A perspective on staff development
Paul Sykes

There are two things emerging that are really taking our understanding of learning and development to a new plane.

The first is something that the Reuters organisation has really taken on board, under Charles Jennings, their Head of Learning. In just one discipline alone, Reuters has some 30,000 learners and 3,500 trainers within the organisation, so their experiences have some real credibility.

They have come up with an approach based on the 70-20-10 learning principle. This suggests that most learning occurs through work on the job, from colleagues and others, as well as in formal ways. The traditional approach to development is built around training in knowledge and skills; competencies- based.

Research has shown that this accounts for only about 30 % of learning that really affects people's performance. The other 70% comes from their environment, their attitudes towards themselves, the learners, their managers, the prevailing cultures of the organisation and the behaviour of the set.

Focusing on knowledge and skills, the competencies, is almost like trying to push water uphill because the biggest single effect on the performance of an organisation is the environment; attitudes and behaviours of the people. Those are the things learned at a subconscious level, but they need to be addressed properly if people want to see performance change.

The second movement emerging in the development world was brought home to me this weekend at the Professional Speakers Association, where Clive Wilson of Primeast, described what they are working on - strengths based performance.

They talk about work done by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton, based on a considerable amount of research done for the Gallup Organisation. Buckingham and Clifton found that within most organisations, the budget and effort devoted to training and development is focused on addressing weaknesses; based around the annual appraisal, where people identify deficiencies and put a plan together to counter those weaknesses.

Instead, companies would achieve a much better return by discovering strengths, and then devoting effort into a programme of enhancing those personal strengths, to enable people to perform more effectively.

This new approach creates positive motivation and environment where people are playing to their strengths, enjoying what they are doing, rather than negatively focussing on the things they hate.

These two things - realising that formal training has limited effect on performance and focusing on strengths - has a very positive resonance with people.

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