Training can be bought outside, but learning is built inside

What the problem is

Almost nobody who runs a team was ever taught how to do it. Sometimes they learned by watching whoever was there before, and hardly ever on a training plan that was executing a budget.

• Training exhausts itself on the mandatoryHealth and safety, regulatory compliance, basic office software… the training plan usually closes the year with the budget spent and the indicator met, but nobody could say what the organisation does today that it wasn't doing in January.
• Everything else is learned by imitationWhoever arrives copies whoever was there. That is how the good and the bad get inherited with no filter, and the organisation calls it culture. It is real learning, but it is not directed learning: nobody chose what was being passed on.
• Technical training is provided and the rest is assumedA person is promoted for how well they did their previous job, which was almost never managing. Technical training is sorted and budgeted; training in running teams is assumed to come with the appointment.
• Training arrives late, if it arrivesThe course is scheduled once the problem has already shown itself: a demotivated team, a decision that was never taken, a conflict that escalated. By then the person has been doing the job for two years and their habits are set.
• Nobody has written down what will not be learnedWithout that list you learn a bit of everything and none of it properly, and the plan ends up being the sum of the individual requests that arrived in time.

The starting point

Before anything is designed there are four questions. Almost no organisation has all four answers, and that is precisely the diagnosis.

• Is training centred on the mandatory and on one-off courses?If the whole plan can be explained by listing courses, it isn't a learning plan: it's a calendar. A learning plan is explained by listing what the organisation will have to know how to do in two years and cannot do today.
• How much of the learning happens through imitation and experience?It is the large part and it is almost never measured. It is worth knowing how much of what is learned here is taught by the culture, because that is what no master's degree is going to correct.
• Is it written down what is expected of someone who runs a team?Without that, training is a gamble. With a leadership model defined and assessed, the programme is designed on the measured gap between what matters and what is exercised today, and not on guesswork.
• Is anyone translating the strategy into a learning agenda?That is: is there someone whose job is to decide what those who lead will have to know how to do two years from now? If the answer is that training takes care of that, the answer is no.

What training for leadership means

A course delivers content that existed before the organisation turned up. Training is the opposite: you start from a problem the organisation has open right now and work with the people who will have to solve it. It requires three conditions, and all three have to hold at once.

• CONDITION 1In-houseThe classroom is the organisation. People are not sent away to learn separately: you work with the whole group, or with the relevant tier, in their own context, in their own language and with their real constraints on the table.
• CONDITION 2Made to measureThe content is written for this problem and for this organisation. A decision-making module in a university and the same module in an industrial plant share the conceptual frame and share almost nothing else.
• CONDITION 3On a real use caseEvery module works on a problem the organisation genuinely has open. Not a business-school case: one of their own, with their data and their names. The module's deliverable can be used the following Monday.

From that comes the principle that orders everything else: you learn while you work. If the programme requires stopping the organisation in order to learn, the programme is badly designed.

Who translates strategy into learning

In most organisations nobody has that job. Training runs a catalogue, human resources runs a budget, and senior management approves a plan it never discussed. The missing function is the one other houses call the Chief Learning Officer, and you don't have to create the post to exercise it: you need somebody to do these four things.

• Translates the strategy into a learning agendaIf the strategic plan says growth has to come from innovation, the agenda has to say who needs to learn how to do that and by when. That translation is not automatic and is almost never written down.
• Designs learning contexts, not contentCross-cutting projects, mixed teams, peer learning and structured reflection on the work. Content can be bought; context has to be built, and it is what makes what was learned stay.
• Connects learning to decisionsA programme whose output enters no decision — on structure, on promotion, on project assignment — is a programme the organisation will stop funding the moment cuts are needed.
• Works with senior management, not only with human resourcesThe learning agenda is decided where the strategy is decided. If the only counterpart is the training department, the programme is born already disconnected from what it is meant to serve.

How the work runs

The design is short work and the delivery is long. The sequence starts with senior management, comes down to the group that is going to learn, and goes back to senior management to decide what is done with what was learned.

1. From priorities to agendaSession with senior management. The priorities are identified and translated into learning: what this organisation has to know how to do in two years that it cannot do today. It is the one session that cannot be delegated.
2. Diagnosis of the current systemThe four questions from the starting point, applied with data: what is being trained today, for whom, on what budget and with what evidence of impact.
3. Who has to learn whatEach strategic learning objective is assigned to a specific group. Not "managers", but which people and why. This is where a prior leadership model, if there is one, saves half the work.
4. How each thing is learnedThe vehicle is chosen: on the job, mentoring, project or formal session. The formal session is one option out of four, not the starting point.
5. What is not prioritisedThe list of what will not be learned this year is written down and communicated. It is the uncomfortable part and the one that makes the plan a plan and not a wish.
6. Designing the modules on real casesEach module is built around an open problem of the organisation, with its deliverable. The house provides the case. The design of the module and its fit within the programme are mine.
7. Choosing the teaching staffThe right person is found for each module, inside or outside. A serious programme is not delivered by a single voice: you call in whoever can best say each thing.
8. Delivery and supportCoordination of the programme and follow-up of the deliverables between modules, which is where learning is lost if nobody holds it.
9. Evaluation and decisionsAttendance, ratings and, above all, what has entered a decision. That is what decides whether it runs again, which modules stay and which are withdrawn.

The modules that come up most

Every agenda is different, but after a fair number of engagements the same six topics appear. They are not a catalogue: they are the places where almost every group that leads has the same gap. The topic repeats; the content is rewritten from scratch every time, on that house's own case.

• Alignment: from strategy to teamThe most requested by a distance. Translating the strategic plan into objectives for your own area, prioritising the unit's portfolio and accounting for what was decided. Where a leadership model already exists, the module is designed on the key functions that came out weak in the assessment.
• Communication, meetings and difficult conversationsCommunication in all three directions, designing and running meetings that are worth something, and explaining the reasoning behind unpopular decisions. It is the module where working on the house's own cases shows most.
• Decision-making and delegationDeciding with judgement under uncertainty, delegating with real autonomy, and facing conflict instead of waiting for it to sort itself out. Delegation is always the hardest part.
• Change management and resistanceThe phases of a change project, the map of who loses what with each one, and negotiating agreements that hold. The work is done on a change the organisation genuinely has under way, not on a textbook case.
• Leadership and innovationHow it is decided what gets tried, on what budget, who can stop a trial and who has the authority to say no. It is a module about governance, not about creativity. And how you get the initiative to come from inside — intrapreneurship — instead of buying it outside.
• People, motivation and climateLevers of motivation, managing your own emotions and the team's, and the effect a manager has on the climate. It includes the question nobody asks in these programmes: who looks after the ones who look after everybody else.

What the programme produces

• The learning agendaWhat someone who leads in this house has to know how to do, who exactly, how and with what expected impact, in a table that senior management signs. Plus the list of what stays out this year.
• The designed programmeModules, hours, sequence, use cases, deliverables and teaching staff, in the form of a university-awarded qualification or a microcredential if the organisation can issue them. Ready to run, with or without my involvement.
• The deliverables from each moduleBecause each module is built on a real problem, at the end the organisation doesn't have lecture notes: it has work done on its own affairs.
• The evidence for deciding whether to run it againAttendance, ratings and a trail of what entered decisions. It is what lets you defend next year's budget without appealing to faith.

What makes it different

A full deployment

At the Universidad Pública de Navarra, the training programme was the natural outcome of the leadership model: first it was defined what was expected of those who lead and measured how it was being exercised, and the programme was designed on that gap.

It was organised as a university-awarded qualification, in five modules, with external teaching staff selected for each block and open at the same time to administrative and service staff and to teaching and research staff, who until then had been trained separately.

• Transformational leadership20 hoursNew principles and facilitating change. The longest module, and deliberately so: it sets the frame all the others use afterwards.
• Innovative leadership16 hoursHow you lead when what has to be achieved does not exist yet. Challenge, larger purpose and a systemic view.
• Strategic leadership and advanced management8 hoursTranslating the strategic plan into the area of each person who runs a team.
• Leadership and workplace climate8 hoursInterdependence between units and the effect a manager has on the team's climate.
• Leadership that inspires and builds a team12 hoursThe close of the programme, focused on building a team and not only on managing one.

Who it works for

• Industry and corporationsWhen technical training is sorted and management training is not, and people are promoted to run teams without having learned how to do it anywhere.
• Universities and R&D centresWhen administrative staff and academic staff are trained separately and have never worked together on a shared problem of the institution.
• Public administrationWhen the training plan is set by whatever is on offer and by regulation, and there is no mechanism connecting it to what the organisation has set out to achieve.
• Organisations with professional managersHealth, education or technical services, where whoever leads got there through clinical, teaching or technical excellence and nobody has trained them for the other part.

How to commission it

What your organisation puts in

• Senior management, at the start and at the endAt the start to translate the strategy into a learning agenda, and at the end to decide what enters decisions. Without those two sessions the programme turns into a better-written catalogue.
• Real use cases, with their dataGenuinely open problems, not teaching examples. It is the condition that makes the programme produce work rather than lecture notes, and it demands a certain willingness to show the seams.
• Recognised time, not added timeThe programme hours and the hours for the interim deliverables have to be in the diary as work. A programme done outside working hours is abandoned by the third module.
• Accepting the list of exclusionsSaying out loud what will not be learned this year produces an uncomfortable conversation or two. That is the price of the plan meaning something.
• A counterpart who can decideSomeone able to close content, calendar and participants without having to consult on every point. It can be the management office, the head of people or whoever the organisation designates, but they have to be able to decide.

How it is closed

The scope is set in an initial conversation: whether the brief is only the design of the agenda and the programme, or also includes coordination and delivery; how many modules, which group and what external teaching staff need to be brought in. Each engagement is quoted on that basis.