Monday, March 10, 2008

How Trainers Should View Work

There are the worker bees (Implementation/Evaluation), the managers (Translation/Communication), and the top dogs (Creation/Re-Creation). The top dogs are those folks that create initiatives and objectives for ABC COMPANY as a whole and the business units. The job of the managers is to put those initiatives and objectives into words that can be understood and utilized by the worker bees. The worker bees are accountable for both the implementation of the plans crafted by the managers and for evaluating the results to ensure that we are going where we think we are going.

The skills that must be taught fall into three distinct categories: Strategic, Intra/Interpersonal, and Technical. As you move up the organization you will find that there are fewer technical job skills but more strategic skills required. Therefore, a training curriculum should be weighted accordingly with line employees focusing more on technical knowledge and skills, some interpersonal skills related to working with customers and/or team members, and only a presentation on the company's strategy and how the line employees fit into that equation. Mid-management would get a mixture of those same classes with the emphasis being on understanding (not doing) the technical work, managing people (not work), and executing the strategy. Senior leaders will not need to know the technical work, but should have a high-level overview of the company's employee activities; senior leaders need to know how to manage cross-functional processes (and teams of leaders); and senior leaders must know how to craft and cascade strategic plans.

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