Most leadership programmes feel like compliance training because they are built like compliance training: a content library stapled together, a schedule forced onto the calendar, and a certificate of completion at the end. People finish them and nothing changes. The fix is to treat a development programme like a product — with users, outcomes, iterations and a roadmap.
Start with the user, not the curriculum
Who is the first-line manager in your organisation? What does their week actually look like? What are they being asked to do that they have never been trained to do? When you start with those answers, the curriculum writes itself.
A 12-month arc
We design leadership journeys in four quarters. Quarter one: the foundations — feedback, delegation, difficult conversations. Quarter two: the systems — hiring, performance, compensation conversations. Quarter three: the strategic — business acumen, financial literacy for managers. Quarter four: the reflective — coaching circles, manager-to-manager peer feedback, one-to-one mentoring.
“If a manager can't have a direct, honest feedback conversation, nothing else in their toolkit matters.”
Less classroom, more practice
Use the 70-20-10 model seriously: seventy percent of learning on the job, twenty percent from peers and mentors, ten percent formal. Design the programme so the formal sessions support the on-job practice, not the other way round.
- Design for users, not content libraries.
- A 12-month arc in four quarterly blocks works well.
- Seventy-twenty-ten — and take the seventy seriously.
- Measure the behavioural change, not attendance.
A development programme built like a product has users who come back, sponsors who renew the budget, and managers who quietly become better. That is the only measure of success worth caring about.