I work at a bank that has 300 employees. We are looking to create an organizational development program and a leadership development program.

We want to start creating this from the inside fairly informal and take it from there. The problem we are running into, is where do we start? We've met with the CEO and COO and identified some key areas that we need to focus on, however, it is obviously more in depth than that.

We want to develop our employees to be ready for positions when they open and we want our leaders to coach and develop employees to be ready for the next open position. We are not seeing that happen today. Can someone provide ideas or share successes that you have had in your company?

We've recapped 2007 training and development prorams and the list is impressive and I want to see that continue, only with more noticeable results.

Thanks!

Chase,

I would encourage you to focus on the OD side of the equation first, with the LD initiative playing a supporting role.

The OD piece insures you have alignment of the systems and processes needed to meet organizational goals and objectives. Without that alignment all your individual development efforts (at any level) may appear impressive in quantity and even quality...but actually contribute little to the desired results.

If you have the ear of the CEO and COO, you are moving in the right direction. Now show them how much business savvy you have by digging deeper into the areas they have mentioned as important. See if you can walk them back from their "key areas" to actual performance goals for the organization. Sometimes you (they) discover the areas are interesting but have little connection to the business objectives. The discussion can also reveal more about their underlying interests and expectations.

Go slow to go fast.

Thanks for the post. Let me clarify if you don't mind. I tend to agree with what you are saying, however, I tend to also believe that if we are developing our leaders and managers to better communicate with and coach employees to improve our core compentencies then we would see more desired results.

Not trying to question what you are saying, I'm really just trying to be sure I understand. Thanks again for commenting!

Hey,......always question!

You are absolutely correct with regard to building those core comps around comm and coaching. They have a home in any organization.

Creating developmental strategies for leaders around those core comps will require the identification and articulation of them. Comm and coaching are BIG. Have you broken down those areas into skills-behaviors...etc? If so, you can create a pretty straight forward (and standardized) assessment instrument (360/web-based) that gathers feedback from all, provides individual and aggregate reports...and helps you target your development dollars. The data itself becomes your training needs assessment.

quote:

We are not seeing that happen today.

May I assume you've already *really* delved into why that is not happening today? What are the reasons you identified?