Provide opportunities
The Leadership Development Program at Consolidated Graphics has three phases to steer employees into management positions, offering development opportunities along the way.
The first stage, formally called the production rotation, is better known as getting dirty. Like the brand-new employee blogged on the Web site, the first step involves teaching employees the process that physically takes a job through the company.
The company’s philosophy is this: If you’re going to be a leader in the business, you have to know how it works down to the finest, grubbiest detail.
After six months, candidates shift to the next phase of business fundamentals by rotating through the back-office departments. They tackle longer-term, hands-on projects in accounting, purchasing and customer service for about another six months.
During these stages, don’t treat the new employees like interns that sit on the sidelines and observe. They should be diving into each specialty to ultimately decide where they want to end up.
On-the-job training provides students reference materials to help teach the technical aspects as well as the assistance of a more experienced associate who may serve as a mentor.
“My objective is I want them to be as successful as they possibly can be,” Davis says. “It’s my challenge to be sure that they have enough opportunities to maximize their potential in our company, and that’s my responsibility.”
While new employees are scouting the various aspects of your company, your job is to make sure they’re making an effort and to help them find their strengths by monitoring their performance.
Every six months, presidents of operating companies comp
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te written evaluations of the LDP associates at their location, and Davis personally reviews the assessments. While they’re always evaluated on soft skills like getting along with co-workers and communicating effectively, the early assessments focus on technical skills.
“You’re looking at: Are they developing their technical expertise?” Davis says. “They spent six months in customer service, for instance. Have they mastered all the things that you need to know about in customer service? If they’re in purchasing, have they mastered everything, including all the products we buy and the characteristics of those products?”
Their interests — as well as your assessment of their strongest skills — will lead them to the third stage of the program, which is leadership training in an area of their choosing. At Consolidated Graphics, that’s generally a choice between sales development and operations management, both of which eventually lead to the president’s seat.
“They have to decide what they want to do,” Davis says. “We can encourage them, but I think people have to encourage themselves. We give them a lot of opportunity, and they have to take advantage of the opportunity. We’re not in the baby-sitting business.”
By mostly leaving the choice to them, you’ll also identify the self-starters who will jump into a position and strive for success.
“You can look at your job in a narrow field or you can say, ‘I’m here to learn all I can about the printing business. I want to help in any area I can,’ and if somebody’s overloaded, you step in and help them out; maybe you learn something about their job when you’re doing it,” Davis says. “So I’m looking for people who are willing to extend themselves and understand our business.”
