SIDEBAR: Performance Reviews Matter
Companies continue to rely on performance reviews and courses in communication and business principles to identify and develop employees with leadership potential.
REVIEWS Performance reviews are integral to giving employees feedback as well as helping them develop their careers. At Royal Caribbean, one or even two reviews a year doesn't cut the mustard; CIO Tom Murphy and his managers do quarterly reviews, and employees have both a professional and a personal development plan, which complement each other.
Harrah's Entertainment takes a three-pronged approach to the review process. First, managers administer biannual performance reviews. Second, workers sit down with supervisors to outline and track their training plans and their career development using People3's IT-HR application. At that point, people are given a chance to identify their wants - say, the opportunity to attend a technical conference - and supervisors also record what projects they have worked on. That allows resource managers to look at the app and say: "This would be a good project for Joe or Mary to work on." The third element involves an annual talent review and succession planning exercise in which IT senior executives look at all 500 or so of Harrah's IT employees to identify the strongest performers and plot out succession plans. The succession plans are recorded in a specialised succession planning system used by the company as a whole.
COURSES Offering courses, whether classroom or online, gives IT executives another way to help their employees grow professionally as leaders. At Schneider National, most courses are open to all 425 IT employees. Entry-level classes include communicating effectively, writing for effective messaging and reading a financial statement. Advanced classes cover topics such as concepts of leadership, the role of leaders and change management.
All Aboard: Royal Caribbean's Lead IT Program
Two IT managers, taking a cue from their leadership-evangelising CIO, launch a grassroots program that brings leadership skills to the entire IT staff
Fired up after a two-day leadership seminar last year run by author and leadership consultant Terry Pearce, Greg Martin, manager of client/server and messaging solutions at Royal Caribbean, was inspired to act. His colleague, Geoff Lawson, an IT manager, says: "It was evident Greg had a lot of passion around leadership development. He recognised the need and desire for a grassroots leadership development program."
Martin developed the concept and presented it to CIO Tom Murphy, his direct reports and eventually the IT management team, which gave it the thumbs-up. The Lead IT program launched last November. According to the flier announcing the new program, Lead IT "prepares Royal Caribbean IT for the future by making sure that the people who will lead us have the vision and skills needed to succeed".
Martin and Lawson act as co-facilitators and serve on the steering committee, which includes an IT vice president. There are currently 40 to 45 people involved in the program, which holds half-day sessions every six to eight weeks. The only criteria for joining the program are that people agree to attend on a regular basis and participate. "We didn't want it to be elitist - people handpicked by upper management," says Lawson. "We wanted it to be inclusive."
The main goals of the program are to build trust and open relationships across different departments within IT and to establish a learning culture where people can share ideas in a supportive environment. "A common thread when we ask people what they want to get out of it isn't people saying, I want to be a director next month; they say, I want to speak better in public. [This provides] a safe place among their peers to practise," says Lawson.
This year, the company has held three sessions. For one, participants read and discussed First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently, by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman; in another, they discussed The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, by Clayton Christensen. The group has also hosted guest speakers, such as Murphy and Miami-Dade County Mayor Alex Penelas. Other activities have included group members presenting profiles of leadership (Winston Churchill and Rudy Giuliani are two that have been discussed) and discussions of communication and presentation skills and diversity. But the better part of each session involves interaction among the participants. Martin says: "Ninety per cent of the program is people sharing their experiences."
The feedback has been positive so far. "People are using it as a baseline to go back to their team and see how they can improve," says Martin.
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