts are being questioned. Management is no longer by the rules, by the numbers or by the book, and is also no longer within the boundaries of industry convention, company tradition, vested authority, national context, functional specialization, the demonstrably feasible and the present. The boundaries of authority are shifting. Personal computers, networks and corporate e-mail systems are helping to create an information democracy, breaking down information boundaries. In the knowledge economy, employees need to be challenged. They will have access to all the facts, can make their own judgements and will be able to challenge the judgements of those in authority. The boundaries of control are becoming blurred. More often than not, control systems do not measure the right things, such as competitors intentions, emerging market needs or subtle regulatory shifts. In the new world of networked, global organizations, management needs controls that give the ability to anticipate and respond proactively to emerging crises and opportunities; where anticipation is not possible, exibility must be built in. Resources are being shifted outside the company or business unit: greater dependence on suppliers, risk-sharing with alliance partners for major R&D investment, new opportunities outside business unit boundaries and greater dependence on geographically-distant afli-
ates for critical resources are all blurring the boundaries of managerial control. The boundaries of loyalty and afliation are shifting. Jobs are no longer for life and loyalty is less valued than capability. Today, employees are asked to be exible, retrain, think about their work, take responsibility for their own development and to widen their jobs. This requires a deep sense of afliation with an organization and its goals. Management must, therefore, strengthen the bonds of afliation and sense of belonging between employee and employer. The boundaries of experience are crumbling. In the past, knowledge brought authority. The top-down hierarchical superiority was based on the premiss that people at the top knew more than those at lower levels, and that long experience of an industry made one wise. Now, the industrial and economic environment is changing so fast that experience can be irrelevant or even downright dangerous. The recipes for success of a decade ago are no longer valid. Companies need to promote the younger generation who live closer to the future, not the past; authority should be as much a function of foresight as of hindsight. In a world of discontinuous change, authority should rest not only on experience, but also on the capacity to learn and adapt. Also valued is the ability to think across industry boundaries. National boundaries are becoming irrelevant. Leading companies are operating in a market of global consumers. They are linking capabilities across geographical boundaries to produce unique products and services. However, few managers are able to approach opportunities with a global perspective. The goal is to create managers with the capacity to transcend culture, to nd the universals and to build large supranational businesses around them. They will need not only to share learning with an existing network of national subsidiaries, but to access and integrate differentiated national skills. The boundaries between the physical and the intellectual are changing. In the machine age, companies made and distributed physical products; management allocated money through budgets, measured assets through the balance sheet, and invested in plant and equipment things were central. In the information age, knowledge is central; things are ancillary. A companys value now derives from knowledge, know-how, intellectual assets and
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Managing out of bounds
competences all embodied in people. However, intellectual assets do not appear on the balance sheet. Management and shareholders need to know whether intellectual capital is being created or destroyed. Managements task is to make sure that the best talent is not locked away in some moribund division. Knowledge assets also need to be protected somehow. The boundaries between present and future are changing. Most managers, many with short-term tenures, live in the here and now. Making the numbers is more important than making a vision. The belief is that no one can predict the future. The problem, however, is not one of prediction, it is one of imagination. Too many managers are caught up in within-industry conventions, concerned only with results for the next accounting period. Most companies fail miserably at the task of
imagining their future in a world full of many potential futures. They need to invest enormous energy delving deeply into the emerging trends in technology, lifestyle, regulation, demographics and globalization that point to new opportunities. Only a unique and compelling view of the future will avoid being caught up in the traditions of the past. If a company wants to shape the future, rather than be its victim, it must be prepared to live in the future. In the out-of-bounds world of the emerging information economy, the past does not have to be an anchor; industry does not have to be destiny; borders do not have to be boundaries; employees do not have servitude; and loyalty does not have to mean acquiescence. In the new age, the language, tools, roles and responsibilities of management must be reinvented.
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Section 2 Effective organizational learning
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Self-managed learning at IKEA
Talk and chalk teaching methods leave a lot to be desired for companies seeking to make their managers more independent, exible, innovative and entrepreneurial. Homefurnishings retailer IKEA has recently introduced self-managed learning as the company prepares for expansion at a time of intense international competition. Managers cannot succeed in a company like IKEA just by using their brains. They must bring their hearts to work to fully appreciate the IKEA soul. So says Lars Gejrot, human-resources manager at the Swedish home-furnishings retailer. In order to develop such demanding attributes, IKEA identies, trains and sends out exemplary Swedish managers to stores in other countries, and executives are encouraged to learn from them. One example of executive training is the intensive cultural weeks, which cover the A-Z of Sweden and IKEAs values. There are also two one-week workshops for each manager every year. Says Gejrot: Through education and working with role models, individuals soon acquire our values quite naturally. IKEA has expanded signicantly since its rst store opened at Almhult, Sweden, in 1958. Today, it has 130 stores in 27 countries in Europe, North America and the AsiaPacic. Customer visits total more than 120 million. There are over 30,000 people on the payroll. The company is known in some circles as the McDonalds of furnishings. All country managers are expected to run their business according to local conditions or settings. Says Gejrot: Customers can be better served according to local needs, and
local conditions are important for employees. Turnover of employees also varies from country to country. A further aspect of decentralization is that Gejrots completely devolved humanresources department is based in Switzerland, IKEAs retailing foundation is located in Holland and management headquarters are in Denmark. Each of these units has employees of different nationalities, as a deliberate policy. These elements encouraged Gejrot, and colleagues in human resources and training, to examine different approaches to management development. Curt Temin, head of IKEAs purchasing-development centre, explains that the rm wanted to change the way it created learning situations for employees (or co-workers, as the company prefers to call them) and make it more local. He says: We sought to make learning more relevant and more compelling, and to execute it in a more cost-conscious way, which avoided having to y every countrys people back to Scandinavia. Lars Gejrot and ve colleagues in human resources identied self-managed learning as the desired approach. Individuals work in small groups, or learning sets, which provide challenges and mutual support. Managers diagnose their individual learning needs, specify their own development goals and decide how they should be attained. Learning set members review and discuss each others work and help to assess the progress they are making. Says one participant: We all have different views of the same problems. Trying to make ourselves clear to each other helps us to realize that decisions are not always a simple choice between right and wrong. The UKbased Roffey Park Management Institute developed a tailored pilot programme for Gejrots team. The aim was to help team members to understand self-managed learning and be able to design and implement their own programmes for country managers. Roffey Park staff guided an initial three-day brieng to explore self-managed learning strategies. The team then met at different European locations every two months. Individuals on the programme have since develThis is a prcis of an article entitled European cases of self-managed learning, which was originally published in Management Development Review, Vol. 9 No. 2, 1996. The author was Stephen King.
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Self-managed learning at IKEA
oped learning contracts tailored to their roles and needs. Says Gejrot: Now we have started to train ourselves as learning-set advisers, so we can lead more self-managed learning programmes. The approach supports the attitude to development that IKEA wants to encourage. This involves people taking responsibility for their own learning, agreeing targets with others and then acting with help from co-workers. This mixture of challenge and support is a powerful vehicle for development, and will also reinforce IKEAs values across its international workforce. Curt Temin adds that participants have built up an excellent relationship with Roffey Park. He says: Their self-managed learning programme and consultancy are giving us new ways of thinking about creating learning situations. It has been a useful vehicle for thinking about how competences can work. Even before their own pilot programme is nished, the IKEA managers see opportunities for self-managed learning programmes among their international teams. Self-managed learning also provides a framework for training trainers within IKEA, which can be used throughout the companys operations. An important application will be to train country managers, store managers and their potential successors. Later this year, some 60 top IKEA executives will take part in four development groups, using the self-managed learning approach. Key themes will be busi-
ness planning, strategic purchasing, and forecasting business and market trends. An environmental-education programme has already been run. Says Gejrot: Self-managed learning appealed because it is real and based on daily working life. It is not a new invention, but more of a toolkit for effective development. Companies hoping to encourage their managers to be more exible, innovative and entrepreneurial are unlikely to achieve these ends through getting their managers to sit down and learn what to do from someone else. Says Joanna Howard, of Roffey Park: There is more to management than case studies and theories. The self-managed learning programme puts people at the heart of the learning process and gives them practical experience of problems involving choice, change, motivation and action as part of the development process. Decentralization, communication and learning are key features of IKEAs success. Learning, of course, enables individual employees to develop, and enhances job satisfaction. At company level, rms which learn faster than their rivals are likely to retain their lead, since the more a company knows, the faster it learns and so the more it knows. That is a lesson which has certainly been learned by IKEA. A leading industry analyst, Walter Loeb, once said: IKEA is now so far ahead of the others that no one else can catch up.
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Making the most of mentoring
Increasing numbers of companies are introducing formal mentoring programmes. This article examines how ve rms Hallmark Cards, Texaco Trading and Transportation, Imperial Oil Ltd, Shell Oil Company and an anonymous Fortune 500 computer company resolved some of the issues which arise.
Mentoring maketh man (or woman).
Few people today would contest that mentoring programmes can bring considerable benets to the mentor, protg and company as a whole. But these benets do not arise by accident. The experiences of Hallmark Cards, Texaco Trading and Transportation, Imperial Oil Ltd, Shell Oil Company and an anonymous Fortune 500 computer company illustrate the advantages of careful planning and implementation.
mentors and protgs are compiled in a book. Mentor-prole sheets include pictures of the potential mentors and details such as why they want to be a mentor, what they hope to gain from the experience, what their position is in the company, what type of work experience they have had and what their hobbies and interests are. Potential mentors and protgs at Imperial Oil Ltd submit rsums detailing their current job responsibilities, hobbies and what they expect to get from the programme. A half-day mixer is held with potential participants. Protgs and mentors are then asked to list three possible people with whom they would like to be matched. If no direct matches occur, the protgs preferences are used to select mentors. At Texaco Trading and Transportation, if the protg is interested in developing his or her skills in a different area of the company, the protg may be matched with a mentor from that area. The Fortune 500 computer company assigns to protgs mentors who could most successfully develop the protgs skills.
What training should mentors and protgs receive?

Mentors and protgs must be told the purpose of the programme, and their roles and responsibilities. Protgs need to be aware, for example, that taking part in the programme does not guarantee that they will be promoted or receive more money. Mentors should be briefed about the differences between the roles of mentor and supervisor and how to avoid problems which might otherwise occur. Among the training methods used by the ve companies are: role plays to train mentors in coaching and providing effective feedback, and to train protgs how to receive feedback; videos which illustrate effective mentoring relationships;
This is a prcis of an article entitled Issues facing organizations when implementing formal mentoring programmes, which was originally published in Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 17 No. 3, 1996, pp. 28-31. The authors were Monica L. Forret, of Long Island University, Brookville, USA, and Daniel B. Turban and Thomas W. Dougherty, of the University of Missouri, Columbia, USA.
Who should receive mentoring?

The company needs to decide whether formal mentoring will be available to all employees, or only to certain groups. Much depends on the rms objectives and the number of employees to whom it can effectively provide mentoring at any one time. At one of the rms studied, all employees with less than two years experience take part in the mentoring programme as protgs. At another, only professional women are offered mentoring. The aim here is to help them to rise to upper management. All ve companies hold information sessions to discuss objectives. Participation as a mentor is voluntary in each of the rms.
How should the mentor and protg be paired?

Hallmark Cards lets protgs and mentors select each other. Prole sheets of potential
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handbooks which discuss issues such as understanding the mentors role, confronting others productively and checking expectations; and lectures to describe what mentoring is, and some of the benets and pitfalls.
What if the mentoring relationship is not mutually satisfying?

Geographical separation or conicting work schedules sometimes make it difcult for the mentor and protg to meet, thereby reducing the benets of the relationship for both sides. Sometimes, the chemistry between the two parties is simply not present. Imperial Oil has devised a useful way to address the issue of potential mismatches. During the training session, paired protgs and mentors have the option of establishing a contract which species their vision of the relationship, their mutual expectations, how often they will meet and what they will do if things do not go well. Pairs also determine how they will measure the value of their meetings. This could involve, for example, keeping a journal of their interactions. It is important to discuss what to do if the mentoring relationship is failing to satisfy either party. Dissolving an unsatisfactory relationship saves the employees from further frustration and gives them the chance to pursue a more fruitful relationship.
How should potential conicts with the protgs supervisor be handled?

Shell Oil Company involves the protgs supervisor in setting the boundaries of the mentoring programme. The aim is to prevent the mentor-protg relationship from interfering with the supervisors ability to guide his or her subordinate. Texaco Trading and Transportation matches protgs with a mentor who is at least two levels above the protg and who is not in a direct reporting relationship with the protgs supervisor.
How long do formal mentoring relationships last?

Formal mentoring programmes typically last for between six months and two years. Mentor and protg are usually free to continue meeting after the formal programme is over.
How can mentoring programmes be evaluated?

Surveying mentors and protgs after six months or a year is a commonly used method to determine whether the mentoring relationship is having the desired results. In addition, Hallmark Cards holds Hows it going? sessions to decide ways in which the programme might be improved. (One result of these sessions was the development of the prole sheets for selecting mentors and protgs.) Similarly, Imperial Oil holds brown bag lunches every few months, for mentors and protgs to assess how the programme is working and ways to improve it. Quantiable results would certainly be useful, but are more difcult to obtain.
What can help to get the relationship off to a good start?

Some sort of planned activity can help to get the mentoring relationship off to a good start, particularly if the mentor and protg have never met before. Texaco Trading and Transportation mentors help their protgs to prepare career development plans. Mentors also develop personal action plans which specify the types of experience they want to provide for their protgs. The company holds a social event to help programme participants to get to know each other. Hallmark Cards holds mentor coffees twice a year. These provide interested employees with information on the mentoring programme, and allow potential mentors and protgs to get to know each other. Among the games played are identifying famous mentor-protg pairs from history. Additional activities, such as scheduling regular lunches, may also help the mentor and protg to get to know each other.
Conclusion
Among the benets which protgs report from a mentoring programme are: outstanding career advice; enhanced performance; increased visibility in the company; a better understanding of corporate culture and organizational structure; and
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increased feelings of support and friendship. Some examples of the benets which mentors report receiving are: better awareness of what new employees experience; the acquisition of new skills; an improved network of contacts; a better understanding of others work styles; an improvement in their coaching skills; and satisfaction from passing on their knowledge to others. Finally, mentoring also benets the company as a whole. Mentoring can improve communication within the rm and help in merging
different cultures. At Texaco Trading and Transportation, for instance, the large number of small and geographically separate ofces resulted in less communication than the company would have liked. That problem, combined with the acquisition of Getty Oil, helped to convince managers that a mentoring programme would be a useful way of improving communication among the ofces and in helping employees to understand the cultures of both organizations. The experience of these ve companies illustrates that simply telling employees that they are now a mentor or protg can never be enough. In the area of mentoring, as in so many others, there would appear to be no short cut to success.
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Brighter Futures shines for Whitbread
How do you maximize the benets of your companys links with the world of education, while avoiding the charge of exploiting young people? This article highlights the experiences of Whitbread plc. When UK rm Whitbread questioned its senior managers about the value of its linkswith-education programme, few of them fully understood how the company beneted and several questioned the value of running the programme at all. The companys response was to refocus and relaunch the three-year-old programme, to make it more relevant to the 70,000 company employees. The brewer and retailer of food, drink and leisure gave the programme a new brand name Brighter Futures and strove to make it more recognizable and more easily understood. Attention focused particularly on the middle and senior managers, who determine the involvement of many of their employees. The company also initiated Seeing Is Believing days, at which every senior manager spends a day looking at the rms community-based activity, including education, with a group of colleagues. The initiative is showing results. Two parts of the company now include education-link activity as a personal development option within their overall personal development schemes. The Brighter Futures programme covers teacher placements within Whitbread, work experience for more than 100 students a year, curriculum development and representing the company on various local, regional and national groups and committees.
The benets of the programme to Whitbread include: (1) Personal development opportunities. The broad range of links between the company and education institutions enables Whitbread employees to develop specic skills. For example, an employee who needs to practise presentation skills can give a talk to students or parents about career opportunities in the company. (2) Public relations opportunities. Local news media frequently feature links between Whitbread and a local school, college or university. The Brighter Futures programme has also enabled Whitbread to inuence key opinion formers at regional and national levels. For example, the company is regularly asked to comment on government proposals and to take part in national groups and committees such as the Government and Industrialists Panel and the Confederation of British Industrys education policy committee. (3) Marketing, testing and research projects. Working with education institutions gives Whitbread the chance to discuss with people outside the company either students or teachers ideas it has for business opportunities. For example, one group of pupils helped the rm to develop new menu items based on their likes and dislikes. (4) Financial benets. Whitbread does not set out to make money from its links with schools and colleges, but does nd that there can be a nancial spin-off. One of the companys Beefeater restaurants occupies a Tudor-style building. Local pupils who were studying the Tudors sketched the outside of the building. The manager put the pictures on display in the restaurant. As a result, many of the children, together with their families, visited to see their work. A number of the families are now regular customers. (5) Recruitment opportunities. Close links developed with colleges and universities give the rm the chance to explain career
This is a prcis of an article entitled Brighter futures: education partnership activity within Whitbread plc, which was originally published in Education + Training, Vol. 38 No. 3, 1996, pp. 3-9. The author was Tony Allen, national education manager for Whitbread plc, Luton, UK.
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Brighter Futures shines for Whitbread
opportunities to students and parents, and to advise on qualication levels. The benets to the education institutions include closer links between teaching staff and the world of industry, the chance to study aspects of the curriculum outside the classroom, nancial benets and publicity. Brighter Futures is part of Whitbreads community programme. This also includes activities such as employee volunteering and support for the arts, urban regeneration and the environment. The education team includes a national manager, responsible for the overall direction of the education programme, and ve regional managers, who promote links between Whitbread employees and education institutions. The regional managers initiate activity themselves and respond to requests from both the company and education institutions. With secretarial and administrative support, there are the equivalent of nine full-time people involved. The team seeks to show that Brighter Futures operates to the same management rigours as any other part of the company, and plays a valuable role in helping Whitbread to achieve its objectives. Each member of the education team spends time with a specic part of the company, to ensure that he or she keeps up-todate with the objectives of that business. This guarantees that at least one team member has enough knowledge of each part of the rm to make sure that activities are kept relevant and do not conict with business objectives. There are regular meetings at regional and national levels with education contacts in each part of the company. Specic activities are agreed and proper feedback is given. Each part of the company has targets for its education activity in the areas of teacher placement, work experience and curriculum develop-
ment. Performance against these targets is reviewed at contact meetings. Whitbreads relationship with the many external agencies which exist to promote education-industry links is under constant review. The company increasingly works on a project basis and less on a core funding basis. Core funding is supplied to Understand British Industry, Young Enterprise and Business in the Community. But core funding is frequently reviewed to ensure that the links remain relevant to Whitbreads programme. All employees who have taken part in any Brighter Futures activity are involved in evaluating its benets, but the job of completing the evaluation lies with education team members. An analysis of the nancial payback is produced where sums above 5,000 are involved. This leads to a more carefully constructed project, with more clearly identied benets for the company and school or college involved. Balancing the benets of a given project to the company and education institution involved is not easy. A number of large rms have, in attempting to maximize the benets for the business, found themselves accused of exploitation. Whitbread is attempting to move the boundaries of link activity forward beyond teacher placement, work experience and a bit of safe curriculum development but constantly guards against being accused of exploiting young people in the interests of prot. More company employees are likely to take part in education-industry links if involvement is included as a measure in the companys appraisal process. The fact that two parts of the Whitbread company now include education link activity as a personal development option within their overall personal development schemes is therefore encouraging.
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Polaroid develops through reection
Managers have always placed a higher value on action than reection. Most of them work at an unrelenting pace, focusing on a specic issue for a short period of time, then moving instantly on to the next. But more companies are coming round to the view that managers should be able to call a halt, at least briey, to the frantic pace of action, and reect on their experiences. This article considers how the Polaroid Corporation is using the process of reection in its management development. The age-old question why? has guided scientists and philosophers to discoveries and insights which have changed our world. Now companies as diverse as Polaroid, PepsiCo and Hewlett-Packard are giving their managers time and scope to use a similar process of reection in relation to business developments. The forces affecting industry and commerce change so quickly and unpredictably that it is difcult for the traditional avenues of management development MBA degrees, executive-education programmes and management workshops and seminars to keep up. By the time course designers have understood existing issues and trends, developed cases and written texts, a new wave of business challenges has appeared. There is, however, immense learning potential in the challenges managers confront and the problems they solve during their everyday working experience. Managers need support to make sense out of these developmental experiences. What is required is a way of exploring causes, developing and testing hypotheses and eventually producing new knowledge. The process of reection plays a key part in this.
Polaroid Corporation uses The Reection Workbook in its management development. The rst section describes the three tools which feature in the workbook the learning journal, the learning log and the learning conversation and provides guidelines for their use. The second section contains the journal pages and learning logs used to record and explore the random thoughts and summary learning statements which occur as a natural part of doing ones job. The workbook is designed to be used independently or with one other person who acts as a learning coach. However, an interactive, small-group process has also been developed to help users to get used to writing in the workbook and to share their learning with others. This exercise, called community reection, takes around 90 minutes. Participants are introduced to the process, agree to a set of ground rules, then spend 20 minutes reecting by themselves, using the learning journal, the learning log or both. During this individual reection time, participants are asked to think and write about their learning in four specic categories, using a set of questions as prompts. For the next 50 minutes, a facilitator leads the group through a process which allows participants to share their individual learning. The exercise ends with a brief discussion of additional learning which surfaced as a result of the process. Polaroid managers report that the tools have brought to the surface a large amount of personal learning which would otherwise have gone unrecognized. One group of managers, involved in a particularly challenging new role, reported three additional unforeseen benets from the community-reection exercise. First, they found that both the individual and group reection time created a sense of fellowship. The act of revealing learning, from both positive and negative experiences, created a sense of trust and friendship which had not previously existed.
This is a prcis of an article entitled Learning from experience through reection, which was originally published in Organizational Dynamics, winter 1996, pp. 36-48. The author was Marilyn Wood Daudelin, in-house trainer, consultant and programme manager, Polaroid Corporation, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
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Polaroid develops through reection
Second, they indicated that the session provided a much-needed chance to slow down and reect quietly on what had been learned. This proved to be a relief from the rapid and continuous assault of new learning which is a regular part of their training. Finally, in addition to the personal insights and lessons which were shared, dilemmas and questions emerged which were explored in future training activities. As managers use quality-improvement tools, as they empower others to take part in decision making and as they develop procedures to measure performance, they have the opportunity to engage more actively in reection. Many of the tools taught and practised in total quality management programmes are actually processes of reection. They call on individual managers to stop and think about important areas such as customer needs, root causes of problems and blockages in the system of production. The trend towards greater employee involvement in company decision making has changed the relationship between leaders and followers. The managers role has shifted from that of a charismatic leader who has all the answers to that of a coach who works with employees to help them to discover the answers. The shift occurs when managers provide the time and structure for employees to reect on challenges, and when the managers support the ideas which emerge from this reection. The best managers recognize that posing questions is often a better way to gain commitment than providing concise answers. Managers in many companies are now more accountable for corporate performance to external shareholders, boards of directors or employee-owners. The managers must reect on performance over the previous year
and use the information revealed to plan for the following years performance. AT&T, PepsiCo and Aetna, like Polaroid, are developing ways to introduce more introspection into their management-development programmes. And Exxon, Motorola, General Motors and Hewlett-Packard are just a few of the rms using action-reection learning to explore and nd answers to important business problems. These efforts signal an increased interest in using reection in company decision making. To use reection effectively, managers need only recognize that it has value, then create a small amount of time for it to take place. With this process, managers take responsibility for their own learning a responsibility which is, in some cases, turned over too quickly to workshop leaders, university professors or consultants. No matter how well qualied these education providers may be, it is unlikely that any of them could create case studies with greater relevance or challenge than a managers own work experiences. The article highlights the formal reection practices which companies could introduce. Reection could be built into classroom training by allowing time for thought individually, with a helper or in a group at the end of each session. Structured reection sessions could be established for all managers following challenging experiences such as job rotations, on-the-job training exercises or external executive-development activities. Finally, formal individual and helper-based reection could become a standard element of corporate succession-planning activities. Succession-planning candidates could use formal reection sessions to become aware of the learning attained from each job rotation, thus contributing their own assessment of readiness to that of upper management.
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Multimedia training system shines in the showroom
The automotive industry is fairly traditional when it comes to training. Companies generally hire a vendor who delivers a packaged programme. A lot of off-the-shelf and generic training has been painstakingly developed for the industry. It is unusual for automotive rms to go to the expense, time and trouble of creating their own. But Lexus, the luxury-car division of Toyota Motor Sales, has turned conventional wisdom on its head. This article explains why and how. If the car in front is a Toyota, one would expect the need for innovative training to keep it there. Lexus, the luxury-car division of Toyota Motor Sales, has pioneered a multimedia training system for sales consultants and dealership managers in the USA. Studies of US Lexus dealerships suggested three major needs: (1) develop a dealership culture that minimizes staff turnover and its associated costs; (2) develop career paths for dealership employees; and (3) identify specic performance criteria for key dealership personnel. A brainstorming session involving the principals and general managers of 12 dealerships and various Lexus employees was based on this study. The session identied key objectives for Lexus sales training: provide training and support that bring employee performance into line with business requirements; incorporate this training and support into the existing Lexus sales-training certication programme; and enable dealerships to get training to improve the performance of their sales consultants when and where they need it.
Following the brainstorming session, the companys sales-training department drew up a formal plan for developing several new curricula. One, for basic sales training, would be delivered through a computer-based, interactive multimedia system. The department then began to sell the plan to the companys executives. Computer-based training would be expensive to create and maintain. However, the planned system would encourage repeated use, and so bring down the cost per exposure to less than typical instructor-led training. There was a large potential audience, because of the size of the Lexus salesforce and high staff turnover. The salespeoples backgrounds varied widely in terms of education and work experience. Time is of the essence in training new people, since hours spent away from the showroom oor can equal lost sales opportunities. All these factors supported an on-site, on-demand, technology-driven solution. However, the training department was proposing to use computers to teach interpersonal skills. How could the innumerable nuances of the sales process be conveyed by computer? Moreover, there is great sensitivity in the automobile industry about a manufacturer telling a dealership how to sell a car. The traditional view is that the manufacturer should build cars and let dealerships worry about selling them. The course for sales staff would have to: explain key customer attitudes and expectations about Lexus and its cars; present a core set of sales skills, and provide the chance to practise those skills and receive immediate feedback; be part of a system that could be expanded to accommodate various dealershiptraining needs, including service, business ofce, reception desk and so on; and be easy to use even for people who have never operated a computer. Money was made available for a computerbased training prototype. A $70,000 contract was signed with a Californian rm, Internal
This is a prcis of an article entitled Anatomy of a multimedia project, which was originally published in Training, July 1995. The author was Joanne Irish, director of training at Visual Services Inc., a US marketing-services company which specializes in the automotive industry.
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Multimedia training system shines in the showroom
and External Communications, to build it. The prototype had to grab people who had never used a computer, who had no frame of reference by which to judge computer-based training and persuade them of the need for the system. The prototype was demonstrated to more than 500 sales, service and business managers from Lexus dealerships. Their feedback was positive and approval was given to go ahead with the main project. The theme for the programme is Lexus Labs a top secret installation, hidden in rolling green hills, which can be used as an umbrella theme for all the sales-training departments training. Simulations are video-based. The two sales simulations have the highest sizzle factor. Each features different sales consultants and customers, and each presents its own set of teaching points. The simulations provide instant feedback and online advice. A database of Lexus sales-related information is available from any point in the programme. Therefore, trainees who get into difculty in one of the simulations can go back to the database of sales-related information for some quick training, then pick up where they left off. Dealerships were closely involved throughout the development. In particular, associates from Lexus dealerships and division headquarters took part in a two-month test of the system. It was installed in 11 Lexus dealer-
ships, at the Lexus US headquarters and at Lexus regional ofces, to provide feedback which was incorporated into the system before full release. One enhancement allows salespeople to create personalized printouts for customers who are comparing Lexus with other vehicles. The design team also added two more simulations, as well as other salesrelated tools and information. Full installation of the system began last year. It is optional for the 172 Lexus dealerships across the USA. Those who take it up must buy or lease the hardware the specially-congured CD-ROM system costs around $7,000. Lexus provides the software, updates, technical support and a helpdesk, at no extra charge. Lexus Labs won NewMedias Invision 1995 gold award for sales training and a distinguished award for excellence. The most meaningful reward, however, will come if better training of the salesforce prompts higher sales of Lexus vehicles. In the months and years ahead, will the car in front still be a Toyota? Human-resource professionals frequently must justify the cost-effectiveness of investment in training. Lexus Lab is easy to cost and its benets, in terms of increased car sales, ought quickly to become apparent. We eagerly anticipate a progress report on the systems operation.
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Section 3 The virtual university model
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Lifelong learning and the virtual university
The concept of lifelong learning, or at least periods of learning at stages within working lives, is seen by many as the route to ongoing managerial effectiveness. Those currently involved in enabling others to learn and who can adapt to the possibilities brought about by technological change are ideally placed to see their activities grow on a worldwide basis. But the threat is there, too, for the complacent as new entrants to the learning market will be developing innovative architectures to deliver world-class services at low cost. Here, Eric Sandelands, Fellow of International Business, University of Surrey/IMC, proposes the concept of the virtual university as a method of delivering lifelong learning. It is a concept that can be adopted by the traditional learning institutions seeking new markets whose brand names will travel. It can also be utilized by new, innovative institutions which can structure themselves to deliver academic programmes anywhere in the world. Distance learning has opened up opportunities for ongoing learning for students without the need for a career break. It has also changed the concept of university capacity which is no longer limited by the size of the campuses. Among the drawbacks, however, have been the lack of student/student and student/supervisor interaction and the expense of keeping learning packages up-todate. Nonetheless, the emerging virtual university model uses technology to build in to learning programmes the type of interaction found in the original university concept. It is not conned to academia, as many corporate organizations are seeking efcient and costeffective ways to enhance management development. BAA and Fina represent corporate
clients working with the University of Surrey/IMC in a learning partnership to develop learning organizations. Without underestimating the short-term challenges, the future for distance learning and electronic publishing appears to be very bright. Sandelands denes the learning organization of the twenty-rst century in the form of a wish list that would allow institutions to: recruit students from all over the world without providing living accommodation, lecture theatres, and so on; deliver courseware based on the best available, up-to-date published knowledge which can be delivered to the student instantaneously (without the cost of storing and despatching it); give students access to the best possible library of published information; run seminars that focus on key issues and give everyone the opportunity to participate; run the programmes effectively and appoint the most appropriate supervisors to projects no matter where they are in the world. Pioneering institutions are designing architectures that exist only in the virtual world. Business School Nederland is the leading MBA provider in The Netherlands. All of its programmes are delivered using the World Wide Web, and all of the items on the wish list are present in its learning programmes. The Business School Nederland and the University of Surrey/IMC make no secret of the virtual university models they have adopted. The majority of their course structures are freely available to all who care to search them out on the World Wide Web. Outlined below are the main features of the models being used: (1) All faculty and course participants must have access to the Internet. While this is a precondition of joining the programmes, its signicance is diminishing as a barrier to entry, given the rapid growth in Internet access. (2) Courseware is delivered using the Internet; no packs are despatched from warehouses. The faculty designing course materials concentrates on the structure and course content. Each module is dened in terms of the keywords of the material being covered. The reading lists are updated every six months using the keywords to pinpoint recent material
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Lifelong learning and the virtual university
from the Anbar Management Intelligence database. This ensures access to the most signicant recent thinking in the eld. (3) All faculty and students have access to an on-line library for current or archival published material. The Anbar Management Intelligence database provides abstracts of articles reviewed by subject specialists from a dened coverage list of journal material. The full-text article can be ordered if required. (4) Participation in seminars and conferences is encouraged. Newsgroups, an established feature of the Internet enabling group discussion, are used as forums to share feedback and explore concepts and ideas. These provide meeting places for course participants worldwide. Journal sponsored or other facilitated conferences enable students to debate with academic researchers from beyond the connes of the virtual university. (5) Effective course supervision is a key factor in ensuring a successfully completed programme. Business School Nederland and University of Surrey/IMC tutors use e-mail to set deadlines, provide feedback, etc. They are also able, on a worldwide basis, to match a student with the
most appropriate faculty member to act as supervisor. (6) Another feature of these institutions is the establishment of an active alumni to encourage ongoing learning beyond graduation. The alumni are encouraged to feed back advice and experience via the Internet seminars, making for a powerful networking club which can reach into many parts of the globe. This is not to say that people never meet. Residential start-ups, summer schools and shorter workshop sessions are important too. Electronics have not yet brought us the chat over a beer or similar aspects of the human bonding process. The distance-learning model that emerges in the medium term seems certain to include a blend of face-toface teaching and discussion groups, materials in print and other media, complemented by electronic access. Yet the emphasis placed on each of these elements looks set to shift as the virtual university concept matures. After two to ve years we are likely to see a multiplicity of virtual universities offering sophisticated educational experiences. The need for training and development in all types of organizations points to this low-cost, high-quality approach to learning as being of major signicance in the provision of lifelong learning.
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Corporate virtual university: BAA
Managing an airport is as complex as managing a small city. BAA (formerly British Airports Authority) currently own and/or operate seven of them ranging in size from small regional airports to the world leader Londons Heathrow. From its roots in the UK, BAA is now expanding internationally, pitching for operations contacts and ownership of airport businesses around the world. The entire operation of each passenger terminal is the responsibility of experienced BAA managers. Their role is to orchestrate the work of many different organizations so that passengers receive a smooth and seamless service. Activities range from running the computerized information and baggage handling systems and advanced passenger transit shuttles, through to providing engineering services, porters and trolleys. A strategy of customer-focused airport management with a constant focus on customer satisfaction is central to the success of the company. The quality service monitor system research conrms year-on-year improvements in customer service. The good management practice that such a customer focused approach engenders, however, has also led to substantial improvements in labour productivity in one year alone the number of passengers handled per employee rose by 27 per cent. The mission of BAA is quite simply to be the most successful airport company in the world. To achieve this the company must: always focus on customers needs and safety; achieve continuous improvements in the costs and quality of all processes and services; and enable employees to give of their best.
Training and development is at the heart of the strategies in place to meet the objectives set out in the mission statement. The training vision is that BAA will become a true learning organization. BAA people will be the best in the industry worldwide and will be delighted by their personal growth and development during their career with the company. An innovation during 1996 was a move to institutionalize learning experiences for managers to seek synergy between internal training programmes and external business school qualication structures. The company was seeking to ensure that training was focused on real issues which supported the companys mission. BAA were also seeking to build an environment supportive of organizational as well as personal learning. Senior executives held discussions with representatives of 28 universities and management schools, before electing to create a learning partnership with the University of Surrey/IMC. Programmes were to be created together to meet both corporate objectives and rigorous, externally assessed, academic standards. BAA executives were to form part of the learning partnership faculty and teach on programmes, in addition to supervisory and mentoring roles. A dynamic blend of generic input from specialist tutors combined with BAA specic and airport industry experiences provides the structure for the programmes, but the business problems of the managers on the courses are what breathe life into them. In January 1997 induction began for 51 BAA managers who had signed up to Certicate, Diploma and MBA programmes to run concurrently. This represented the beginning of a ve-year investment in the learning partnership with Surrey/IMC for BAA, tangible evidence of the rm making a serious investment in meeting its learning organization objectives. A corporate virtual university support structure has been created, with the components outlined below: Every participating manager has access to the Internet. BAA provided notebook computers and accounts with an Internet provider for everyone taking part. An Airport Business Forum on the Internet combines newsgroup communications with current information, a library online and all courseware. Uniquely it brings together airport business academics and business leaders from around the world
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Corporate virtual university: BAA
enabling online conferencing, problem solving and experience sharing. Course materials the equivalent of lecture notes and readings are never out of date. New material is automatically incorporated from the Anbar Management Intelligence database. Partner organization the British Library ensures that full-text articles are available on any conceivable subject. Simply search Anbar Management Intelligence and order. This is available to mentors, project supervisors, faculty and course participants. Managers support each other in action learning sets, encouraging effective crossfunctional teamworking. They meet faceto-face every six to eight weeks and support each other in between times using the Internet. The best tutors or supervisors for projects and assignments are selected for their experience and specialist knowledge, not proximity to the host institution. They can be based more or less anywhere in the world. Setting deadlines, providing feedback, encouraging and cajoling can be extremely effective using e-mail and newsgroup technology.
To achieve its mission BAA must pursue the following activities: Give safety and security the highest priority at all times. Provide a good and safe working environment which attracts and retains committed employees. Ensure passengers and airlines receive excellence and good value for money in the services BAA provides and work together with suppliers and business partners to create added value for all concerned. Concentrate on the core airport business, be prudently nanced, continuously improve quality and cost-effectiveness, become excellent in information technology, fully develop the property and retail potential, achieve world-class standards in capital investment, and develop an international business which enhances the quality and growth prospects of the group. Encourage shareholders to believe in the company by giving them consistent growth in earnings and dividends. Recognize the concerns of local communities, set challenging environmental targets and monitor performance against them. Much scope then for the rst wave of projects!
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Corporate virtual university: Sema Group
When Sema Group announced its interim results for the six months to June 1996 turnover was up 33 per cent and earnings per share up 26 per cent. With strong organic growth, in excess of 20 per cent across the board, Sema Group reported improved nancial results in virtually every country, every industry sector and every business area in which it operates. The information technology company, with headquarters in London, England, employs 13,000 people globally in over 100 locations. The heartland for the rm is in Europe and increasingly the tiger economies of the Pacic, but strategic geographical expansion has seen ofces open recently in the USA, India, China and Canada. Sema provide systems integration, consulting, information technology products and outsourcing solutions for organizations in a range of industry sectors, including: telecoms; nancial services; defence; and the public sector. Immediately after the nancial results were published, Sema Group announced the acquisition of Syntax Processing SpA, a major Italian outsourcing supplier, from Olivetti. Chief executive Pierre Bonelli voiced the optimism felt by the rm saying: We are delighted at the strength of the performance across the board of our business. This demonstrates the critical success of Sema Group strategies over several years, designed to reinforce our role as the pre-eminent European computer services group. Sema are not about to become complacent. Major challenges for the company are developing and retaining key managers, managing rapid growth and ensuring step and continu-
ous process improvements. Investing in management development is seen as the route to these objectives, but not just any development, Sema is working in partnership with International Management Centres to create a learning environment, and a culture of change through projects. On 27 September 1996 a team of Sema managers began an in-company postgraduate diploma in quality management (DQM) led by a faculty combining academics from International Management Centres with senior executives from the company. All projects are work-based, real-world problems. The completion of a successful assignment should lead to change and quality improvement. To complete the programme members of the learning set must analyse: quality policy: what our quality management system is intended to achieve; audits: how we get to know what we have, and how we judge conformance to the policy; systems: how we operationalize our quality policy; change management for total quality: how we manage those around us towards improvement and the delivery of our quality strategies; strategic planning: how we plan for total quality; and total quality operations: how total quality strategies can be put into action. The board commitment to the strategic success of this programme requires participants to report back with challenges, ndings and progress on a regular basis. Input from executives and senior managers, with an emphasis on implementing change, is crucial to the success of the programme, but also crucial to Sema in recouping this training investment through bottom-line improvements. Participants taking the DQM are supported by virtual corporate university infrastructure which enables managers from the UK and Atlanta, USA, to work together as a team, providing mutual support and insights. The model used is as follows: the learning set meets every six to eight weeks for teaching sessions, tutorials, group discussion and social activities; communication between sessions is via an Internet newsgroup backed up by e-mail, phone and fax;
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Corporate virtual university: Sema Group
course materials (the equivalent of lecture notes and reading lists) are delivered online over the World Wide Web, and kept up-todate as new research becomes available; an online library is provided by the Anbar Management Intelligence database, providing access to research and practice papers from the worlds best journals; a set homepage on the Internet provides a welcoming place to go for news, gossip, courseware and to use the library. For Sema, this learning initiative represents not merely a chance to develop individuals, or just to gain a short-term advantage from implementing the resulting projects. The strategic objective is to institutionalize learning in building a learning organization. The combination of action learning and team working supported by communications infra-
structure is a tangible route towards this objective. The process demands the support and participation of senior managers and executives as tutors, mentors and clients for what are effectively internal consultancy projects. The team working aspect encourages a powerful can do culture. The net result is that rather than the usual business school graduate experience of learning away from the business environment then struggling to sell the ideas back to the rm, the main players are involved from the start, making successful implementation of research ndings highly likely. As Pierre Bonelli look[s] forward with condence to the ability of our company both to grow and to prosper, he is aware of the continuous and step improvement culture that is being fostered through this virtual corporate university.
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A wider view of training effectiveness
US business will spend more than $30 billion on training this year. But will organizations get value for money? This article argues that the criteria against which training effectiveness is measured should be changed to reect the changing demands made on the training function. Companies are cutting costs. Training, like everything else, is on the hit list. But a rms ability to learn faster than its competitors may be its only sustainable competitive advantage. Company restructuring and the speed of change mean that workers must broaden their skill base and be more thoroughly trained and retrained throughout their working lives. Motorola University, which began on a $2 million shoestring and a staff of three, now spends more than $120 million a year. Yet Motorola shies away from precise bottom-line evaluations of its training expenditure. It simply declares that training has yielded $30 for every dollar invested, and saved more than $3 billion in costs since 1967. The company cites greater motivation, higher quality, changed attitudes and more open and honest communication as evidence that training is working, but admits that proof of its effect on company prots is harder to nd. Andersen Consulting invests $280 million a year in training for more than 38,000 people worldwide. Each partners share of the bill is $280,000 a year. To keep the partners contributing, the company ensures that training is consistent with clients needs, and remains in tune with business realities. Car maker Saturn gives each of its 9,200 workers 90 hours a year of training. This
amounts to 5 per cent of their worktime. Saturn attempts to nd what difference training makes, even when the company cannot tie training to the bottom line. The company carries out a survey of workers before and after training. Federal Express goes so far as to test the job knowledge of all 40,000 of its US couriers and customer service agents by having them plug into an interactive PC-based program which asks questions specic to their individual assignments. The results play a key part in their job evaluations. Motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson also offers evidence rather than proof of good value from training expenditure. Says Richard Teerlink, president and chief executive: We know training works when we do things quicker and better. This is not rocket science. The company gets products to market faster by training design and manufacturing teams in a technique called failure mode and effect analysis. The company answers three questions: What could go wrong? What is the probability that it will go wrong? What would happen to the product if it did go wrong? The analysis allows the companys teams to make design changes which avert these failures. Employees at US memory-chip maker Intel are similarly expected to apply their training on the job to produce results. The companys $250 million training investment accounts for 5.7 per cent of the payroll. Most of Intels training is done by employee volunteers. Senior managers are encouraged to put in a minimum of four days a year as classroom instructors. Teaching is a component of executive bonuses. At Johnson & Johnson, line managers tell the training department what they want training to accomplish, and the training department explains what training can be expected to contribute towards these objectives. The training department makes clear that training plays a role, but that other factors are also involved. If traditional bottom-line accountability eludes training, the reason may be that the nature of training, like that of work, has changed. In addition to its original purpose of building skills, training now also helps to
This is a prcis of an article entitled Does training pay off?, which was originally published in Across the Board, June 1996, pp. 16-20. The author was Steve Blickstein.
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A wider view of training effectiveness
build teams, change cultures and communicate company values. Training also has a role in the selection of people. The kind of information which has to be learned can dictate the kind of person being hired. US insurance company Allstate is linking education more closely to human resource decisions about compensation and succession. Training at Banc One Corp., a large bank holding company based in Columbus, Ohio, is about selection and succession as well as skills. The company judges the kinds of thing it will have to prepare for in the future, then nds and trains the people who will acquire the skills most efciently.
As training changes to meet the needs of todays environment, evaluation of training is also changing. The question of strict nancial accountability is losing its relevance. If bottomline proof of training effectiveness is hard to get, look for the evidence of trainings overall impact on the company. It is difcult to argue against the need for effective training in todays re-engineered, downsized, globalized, technologicallyadvanced economy, where useful knowledge has the half-life of a chocolate bar in a nursery. Is it too simplistic to say that if training feels like the right thing to do, it probably is the right thing to do?
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Section 4 Effective training capabilities
133
134
What makes training pay?
Companies need to redene value for money in the context of training and nd new ways of matching employer and employee development needs. So said delegates at the Institute of Personnel and Development (IPD) 1996 Human Resource Development Week. Human Resource Management International Digest highlights some of the debates. The chief executive of UK computer rm ICL views the companys human-resource development arm as a corporate lever of change. This captures perfectly the role that training needs to occupy to be effective, said Richard Lee, management training and development consultant, who presented key ndings from the IPDs research project, What Makes Training Pay? He said that companies should focus less on gaining immediate nancial return from the money they spend on training, and more on the cost to the organization of what no or inadequate training would be. The IPD project examined the benets that four British organizations Frizzell Financial Services, ICL, Royal Mail Anglia and Yamazaki Machinery UK got from their training policies. The research focused on two types of return pay back and pay forward. The former is dened as a measurable nancial return. The latter looks for benets such as staff identifying more closely with the companys objectives and better team or individual behaviour. Richard Lee said that rms which believe in training seem to share the following characteristics:
where proof of payback is required, this is linked to behavioural change which has been specied in detail and to which the line manager is committed; training is actively supported by the chief executive and senior management who perceive training as benecial to them in their operational roles and in terms of their own development; training is seen as supporting business strategy and, in some cases, may be an input to it; specic objectives for training form the basis of a contract between the humanresource development specialist and line managers; performance-appraisal and career-development mechanisms support individual training interventions. Richard Lee said that, for companies to get strategic as well as tactical benets from investment in training, human-resource specialists must win the trust of top management, by demonstrating that training is relevant to the organizations needs. Trainers should begin by delivering quick and sure returns on training investment. They could then build a reputation for delivering relevant, useful training and go on to win support for training activities with longer-term outcomes. Dr Barrie Hopson, Lifeskills International chairman, advocated a partnership in which an employer takes 30 per cent of the responsibility for an individuals development and the employee accepts responsibility for the remainder. He said this makes both moral and economic sense. It gives staff future employability, ensures that the workforce has the attributes needed for a customer-focused business and helps business to retain valuable staff. A partnership approach to employee development would also help staff and their employers to adjust to atter organizational structures and the new psychological contract. Barrie Hopson continued: It is not possible to encourage responsibility for selfdevelopment without changing the managerial role from controller and decision maker to facilitator and coach. And evidence increasingly suggests that empowered workforces are a key factor in todays successful organizations. He admitted that genuine partnership poses a challenge to many companies.
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What makes training pay?
Managing directors are often too busy to be aware of the research which demonstrates how managing people in this way has an effect on the bottom line. They see it instead as an altruistic gesture and pay lip-service to it. What a genuine partnership offers is benets to the individual and to the organization, he said, citing the small but growing trend of linking the acquisition of qualications with pay as an example. The GKN Westland Helicopters managers toolkit for training and development, launched at the end of 1995, was held up as a win-win example of how employee and employer development needs could work in tandem. Westland managers were asked to stipulate what an ideal managers manual would contain. The result incorporates managers wants and needs with organizational aims, into a personal-organizer type of system which encompasses business aims and values, personal objectives and company policy and procedures, with special emphasis on humanresource development policy and resources. The toolkit also offers the chance to include diary and open-learning options. Tony English, Westland Helicopters employee-development manager, attributed the strength of the toolkit model to the fact that it has been designed by managers and not thrust upon them, and its combination of individual development needs with company culture. It is a practical example of the company providing managers and team leaders with all the information they need and want to develop the teams and themselves, he said. Employers risk creating a work culture of Me Ltds and Poor Me Ltds, said Carole Pemberton, a consultant specializing in career management and change issues. The former are employees with high skill levels which they offer to the highest bidder. The latter are people who stay with their employers because they feel trapped. They have no sense of a career and no sense of their own value. She said: The change has come about because organizations are shifting responsibility for career development on to individuals in a context of limited promotional prospects
and security. Employers no longer want to play the paternalistic role. Nor, however, is it in their interests to employ anxious, resentful people. Arguing that making people redundant has become an area where companies have followed competitors examples, she urged employers to come up with employeedevelopment plans which t their needs. If career development for the future is to serve both individual and corporate needs, organizations must develop the courage to act according to the needs of their culture, she said. Gil Parsons, Vauxhall Motors training manager, explained how the companys plant at Luton, UK, had previously concentrated its resources on high-potential employees. The strategy did not enable the rm to tap the potential of the rest of the workforce. Vauxhall therefore set up Guidelines an in-house employee-development information service which gives all employees access to independent advice and open-learning opportunities. The scheme has encouraged employees of all levels to return to learning and they have responded enthusiastically, she said. The organization has also beneted enormously. Staff feel more positive about the company and their role within it and skills and motivation among the workforce have increased. It has also beneted employees as they have become increasingly able to manage their own careers and development. Few of our grandparents would have spoken of their work in terms of a career. But in the middle twentieth century, when demand for skilled labour outstripped supply, a career which offered a clearly-dened upward path in a large organization became the expectation of educated men and the aspiration of educated women. Today, when companies are shifting responsibility for career development on to individuals, it is easy to forget that the traditional concept of a career has mutual benets. Organizations are able to accumulate the skills, knowledge and experience they need to compete and build a strong corporate culture. And individuals gain an objective measure of success and a sense of self-worth.
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Starbucks investing in people as a route to prot and growth
During the 1970s, Starbucks was a local, small-scale coffee bean roasting and sales operation in Seattles Pike Place sh market in Washington state. Today it has more than 700 outlets in North America, sales of $630 million (in 1995) and an ambition to reach 2,000 coffee shops worldwide by the millennium. Howard Schultz transformed the local coffee manufacturer into a protable national retailer with a simple, if radical, growth strategy: investing in employees. Our only sustainable competitive advantage, explains Schultz, is the quality of our workforce. Were building a national retail company by creating pride in and providing a stake in the outcome of our labour. The centrepiece of Schultzs vision is a generous and comprehensive employee benets package encompassing health care, stock options, training programmes, career counselling and product discounts for all workers, full-time and part-time. According to Schultz: The desire to scrimp on these essentials helps reinforce the sense of mediocrity that seeps into many companies. Without them, people dont feel nancially or spiritually tied to their jobs. Emily Ericsen, head of human resources, puts it another way: We are in the people-development business almost as much as the coffee business. Although the connection between such an aggressive employee benets package and the bottom line is often difcult to show conclusively, the circumstantial evidence is compelling. The company is clearly on its way to becoming the dominant speciality coffee retailers and brand in North America. In the months after Starbucks went public, the stock climbed 82 per cent. Employee attrition,
which typically hovers in the triple digits for food retailers, is less than 50 per cent. The company is posting higher prot margins every year, and the companys health care costs, despite the extensive coverage, are well within the national average. Schultz says he needs no further proof that employee benets are the key to competitiveness and growth. He is convinced his employees are working harder and smarter because they have a stake in the outcome. From the beginning, Schultz saw a symbiotic link between the rms growth curve and his ambitious benets plan, gambling that revenues would outrun spending for expansion. At rst, the companys losses almost doubled, to $1.2 million from scal 1989 to 1990, as overhead and operating expenses ballooned to $18.4 million on $19.2 million in sales. But in 1991 sales shot up 84 per cent, dramatically outpacing expenses, and the company broke into the black. Although the company already had an adequate benets package in place and had been covering parttimers since 1971, Schultz began to beef up offerings substantially. He added a heavy emphasis on preventive health care, as well as similar encouragement for regular dental visits. He also introduced eye care, and the company picks up the total tab for disability and life insurance as well. All that, however, did not make it easy to persuade the insurance companies to sign Starbucks up. The biggest problem was covering part-timers. A handful of retailers provide benets to people who work 30 hours a week but not to those who work only 20. At Starbucks at least two-thirds of the workers are clocking fewer than 40 hours. Schultz outlines his reasoning: More than half of our retail salesforce is made up of part-timers. That tells me that the majority of our customers are coming into contact with part-time workers. How we treat our people is directly related to how we treat our customers and to the quality of our product. It is inarguable that our parttimers are key to the companys success. The success of the strategy has depended, in part, on the relative youth of most of the employees. Schultz himself is only in his early 40s, and half his management team is under 50. In general, the company appeals to young people who have a more healthy lifestyle, and that leads to lower insurance rates. Already, Ericsen is considering offering workers a cafeteria-style benets programme
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Starbucks investing in people as a route to prot and growth
that lets them select different degrees of coverage. Under such a plan, monthly benets costs could rise from $200 to $240, but these are costs the company is willing to absorb. Schultz understands that the rst point of contact with customers is his workers, and he is determined to have them recite in their sleep how to make a mocha latte, and to know the difference between espresso machiato and espresso ristretto. Each is given 25 hours of training before starting work behind the counter. Management trainees attend eight to 12 weeks of classes with titles like Coffee Knowledge 101. Although the company spends, by his estimate, $1,000 to train each new worker, this overhead is dropping as a percentage of sales, even as the number of stores climb. The gure fell from 12.3 per cent in 1989 to a scant 8 per cent just three years later. In addition to the reduced attrition and shrinkage, Schultz points to yet another benet of maintaining a superior and involved workforce ideas. Executives from Seattle fan out to a dozen cities each quarter to conduct open forums and gather ideas, which run the gamut from addressing environmental concerns to marketing. Schultz says: In a series of open forums, we heard our people asking for what I call a new paradigm; an incentive not only to stay with the company but also to have a stake in its success. As the centrepiece
of that new paradigm, Schultz and Orin Smith came up with Bean Stock stock options structured to achieve both employee and corporate goals. The company has set up a vesting period of ve years which starts one year after the option is granted, then vests the employee at 20 per cent every year. In addition, every employee receives a new stock option award every year, and a new vesting period begins. The percentage of the grant is tied to the protability of the company. The rst year that Bean Stock was offered, the company overshot its prot goal by 20 per cent, and the board responded by nudging up the percentage of salaries for stock options to 12 per cent from 10 per cent. The way Schultz describes it, the stock options and the complete benets package act as the glue that binds workers to the company, forging loyalty and, above all, encouraging attentive service to the customer. Its reduced attrition, and weve literally changed the level of communication. You cant imagine how excited our workers were when we started unveiling our new benets package and explaining Bean Stock. All kinds of people started coming up with ways to save money and improve productivity. Now they are invested in our future. The future of Starbucks lies in increasing shareholder value and increasing employee value will directly increase shareholder value.
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McDonalds serves up HR success in 91 countries around the world
What is the McDonalds recipe for international success? This article describes how the company translates its winning human resource practices into many different cultural settings. A new McDonalds opens somewhere in the world every eight hours. Two-thirds of the 1,200 to 1,500 new restaurants which the company opens annually are outside the USA. The rm has more than a million employees, and estimates that the gure will double by the year 2000. McDonalds reveres exibility and sensitivity to local cultural mores, and this spills over into its human resource management. It aims to take its best practices from around the world and work with local staff to blend these into local practices. The companys philosophical approach to employment is therefore the same in Beijing or Budapest, Melbourne or Miami. McDonalds has 18,380 restaurants in 91 countries. Each restaurant employs an average of 50 people, in 25 different jobs. Total sales outside the USA contributed 54 per cent of company income last year. The human resource department has a list of questions on employment practice which must be answered before McDonalds enters a country for the rst time. What are the labour laws? Would the company be able to establish part-time and exible work schedules? Are there a specied number of hours which employees would be allowed to work? What services would the company provide? Local lawyers, well versed in labour laws, coordinate with the human resource director for the country to establish what the policies are going to be.
In many countries, just building a restaurant and nding food which will meet company standards requires hiring an entire network of support services, such as engineers, construction workers and agricultural experts. Local human resource managers and restaurant managers in a country which is new to McDonalds spend a training period abroad, in an established McDonalds restaurant. The human resource department has to prepare visas and all the other paper work needed for this to take place. However, there are times when McDonalds introduces US ways to other countries. This often happens where the fast food industry is either non-existent or very new. Flexible scheduling, part-time scheduling and the employment of homemakers or university students are examples of practices which McDonalds has frequently brought to a country. The company nds recruitment easy. There were, for example, 27,000 applicants for jobs at the McDonalds restaurant in Moscows Pushkin Square. The rm establishes itself as an employer of choice by paying top wages for high quality employees and providing a benets package which exceeds the minimum. McDonalds seeks out individuals with the ability to become customer-focused. This theme is emphasized in recruitment advertising and continues in preliminary screening. The right attitude is seen as more important than technical ability. In a copycat world, the company believes that the best way to stand out from the crowd is to satisfy all the customers, all the time. Later in the selection process, the company also looks at specic skills and general knowledge. Applicants who pass the initial screening for store management jobs are invited to work for three to ve days in one of the restaurants before a nal decision is made. This gives applicants the chance to try out the job, and provides McDonalds with the opportunity to see how they function in the environment in which they will work. Both the potential recruit and the manager under whom he or she works ll out an evaluation form which
This is a prcis of an article entitled Big Macs McGlobal HR secrets, which was originally published in Personnel Journal, Vol. 75 No. 4, pp. 46-54. The author was Charlene Marmer Solomon.
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McDonalds serves up HR success in 91 countries around the world
plays a large part in determining whether a job offer should be made. The company is strongly committed to stafng locally and promoting from within. This helps to attract people because they know they can move up if they work hard. It also means that McDonalds has managers who understand both the corporate and local cultures. The McDonalds Hamburger University is based at Oak Brook, Illinois, USA (see HRMID, Vol. 3 No. 3, 1995). At its heart is the advanced operations course, designed for managers, assistant managers and prospective franchisees. More than 50,000 people have been awarded the Bachelor of Hamburgerology degree. The university is set up to provide training in 22 languages, to provide simultaneous translation and even to teach in two languages at the same time. There are additional training centres in Munich, Tokyo, Sydney and London. There is also a complete training centre in mainland China. The training centres teach managers such detail as the temperature at which hamburgers should be cooked and how to inspect
restaurant facilities to ensure quality standards are met. Managers are also taught how to give performance reviews, how to listen and what to do if a person becomes defensive. Managers, in turn, pass the details on to their staff. The McDonalds way of careful planning is a lesson for every business. The multinational company can deploy its human resource talent globally to address local concerns. This requires exibility and creativity but the recipe is open for any company to follow. The sheer scale of the McDonalds operation makes it a force to be reckoned with in human resource management. According to the companys own calculations, McDonalds conducts more training than any other US organization, including the US army. A staggering one-eighth of the US workforce has worked at McDonalds. In its international operations, the company is clearly achieving an effective blend of US human resource practices and host country norms. Hamburger University and its hamburgerology curriculum may seem a little over the top to some, but who can seriously challenge the McDonalds recipe for global success?
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Industrial and Commercial Training

Volume 29, Number 4, 1997

Strategic issues for training

Section 1: Tomorrows executive challenges

Section 2: Effective organizational learning

Section 3: The virtual university model

Group 131 A wider view of training effectiveness

Section 4: Effective training capabilities

Strategic issues for training new challenges/ new opportunities

Section 1 Tomorrows executive challenges

What living systems can teach the learning organization

What living systems can teach the learning organization

Industrial and Commercial Training Volume 29 Number 4 1997 101102

Individual and organizational learning: an interview with Sir Leonard Peach

Sir Leonard Peachs biography appears at the end of this interview.

How important is managerial learning in organizational effectiveness? And why?

How can a learning culture be encouraged?

Individual and organizational learning

Industrial and Commercial Training Volume 29 Number 4 1997 103106

What are the triggers which cause managers to seek information?

Individual and organizational learning

Industrial and Commercial Training Volume 29 Number 4 1997 103106

Individual and organizational learning

Industrial and Commercial Training Volume 29 Number 4 1997 103106

Managing out of bounds

Managing out of bounds

Industrial and Commercial Training Volume 29 Number 4 1997 107108

Section 2 Effective organizational learning

Self-managed learning at IKEA

Self-managed learning at IKEA

Industrial and Commercial Training Volume 29 Number 4 1997 111112

Making the most of mentoring

What training should mentors and protgs receive?

Who should receive mentoring?

How should the mentor and protg be paired?

Making the most of mentoring

Industrial and Commercial Training Volume 29 Number 4 1997 113115

What if the mentoring relationship is not mutually satisfying?

How should potential conicts with the protgs supervisor be handled?

How long do formal mentoring relationships last?

How can mentoring programmes be evaluated?

What can help to get the relationship off to a good start?

Making the most of mentoring

Industrial and Commercial Training Volume 29 Number 4 1997 113115

Brighter Futures shines for Whitbread

Brighter Futures shines for Whitbread

Industrial and Commercial Training Volume 29 Number 4 1997 116117

Polaroid develops through reection

Polaroid develops through reection

Industrial and Commercial Training Volume 29 Number 4 1997 118119

Multimedia training system shines in the showroom

Multimedia training system shines in the showroom

Industrial and Commercial Training Volume 29 Number 4 1997 120121

Section 3 The virtual university model

Lifelong learning and the virtual university

Lifelong learning and the virtual university

Industrial and Commercial Training Volume 29 Number 4 1997 125126

Corporate virtual university: BAA

Corporate virtual university: BAA

Industrial and Commercial Training Volume 29 Number 4 1997 127128

Corporate virtual university: Sema Group

Corporate virtual university: Sema Group