First, You Must Understandthe Big Picture

One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. "Which road do I take?" she asked. "Where do you want to go?" was his response. "I don't know", Alice answered. "Then", said the cat, "it doesn't matter. When you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there." (Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass or the Adventures of Alice in Wonderland)

That fictional conversation between Alice and the Cheshire cat is very similar to the ones between clients and consultants when it comes to workforce development. The client knows they want help in changing the status quo but haven't put much thought into what they want it to become.

If you are considering a workforce development initiative in your organization and want to ask a consultant to guide you along, you must also consider your situation from the consultant's viewpoint. They will need, as a minimum, answers to these questions:

* Since the term "development" implies a change from a current situation to a desired one, how do you define where your workforce is now? (In other words, if you do not know where you are now, how can you tell if anything has gotten better?)

* What will be the characteristics of your workforce when you achieve that desired outcome? (Use objective, measurable terms as much as possible. Simply saying, "We want them to be more professional and customer friendly" doesn't help much.)

* How will you define success as we go along so you will know we are making progress (and that I have earned my fees?) (Workforce development is a process, not an event, and should include evaluation for payment at pre-determined objective milestones along the way. If you cannot justify your payments to a consultant based on results achieved, it will not be long until someone starts asking what the organization has gotten in return for all the money spent.

* What internal or external forces have brought you to this point of developing your workforce? (Do you suddenly have new leadership? Has your market changed? Is there new legislation that forces you to do this? Are there sudden changes in the demographics of your workforce? Do you anticipate a new product line or focus of business that is prompting this?)

Finally, if you are one of the leaders in the workforce development initiative for your organization, your credibility (and possible career) is at stake, also. If you do well, a new world of opportunities may open up. Or, if it does not work well and the organization expends a lot of time, money, and resources without much to show for it, you will be remembered for that, too.

The following are some typical questions that consultants will (or should) ask. They are not in any particular order and do not claim to be comprehensive. They are from my experience and I have probably left out many that should be included. At first glance, it may be tempting to ask about some of them, "What does this have to do with developing the workforce?"

Please keep in mind that developing the workforce may involve making alterations to the ingrained culture of the organization which has evolved over time. Enduring changes will not occur with just some surface activities over a few weeks or months. It took many years for your organization to get to the point where someone thinks there is a need for workforce development: you cannot expect to develop it into something else overnight.

The good thing about all of this is the more information you can supply to a consultant in the beginning improves your chances of getting the results you want in the end!

Where do you want to go - what do you want to become? (This is the Cheshire cat's question to Alice.)

What does success look like?

Productivity metrics (What measurements does your organization use to determine productivity? Can you describe the difference between being ‘productive' and just ‘busy'?)

Operations metrics (What metrics do you use to measure efficiency, cycle time, or anything else associated with the operations that support productivity?)

HR metrics (What metrics do you use to measure recruiting and retention? The profit per employee? Recruiting cycle time? How long does it take a new hire typically to become productive in various departments?)

Employee training (Do you have a training department? Is it a key part of the leadership team that proactively develops employees to support organizational goals or does training occur randomly as a reaction to internal requests? Is training seen as an investment or an expense? What follow-up is there after training events to make sure employees are applying the skills? What determines before the training whether the content is relevant to the business?)

How will you know if you are making progress toward what you want to become? (What requirements are there on department managers to monitor progress toward overall and departmental goals? Do they know how to do it?)

Who keeps track of the progress? (Is the progress of the various units within the organization compiled into one big picture - like the dashboard of a car - where someone (who?) - can monitor the progress of the organization?)

How will they keep track of it (metrics)? (Hard numbers, anecdotal reports, word-of-mouth, "if nothing has blown up, we must be doing OK")

How often do you check? (On a regular basis or when someone thinks to do it?)

Public (external) perception of us? (What does the general public think of us or do they even know we exist? Is that good or bad? Why?)

Workforce (internal) perception of us? (Would our employees encourage their friends to work here? Why or why not?)

When do you want to get there? (Is there a schedule involved? Are there trade offs within the schedule? For example, we can wait a little longer with the schedule if we can also gain X.)

Specific deadline - what & why?

Risks/rewards for making it or not

Where are you now? (Back to question #1)

Productivity metrics

Operations metrics

HR metrics

Public (external) perception of us

Workforce (internal) perception of us

Where were you before now? (We must compare our situation now to a point in the past or as many points in the past as we can identify to learn if there are any obvious trends we must consider.)

Productivity metrics

Operations metrics

HR metrics

What happened to bring you to here? (Did the event that brought us to this point come from the inside - "we let things get so bad...." - or externally beyond your control?)

What's the chance of it happening again? (Stop - Start - Continue analysis. What should we stop doing, start doing, or continue doing as we go forward?)

Lessons learned (Do we share lessons learned internally or keep making the same mistakes over and over again?)

Why do you want to go there/become that? (Is the reason strong enough to endure the time, money, and resources we must devote to a successful outcome or is it some executive's whim that may change next week?)

Business - market driven

Cultural - major change in leadership/ownership

Something else?

Who are you now? Describe your corporate culture regarding:

The quality of your leadership top to bottom (Studies have shown that employees are more prone to stay with/or leave their leaders, NOT the employer. The quality of the leadership is essential in the success of any workforce development initiative because they may have to make some changes, too!)

The extent of your leadership development activities top-to-bottom (What planned programs do you have to develop talent internally or do you always hire it?)

The skill of your HR department (Is your HR Department more focused on rules and regulations - processes - than on solutions and improving the organization?)

Recruiting and retention skills and metrics (Are there planned and sustained efforts to recruit and retain employees? Why would an existing employee want to work for your organization and not do the same job somewhere else? Why would a potential employee want to work for you and not somewhere else?)

Strength of the performance assessment process (Is it seen as fair, objective, and a useful tool in developing employees and measuring performance or just a headache that must be endured annually?)

Strength of applying consistent policies and procedures (How do employees view the HR Dept. As their advocates, the ‘corporate police', impersonal bureaucrats, what? How do you know?)

The quality of your training department

Strong understanding of performance issues or just "dip-‘em-training-and-hope-for-the-best" approach?

Able to develop and deliver relevant training. (Can they conduct a needs assessment and design and deliver training to meet those needs or is all training purchased via outsourcing? If they can develop training, can they do it quickly or is there a long process involved?)

Willingness to change as a corporate culture

Why or why not?

Extent of politics/non-objective criteria vs. talent

Diversity - symbolic or meaningful

Anchored in the past - good or bad (What strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats exist from our past?)

The corporate use of measurements

The need for defining performance metrics

Top-to-bottom understanding the language of performance (How well do the people who actually perform the work we do understand performance measurements? How well do our leaders understand performance measurements and can they use them effectively in forecasting?)

Melding it into the corporate culture (How well do we as a culture understand performance measurements? How often do we get ideas for process improvements from our employees? How often have we acted on them? What's in it for the employee to make suggestions?)

Existing metrics

Where, why, when, who, & how?

New metrics for consideration (Are there additional metrics we could use to give use more relevant data to support our plans for workforce development?)

Where, why, when, who, & how?

The need for a clear vision for the future

The need for leaders to enunciate it & live it (Do we have a mission that makes sense?)

The need for line employees to understand it (Do our line employees - the people who actually do most of the work - know what our mission is and understand it?)

The need for them to understand their role in achieving it (Can our line employees explain their role in the overall organizational mission?)

As I said, this is not intended to be a comprehensive list but it will help you help the consultant develop your workforce. As your organization becomes better able to answer questions like these, you may also notice an improvement in your workforce!