B EST P RACTICES C ONFERENCE 2013 R APID S KILL D EVELOPMENT : M EETING T OMORROW ' S N EEDS B EFORE T OMORROW A RRIVES P RESENTED BY S AM A LLRED D IRECTOR AT U PSTREAM A CADEMY, LLC B EST P RACTICES 2013

B EST P RACTICES C ONFERENCE 2013 “Since professional firms sell skill, talent, knowledge, and ability, it follows that any firm that can outperform its competition in building and creating skills will gain a significant competitive advantage.” David H. Maister W HAT D OES T HIS Q UOTE M EAN ? 2

B EST P RACTICES C ONFERENCE 2013 “Competitive advantage does not come from an ability to hire better people than your competitors do, but from a superior ability to develop them.” David H. Maister W HAT D OES T HIS Q UOTE M EAN ? 3

B EST P RACTICES C ONFERENCE 2013 Is it possible to outperform your competitors in building and creating skills? Q UESTION 4

B EST P RACTICES C ONFERENCE What advantages would you get if you outperformed your competitors in skill-building at all levels? Take 7 minutes and discuss this at your table. T ABLE D ISCUSSION

B EST P RACTICES C ONFERENCE 2013  O BSERVATIONS A BOUT T RAINING 6

B EST P RACTICES C ONFERENCE While we generally do a good job of providing technical training, we often do a poor job of training our people in the skills that will have a significant impact on their personal success. Few firms have a process for training their people in the vital leadership skills. O BSERVATION #1

B EST P RACTICES C ONFERENCE “Most firms are pretty good at training their people in the technical core of their profession, but few work actively at developing some of the critical skills that determine the professional’s success.” David H. Maister

B EST P RACTICES C ONFERENCE 2013 What are “some of the critical skills that determine [a] professional’s success?” Q UESTION 9

B EST P RACTICES C ONFERENCE One of the fundamental goals of every firm should be to retain its best and brightest people. One of the best ways to earn loyalty is to help your people make the most of their careers. Great training helps to do this. O BSERVATION #2

B EST P RACTICES C ONFERENCE 2013 How can great training help your people make the most of their careers? Q UESTION 11

B EST P RACTICES C ONFERENCE Too many individuals view meeting the annual CPE requirement as synonymous with meeting an individual’s training needs. In some ways this has cheapened the overall training experience for many within our profession. O BSERVATION #3

B EST P RACTICES C ONFERENCE Too often, firms commit significant resources to annual or semi-annual training marathons that seem to ignore all we know about the ability of the human mind to process and retain new information. O BSERVATION #4

B EST P RACTICES C ONFERENCE Most firms have not established written training standards and, as a result, the quality of the training experience can vary greatly and is at a much lower level than it should be. O BSERVATION #5

B EST P RACTICES C ONFERENCE Too often, we send individuals to CPE courses or conferences with very few expectations regarding what they are to learn, do, and bring back. As a result, we often have minimal results to show for the firm’s investment in training. O BSERVATION #6

B EST P RACTICES C ONFERENCE We do very little testing within our firms and so we really don’t know how effective our training is. We seem far more content to comply with the CPE hour requirement than to help team members move to the next skill level. O BSERVATION #7

B EST P RACTICES C ONFERENCE 2013  K EYS T O R APID S KILL D EVELOPMENT 17

B EST P RACTICES C ONFERENCE Increase expectations. Be more appropriately demanding early in an individual’s career that they become an expert in one of more areas. 2.No tolerance for under-delegation. No one in the firm should be working below his/her pay grade. All work should be pushed down to the appropriate level. K EYS T O R APID S KILL D EVELOPMENT

B EST P RACTICES C ONFERENCE Willingness to move someone out of his/her comfort zone. Comfort zones need to be viewed as career anchors. 4.Proactively schedule your best people on your best opportunities. 5.Ensure one-on-one shadowing occurs. K EYS T O R APID S KILL D EVELOPMENT

B EST P RACTICES C ONFERENCE Insist on an effective client screening process as part of a well-organized, constant push to upgrade the caliber of work brought in. 7.Use technology more effectively to teach critical skills. Consider video on demand training. K EYS T O R APID S KILL D EVELOPMENT

B EST P RACTICES C ONFERENCE Focus as much on the necessary transfer of knowledge as you do on the transfer of clients. K EYS T O R APID S KILL D EVELOPMENT

B EST P RACTICES C ONFERENCE 2013 Q UESTIONS A ND A NSWERS 22

B EST P RACTICES C ONFERENCE 2013 Thank You! 23