CHAPTER 7
Surveying the Background and the Context

This chapter explores how the consultant can survey the background and context of this type of issue in order to be able to fulfil the brief with greater insight and relevance. The process is shown in Figure 7.1.

Before interviewing relevant managers in the client company, preliminary research should be carried out regarding both the external environment in which the organization operates and its internal situation. This should prepare the trainer for conducting interviews with the training sponsor and other senior managers who can give their views on why the training is required. At the same time the managers will form their own perceptions of the trainer, which are likely to be more positive if they feel the trainer has a good grasp of their company's external and internal environment. Once all the data is obtained it should be analysed and a training context frame developed that provides the background and framework for the training.

Figure 7.1 The surveying process

Breadth before depth

In this type of situation there is a great temptation, particularly when operating in their familiar home culture, for the training consultant to move straight to a series of interviews with the board members and their immediate reports to establish all the perceptions as soon as possible. (The term training consultant is used here rather than 'trainer' as this stage of the process may well be carried out by someone who is a consultant expert in identifying training needs.) Interviewing will of course be an important part of understanding the training needs, and will be discussed in the next chapter, but is there background work to do first? The answer to this question depends on how well informed the training consultant is about the company, its sector, its markets, its customers and its competitors.

If the consultant has only a general understanding of fast-moving consumer goods, but little specific knowledge about the personal products sector, the Swiss market, the local customers and the competition, it is essential to do some research into the external environment in which the client company is working. At the very least this will give the consultant more credibility when meeting the company's senior team and it will probably also enable the consultant to ask more insightful questions at the interview stage.

A considerable amount of the essential background information is in the public domain. A study of recent articles in the local trade press will soon tell the consultant the names of the key competitors and the customers, even if it does not reveal up-to-date details such as market shares. Competitors' websites are likely to give significant information on their product ranges and recent product introductions. Very soon a picture can be drawn of the environment in which the client company is operating. This picture should go beyond local boundaries to include multi-national competitors and customers as well as local players.

Armed with this valuable information it is now time for the consultant to gather information about the client company itself. Is it a stand-alone Swiss company? Does it operate in other markets? Who owns the company? What can we learn about the shareholders' objectives, short term and longer term? Do the statements of vision, mission and aims of the company, if they exist in written form, tell us anything useful about the issue surrounding new product launches?

Useful additional sources of information

Figure 7.2 The balanced scorecard

At this stage it is worth investigating whether there are any processes within the client company that will have created similar survey data that would be useful. For instance, if work has been done to create a 'balanced scorecard' as shown in Figure 7.2, there may well be an analysis of the changes that need to take place in internal business processes to balance the financial perspective with planned actions to improve strategic performance and results. When working on the survey stage of an assignment concerned with identifying the training needs of senior customer managers in the European subsidiary of a major multi-national, we asked if there had been any recent work done in the area of identifying the strategic challenges of managing 'Pan-European' customers. We were given the results of a balanced scorecard exercise. This showed very clearly that the company needed to recognize the future challenge posed by the consolidation of their customers across national boundaries in Europe. This in turn led to the inclusion of a session, run by an expert in the field, on the consolidation of retailers, not only in Europe, but across the globe, so that participants could appreciate that this trend is only in its infancy but is likely to gather speed over the next few years.

If the assignment was being carried out in the UK it would be worth finding out if the client company had been assessed for the Investors in People award as this could give valuable information about existing plans and actions for training in this and any associated areas, as well as including useful information on the company's business plan and its HR development strategy. An Investors in People diagnostic report could reveal very useful information about the 'training literacy' of the organization, giving a greater insight into the level of organizational training commitment discussed in Chapter 6. It could even give the extent of its annual training budget, as well as information about training policies and plans. Figure 7.3 below gives information about the scope of the Investors in People process.

Figure 7.3 The Investors in People process

During an assignment to design some management training for the professional staff of an Employers' Association in the UK, mention was made of the diagnostic report for Investors in People. The organization was happy to share the report, as the training would form part of the evidence to be submitted in support of achieving the Investors in People award. The report, based on interviews with professional and support staff, painted a clear picture of the need for managers to learn the skills of delegation in order to improve office productivity. This coincided with our observations about the need for a more supportive approach towards working together, between professional and support staff. As a result delegation skills became an important part of the programme which eventually enabled the association to extend its services to members without any addition to staff numbers.

The likelihood of the company sharing this type of confidential information with an external or internal consultant is not just dependent on the nature of the organizational culture but also the social culture. Those organizations with relatively high power distance ratings such as in India or Belgium where knowledge reinforces power are likely to feel more uncomfortable compared with those in the USA or Sweden in allowing access by outsiders or lower-status internal staff to this type of information.

Armed with as much of the above information as possible, plus a chart showing organizational structure and whatever documents exist to describe the new product launch process (in the case of the Swiss company described at the beginning of this chapter), now is the time to prepare for a structured interview with all the senior managers involved in the product launch process.

Preparation for interactions within the client company

In preparation for these interviews, in common with any assignment of this type the consultant needs to think through the following and frame the questions to be asked:

• What is the essential information to be collected about each manager's perceptions of the issue?
• What needs to be recorded about each manager's feelings about recent material events, namely, new product launches in the case of the Swiss company described earlier?
• Where do conflicts about the issue arise?
• How does this issue relate to other business issues that are current?

With these thoughts in mind, a set of questions needs to be established prior to the individual interviews.

Once the framework of questions is in place, the training consultant needs to arrange appointments with each of the senior managers. It is important that each manager is given approximately the same length of time to be interviewed, so that it is clear that the intention is to give similar weight to the views of each interviewee. There is usually a benefit in carrying out the interviews at the place of work of each of the senior managers. It is an opportunity to become more closely aligned with the culture of the organization.

Gaining an understanding of the culture of an organization is very helpful in planning the delivery of training and considering how the new learning is likely to be transferred to the workplace. Organizational culture can be appreciated by observing symbols and noticing the rituals that take place within the company. For instance, the type of building, office layout, the way that people defer to those in authority all provide useful clues when developing the training. Training is much more likely to be accepted if a conscious effort is made to tailor it to the existing culture. If all the signs are that the company is pragmatic rather than sophisticated, the approach to the training needs to be pragmatic. If the atmosphere and dress code is very informal, the training consultant's dress code and approach needs to fit in. Scandinavia, Benelux, France and Germany tend to be fairly informal. Italy, Spain, Portugal, Eastern Europe and the Middle and Far East are more formal. However, even within individual cultures there are likely to be differences between dress codes in organizations. 'Dress down Friday' has been adopted by many non-US organizations.

When conducting the interviews there will be differences in perception due to individual personality and experience as well as differences in national characteristics. In the Swiss example, all the senior managers were Western European in origin and there were clear differences between individuals due to personality and experience as well as nationality. The fact that a person has a supply chain background will impact on that individual's perception about new product launch issues as well as the fact that the person originates within Western Europe. These cultural differences have an important part to play. For example, both in phrasing questions and interpreting the answers the consultant should be sensitive to such issues as:

• saving face, particularly with Eastern and African cultures;
• respect for hierarchy in high power distance cultures;
• importance of respecting the family and social context in low masculinity cultures.

At the same time it is extremely valuable to keep the antennae tuned to pick up clues about the true level of management commitment to training. It is helpful to have the model describing the level of organizational commitment as shown in Figure 6.3 in Chapter 6 in mind when doing this in order to position the client organization at the appropriate level. For instance, client organizations at level four and even level three will want to see any proposed training fitting into the present or likely future market, competitive, general economic and social context, while those at levels one and two will be content that the training is relevant to the individual's job role. Likewise, clues will be obtained regarding later parts of the training process such as the approach to designing and delivering training. In an organization at level two it will be quite different from the approach towards the task in an organization that is a leader in level four. A client at level four will be open to suggestions of involvement of managers and specialist support staff in the follow-up to any traditional off-the-job training, whereas the organization at level two may see the suggestion of follow-up coaching as being an unwelcome diversion of management resources.

Another important consideration is that, even at the survey stage, it is well worth making an assessment about how the training is likely to be evaluated. Certainly it is worth asking 'what is the normal evaluation process?' It may also be possible to learn something from existing documentation. Whatever is written down, it is likely that verbal feedback on the quality and value of the training inputs will be of importance, and some of this feedback will be related to how well the trainer managed to fit in with the cultural norms of the client organization. The reality is that the training consultant needs to be aware that there is likely to be open discussion within any organization about all of the face-to-face interactions, and there are a multitude of opportunities to say the wrong thing or be seen to behave inappropriately within the cultural norms of a particular organization.

Equally important at the survey stage is the need to consider how the learning from the training is likely to be transferred to the workplace. This will give further clues about the level of training commitment in the organization. What is the evidence for successful transfer of previous training? What are the barriers likely to be? How much one-to-one coaching is going on in the daily running of the business? Observation and a few casual questions about previous experience can reveal much information in terms of existing processes and, even more importantly, prevailing attitudes. For instance, if a very positive customer service attitude prevails amongst front-line staff alongside regular training and coaching, it will suggest that where the organization buys-in to people development it is capable of translating the learning into effective behaviour within the business.

Outputs from the survey stage

The outputs from the survey stage can be summarized in the training context frame. This comprises several sections, as shown in Table 7.1.

The left-hand column should be regarded as a checklist. Other issues may crop up during this stage which can be added at the bottom of the context frame.

The training context frame is useful in a number of ways:

• It can be used as part of an interim report specifying the proposed training.
• It ensures all the important issues have been covered in the survey stage.
• It makes explicit the link between the issues and the training, ensuring that none are overlooked.

Table 7.1 Training context frame

Summary

Whatever the training assignment, it is important to survey the background and the context of the business issue. First of all, it is appropriate to assess that there should be a training solution to the problem and then to collect as much information as is practical in order to understand the organizational context of the particular issue and the type of training solution that could be possible.

The survey should encompass understanding the factors external to the company that could impact on the issue and the client's preferred approach to organizing the training. Then it is important to collect information about the internal factors, through data collection and interviews where necessary. Importantly for the trainer, senior managers are likely to be drawing their own conclusions about the trainer's suitability for the task based partly on how well he or she understands and relates to the company, its environment and the issues triggering the training.

This process will provide not only the necessary factual information, but also give an important insight into the company culture and the management's approach to the resolution of business problems and the role of training. It can be anticipated that the behaviour of individual managers within this culture will vary according to their personality and experience as well as to their national background.

Even at this early stage it is important to try to find out how training is likely to be evaluated and also what support mechanisms are likely to be practicable in helping participants apply their learning in the work situation.

The training context frame is a useful device to bring together the key outputs from the survey stage and draw out the implications for the proposed training.

For a training event for international managers that you are planning, consider which of the areas in the Action plan need to be investigated at the survey stage, making notes on how you would intend to obtain the information on each one.

Action plan