South Staffordshire Water

Senior Management Development Programme

You have just interviewed a lot of people for a development programme that will only take a small number of those interviewees; you recognise that the talent in your organisation is much deeper than you had anticipated. What do you do? You commission a further development programme and give even more people a chance to make their mark. This is what we designed and delivered for South Staffordshire Water.

Working collaboratively with the company’s Human Resources team, we designed a programme contributing to the company’s desire to develop home-grown talent. The programme was centred on the principles of action learning with content tailored to the specific needs of the team, as identified from personal Learning Contracts. Each individual developed and led a business project that took them outside their own area of expertise; the team as a whole also took on a business-wide project that significantly influenced the way the company handled procurement issues.

Participants in SMDPA series of focussed workshops added to the participants’ personal toolkit and business understanding over a period of 18 months, whilst residential Startup and Mid-Term Events enabled some intensive teambuilding, essential as SMDP worked on their team and individual business improvement projects. Occasional joint workshops with managers on another programme, Class of 2001, strengthened the internal networks and helped ensure development of a consistent philosophy and culture.