Leading organisations are moving away from the old approach to Training known as the 'sheep dip' where everyone in the organisation is subjected to the same training experience. We witnessed many organisations in the 90's who exposed their staff to huge training experiences where everyone (whether they needed or benefited from the process) went through the same experience. It does not work, simply because people occupy different points on learning curve where some have little knowledge or experience and others a surfeit. Although we know that the intent behind this strategy was consistency and certainty in transfer of knowledge, it did little to create a dynamic focused workforce ready to deal with ambiguity and change.
Many organisations are now finding that a far more tailored approach to designing a development process is relevant for their people and are increasingly using 'Development Centres' to assess the need of staff to take an important step and manage their own learning and development.
We recently worked with a major European Drinks Business - a Distiller and Distributor of Wines and Spirits. As part of the 'change process' we designed a Development Centre to help first line-managers to design their own learning experience. This platform was based upon earlier work undertaken with organisations such as Mortgage Express to equip their people to develop their expertise so that they retained their 'attractiveness' as an 'employable asset' in the Financial Services market while their organisation was undergoing substantial change.
(For further details of this process see Chapter 14 'Speed of Change - You're fast or you're dead' in the text "The Iceberg Agenda: Mastering Corporate Potential", by Philip Atkinson, BT Batsford 1998)
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