Mpower: An action-learning approach to leadership development in SMB companies

Browne & Mohan

Board & CEO Advisors, Management Consultants

Mpower: An action-learning approach to leadership

development in SMB companies

With significant inputs from V Sheethal, Junior consultant and Usha Murthy, Asst Consultant (Strategy & Marketing).

Browne & Mohan


Introduction

Small and medium businesses are backbone of

many economies. In India, SMB companies, about

30 Million in number contribute to 45% of the

industrial output, and 40% of India’s exports.

These companies employ 1.2 million jobs each

year and employ about 60 Million people (MSME,

2012). Access to limited resources including

capital, elementary investments into training and

development and lack of managerial bandwidth

limit many of the SMB in realizing their growth

potential. With increasing global competition,

economic slow-down and low consumer

confidence, many owner managers of these

companies are realizing a need to quickly develop

competent leaders to increase ownership,

responsibility and sense of urgency amongst their

employees. One of the major organizational

challenge SMB face is on leadership development

and succession management. Many companies

are single-owner driven and have major

challenges in attracting and retaining high quality

talent. Many of the employees grow with the

organization from ranks and may lack

comprehensive understanding of the business like

the owner manager. While there are several

leadership training and development programs

available in market, they may be hard pressed to

spare their resources because of limited

manpower availability. Some SMB may not also

afford the cost of training and development

programs offered by academic and private

organizations. Hence, they seek to invest in

context relevant leadership development

programs that facilitate expansion of collective

capacity of organization members to engage

effectively in leadership roles and process

(McCauley et al., 1998). What the owner

managers want is to ensure all people embrace

leadership roles even if they may nor may not

have formal authority, and initiate and sustain

leadership process that allow group of people to

work effectively. In that essence the focus here is

not on management development, but leadership

development of people make them own and take

responsibilities for actions, decisions and direct a

sense of urgency and directions. The expected

outcome is to create leaders who take up the task

of bringing together a group of people to achieve

a common goal.

Many leadership development programs exist,

traditional classroom training based or other

intervention based (Day, 2001). Some are

intended to improve performance management,

some networking, facilitate corporate bonding

and knowledge transfer (internal coaching and

mentoring) or enhance learning by doing. SMB

organizations realize that class room based

training is at best partially effective at building

leaders for the emerging business environment.

While class room teaching is useful to learn newer

approaches or knowledge, sustained changes or

development may not be guaranteed. Many

participants may forget the learning and fall back

to older practices. Executive coaching is another

approach some SMB try to foster one-on-one

learning and bring out sustainable changes (Hall,

et al, 1999). Organizations also try out formal

mentoring programs to transfer the business

knowledge, networks and other skills from the

senior managers to juniors (Kram and Isabella,

1985). While both executive coaching and

mentoring have their advantages over the class

room training, prohibitive cost (executive coaches

may cost $500/hour or $100,000 per year) and

time dissuade many SMB organizations to try

these approaches. SMB owners realize people

learn effectively when working on real-life

business challenges. Action learning approach

enriches job experiences, responsibilities, tasks

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and team management (McCauley and Brutus,

1998). Action learning through job assignments is

useful to embarking team building skills, hone

strategic thinking, persuasion and negotiation

skills (McCall, et al., 1988). Action learning has

been adopted by many MNC to develop their

leadership teams and prepare them for growth.

Coca-Cola runs a program where more than 300

professionals spend about a year in new markets

and learn cultural, organizational and marketing

challenges and solutions that work. Gillette sends

its U.S managers to overseas markets to benefit

from broader experience and exposure to

decision making in different countries and

operational contexts. (Laabs, 1991). Citibank has

a unique program where it places high potential

managers into new assignments for which they

are no more than 60% prepared. The managers

learn and hone the skills required for the new

assignments under the tutelage of senior

professional (Clark and Lyness, 1991). GE runs an

action learning initiative called “Work-out” to

develop leadership across their managerial and

technical staff (Vicere and Fulmer, 1998). The

underlying tenet of all these programs is that

action learning programs allow people to try out

new things, trust themselves and others as they

learn to master the skills and helps to make them

think in uncertain dynamic environments. In this

paper, Browne & Mohan consultants share their

experience of designing and implementing an

action learning oriented leadership development

program specifically aimed at SMB’s.

Mpower Program

Mpower program is designed keeping in mind

that leadership is relational and domain specific.

Followers learn from their leaders, manage the

next level of complex business activities and

extend themselves to emerge in newer roles and

process. Mpower has been designed to formally

transfer leader’s activities to the juniors so that a

platform to learn is created. It will also allow all

second level leaders to learn on job all the

administration, management, policy control

where they could relate themselves and apply the

learning. Leadership development program is to

create second line of managers where in

organization will have the teams who are enabled,

self- driven, self - managed. The Mpower program

is designed in such a way that it is action oriented,

practical and executable. It involves participation

by the junior, senior and the HR of the

organization. Each has their own role to play. The

junior is in the learning and imbibing stage. The

senior imparts his knowledge, mentors his

behavior and empowers the junior to learn on job.

The HR acts as a facilitator, external reviewer and

process managers to ensure consistency of the

program.

Mpower program has six steps as shown in

Fig1:

Step 1: Identification, Alignment of personal

mission statement: Identification of the junior

employees and aligning them with senior level

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employees. The junior employee is asked to come

up with the personal mission statement which

comprises of personal goals, professional goals

and organizational goals for the quarter. Junior

discusses the personal mission statement with the

senior and the HR where they understand the

goals, capabilities and challenges (improvement

areas or focus areas) of the junior. Identification

of employees for the program based on

willingness to learn, work and their skill sets to

carry on.

The employees have to be chosen who are:

1. Willing and capable: An employee who is both

willing to learn and capable to carry out the work

is chosen.

2. Willing but not capable: those who are willing to

learn and ready to work but are not equipped

with the required knowledge or training can be

chosen

3. Personal Mission Statement: it is a document

prepared by the juniors selected for the program

in the organization where they list out the goals

that they would want to achieve within that

quarter .This helps the Junior, senior and the HR

to come up with a plan to achieve the set goals. It

provides clarity and a sense of purpose.

Professional Goals: The juniors have to prepare a

list of activities which are related to their career

which can be trainings or learning programs, and

explore opportunities to network in their industry

which can be seminars, conferences, writing

articles for journals and giving talks/

presentations pertaining to their domain.

Organizational Goals: - The Juniors are asked to

prepare a list of activities to be carried out which

would lead to quality work to the clients, meeting

client needs, optimal utilization of resources,

working as a team and reduction in errors and re-

work.

Personal Goals: Personal goals for the junior

would be to identify the current weak

areas/obstacles as an individual or in his

profession that are hindering his ability to put

forth his best in his work and team and methods

to overcome the same by bringing in

improvements within the process and self.

Step 2:Superior Delegation Statement and Plan B

It is a list of tasks identified by the seniors who

have to come up with Superior delegation

statement where he discusses with the junior on

the tasks that he could delegate and the tasks the

junior could own. Senior identifies the task/

activities to be delegated. The tasks are identified

based on complexities, uncertainties, skill and

capabilities of the teams and individuals involved

in the process. This meeting is a mutual

agreement between the Superior and his junior

where the senior agrees to delegate certain tasks

and the junior agrees to take up those tasks. The

Senior has to also come up with a “Plan B” in the

case the junior fails to complete the task assigned

where in the Senior would have an alternate

solution (he might be required to complete the

task himself or assign it to other employees)

Step 3: Training and Development

The superior provides process, technical and

technological knowledge to junior. The Superior

provides adequate information on process

standards, process adherence, and time frame to

the juniors. It is an organizational activity aimed at

bettering the performance of the individual and

groups. The junior is hand held by the senior

during this process where the senior owns the

outputs of the junior.

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The knowledge transfer is continuous till the junior

is confident of carrying out the task himself.

Step 4: Identification of Gaps

During the training period, the junior and senior

understand the gaps/challenges that arises while

the task is being carried out, analysing which they

come up with corrective measures to overcome the

same. The reasons for the gaps are identified and

relevant steps are taken to fill the gaps. Below are

corrective steps that could be taken.

Functional training: The senior has to identify

if the junior needs any specific functional training or

process training. The junior has to come up with

areas where he/she needs guidance on to better

the performance.

On the job training/Assistance: This

requirement is identified when the juniors need to

see, do and learn which helps them grasp better

rather than polish them on theoretical aspects. This

can be identified once the learning styles of the

junior are clear.

Generic training: which are generic in nature

and which can be applicable to all the departments

such as how to improve communication skills,

enhancing inter-personal relationship, working in a

team etc. This need is communicated to the HR

who can facilitate to satisfy the requirement.

One-one with junior and senior: The Senior will

have one-one discussion with the junior to identify

the previously agreed goals, challenges, and

provide them suggestions for improvement and re-

look at the goals. This is an on-going process and

can be done informally too.

Step 5: Program extension/Assign a new task

If the junior is able to perform the task assigned

successfully and if the senior is convinced that the

junior has gained a thorough knowledge about

the task, he/she is assigned the next task or new

task. If the junior is unable to perform, the

program gets extended till the junior improves.

Step 6: Quarterly review and plan for the next

quarter:

At the end of the quarter, HR would have a

feedback meeting with the senior and the junior

on the status of the task delegated,

improvements and the challenges in the tasks, if

any. HR acts as the facilitator to reduce the

friction between the senior and the junior and

motivate the junior to perform better. The

objective behind the feedback meeting is to

increase the trust and performance by

independently discussing with the senior and the

junior. During the feedback meeting, the senior

and the junior along the HR discuss the next

quarter plan.

Conclusion: Mpower program helps to create the

next level leadership in the organisation. To

create a culture where junior are less dependent

on their superior, who can learn to manage things

on their own and to create their own thought

process of simplified way of working styles and

coming up with their innovative thoughts and

ideas on process . It is a formal transfer of non-

critical and non-value added activities of the

leader to the next level so that he empowers the

team to take care of these activities. He gives

them a platform to learn and emerge in various

fields.

The advantage of the Mpower program is that it

will help the leaders to concentrate of more

critical strategic activities while the non-critical

part can be hived off to the juniors. It relieves the

stress on the superiors and paves way a sense of

opportunity to the juniors.

Browne & Mohan


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Mpower: An action-learning approach to leadership development in SMB companies