You are in the middle of designing a unique leadership development program for your organization. You have determined the key leadership competencies needed in your company, you have assessed the current leadership skills and abilities of your supervisors and managers, and you have gathered information about where there are gaps between the current skills and the needed competencies. By now you have so much information, assessment results, focus group comments, survey responses, it seems overwhelming to make sense of it all!
At this point in time the task can be daunting, so first take time to pause, reflect on what you have accomplished so far, remind yourself of the end result that will be very worthwhile, and celebrate the progress you have made so far. You may have several weeks of your time, or even more, invested in this project yet when in the middle it can be hard to see the end. Then, think back to that old cliche about how to eat an elephant – one bite at a time. Organizing all the information that has been gathered will help you analyze and pinpoint the most critical areas to focus on in your leadership development program, the areas that are important yet not as critical, and the nice-to-haves.
Here are some ideas for organizing your information, and you may have other methods that have worked well for you in the past. Often the method you choose is based on your own learning and working style. Some people like to lay everything out in order to see what they are dealing with and to group similar findings and information into categories. This can be done by sorting (either online or physically) information by like ideas using the key leadership competency areas as a guide. For example, if you identified four key leadership competencies that your organization will be focusing on, each piece of information can be organized into a grid (again this can be online, on a whiteboard, or physically on a large tabletop or counter). The grid will have four sections for each of the leadership competencies, and then can further be broken down by whether the assessment or information shows evidence of strength in each competency or weakness in each competency.
Once all information gathered in your various assessments and gap analysis tools has been organized depending on which competency it relates to and whether or not it evidences strength in the competency. You will be ready to prioritize and make decisions about what learning, training, and development opportunities will provide most value to your organization. (If you missed our first post in this series about creating a leadership development program for your organization, check it out here)