Chief Learning Officer - December 2007 - (Page 72) LEADERSHIP Silver, Division 1 Matthew Bertman, National Director, Leadership Development, Pulte Homes Over the past year, Pulte Homes faced rapid growth and then a sudden downturn in the housing market. This situation created the challenge of thriving in times of growth, then surviving during an industry downturn. Matthew Bertman, the national director of leadership development for Pulte Homes and winner of the Silver Award in the Leadership category of Chief Learning Officer magazine’s Learning In Practice awards, led the charge in creating a leadership program that could quickly ramp up quality leaders in the organization. This helped save Pulte Homes, as strong leadership is helping guide the organization through a slower home-building economy. Silver, Division 2 Kimberly Kelly, Director of Training and Development, Paychex Inc. Kim Kelly, director of the University of Paychex and winner of the Silver Award in the Leadership category of Chief Learning Officer magazine’s Learning In Practice awards, is something of a perfectionist. In spite of already having won external awards for training and being recognized internally as an important part of the organization’s success, Kelly wanted to improve the function in areas such as ROI measures and leveraging technology investments. To do this, she worked to get her senior managers engaged to establish a guiding coalition. She took them off-site for a day to lay out the case for change and challenged them to work as a team to come up with a plan. Senior business leaders were brought in to help the team better understand the strategic business issues. Kelly presented her proposed list of goals to the team, and they discussed each one to ensure it was aligned with business goals. Her managers were then asked to go back and prepare a long-term strategy for each goal, which they presented at a second off-site meeting Kelly then chartered a group of employees to design a department learning event, using external presenters, to learn more about ongoing training and blended learning. Training gurus Elliot Masie and Bob Mosher spoke at this event, and their presentations significantly helped establish a sense of urgency and desire to change. Kelly and her managers made a commitment to embrace what they all heard that day. Meetings were then held with the next level of training management, and then with all employees to review the strategy and get their input and buy-in. As a result, the University of Paychex now has a documented, comprehensive, three-year strategic plan for training and development. The plan is posted in every training manager’s office and on the company’s intranet. Every training department used this plan as the basis for their fiscal year 2008 training and development plans, and there are action plans in place for every goal. Bertman was initially challenged to build leadership skills with a core group of 2,500 managers. His solution was based upon building a Foundations of Management Program, focusing on three core principles within the Pulte organization: skills, standards and style. Leadership training has allowed Pulte to minimize staff reduction during the industry downturn while remaining competitive in the marketplace. The skills competency focused on building leadership expertise in recruiting, retention, performance management and compliance; the standards competency focused on building seven core leadership standards; and the style competency targeted building one’s own personal “brand” of leadership, which integrated with the Pulte leadership culture but still allowed an individual to express his personal style of management. Since it was unveiled, more than 4,000 managers have been certified in Foundations of Management, which has in turn fostered a “Top Gun” leadership mentoring program, a new community of practice within Pulte Homes. Also, the Problem Solving Council — a tactical group of leaders that was formed as part of this initiative — has been in place for one year and has provided solutions for 10 major initiatives throughout the organization. Most importantly, leadership training has allowed Pulte to minimize staff reduction during the industry downturn while remaining competitive in the marketplace. December 2007 I www.clomedia.com I Chief Learning Officer 72 http://www.clomedia.com
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