This has been a topic of conversation with several our clients and contacts recently. The short answer is training and development programmes alone can't create that cultural shift. If you and your firm are looking at a cultural change, then training and development will be central to this, but it won't achieve this alone.
Once you start to look at what role training and development plays in cultural change, it can be pivotal when coupled with these key areas:
Where there is a clear link to your wider organisational strategy. It may sound like an obvious point, but I am not sure if you have experienced training and development that doesn’t clearly link to a firm’s strategy or goals. It can happen more often than you might expect! Think about aligning all your training and development programmes to your overall strategy and goals. Understanding the skills your teams have at the minute and where the gaps are. Those gaps are your training and development opportunities.
Understanding what your people need to do to be excellent in their role. What does this look like and is it documented? Having things like an up-to-date competency framework that evaluate the skills and behaviours needed to deliver against role specific requirements. Using things like a competency framework can help you model excellence and identify growth and development plans at monthly, quarterly, and annual reviews.
Specific tools and skills to help your team to grow. Where there is a specific skill or behavioural gap across your firm, taking time to recognise this and build a programme that address this is key. We often train whole firms in things like client journey, we ensure we train those that are furthest removed from clients. This is to help everyone in a firm take a client centric approach. It also helps to create shared goals and language as a firm. These are also supporting pillars in creating that cultural change.
Challenge and accountability. Something I find myself saying to more and more firms is “Your values are what you do not what you have written on the wall!”. We are often asked to help keep organisations, teams and individuals accountable and to challenge them when they are living their values. I am sure you have experienced a firm that talks about something like “We keep things simple”, then sends you a complex document to complete, with no guidance, little help or support and a convoluted service and help team that you can only speak to in an online chatbot. The values there don’t matched the lived experience.
On the flip side, I did some work with a legal firm recently and I happened to comment to their MD just how friendly every one of their teams across four offices were (I gave a couple of examples and named a couple of people who had been really friendly and helpful). He smiled when getting that feedback and said that was one of the values they had been working on and it was great when a supplier noticed that.
Having a range of internal development tools and frameworks. Abraham Maslow’s quote fits really nicely here – “If the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as a nail”. I love that quote because I lived this in a corporate world where one of our managers would (metaphorically) just hit everyone over the head. Repeatedly. Constantly. Then he wondered why people started flinching whenever he walked past! Great firms have a group of well supported people with a huge toolkit to help them and everyone around them achieve individual, team and organisation level goals. These firms use a mix of things like training, facilitation, coaching, management, delegations, workshops, masterclasses, lunch and learn session, bitesize learning, eLearning etc. All of these tools and approaches allow partners, directors, managers and team members to be the best they can in any given situation.
In summary cultural change needs to be supported at every level of a firm in multiple ways. And, while training won’t necessarily be the lead component, real change is less likely to happen without a robust training and development plan, linked to your strategy and recognised at the strategic level.