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Executive Development: Strategic and Tactical Approaches
ASTD - American Society for Training and Development, April 2009, Pages: 73
Every organization faces an ongoing challenge to retain the talent needed to meet its goals, and that challenge is even greater when focusing on the executive level. The ASTD-Booz Allen Hamilton Strategic and Tactical Approaches to Executive Development Study takes a deep look into the executive development practices of today’s organizations. With many firms struggling to find the right way to develop top-level leaders, this study helps to answer common questions about the state of executive development.
The ASTD–Booz Allen Hamilton Strategic and Tactical Approaches to Executive Development Study (“the study”) aimed to differentiate the elements in corporate approaches to executive development. The study found executive development to be generally idiosyncratic, using a combination of formal and informal learning approaches, and therefore difficult to summarize and measure. There is a considerable gap in the literature for best practices methods and research summaries, especially in the area of specific activities and success factors related to executive development programs. A handful of experts argue that executive development promotes a variety of benefits for organizations. For example, Edward Verlander (1988) claims that a program that encourages executives and high-potential employees to take personal responsibility for their own learning can create a community of “knowledge” workers who are more flexible, creative, and adaptable than “traditional” executives. However, studies directly investigating these links are scarce.
Executive development was defined by the research team as “an ongoing systematic process that assesses, develops, and enhances one’s ability to carry out top-level roles in the organization.” The researchers intended for this working definition to be clearly distinct from leadership development, which was defined as “an ongoing systematic process that cultivates the learner’s capacity to lead people at all levels of management.” Executive development refers only to the efforts of those high-potential individuals chosen to carry out the uppermost positions in the organizational hierarchy. The primary focus of the study was an investigation of the development of these top-level employees and not the general development of leaders and managers at lower levels.
In particular, the study was designed to assess how organizations currently handle the major components of executive development. The study mixed qualitative and quantitative analysis with a 31-item online survey with data from 397 workforce learning and performance professionals and 18 follow-up interviews with executives. Both phases of the data collection were completed in the spring of 2008.
Key Components of the Study
Executive development has been around for decades, and the objectives of executive development programs have not changed dramatically since their inception (Moulton & Fickel, 1993). However, the identification and clarification of organizations’ executive learning practices are rarely addressed in research publications, journals, or other informational outlets.
Thus, this study is one of the first to explore the following key components:
- who is involved
- how employees are selected
- what content is included in a program
- amount spent on programs
- lessons learned from established executive development programs.
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