As an avid sports fanatic, some of my favorite quotes related to preparedness came from legendary National Football League (NFL) coach Tom Landry of the Dallas Cowboys considered one of the most innovative coaches in NFL history. A couple of my favorites are:
“If you are prepared, you will be confident, and will do the job.”
“I believe in getting a team prepared so it knows it will have the necessary confidence when it steps on a field and be prepared to play a good game.”
Over the course of my implementation experience, I’ve seen that customers who prepare early and get a head start on a given project are the most successful. For a variety of reasons we often see project kickoffs getting delayed, however, it doesn’t necessarily mean that as a project team you need to wait to begin preparations.
This article attempts to outline some of the key questions you should consider when preparing for a Career Development & Planning implementation. Answers to these questions do ultimately determine the level of desired complexity and can assist your implementation partner in their preparations.
1) Will development planning be integrated into your performance review process or will it be separate?
- If you are an existing customer already live with your performance review process and desire this type of integration, the team will need to consider if updates to existing configuration and process need to be made.
2) Will employees be rated on progress against their developmental goals/objectives?
- From a common practice perspective, the trend is that most customers choose not to rate development goals/objectives. The answer to this question will, of course, have a direct impact on your performance review process.
3) Are competencies defined in your organization?
- The overall Career Development & Planning solution can rely heavily on the existence of a defined competency structure. The more refined your competency structure is the better for you in order to take advantage of some key features of the solution.
4) Will each development goal/objective be tied to one or more competencies? If so, will employees be able to select from all available competencies or only from the competencies that are specific to their job role?
- Related to key question #3 above, this consideration can help determine how granular you desire for your job role structure to be ultimately leading to the possibility of needing to define job-specific competencies.
5) Do you have an existing LMS or plan to implement an LMS?
- While a simple question, this is one of the most critical questions needed to be answered. If you have an existing LMS and it is not the SuccessFactors Learning (LMS) solution, then there are different integration options to consider and understanding those options are very important.
While Tom Landry is no longer with us, his inspiring quotes do live on. In the spirit of preparedness, the sooner the above 5 key questions can be addressed by a given project team, it will ensure a great start to your Career Development & Planning implementation project.