Growthspace: A Pioneer In Precision Skills Development
As most of you know, developing business skills takes time. You have to ask people questions, take a few courses, and learn from your mistakes. If you’re a software engineer, this means writing buggy code. But if you’re a sales rep or a manager, it could mean trouble: losing deals, alienating people, and possibly being fired.
The training department builds courses, academies, and developmental experiences to help. Employees consume the training, ask for help on the job, and “stair-step” their way to mastery. If you have a great manager, he or she will help. But for most of us, we’re really left on our own.
The corporate training market, which I have been a part of for 30 years, is filled with novel ideas. We build classes, simulations, labs, and stretch assignments. We author videos, zoom classes, micro-learning, spaced-learning (training spaced over time), VR experiences, and mobile text-based courses. And we throw them out there to see what will stick.
I talk with lots of L&D leaders and most of them are experimenting all the time. Since we really don’t know how a human being learns (we’re all different), the L&D profession is filled with experiments. In fact many of the most innovative new technologies (Mobile video, social media, messaging, AI) are pioneered for teaching and learning.
Lately we’ve been on a diversion. For a variety of reasons, companies decided to focus on “skills,” not “learning.” Rather than focus on capabilities and depth, we’ve tried to break everything down to small topics. And while this has been a complex distraction, it has taken us to a new place. Instead of teaching a sales person “all about selling,” we teach people about “rapport building” and “objection handling” and “storytelling.” Or we add managerial skills like “account management” or “pipeline management” or “negotiating to win.”
Isolating And Developing PowerSkills
While it’s an important approach, the “skills-based organization” has lots of dead ends. Is “learning to use Salesforce” is a sales skill? No, it’s an administrative skill. Yet many of the skills tools focus on such low-level, non-strategic things. So company skills models are cluttered up with skills like “Microsoft Office” or “Communication,” which are vague and unhelpful.
Well as many of you probably know, there ARE certain skills that matter, and I call them PowerSkills. And great companies figure these out.
In our company, core “skills” include inquiry, systemic thinking, data analysis, written communication, project management, and business strategy. We know what skills matter and none of the have anything to do with “using Hubspot” or “Microsoft Word.”
So let’s say you want to identify and build these PowerSkills? How can you identify them and develop them with precision? In other words, can we deliver “precision skills” like a pharmaceutical company does with “precision medicine?”
Well in my journeys through this process, working with BetterUp, LinkedIn, and hundreds of other L&D providers, I came across some folks who figured this out. Their company is called “Growthspace.”
What Does Growthspace Do
Through active research and consulting, Growthspace built an functional job library of what we may call “PowerSkills.” These skills (or capabilities as I call them) are complex, well-understood skills within each functional area of business. I like to think of them as “critical capabilities” or “SuperSkills” at work.
They fall into functional areas (management, sales, product management, engineering, customer service, business development, and even HR), and are also categorized by job level (individual contributor, manager, leader).
We know, for example, that great sales people are consultative. They listen well, they challenge clients, and they patiently assess the readiness of a person to buy. They also have to learn to “size up a client” and see if they are ready, qualified, and budgeted to buy. These are all PowerSkills in the Growthspace model.
How does Growthspace deliver these skills to employees? Well they didn’t hire an expert to create videos. Rather they built a network of 2000+ “experts” in each 65+ countries. Each “expert” is certified in two or three skills, so the expert can focus on the depth of each skill.
And rather than set these experts loose without structure, Growthspace packages development into three offerings: one on one coaching, team-based training, and open enrollment “group sessions.” A program typically consists of five one-hour sessions. After each session, experts provide resources or assignments that take up to 30 minutes. Sessions are usually scheduled 1-2 weeks apart, so programs usually take 6-8 weeks to complete.
Unlike coaches, the experts are real-world business people. They are assessed by Growthspace and rated by users. Growthspace’s AI matches teams to experts based on industry, role, geography, and other factors. And it works very well.
This innovative model works quite well. As one of Growthspace’s clients put it, it’s like the “Salad Bar” of personal development. You select all sorts of healthy things to consume, each of which has vitamins and minerals.
If you’re a mid-level sales person in a software company and you want help with account management, you’re going to get matched with a seasoned sales professional who knows how to help. Remember this is an “n-dimensional” matching problem: for precision development we need someone who understands my functional area, my role, my industry, and my level of experience. With 2000+ experts, Growthspace can match this almost perfectly.
To help L&D drive value, Growthspace makes sure managers are deeply involved. Before the program starts, participants and managers are expected to hold an alignment meeting to identify the skill set to work on. After the program ends, managers provide written feedback on their employee’s progress, and they are are encouraged to discuss the program in their weekly meetings with participants.
A Healthy Salad Bar Of Professional Development
Growthspace has now delivered these solutions to companies like Siemens, PayPal, ServiceNow, Stanley Black and Decker, Baker Hughes, Sherwin WIlliams, Ulta Beauty and others.
Let me cite an example: Cognyte, a fast-growing security company in Israel (2000+ employees) has deployed Growthspace in what they call he calls a “Salad Bar” of professional development: lots to choose from, all healthy, you pick your favorite items.
If you read our case study on Cognyte, you’ll see that Nir Tidhar, the HR leader, understands that no L&D program will succeed unless managers and employees like it. Growthspace, because it’s grounded in real-world business skills, really fit the bill. (Case study here.)
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Why Does This Model Work?
There are some subtle design elements here. Unlike a coaching solution, these are architected “precision skills” experiences. And teams are interacting with seasoned experts.
Growthspace manages and measures every program. Rather than throwing an employee into a coaching session, these are designed experiences.
Experts get feedback as well. As their experience grows they get feedback from clients and their “areas of expertise” and level of quality goes up. And that’s why Growthspace forces experts to only focus on two or three areas: they want experts to narrow and deepen their expertise.
Where Does Growthspace Fit?
Growthspace is a solution that business leaders want to buy. While L&D Professionals love it, it’s managers who decide what skills to focus on. So if you’re an HR leader or L&D executive, I suggest you show it to your line managers. This is a way to build a new level of “PowerSkills” based learning that compliments many of your existing programs.
Think management development, leadership coaching, sales, customer service, and functional domains like product management, engineering, and business development. Given Growthspace’s scalable model and their passion for this space, I anticipate they get into industry domains over time (manufacturing, quality management, and more), and we are investigating a partnership with them in HR with our own Academy.
Additional Information
Let’s Stop Talking About Soft Skills: They’re PowerSkills
Human Centered Leadership: A Josh Bersin Academy Certificate Program