We believe personal development should not be “one-size-fits-all”, but instead should be aligned with the organizational vision. This means Strategy Works, in collaboration with our clients, looks at how our programs can develop people in order to improve their ability to help realize the corporate vision. This way, a program is not founded on general principles which can apply to any organization, but instead, contribute to each specific organizational context, thus creating maximum impact.
Our approach to linking reflection to on-the-job learning is by incorporating a business case in the program. Participants form teams in which they tackle a real life company issue. We encourage their management to select business cases that have an immediate bearing on achieving the corporate vision.
Participants apply what they have learned from our trainers and hone their skills by reflection in an offsite location to translate their learning experiences to a more abstract level so that they can apply them to other contexts in the future. If a program has multiple session, participants often start work on their business cases on the sessions themselves, complete them in-between and receive feedback in the next session.
We aim to maximize the impact we have on the future of the participants within their organizational context. In order to show our participants progress, and thus the program’s effectiveness, we apply different ways to measure results:
- Program evaluation: Querying participants on how they experience the program.
- Assessment: Measuring competences before and after the program to spot developments.
- Career development: Gauging promotions and professional evaluations of participants until 1 year after the program.
- Implementation of the business case: Evaluating the impact of the business case assignment that is central to the program.
Our experience has shown that these four tools offer great insights into the effectiveness of our programs, but also offers valuable data on how to continuously improve on them.
