Korda Chapter One

7/29/2019 Korda Chapter One

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Strategy and Training


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TeMeaningful Ambitions Initiative

All the royalties rom this book are donated to theMeaningul Ambitions

benevolent society (called Energie Jeunesin France).

Meaningul Ambitionsuses training methods employed in the business

world to prevent young people rom dropping out o education. It organ-

ises educational initiatives or underprivileged teenagers in junior high

schools, with the support o corporate partners such as Air Liquide, Atos,

Axa, Korda & Partners, LOral, Orange, SMABP, Spie Batignolles and

Verlingue.

Tanks to dozens o businesspeople reely giving their time, thousands o

young people have already ound the inner motivation to help them avoid

the slippery slope to ailure.

Further inormation is available on-line at www.meaningulambitions.com

o contact the author: [email protected]


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Strategy and Training

Making Skills a Competitive

Advantage

Philippe Korda


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Strategy and Training: Making Skills a Competitive Advantage

Copyright Business Expert Press, 2012.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any

meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other

except for brief quotations, not to exceed 400 words, without the prior

permission of the publisher.

First published in 2012 by

Business Expert Press, LLC

222 East 46th Street, New York, NY 10017www.businessexpertpress.com

ISBN-13: 978-1-60649-572-8 (paperback)

ISBN-13: 978-1-60649-573-5 (e-book)

DOI 10.4128/9781606495735

Business Expert Press Strategic Management collection

Collection ISSN: 2150-9611 (print)

Collection ISSN: 2150-9646 (electronic)

Cover design by Jonathan Pennell

Interior design by Exeter Premedia Services Private Ltd.,

Chennai, India

First edition: 2012

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America.


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Abstract

Tis book explores corporate training in the context o deploying strategic

initiatives within organisations. It goes beyond merely explaining strategy,

to investigating how it relates to skills training, and how companies can

leverage this to implement their initiatives.

Drawing on real-lie client examples and the inspirational stories o

highly successul individuals, this book highlights approaches that have

transormed organisations and re-invented training. It dispels myths

that exist around traditional training paradigms and brings to light the

efectiveness o new methods and approaches.Social learning, using technologies such as witter and video-blogs, is

today revolutionising the way training is undertaken. At the same time,

the age-old communication technique o storytelling is being reinvented

as a way to roll out strategic programs to large multi-cultural groups on a

global scale. Te author presents key questions that are relevant at project

and company level, and provide practical checklists and summaries com-

plementing each chapter o the book.

Tis text highlights how you can develop your teams expertise through

systematic coaching when cascading a strategy throughout your organi-

sation, and explains the benets o reinorcing strengths, identiying

weaknesses and correcting ailures to build competitive advantage. It also

addresses the risk o unlearning post-training, and issues that arise with

maintaining perormance evaluation and measuring tangible progress.

Succinct and pragmatic, the book reveals how strategic projects can

be successully rolled out globally, using cost-efective training that will

ensure a return on investment or your organisation.

Keywords

strategy, strategic programs, training, training models, skills develop-

ment, practical tools, social learning


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Contents

Introduction ..........................................................................................ix

Chapter 1 When Strategy Met raining: As an Era Ends,

Another Begins ..................................................................1

Chapter 2 Te Straight and Narrow Path to Excellence:

raining Leads to Expertise, I and Only I ..................19

Chapter 3 Te Fascinating Mechanics o Progress: Diferent

Challenges Require Diferent raining Responses ............41

Chapter 4 An Animal Endowed with Reason and Emotions:

Te Diference Between Computers and Human

Beings ..............................................................................65

Chapter 5 Web Communities and raining: Te Era When

Everyone Helped Everyone Else .......................................89

Chapter 6 Old Paradigms and New Formats: What I the WorldReally Isnt Flat? .............................................................111

Chapter 7 Te Quest or Return on Investment: raining Doesnt

Have to Be a Cost! .........................................................135

Chapter 8 Conclusion: Gazing into Our Crystal Ball:

What Does the Future Hold or Strategic raining? .......173

Notes..................................................................................................175

Reerences...........................................................................................177Index .................................................................................................179


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Introduction

Tis book had its origins in two ideas. Te rst was the realization that

most strategic projects ail. Te second was the belie that training can

now establish a new order. Various studies have demonstrated that only

two out o ve strategic projects succeed in delivering the anticipated

results on time and budget. Tat is an enormous waste, and improved

training can improve the success rate o new strategic initiatives.It goes without saying that not all strategies are intrinsically wrong.

Usinginnovation to stand out rom the crowd:not a bad idea, on paper.

Providing solutionsrather than mere products: that should be o interest

to customers. ransorming your economic modeland drastically reducing

your cost structure to dominate existing markets or create the markets o

the uture: that sounds promising, in principle. Te list could go on.

No, when strategies ail it is mainly due to deects in their execution,

that is to say, in peoples inability to implement the strategy efectively. Inmore than hal o all cases, ailure is connected to the di culty o chang-

ing priorities, working methods, and patterns o behavior quickly enough

within an organizationincluding the everyday habits o employees in

direct contact with the product or customer.

For example, a strategy based on innovation can only succeed i

employees are really capable, as a group, o doing better than the com-

petition at generating, developing, bringing to market, and selling new

products or services. Meanwhile, a strategy based on quality o service can

only prove successul i your entire workorce is able to provide awless

service throughout the customer relationship process.

Te problem is even more immediate in moving rom strategyper se

to the major action plansthrough which it is implemented: successully

launching a new and innovative product, making benecial changes to

your organization, ully implementing and using a new I system, and so

on. Tese all require staf with a great ability to do newthings and to do

things diferently.


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x INTRODUCTION

It would thereore be tempting to say: Most strategies ail because

not enough employees are su ciently skilled to implement them efectively.However, this would be incorrect and unair, because a good strategy

takes proper account o employees skills.

Let us imagine that a senior manager heading an underqualied and

inexperienced workorce ormulated a strategy so sophisticated and di-

cult to implement that his employees were doomed to ail. Who would

be responsible or that disaster? I it were a General, planning a military

campaign, or a ootball manager preparing or the cup nal, we would

quickly know where to lay the blame.

Te act remains that skills existing at a particular time are rarely su -

cient to achieve a great ambition. What counts, when drawing up a strategy,

is the workorces potentialand the resources at the businesss disposal to

exploit that potential. Tat is why training is absolutely essential.

So why, currently, is training so underused as a tool or implement-

ing strategy? It is this specic aspect o training, and this alone, that we

address in this book. Te publication is neither a general training manual

nor a summary o educational methods. Rather, it is a work on strategy

that ocuses on training as a means o deployment. Tis aspect is critical,given that training is constantly changing due to the ongoing technologi-

cal revolution.

No one has a miracle solution when it comes to using training to

implement strategy. Every business is diferent, every strategy is unique,

and everything can change very quickly. Tis book does not hand down

lessons in tablets o stone but it ofers senior business people and training

proessionals some nuggets o wisdom, drawn rom authoritative data,

together with recommendations or action supported by specic exam-

ples.

Te rst subject to be addressed concerns purpose: Exactly what is

the purpose o training rom a strategic perspective? Looking beyond its

philosophical nature, there are some very practical aspects to this ques-

tion. Te usual response is that the purpose o training is to develop skills.

We shall endeavor to demonstrate that such thinking is no longer really

su cient in the world in which we live. Te book also questions a num-

ber o widely held assumptions about the wayin which training should

be carried out.


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INTRODUCTION xi

Te rst chapter highlights the need to assign new roles o train-

ing, roles directly connected to strategy. It suggests a new denition orthe objectives o major business training programs. Te second chapter

argues or a thorough transormation o the training methods employed

in strategy implementation plans. Up-to-date ndings o extensive scien-

tic research suggest most existing teaching practices actually get in the

way o achieving excellence. Fortunately, we shall discover solutions that

have proven efective or business strategy training.

Te third chapter questions the current tendency to see only weak-

nesses in organizations and individuals, and to systematically resort to

skills standards in an attempt to enorce uniorm practices and behavior.

It proposes a situational approach to training, suggesting that the

training process should be designed diferently depending on the chal-

lenge it is addressing. Te appropriate choice might involve introducing

new activities, correcting competitive weaknesses or making better use

o the businesss strengths. Likewise, training must take a quite diferent

approach to each individual, depending on their situation and the skill

required.

Te ourth chapterrecommends that employees undergoing trainingshould be viewed as capable human beings who can resolve problems (not

merely apply solutions), display emotional intelligence, and take initia-

tives. Tis assumes that training takes account o various skills required

to implement a strategy, the diferent ways o learning, and the need to

employ universal languages.

Te th chapter argues or training in strategic issues to take ull

advantage o new opportunities provided by the collaborative tools and

systems o Web 2.0: social networks, blogs and orums, to name a ew.

Tese open training up to new wide-ranging areas that are instantly

accessible.

Te sixth chapter invites the reader to review the principles o the

past, which too oten still determine the way in which we design and

carry out training programs. Many old belies, such as those relating to

optimum training group size or the role o the group leader, must now be

challenged in the light o extensive and convincing experience.

Te nal part o the book is devoted to the strategic economic

management o training. Te seventh chapter recommends strategic


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xii INTRODUCTION

training management, both in allocating human and nancial resources

and in measuring efectiveness. It demonstrates that real breakthroughscan be made in how strategic contribution o a training relates to the

resources it consumes. Te conclusion then asks the reader to reect on

assumptions about the development o training as a tool or strategy

implementation over the years to come.

Each chapter has a similar structure. It opens with a business story

presenting the issue, usually based on a real-lie example. It concludes

with a brie summary o the key points to remember and an important

checklist o recommendations.

Tis book is the ruit o many years o experience supporting businesses

that are at the cutting edge o deploying their strategies on every conti-

nent. It also includes the results o various international benchmarking

studies conducted by Korda & Partners teams on issues connected to

training and strategy. Te text draws on the academic work o outstand-

ing researchers in disciplines as diverse as educational science, social psy-

chology, thought-leading insights, and new technology. Tese experts are

all credited and their most prominent or most recent works are listed at

the end o the book.


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CHAPTER 1

When Strategy Met Training

As an Era Ends, Another Begins

Strategywas an intelligent and riendly person, but a little bit o a

control reak.

eeming with ideas, she sometimes lost hersel in abstract reec-

tion but always came up with big exciting projects in the end. Unor-

tunately, she then struggled to ollow them through in practice.

I the truth be told, she sometimes wondered who she really was,

given the extent to which her name was misused and bandied about

by senior managers.

She usually ound hersel teamed with Finance, Budget, Reporting,

Organization, and Inormation Systems. She did not know Training

very well yet and was still blissully unaware o how her meeting with

him would turn her lie upside down.

Trainingwas generous and hard working by nature, even i some

thought him a little overidealistic.

He believed in peoples ability to learn and develop. He was atten-

tive to the expectations o senior executives, middle managers, and

colleagues.He devoted a lot o time to managing skills-development programs

in every possible eld.

Yet every year he also had to ght or his budget. Cruel people

around him oten reminded him that, even though held in high esteem,

his work was costly and ultimately yielded ew tangible benets.

He was yet to discover how his encounter with Strategywould

lighten up his lie and give new meaning to his existence.


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2 STRATEGY AND TRAINING

Over the course o this chapter, you will discover

just what strategy involves

In business and in the media, the word strategy is used so requently and

in so many diferent senses that it is useul or us to dene its true mean-

ing. Specialists in strategy can thereore skip the rst part o this chapter.

just what strategy now expects o training

We have moved on rom the days when training merely served to cre-

ate the skills required or an activity. Training aces new expectations;

it is the target o growing criticism and yet, by developing a closer

relationship with strategy, it is undergoing a revolution.

What Is a Strategy?

Tese days, strategy is one o the most widely used words in the busi-

ness world: strategic vision, industrial strategy, product strategy,

commercial strategy, social strategy, nancial strategy, purchasingstrategy, partnership strategy, strategic initiatives; the list is endless.

According to the Shorter Oxord English Dictionary, the word origi-

nates rom Greek stratgiaand Latin strategia, and means Te art o a

commander-in-chie; the planning and direction o the larger military

movements and overall operations o a campaign or, in a wider sense,

the art or skill o careul planning towards an advantage or a desired end.

Unlike tactics, which are local and time limited in scope (winning a

battle), strategy relates to a longer-term general objective (winning the war).

Any organization acing enemies (or any other problem) must make it

a priority to rely on a solid strategyto achieve the goals that have been set.

However, in the business world, many top executives use strategy to

describe concepts that are actually quite diferent in nature.

Some o them reer to a corporationsgeneral mission.

For example, our strategy consists in helping to cure all the sick

through a continually improving range o medication or our strategy

is to supply sae, high-quality, environmentally riendly cars which are

afordable by as many customers as possible.


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WHEN STRATEGY MET TRAINING 3

All these declarations are useul and even praiseworthy, generally

speaking. However, in no way do they showhowthe organization is goingto gather its orces to achieve its objectives.

Other senior executives wrongly believe they reer to strategywhen

dening their organizations statistical objectives. For example, our strategy

is to achieve a 20% market share and to double in size within 5 years.

It is o course essential to clariy your goals. For example, when Boe-

ing stopped trying to be the worlds leading aircrat maker in avor o

being the worlds most protable aircrat maker, it marked a turning

point or the company.

Yet having a strategy involves going urther and deninghowyou will

go about achieving your goals. In a competitive world, this requires you

to establish, among other things, asustainable competitive advantage.

Michael Porter, probably the worlds acknowledged expert on the

subject or the past 30 years, believes that there are only three types o

strategy that can create that competitive advantage: cost leadership, di-

erentiation, and ocus.

Once we have claried precisely what these terms mean, we shall see

that we need to add a ew concepts to dene our subject more completely:Blue Ocean strategies, combining activities, strategic hierarchies, and

strategic initiatives. In this way, we shall see what training can bring to

strategy.

Cost-Leadership Strategies

For Ryanair, business has been booming despite the crisis in air travel.

By 2010, it was already carrying as many passengers as Air France KLM

and it could soon overtake Luthansa to become Europes leading airline.

Te airlines phenomenal success has certainly raised eyebrows.

Not that this has anything at all to do with the benets that it ofers

its employees: its pay levels are below the market rate, oten circumvents

social legislation, provides deplorable working conditions, and has even

been heavily criticized by Amnesty International.

Neither is its success explained by the level o service ofered to pas-

sengers. In every area, this is pared back to the minimum, and sometimes

even less than the minimum!


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Aggressive, provocative, and not araid to speak his mind, its CEO

Michael OLeary never hesitates to publicly put customers in their place:Our customer services department never answers emails. I you dont

like it, you can go elsewhere! We never give reunds, whatever the rea-

son. We dont all or the My granny ell ill excuse. And dont give us

your sob storieswere not interested. Queue at the check-in too long

and you missed your ight? ough! Youre not happy? ake your custom

elsewhere!

Nor can Ryanairs success be credited to an environmentally riendly

approach, as OLeary specically declared that the best thing we can do

with environmentalists is shoot them.1

What explains Ryanairs triumph is its cost-leadership strategy, which

involves building an ultracompetitive economic model.

It goes without saying that a company beneting structurally rom

lower costs than its competitors possesses two major assets: it can ofer

attractive prices to win a large number o customers, while dissuading

its competitors rom launching price wars that, by denition, they could

never win.

A company adopting such a strategy is implicitly making several un-damental choices. Firstly, to ocus on the mass market, to the exclusion

o more sophisticated and demanding customers, who are bound to cost

more to satisy. Secondly, it is targeting high-volume business in order to

achieve economies o scale. Lastly, it is opting to standardize its products

and services as much as possible.

At Ryanair, the quest or savings is a clear obsession in every area. Te

corporation obliges local authorities to bear a proportion o its inrastruc-

ture costs. OLeary prohibits his employees rom recharging their mobile

phones in the o ce to cut electricity billsand OLeary himsel makes a

point o only using ree pens taken rom hotel bedrooms.

Ryanair explicitly targets those customers who wish to travel at the

lowest possible price and have no interest in any other services that are

usually ofered inby other airlines.

In a diferent eraand merciully adopting a more customer-riendly

stylecorporations such as Kodak and IKEA succeeded in capturing

markets by designing, manuacturing, and mass distributing simple,

afordable, standardized products that met most consumers expectations.


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Differentiation Strategies

In the car industry, BMW has always taken the utmost care to diferentiate

itselrom its competitors. It pays constant attention to its products, ser-

vices, and brand image to ensure that the consumer willingly accepts the

BMWs higher price compared with a similar model rom other manu-

acturers.

o take other, very diferent examples, Apple has always diferentiated

itsel on the basis o innovation and design, Amazon upon the customization

o the advice provided, and Starbucks upon the ambiance o its cofee bars.

Tose our businesses illustrate the diferentiation strategy. Unlike costleadership, this involves developing a range o products or services that is

signicantly better than the competitors.

Better in what sense? Te important thing is that the customer should

hold the diferential element in su ciently high regardor, more speci-

cally, a su cient proportion o customers should do soto ensure that

the business achieves a signicant market share, despite charging prices

higher than its main competitors.

Focus Strategies

According to Porter, i a corporation does not possess su cient attributes

to dominate its market based on cost or to diferentiate itsel su ciently,

it must do whatever it takes to avoid taking the middle way.

In practice, the absence o any real strategy will condemn it to be sup-

planted in high-volume markets by those o its competitors that benet

rom lower costs, while losing more demanding customers to corpora-

tions that have developed true diferentiation.

In such circumstances, Porter thereore recommends a strategy o

ocus, which involves opting or a more tightly dened eld o play as

regards customers or products.

Indeed, it is easier or a corporation to develop a competitive advan-

tage within a limited market segment where it will be able to either exer-

cise cost leadership or to diferentiate itsel rom competitors.

For that strategy to succeed, ideally you need your chosen market to

be su ciently small not to attract major competitors, while requiring su-

cient dedicated investment to discourage other small competitors.


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In the airline sector, Southwest Airlines deployed this strategy to

become one o the most admired corporations in the world by ocusingexclusively on domestic ights within the United States, using only sec-

ondary airports and a single type o aircrat.

Even giants ocus. Coca-Cola has built a dominant position within a

single market or alcohol-ree beverages, without ever seeking to become

a generalist ood retailer, unlike its major competitors. Disney has built an

empire without ever straying rom the single sphere o amily entertainment.

Blue Ocean Strategies

Is there an alternative to the three types o strategy described earlier?

It was in 2005 that two INSEAD business school lecturers, W. Chan

Kim and Rene Mauborgne, opened a new page in strategic thinking

with the brilliant concept o the Blue Ocean strategy.

Upon completing a huge research project covering hundreds o cor-

porations, these two researchers discovered that many outstanding success

stories did not correspond to any o the three strategy types that Michael

Porter had theorized about or 30 years.For Porter, strategy is dened as the management o a war conducted

against enemies within a specic market area.

Yet certain businesses, such as Cirque du Soleil, Swatch, and Nintendo

(with its Wii console) have succeeded in avoiding ace-to-ace combat

with its competitors by creatingnew markets. How did they achieve this?

A closer look at these cases reveals that in each instance the corpora-

tions liberated themselves rom the rules o the game or their industry.

Firstly, they built highly competitive cost structures. Unlike their

competitors, Cirque du Soleil does not use animals in its shows, Swatch

does not use noble materials, and the Wii (Nintendo) ofers only medio-

cre image denition. At rst sight, one might thereore categorize their

strategies among those based on cost leadership.

However, they also included, signicantly, elements rom other

business sectors in their respective products: Cirque du Soleil presents

high-quality musical productions; Swatch was the rst watchmaker to

introduce antasy into product design; and the Wii was the rst gaming

console based on motion detection.


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Tese strategies thereore did not arise rom a choice between cost

leadership and diferentiations, but incorporated both!Furthermore, the key actor is that they do not seek to attack existing

competitors, but to attract individuals or organizations who are not yet

anyones customersin their respective industries! Tus, the Wii took tens o

millions o consumers (young girls, the elderly, etc.) who had never held a

joystick in their lives and introduced them to video gaming.

Te main consequence o these strategies, when they succeed, is

the creation o new markets within which competition is completely

nonexistentsometimes or years on end.

Strategies and Combined Activities

Whichever o these great strategic models it selects, a business must pro-

tect itsel against immediate imitation by competitors.

o do this, it is oten essential to develop a coherent and specic set o

activities, which is much more di cult to copy than a simple commercial

product.

Tus, the IKEA model does not merely rely upon aesthetically pleas-ing, unctional urniture but afordable mass-produced sel-assembly ur-

niture. It is based upon a complete model that includes, or example,

easy-access parking, in-store child-care acilities, afordable on-site amily

catering, and the easy selection and shipment o products.

In the case o Apple, again it is the unique combination o activi-

ties such as physical products combined with the acility to order music

online via iunes and App Store apps shopping that enabled it to achieve

the second highest stock market capitalization in the world in 2010, as

well as the coveted title o the worlds most admired company.

Strategies of Business Units, Businesses,

and Conglomerates

Large organizations inevitably undertake multiple activities.

Each o these is oten pursued in a specic context: products, custom-

ers, competitors, technologies, economic models, and key actors in suc-

cess vary rom one to another.


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Tat is why, beyond a certain level o complexity, corporations are

usually organized into business units. Whether or not it is a subsidiary,each o these institutions is responsible or the protable development o

its business within a boundary dened by its trade or market.

Some o those units are akin to one another in particular aspects o

their business: use o the same technology, internal customers/supplier

relationships, complementarity or even competition vis--vis a given

category o customers. For example, this is generally the case with

mass-marketed products.

In other cases, those units have no proessional proximity to one

another. What really is the common ground between escos involvement

in retailing and in nancial services or between the Virgin Atlantic airline

and the Virgin Media did cable V? We thereore reer to conglomerates

to describe highly diverse business groups that are essentially bound by

nancial ties.

Tese diferent situations can coexist at diferent levels within a single

organization.

Tus, the Sky News and Sky Sports television channels coexist within

the BSkyB group. Although it carries out various activities, BSkyB ocuseson a single strandinormation and entertainmentand can be viewed

as abusiness.

At a higher level, BSkyB is itsel partly (and potentially wholly) owned

by News Corp., a conglomerate active in the media, publishing, enter-

tainment, and the internet.

Tere are thereore three levels at which strategy is dened.

At the level o aconglomerate (e.g., esco), by necessity the strategy

remains general in its ormulation. Here nancial issues and risk distribu-

tion are important: or example, certain activities may lend themselves to

achieving growth, others liquidity, and some others stability.

At the level o abusiness(BSkyB), the strategy mainly seeks to use clear

directives to maximize the synergy between its various institutions to the

benet o their shared economic and commercial ambitions.

At the level o the business unit(e.g., Sky Sports), the aim is to estab-

lish a sustainable competitive advantage within a very specic proes-

sional sphere.


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The Strategic Initiative Concept

According to Michael Porter, Most executives think they have a strategy

when they really dont, at least not a strategy that meets any kind o rigorous,

economically grounded denition.2

In contrast, all o them are capable o dening their most important

priorities: winning over customers o a particular type, launching a major

new product range, reorganizing production to improve e ciency, inten-

siying service innovation, etc.

Tat is why in this book we shall also use the word strategyto reer to

a corporations major competitive orientation and principal initiatives.

What Can Strategy Expect of Training?

Firstly, we need to understand how strategy needs training, beore we

dene the key objectives that are to be assigned to it.

Implementing Strategy Relies Principally

upon the Workforce!

As we said in the introduction, most strategies ail because they are badly

implemented.

raining is thereore o great importance rom several perspectives; it

not only helps the corporation to carry out its chosen activities, but it also

helps to secure the competitive advantage that it desires.

For a corporation to be able to implement its business strategy, the

primary requirement is that it shouldpossess the skills needed to perorm its

activities efectively.

Let us examine three examples o British and American businesses.

Once a British xed-line telecommunications operator, B has now

become an integrated international operator with a strong commitment

to the internet and associated services.

Once an American lighting business, General Electric now encom-

passes everything rom media through inrastructure and high technology

to nance.


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Once a building society, Haliax is now a ull-status bank beore mov-

ing on as a merged concern to ofer its customers the ull range o inter-national nancial services rom insurance to investment.

We can see that when strategy requires undamental change, the role

o training is to ensure that a su cient number o employees are up to the

job o producing the work expected.

Tis is the particular purpose o major induction programs or new

staf and o occupational retraining.

Te main challenges relate to the number o people involved, the need

to limit the associated costs, and the need or efectiveness: the require-

ment is to enable a lot o people to carry out tasks that are new to them

within very little time while deploying a reasonable volume o resources.

Beyond this initial undamental imperative, training must allow the

business to secure its competitive advantagewithin its strategic business

unit(s).

Tus, cost-leadership strategies require you to achieve higher produc-

tivity and better perormance levels than your competitors at each stage

o the value chain, while using ewer resources and oten a workorce that

is predominantly underqualied.Certain skills are crucial, such as sourcingand negotiating over pur-

chases or managing business that has been extensively outsourced

including to subcontractors operating in low-cost countries. Likewise, at

every level you need employees who are capable o handling large volumes

e ciently, both as regards logistics and on an administrative level.

In the case o diferentiation strategies, the challenge or the business

is to ensure that the diference is actually perceived and valued by the

market.

For this to be the case, that diference needs to be elt by all employees

and not just those who are in contact with customers.

In his bookChange to Strange, Daniel M. Cable3 suggests that a busi-

ness can only diferentiate itsel by building a diferent, that is to say

strange workorce (page number).

Te devil is in the detail: or example, you cannot consistently ofer

a customer top-o-the-range services i within the corporation there is

negligence in the provision o services between internal suppliers and cus-

tomers. raining must thereore help all staf to adopt su cient discipline,


23/30


in all their work, to ensure that the corporation maintains and increases

its distinctiveness.When a business opts or a ocus-based strategy, once again training

plays a key role.

o dominate a market segment consistently, a corporation must efec-

tively develop a set o skills perectly suited to that segment and o such a

high standing that it is almost impossible or a competitor seeking rapid

success to match them.

Blue Ocean strategies require personnel to know how to work out-

side the standards o their proession and to satisy new customers who

have diferent expectations.

Original business combinations require you to ensure that staf mem-

bers doing jobs that do not usually have any connection cooperate efec-

tively with one another.

Lastly, the deployment o strategic initiatives requires excellent execu-

tion at every level o the business.

It is true that training is not the only means o ensuring that tasks are

completed to an excellent standard.

Indeed, within certain limits, a corporation can buy in skills byrecruiting people who are already experts or by outsourcing certain

activities. It can also mechanize activities and reduce its dependence on

human intervention.

Businesses also possess the means o reducing training needs. For

example, they can provide staf, at their work stations, with tools that

allow them to have immediate access to the inormation required and

giving them step-by-step guidance at the precise point when they carry

out a task or the rst time. Tis is the role played by the so-called EPSS

(Employee Perormance Support Systems) tools.

Nevertheless, however excellent it may look on paper, a strategy can-

not succeed without efective training.

Te question that then arises is: Exactly what types o objectives

should training pursue to serve a strategy well?

Skills: Indispensable but Insufficient

Te initial response that comes to mind is skillsdevelopment.


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Skills are generally considered quite diferent rom knowledge in that

they always combine knowledgewith expertiseand interpersonal abilities.Skills are a kind o knowledge obtained rom the businesswhich has

become an educational systemand validated through action.

Indeed, the concept has the great merit o ocusing training on the

capacity o the individual to implementhis or her newly acquired abili-

ties. In practice, we usually dene skills as the capacity o an individual to

resolve a given problem, in a given context.

Viewed rom a strategic perspective, developing skills is thereore an

absolutely core objective o training.

Tis challenge is so important that the word now undergoes an in-

nite number o transormations: skills audit, skills standards, skills man-

agement or even skills-based management, skills planning, etc.

However, everyone could already see that or things to work, it was

not enough or an individual to be capable o resolving a given problem,

in a given context.

In other words, improvingskillsis not enough to achieve excellence.

Te act that an individual is capableo resolving a problem does not

allow you to anticipate that persons propensity or putting this intopractice.In our lives we are now surrounded by a multitude o problems (relat-

ing to our homes, our cars, our weight, or our amily) that we would

probably be capableo resolving but that we currently leave unaddressed,

or all sorts o reasons. Capacity is insu cient; you also need the desire to

act.

In addition, the act that on their own, individuals may each be capa-

ble o resolving a given problem in a given context does not guarantee

that the organization to which they belong will produce a better peror-

mance overall.

Te history o sport is replete with cases o teams comprising players

with exceptional skills that were unable to deeat lesser opponents.

I individuals do not share the same comprehension o words, situa-

tions, and priorities, individual skills will be insu cient to ensure collec-

tive excellence.

In short, the efective deployment o a strategy requires personnel not

only with the appropriate skills, but also with a high level o individual

commitmentand a strongcommon culture.


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Skills, commitment, and common culture: any policy, program, or

training initiative devoted to a strategy should pursue objectives at thesethreelevels.

Tis has considerable consequences or both the design and the

deployment o training initiatives. We shall gradually discover this over

the course o the coming chapters.

But are we not expecting too much o training? How efective is it really?

Training in the Dock

Let us delve back in time or a moment to the rst decade o this millen-

nium.

Small and big businesses alike were living in an environment trans-

ormed by extraordinarily rapid change.

Within a ew years, the Internet and new communications technologies

would revolutionize the economic models o entire sectors. Globalization

was creating new competitors as well as new markets and was causing a

massive shit in the worlds centre o gravity toward Asia. Multiple mergers

and acquisitions were leading to the emergence o new megacorporationsthat controlled most o the capital and investment and established new

rules by which markets had to play.

Probably never in history had training needs been so huge.

In the emerging countries, within a ew years they needed to prepare

hundreds o millions o people to adopt the most modern methods o

production, distribution, and even research and development.

In the developed countries, they needed to encourage all the new gen-

erations to position themselves in oten highly skilled occupations that

were less easy to relocate. Yet they also needed to help people already

in work to quickly adopt best practices as these alone would allow the

organizations employing them to maintain their competitiveness and to

survive.

Yet within businesses, training methods had still changed little since

the postwar years.

It is true that training had made some progress. However, compared

to the revolutions experienced in production, marketing, and customer

service, thus ar it had been quite slow to adapt.


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For initial training, it was accepted that students had to listen to lec-

turers, carry out some practical work in groups, and then revise alone,beore presenting themselves or examinations and competitions that

principally allowed them to prove that they had duly memorized and

interpreted the inormation provided.

For continuous training, more oten than not a small group o 10 or

so people was assembled with a trainer who shared his or her expertise

while ofering participants the opportunity to work on a ew case studies.

E-learning had appeared, but its use generally remained marginal.

More sophisticated tools, such as serious games inspired by video gam-

ing were starting to be developed, but still without proving that they had

a practical purpose to justiy the cost involved. In truth, as we are now

realizing, the rst generation webthe so-called Web 1.0was o lim-

ited benet in terms o training.

Above all, though, training as a whole was nding it ever harder to

convince people that it was efective.

In the business world, training was ever more requently the subject

o three criticisms.

First, the common criticism is that trainingcosts too much money and,more importantly, it took up too much timein an environment where those

two key resources were in short supply.

Te sums devoted to training were indeed astronomical. In France, they

amounted to almost 30bn per annum or continuous vocational training

and sandwich courses alone, o which more than 40% was payable directly

by businesses. Yet businesses controlled their costs as tightly as they could

and no longer hesitated to question the value o training expenditure.

Te time taken by training was also ever more di cult to reconcile

with the imperatives o organizations operating on a just-in-time basis.

Secondly training is generally viewed to have ailed to produce a vis-

ible and indisputable impact upon the perormanceo individuals, groups,

and organizations ater it was completed.

A major corporation oten invested tens o millions o euros per

year in its training programs, but what did that achieve? It was generally

impossible not only to measure this but also to identiyit, such was the

general inefectiveness o the training.


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Lastly, and perhaps most worryingly, or those who believed in train-

ing, it largely beneted onlythose who needed it least.Within a particular category o employees, training oten accentu-

ated inequality. Many training managers noticed this: only the most

motivated, highest-perorming individuals beneted rom each training

course. Te others, those who were struggling to do their jobs, were gen-

erally the least satised: It was all theory; I already knew all that.

You might think, thereore, that training no longer has much use.

The Training Revolution Gets Underway

Let us return now to the years rom 2010.

Te most advanced major corporations are setting new objectives or

training, which ocus much more directly on strategy implementation

and collective economic perormance.

Tey are questioning the most widely accepted educational principles

so as to drastically reduce the cost and time absorbed by training, while

increasing its efectiveness.

Tey are using new technology and new toolsoten connected tothe meteoric rise o Web 2.0and are bringing training into the everyday

lie o their company, their staf, their customers, and their partners, with

the aim o ensuring that it nally benets them all.

Over the recent months, the author, his partners, and their teams have

had the opportunity to help Renault to plot the training o its 120,000

employees in the groups new values. LOral has asked us to develop

training packages designed or all its managers worldwide on subjects

connected to personnel recruitment, evaluation, and development.

Another large industrial group has invited us to train all its buyers in

China, India, Japan, Brazil, the United States, and Europe. Each time this

has involved methods that would have been unthinkable just a ew years

ago, as well as more ambitious objectives, shorter durations, and more

efective systems.

Tose corporations, among others, have understood that 20102020

is the era o the training revolution and, even more crucially, the era o

convergence between strategy and training.


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Key Points to Remember

A business needs training not only to access the skills

necessary to carry out its activities, but also and above all to

secure its competitive advantages through practical excellenceat

every level o the business.

raining is designed to develop skills, but it ofers so much

more.

Te efective deployment o a strategy requires not only

personnel with the appropriate skills, but also a high level

o commitment and a strong common culture. People increasingly struggle to believe that training is

efective. In senior managers eyes, it costs too much and takes too

long. It oten ails to produce a visible and indisputable impact

on perormance. It generally only benets those who need it the least.

A training revolution is underway. raining is much more directly connected to strategy

implementation and to the quest or excellence. Te teenies will be the era o convergence between strategy

and training.

Recommendations

Training packages connected

to the implementation of yourstrategy

Alreadyachieved!

More orless

Not yetachieved

Are they designed and managed by people

who have fully understood the organizations

strategic priorities?

Is their purpose to ensure that a sufficient

number of employees achieve the level required

to produce the work expected?

Is their objective also to allow the business

to secure specific competitive advantages?


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Are they systematically and specifically

designed to simultaneously develop skills,

commitment, and a common culture?

Do they consume less time and fewer financial

resources each year, while proving just as

effective?

Do they have an indisputable impact on

the performance of people and of the

organization?

Do they specifically contribute to the

progress made by all personnel, not just

those who need it least?

Do senior managers view them as a key

lever for rolling out corporate strategy and

achieving excellence?

Do they rely upon explicit, innovative

educational principles directed at the quest

for effectiveness?

Do they take full advantage of2.0

technologies and new tools to be integrated

into the daily life of the business?


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Korda Chapter One

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Transcript of Korda Chapter One