The value of the development discussion is often questioned. It is such a soft issue. Right at the core of all that fluffiness that HR has come to represent. That is why I want to reinforce: The value of the development discussion is very well validated.
22 years ago, Peter Bolinder, Lars Hessner and myself produced the first quantitative analysis linking these “soft” leadership areas to profitability. We had analyzed the profitability of different profit centers within a bank, a sales organization and an insurance company where I worked at the time. We found eleven key issues that explained 1/5 of the variance in profitability. The development discussion was one of these eleven issues.
Peter and Lars replicated this analysis ten years later, in a large nordic service company. ESI* still explained 20 percent of profitability.
In the summer of 2010, 20 years after the initial survey, we replicated this analysis again, in four different companies.
And it does not even end here. We test our indices a little now and then, but no commercial index I know of is validated as often, in as many different lines of business, with as consistent results, as this one. These key issues remain as important today as the were in 1990.
This feals good and bad. The good thing is that I can be pretty proud of the work we did back in 1990, when I was still young, promising and naive.
The bad thing is that the correlation is still there. If every manager had gotten the processes in this area to work this correlation would saturate and cease to exist. There is no sign of that happening.
Today the Swedish HR-magazine Personal & Ledarskap publishes an analysis of why that may be. Analyzing the data of some 460 000 surveys I have found that managers that get a good score for their development discussions also tend to be strong communicative leaders. They give more and better feedback, they have a better understanding of the work their subordinates are doing, and -above all- they make it happen!
By “it” I’m not talking about a general doer orientation. “It” here is whatever was discussed in the development discussion. Jan Knoph, a manager at one of our clients, OneMed, set me on this track when I asked him about his top scores in this area. “I don’t think my development discussions are any better than anyone elses” he said, “I think they are talking more about the monthly follow up meetings”.
Of course! Jan keeps monthly follow up meetings with every one of his direct reports in Norway and Denmark. In those meetings he follows up on what was decided in the development discussion.
That makes “it” happen. And that makes the development discussion drive profitability.
Most companies seem to focus to much of their energy on the actual discussion, and not enough on making sure the plans from that discussion are realized. This is a little bit like going to the doctor, but not following the advice you get there. If you’re not going to take the medication, that doctor’s visit is a waste of time.