Focuses on clarifying guiding principles and defining and delivering the program elements for career planning.
In many organizations, creating an organized program for supporting career, leadership development, or talent management represents an important initiative. Our approach to program design and implementation always includes a current state assessment, a definition of purposes and outcomes, and creation of guiding principles as a starting point. This initial phase is important to avoid ineffective point solutions and clarify realistic requirements for long-term success. The second phase of engagements for building a consistent program focuses on a detailed design, including a defined program scope, kinds of participants, the level of integration with other leadership and talent management initiatives, and specification of activities and supports required to deliver target objectives. This phase is most often done in close collaboration with an internal team and entails engaging stakeholders to provide input about the design. While the nature of testing and implementation phases vary widely, they most often include clarifying and documenting support materials and methods, piloting program elements, creating roll out communications and plans, and instituting a change management plan to create sustainable outputs integrated into an organization’s practices.
In some situations, we provide our tools and training as part of program design; in others we incorporate existing internal materials or materials from other vendors into the overall program framework. The primary considerations for making programs successful for career planning in particular include:
- How to include personal preferences in the approach (e.g., our Values and Preferences Inventory);
- How to evaluate the requirements of career target roles or work context (e.g., as assessment of competencies and values most important for various work settings) and fit between a person’s attributes and work setting attributes;
- What specific tools and resources relevant for career planning the program should provide for personalizing each person’s approach (e.g., career maps, developmental experiences related to competencies related to target positions);
- How to provide ongoing support for feedback and updating plans (e.g., access to coaches and mentors).