CC-ASTD Makes a Difference in Africa
Identifying Desired Performance or Boiling It Down
by Ed Bancroft
When we are done,
what do we want people to know how to do? This question drove all of our drafting
and redrafting. It pushed us to be better.
Being a performance management consultant made me the likely candidate in this group for the role of “boiler.” It wasn’t always easy to identify which one or two core skills should be taught per topic so that participants would be more likely to apply the new learnings. Sometimes this meant going back and refining models for how to market a business or teach others. At one Chicago meeting, several of us jumped up to the board and started brainstorming madly until we emerged with the five key steps to starting a business. That became one of our frameworks for the many meetings that followed.
We worked tirelessly within the team to “get it right.” I think we were a little fearful of creating an “international incident” with a content or training faux pas. Group members opened themselves to direct and sometimes bristling feedback. Everybody wanted to respectfully bring value to a place very different from our own.
In Africa we started by visiting GAA partners and their client businesses. These visits gave us a real sense of the challenges of starting and running a business. They also built trust and optimism in the trainer group. The visits inspired several new tools developed on the ground to help participants learn from each other. During the training, I conducted a lively, multi-language summary session on what they had learned about business. Why Are Some Businesses Successful? was a tool with specific African examples that summarized what we saw and heard during our visits, and what they discussed in class.
We created other tools to be used during our follow-up coaching, including:
- Advising for Business Success, a sequence of steps to guide a new business;
- Roles and Responsibilities—a worksheet delineating the key roles and assignments as a business is planned; and
- Learning Plan—a plan for on-the-job learning.
Advising for Business Success was a paraphrase of comments made by one of the participants. Two of the tools were a variation of succession planning work that I have been doing in the US. All tools grew organically from our intense involvement and desire to respect our clients, blend our two worlds, and partner with GAA.
What is the feedback since our departure? People are working hard to incorporate the skills into their critical daily work. They’d like to see ASTD trainers back once or twice a year.
Currently, ASTD/GAA’s Phase Two plan is to design another program to be delivered February, 2006.
Ed Bancroft is President of Bancroft Consulting Inc., an organization dedicated to creating unique and practical performance management strategies that make a measurable difference. Ed has authored many articles. His most recent is CEO Measurement and Evaluation: The Three P’s, in the June 2005 issue of Trustee Magazine. Contact Ed at ed.bancroft@sbcglobal.net or 847-446-6491.
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