FULL PROGRAMS
HP2 specializes in the long-term development of Commitment Based Management for the sake of generating new levels of performance and profit for our clients. We don’t do education for its’ own sake but as a means to accomplish a larger objective. The days are gone when smart companies are content to pay consultants to provide binders full of advice and invoices. Instead they want to learn how to bring new strategies to life on their own. The future lies in learning new practices that become a permanent part of the organizational culture. That is why our typical client engagements run from 3-18 months, as that is what it takes to produce real competence in the new practices and generate substantial financial results.
There is only one way to generate new levels of performance and profitability and this is to learn new skills. Doing what you already know how to do only doing it harder and faster and with fewer resources is a recipe for disaster. What is commonly called skill is simply the embodied result of recurrent practice. It is recurrent practice that produces the change in people's behavior and therefore produces a shift in the results that they can generate at work and in their larger lives. To build new competence takes practice, patience, and perseverance. It is therefore imperative that a developmental process be structured in a way that provides all of these elements. Here is a detailed look at the components that are typically involved in one of our complete programs. It is important to bear in mind that while all of this may seem complex in reading about it, in practice the elements flow smoothly together and are customized to meet the particular needs of each client.
We begin with a series of Assessments. Depending on the mandate that you give us we will deploy a cultural assessment, a productivity assessment, and or a series of interviews to establish baseline data, inform our program design, and set standards for measuring our performance.
We then begin the process of deploying our work. That processes typically includes some of the following:
An Off-Site Core Training Session that serves as the kick start to the entire process.
Management Conferences—four to seven 2-day meetings where new competencies are introduced and existing practices are honed and improved. This means the entire project will run for 5 to 9 months depending on scheduling nuances.
Project Teams—work related teams addressing key current organizational issues as the means for putting new competencies to work.
Coaching—hands-on work that develops the competencies and practices. This is the key to the success of the project.
Assignments - at the end of each conference there will be an assignment. The assignments are the means by which new practices get put in place, as they will require the managers to use the material that was introduced in the conference. A central element of the assignments will be determining projects that align with the company's strategic agenda and at the same time generate revenue increases or cost savings that pay for the expense of the program.
Core Training Session
The first step in working with a client group is a 4 1/2-day off-site session. This is the kick-off event for the long-term process and is critical as it sets the tone and standard for the rest of the process. The event is designed to be residential, as we want to immerse the team completely in their learning. The days are long and the pace is quick. The purpose of the session is:
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To generate a powerful unified commitment to the values, vision and mission of the company. This will include work on declaring a clear mission and strategic design for the future. |
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To increase the team's willingness and competence in learning |
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To enhance the trust among the team members |
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To shift the mood of the team to one of unified ambition - to generate a new spirit of accountability |
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To produce a basic alignment about the changes necessary for the organization |
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To organize the team for the ongoing process of the management development |
We will do classroom work on what we consider the basics of being a team. Concepts such as awareness, choice, accountability, commitment, trust, honesty, and integrity will be covered and practiced. We will introduce a centering practice so that the team will have a take home skill at managing personal stress. This centering practice will serve as the foundation for the somatic work that will be a central theme of the entire engagement. We will do a ropes course with the team. This provides them with the experience of being able to transcend boundaries and come to see that most of the barriers that they face are in their minds. Another component of this off-site will be a series of communication practices. This work is designed to build trust and awareness within the team. There will be observable results from this session in the realm of trust, openness, cooperation, mood, and alignment. It is a long week and at the completion of it the team will report that they wouldn't trade the experience for anything. Many of them will report that they have never been more invigorated, excited, and alive. At the same time, the real work of building competence begins with the management conferences.
Management Conferences
The Management Conferences are where the process of competence building takes place. Each of the 2-day sessions are interactive and provide the whole team with an opportunity to come together to review, learn new concepts and work together to build new management practices. These Management Conferences are scheduled to take place every 6-8 weeks, with the first two sessions scheduled closer together to generate initial momentum. Unlike the Core Program these conferences are not residential. They can be conducted at any off-site hotel or conference center and take place during normal business hours.
There are a series of program elements that will be delivered in these sessions. The exact sequence will depend upon our design conversations with the client and how the team performs in the off-site. It is highly probable that the following pieces show up in the working sessions. We conclude each conference by giving the participants a structured written assignment that provides a small amount of reading to provide them with a reference for the content of the conference and exercises and practices that build on the concepts and skills introduced in that conference.
The participants are grouped into their Project Teams and work on the assignments in two scheduled meetings between conferences. The coach attends and guides these Project Team meetings.
The work that we will do in these sessions will focus on:
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Identifying and managing Action Cycles - this is the foundation for the work of redesigning the organization |
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Mobilizing and leading teams |
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Recognizing and managing moods |
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Building new practices for managing meetings |
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Managing projects as a network of commitments |
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| • | New practices for building and re-building trust | |
| • | Introducing and practicing somatic work designed to generate the "body of a leader," which in this case means someone who can stay centered in the face of chaos | |
| • | Introducing a way of seeing the world so that your team sees simplicity, even though the rest of the world is confused by complexity | |
| • | Building a new capacity to generate customer satisfaction and innovation | |
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Shifting the identity of the team members so that the greater organization sees them as people who can get things done, anticipate and manage breakdowns, and listen to concerns |
The competencies these conferences build include:
Learning - A new interpretation based on the development of new competence. This will be important, as building the appetite for learning is essential for a high performing team. We will work diligently to shift the old interpretation and build new practices and an appropriate mood for learning.
Listening - In this case we offer new distinctions about the phenomenon of listening and then quickly move into the development of new practices for listening. This is an essential awareness tool and one of the fundamental practices for building trust and management competencies.
Assessments/Assertions - There is a myth in organizational cultures that we have lots of facts on which we can base our strategies and actions. The purpose of this element is to show people that for the most part there are very few facts in business. There are lots of assessments that masquerade as facts and it is vital for a manager to be able to know the difference. We will show your team how to distinguish facts from opinion and how action is based on informed opinion.
Teams - We will spend a lot of time working on the real practices for building teams. This is a competence that managers must have and one that once learned becomes a career enhancing competence. Included in the set of competencies for building a real team are practices for:
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Producing ownership of the values, vision, mission, and strategy |
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Practices for generating trust |
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Practices for generating a mood for success |
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Clarity about areas of responsibility |
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Clarity about authority and the team's relationship to it |
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| • | Practices for innovation | |
| • | Clarity about the standards for success. |
Mobilizing Action - We will continue work with the Action Cycle and work with the managers on how to use these elements to produce the organizational results they are committed to achieve. The value in this is that people begin to see the pieces that are missing in their everyday practices. This enables the managers to take new actions as they see that their role is to manage cycles of commitment and satisfaction, not activities. The net result is a dramatically higher level of productivity, effectiveness, and an increase in trust.
Communication Practices - One of the fundamental ongoing breakdowns in every team is in communication and coordination. At the simplest level there are basic practices for keeping people informed. At the higher level, which is where we intend to work, there are the more challenging practices for being authentic with each other. This means learning to share assessments in a way that evokes new action as opposed to upset. It means being current with any withheld communications and learning how to deal with potentially difficult communications until they are complete. The practices that we will introduce are what we call accountable communication practices. These include practices for both listening and speaking that enable people to take ownership for their communication and enhance their identities as leaders and managers.
Projects - Work today is an ongoing series of projects. Many people have learned some version of project management, but most of this historical work centers around managing activities to a time line. We want to begin with customer concerns, planning practices, and project design. From there we will move to the Design of Action, Project Review sessions, Completion, and Customer Satisfaction cycles.
Meetings - The bane of all organizations. We will introduce people to the four basic types of business meetings: speculation, planning, decision-making, and review. There are different practices for running each type of meeting and it is essential that a manager is clear about which sort of meeting he or she is either running or attending.
Somatic Practices - These are essential to the developmental process and are unique to the work that we have developed. Somatic refers to practices that are oriented around the body. This includes basic and advanced centering practices, building what we call the body of a leader, and bringing forth dignity in bodily form. These practices are essential to the work and will prove invaluable to the participants.
Being a Good Customer - This is both a distinction and a set of practices that will be critical in shifting the performance and structure of the organization. One of the ways that leaders build power is by being rigorous customers. This means that you are clear in your articulation of conditions of satisfaction, hold people to managing their promises, and are clear about completing action cycles with a declaration of satisfaction. There is much more to say about this, but that is the basic premise.
At the completion of this work you and your team are then ready for the advanced work that touches on leadership, innovation, strategy, and power. These are more complex subjects and our unique approach is not readily captured in a few summary lines. What you can count on is that we have new ways of seeing and teaching these essential elements of business.
Project Teams
The work of integrating new practices occurs in the Project Teams. Prior to the Core Program, we work with the company executives and senior staff to put the managers onto Project Teams. There are two basic approaches to project team structure. One is to put people who naturally work together on the same team so they can learn how to be more effective. The other is to put people from across the organization on a team so that while they will also learn to be more effective, the diversity of membership will help break down the smokestacks in the organization. The Project Teams will meet twice between each Management Conference. A Coach will attend each meeting to insure that progress is being made and provide coaching for dealing with the expected breakdowns. Each team meeting will run approximately two hours. The purpose of the meetings is to provide a forum in which the managers share what they are learning, work on the areas where they are having difficulty, and move the practices to the next level by hearing how their teammates are doing at innovating with the new practices. As part of their learning each of the team members will have an opportunity to fulfill the role of team leader. He or she will be responsible insuring that assignments are complete, people attend the meeting, the meeting runs smoothly, and that commitments are made and managed.
Coaching
Central to the entire process are the coaches who will be working directly with the Project Teams and on an individual basis with a select group of the senior team. The coach in this case has a demanding dual role. On one hand he/she is a resource whose promise is to develop the competence of the members of the team. To fulfill on this promise, the coach will use all of his experience to assist each member of the team to move forward in his/her development.
On the other hand, the coach is a customer who must be satisfied. In this case, he/she must be satisfied that the members of the team are doing the work and not just going through the motions. Our commitment to you is that we will do everything we can to develop the competence of your team. We have infinite patience with people who are working to learn and having difficulties, and we will devote whatever time and resources it takes to help them be successful. At the same time, we have little patience with people who are pretenders or are just going through the process to look good and avoid being left out. In short order, we will invite these people to move outside the circle of learners. This is one of the ways in which we can support you in managing the company's resources.
Why is coaching so critical? Because it ties everything together. It is the means by which we take the distinctions that are introduced in the Management Conferences and turn them into practices. The role of the coach is to work with the team members to bring the practices alive and insure that they are put to work on the job.
What we have learned over the years is that people will naturally fall back into their historical mode of action if there is not a strong support system in place to assist them in making changes. This is why most educational and training efforts fail. The student goes off, gains understanding, is not taught any new practices, and has no ongoing support system. This is especially true in organizations as the organizational norms have a very strong pull. Thus the coaches will be on-site throughout the program. They will work to put in place the new practices and help the team along as the normal breakdowns associated with new learning occur. Their role is to prevent that back sliding that typically occurs. It is the quality of the coaching that will make the program a success.
Assignments
As part of each conference participants will be given an assignment. These are not typical "homework" assignments. The purpose of these assignments is to give the managers real time experience in using their new practices. Each assignment will include a small bit of reading, new practices to put to work on the job, and an opportunity to look at their real time work in a new way. Initially the assignments will show up as an addition to already full lives. However, by the time the 4th assignment comes out the managers will find that they have more time in their days. They will be a bit more relaxed and have the capacity to look in a different manner to their future.
As a critical example, one of their initial assignments will be to use the new practices they have learned to generate a project for themselves and their team to work on. The project must meet three conditions of qualification.
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It must be critical to the success of the business. The CEO will be the final arbiter of the alignment of the proposed project with the strategic objectives of the company. |
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It must be something that requires a team to complete. This ensures that the manager learns the practices we are teaching for constituting and managing teams. We don't want them to simply go off on their own and do something. We are looking for projects of a larger scale. |
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The project must generate 10x the amount of money in new revenue or cost savings to the company as was spent on the manager to take part in the program. This means that in the end it will cost the company nothing to have accomplished this dramatic redesign of the organization. |
The promise of the projects is to not only give the managers hands on experience, but to pay for the expense of the project by generating cost savings to the company. The goal is to free up 10x the amount of revenue that was spent on the project. What we will be looking for are projects that either generate new revenue or cut the cost of administering services, that eliminate waste and redundancy, or that redesign entire processes. To qualify the project must eliminate expenses from the budget. It will not be sufficient to simply transfer them to another department's budget. A final element of the assignments will entail teaching part of what they are learning to others. A critical element to the ongoing success of this initiative will be making the new practices that we teach the managers a permanent part of the organizations culture. One way to ensure that this occurs is to give the managers the assignment of teaching what they are learning to the people that work for them. We will select some of the critical elements of the process and as part of the assignments have the managers spend time with their teams in teaching. This not only drives the work deeper into the organization; it enhances the learning of the managers.