What if the ‘Best’ already exists?

Let’s just say you’re looking for a leadership competency framework; a coaching structure or even a set of sales behaviours to assess and benchmark your team with. Say you look externally, you buy in this expertise and set about training your teams to ‘fit’ someone else’s best practice.That’s certainly one way of spending your money.

Alternatively, there’s another way of looking at this that requires you to adopt a different paradigm – the belief that ‘best’ is sitting in front of your eyes and in plentiful abundance already within your organisation. All it takes is some discovery, gentle probing and a fascination for what your people see, believe and know. I’ve learned never to underestimate the power of people feeling consulted and listened to, and the crafting of an in house, bespoke framework is a genuine joy to behold!

Once your own framework is completed and presented back, it requires no ‘selling’ to your staff (“this is why we’ve chosen such and such an approach..”) it obtains instant ‘buy in’ (they fashioned it after all) and its written in your language. I’ve only ever seen people positively ask for the ‘how’, having gained insight into the ‘what could be’. Two further critical factors make this approach worth considering: 1) its sustainable (it doesn’t go out of fashion when the director who bought it leaves); and 2) you own it. Unpalatable for most training organisations, but vital for yours…