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A Management Development Program for Rompetrol implemented by Human Invest
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A Management Development Program for Rompetrol implemented by Human Invest
More and more often companies, regardless of their size, see management training as being a very important investment.
They consider it to be indispensible in this extremely bustling and equivocal business environment where we have an accelerated decrease in employee loyalty, energy and commitment.
A. Project Status-Quo
In the case of the "Leadership interaction into action" project, that has been implemented in the Rompetrol Group since July 2007 till May 2008, the reasons couldn’t have been any clearer: the business’ rapid expansion required that a large number of senior managers be able to develop competent managers at all operational levels.
The main objectives of the organization and the problems to be solved were:
• Understanding and practicing the abilities and behaviors necessary to leaders who had obtained results due to their entrepreneurial spirit, professional experience and technical know-how
• Using the same set of instruments/ knowledge for all the managers within the group in implementing the succession plan and management performance process
• The lack of a common and coherent program for developing management abilities at group level
The solution proposed by Human Invest consisted of two stages:
1. Between July 2007 - February 2008, we had our first two day training sessions using the most practical solution for management development in Human Invest’s arsenal, Situational Leadership©II.
2. After a few months we had a one day follow-up in order to strengthen the knowledge base and refine the abilities learned in the first part.
During the course of this program, all the managers developed their ability to diagnose the employees’ needs, they learned how to be more flexible and how to adapt their leadership language and style to the situations they face every day. The purpose was to enhance both performance and employee satisfaction.
The team responsible for implementing the project consisted of: two project managers, one from Human Invest and one from Rompetrol, a logistics support team and HR managers from Rompetrol, supported by the Internal Communication department.
Andrei Gheorghe, Learning and Development Manager at Rompetrol, has the following opinion regarding the project:
"Our mission was to find efficient solutions for developing abilities that bring added value for all our employees, in order to support company strategy.
Basically we followed our objectives: supporting the implementation of the succession plan within the organization, understanding leadership styles and being able to adapt them to different situations, developing entrepreneurial spirit, proactive and interpersonal communication abilities. 230 senior and middle managers from all the Rompetrol business-units took part in the program."
Satisfaction study
At the end of the program we conducted a study in order to asses both the level of the participants’ satisfaction regarding the courses and the degree to which they developed their management abilities.
This report highlights the key benefits obtained as a result of participating:
• 86% of participants understand how to adapt their leadership style to their employees’ needs and level of development
• 76% of participants say they gained the necessary abilities in order to increase employee performance and satisfaction
• 68% of participants consider that practicing this method will increase employee responsibility, autonomy and performance
• 97% of participants would recommend this program to other colleagues
The Internal Communication department was also involved in order to make sure that the program was in sync with the strategic priorities the company had at that certain point.
Daniela Velescu, Event Marketing & Internal Communication Department, explains the role her department played in this project: "During the course of this program, Internal Communication assisted participants step by step. The interest towards this program can be seen by the large number of managers involved as well as the efforts and high commitment of the company."
B. The Program’s Value
Knowing the expectations of our client and the business experience of the participants, the impact on all those involved surpassed Human Invest’s expectations. Below we have a list of the added benefits:
• A new common management and leadership language was developed at the high levels of the organization
• A large number of general managers decided that the program should be implemented for middle management as well
• The presence of Leadership Team guests in certain groups made for energetic debates with the participants
• People from the same business unit, that had no previous contact with each other because they worked in different companies, had a chance to get to know one another at a personal level and talk openly about the difficulties they face as managers and the solutions they discovered
• The relaxed atmosphere of the sessions ant the different fun activities that were organized were welcomed by the participants as a chance to get away from the day to day professional life
C. The difficulties met in the implementation process
Implementing such a large scale program, in a corporation as big as it is dynamic, is not without obstacles:
1. Once the supplier and the program were agreed, the period in which we had to prepare was extremely short, 5-6 weeks. During this time we worked on the final message and made sure everybody in the company knew what the program was about.
We wanted the vice-presidents of the Leadership Team to be tuned in to the project and also to join their business units in the program- something which proved very difficult seeing as their schedules were very busy (some were involved and some weren’t)
2. We rediscovered how difficult it is to convince people to forget about the management practices that had proved successful for the company, and learn to adapt, to be more flexible and inure new styles of working, better suited for the next stage the organization was preparing to go through
3. Due to the high number of participants involved and the short time we had at our disposal, any deviation from the plan required huge efforts when it came to rescheduling, and as a result the deadline was missed by two months
4. Due to the pressures of the business environment, unplanned emergencies, some of the tasks our participants had to do prove very difficult, some weren’t even completed. However we took advantage of the follow-up sessions in order to restate the importance of the "One to One" meetings in the management and leadership process.
D. Things we have learned:
• The larger the number of participants involved in a management development program, the simpler the program has to be (you have to develop a reduced number of abilities, the tasks have to be practical, clear and adjusted to the daily business priorities of the participants).
That is why, the tasks we gave were created in order to support other projects that were in development: implementing the performance management program and the start of the succession plan within the company
• The quality and rigor used in communicating with participants, management involvement and project managers contribute as much as quality does to the overall success of the implementation
• The strategic positioning of management development programs and the way the internal brand is created are indispensible in assuring a return-on-investment proportional with the costs. Otherwise you simply have another training program with no results. Thus involving those responsible with internal communication from the very beginning is of the utmost importance
• Due to the high impact recorded, the entire project team understood the value of quality accessories in the learning process: banners, pens, bags, movies, personalized t-shirts that build program identity up to the different surprises the participants had after the course (diplomas, photos, special mouse-pads).
Viorel Panaite,
Partner
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Human Invest is a Premier League company in the arena of training and
organizational development consultancy services, present on the Romanian market since 1998.
We are recognized for conceiving and implementing programs which offer managers an authentic experience towards improving their leadership
performances, and thus we support companies in becoming more and more engaged in delivering excellent services for their clients.
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