Serious Business:
Executive development with Ivan Fellegi
interviewed by Paul Crookall
Executive MBAs are wonderful things, they broaden your knowledge and challenge the brain…but they can't teach you to be an executive. You learn to be an executive on the job, through feedback and development. Courses don't make a leader, but they can polish the rough edges.
PREPARING PEOPLE FOR EXECUTIVE POSITIONS TAKES A LONG TIME. A few years ago there was a perceived looming shortage, due to retirements. The fast track programs put in place weren’t especially successful – the individual foundations just weren’t there. Growth comes from long-term development in all its aspects: training, opportunities, rotation, assessment and feedback, coaching, formal and informal training.
You must build an environment that pays attention to your people. Some do well on their own, but you can’t count on that to provide enough managers. Not all managers need to be internally developed, but managers succeed best if they go through organizations that pay attention and provide individual nurturing within a supportive environment.
We start at the beginning, hiring the best and brightest, looking for a career commitment. WE CREATE THE ENVIRONMENT IN WHICH PEOPLE CAN DEVELOP. We give them training, development and opportunities right from the beginning, and ensure they are moving ahead in their profession. For those interested in management, we add management development; for those interested in becoming leading specialists, we provide professional development opportunities.
WE BUILD A POOL OF QUALIFIED CANDIDATES at each level, ready to move up. If the
pool is too small (as in a specialized technical field where typically we do not have a large group) we will add recruiting from outside. Development deserves a lot of attention. There is no short-term solution. I personally sit on the selection boards for executives, not just my direct reports, but also their reports, and the next level as well. Each candidate gets thorough feedback. But it starts much earlier than that. You learn to be an executive through feedback and listening.
We meet yearly as an executive team to review each manager, including the assistant deputy minister level, the three levels of the executive category, and the level that reports to them (EX minus one). As a team, we talk about their strengths and weaknesses, what development would help – training, job rotation, new functions in their current job. Then we take action, coordinated across the organization, as several hundred people are involved.
We don’t use a formal 360-degree feedback program at appraisal time. But we do review the results of Employee Opinion Surveys of each work unit in a form of 360 degree: the manager must tell his/her staff what strengths and weaknesses the unit has, get feedback from the staff, dig deeper with focus groups, and report back to the team. We also learn about each manager from the whole executive group, in our annual session, not just from the appraisal done by the individual’s supervisor. So we have a comprehensive view of their performance and their development needs.
People get to know themselves better through this process. We don’t use tests like the Myers-Briggs inventory. The Statistics Canada Training Institute has over 100 part-time faculty, mostly from within StatsCan. We spend three percent of our budget on training. Our internal website provides career stream guidance.
When we cannot provide a course internally, we have arrangements with Carleton University and University of Ottawa for our people to take courses and receive a certificate.
COURSES AND EXECUTIVE COACHING are useful for polishing the rough edges. The
Canada School for Public Service leadership course, for example, is good at building awareness of clients and partners. Coaching helps address individual needs, such as presentation skills for meetings or competitions.
In some cases we also use it to create an awareness of one’s management styles. LANGUAGE TRAINING is best given early in one’s career – when it is less disruptive, less costly, and it is easier to learn.
THE BOTTOM LINE: don’t look for an easy way out, executive development is a serious business.
Dr. Ivan P. Fellegi was appointed Chief Statistician of Canada (Statistics Canada) in 1985 and has led what The Economist calls the best statistical office in the world. He holds the Order of Canada, the Outstanding Achievement Award of the Public Service of Canada, the Order of Merit of the Hungarian Republic, and the Career Achievement Award of the Canadian Policy Research Initiative. For further information about Statistics Canada, see www.statcan.ca.
