Martyn Sloman: Martyn Sloman reflects on lessons learned during his 40-year working life

Training Journal, Nov, 2008 by Martyn Sloman

Having just celebrated 40 years as a member of the workforce, I would like to use this month's column to offer a personal reflection. What is the most important lesson that I have learned in all those years as a corporate training manager?

My answer will doubtless depress training purists. The main lesson has nothing to do with the psychology of individual learning, the techniques of instruction or, still less, the minutiae of evaluation. The main lesson is about the management of training and safeguarding relationships in the organisation.

The underlying point is simple: never get between the dog and the lamp-post. Let me illustrate through an example of a failure to observe that maxim. This occurred when I was head of human resource development at NatWest Markets between 1992 and 1995.

NatWest Markets was created by the merger of three subsidiaries of the major banking group, which was then one of the nation's most trusted brands. Following some subsequent catastrophic business ventures, NatWest is now part of the Royal Bank of Scotland. The intention, in the early 90s, was to create an investment bank with the size and expertise to challenge the big US players like Goldman Sachs. I can only say that it sounded like a good idea at the time.

The three constituent parts of the merged organisation were very different in character. Two had been City-based organisations, one in capital markets and the other in stockbroking and venture capital. These were full of aggressive young people who embraced the Thatcherite values of the time; they had a transactional, almost mercenary, approach to their job and their employer. They felt no loyalty to the parent NatWest group.

The third constituency, by contrast, felt almost a reverence for the parent organisation. They were involved in corporate lending and had grown up in the retail bank.

The intention, following the merger, was to create a collegiate organisation with a single culture and single values. Some hope. Where the problem came my way was over career development. Here's where I got caught between the dog and the lamp post.

Those who had joined NatWest Markets from the corporate lending arm had participated in the retail bank's career assessment programme. All managers were, some five years into their career, required to participate in an assessment centre. This 'tiering', as it was known, indicated potential and the five grades were:

E (executive)--you are a superstar and we will ensure that you are promoted well above your capability as this will prove that we were right in our assessment of you

S--you will be given a personal HR person to look after you and we will promote you as often as we can

A--OK, you may get to management level but it will be a long hard grind and, by the time you get there, you'll be knackered

B--keep coming to work because we need morons to do the dross jobs that nobody else will do

C--don't bother to come to work because you're rubbish (1).

The E tiers bore their badge with pride, safe in the understanding that 'a god in the sky' would nurture their career through interventions of a divine hand from on high. The creation of NatWest Markets meant for them, at least, that god was dead. How would this news be imparted?

The solution, by default, was by creating a new performance development and appraisal system. After the new system had been formulated, it was to be rolled out across NatWest Markets through workshops delivered by the training department.

I well remember the pain of these workshops. Multiple participants asked the same question in different forms: "Are you now telling me that the career guarantee by an organisation I joined after A-levels has been unilaterally withdrawn?" The answer, and there was no avoiding it, was yes. A follow-up of "It's not my fault, guv, and in my view it was daft to have given that assurance in the first place" would hardly have helped to assuage feelings.

Could I have managed it differently? In retrospect, probably yes. I could have tried to insist that a member of the management committee attended each of the sessions and made the terrible announcement. I would have been unpopular, but nowhere near as unpopular as I became.

To emphasise: trainers should never get caught between the dog and the lamp-post.

(1) Acknowledgements to my friend and former colleague David Bancroft-Turner, MD of the Academy for Political Intelligence, for his description of the tiering system.

Martyn Sloman is CIPD adviser in learning, training and development. From 1997-2000 he worked as director of management education and training for Ernst & Young. He is a visiting professor at Glasgow Caledonian and Kingston Universities. He can be contacted at m.sloman@cipd.co.uk