In one example, over a three-year period Ralph Cannon, the VP for human resources, used the vertical and horizontal method to provide leadership and managership training and education to 100 percent of the company’s managers and supervisors. The first year began with the basics and subsequent years built upon critical leadership and managership topics. By carefully controlling the learning events, Ralph was able to increase the skills to a high-performance level as measured against business goals. For this vertical and horizontal training integration to work, he made sure the information had continuity down the management chain to employees first. This meant that everyone got the same topics but tailored for their specific level and needs.
The second successful element of horizontal integration was a building plan. Start with the fundamentals, train employees to perfection, and then add more knowledge and skills to the package each year. After three years of concentrated activities and follow-up, this company had a well-schooled management team. For your own training to support your business plan, you can build a custom package tailored to a number of identified shortfalls from the gaps found in the planning processes.
You can condense your core company business plan to five pages. Your top management team then cascades the plan down through the system. Extensive preparation and homework must be completed to define the necessary information from which to plan support for the five pages. With careful preconference preparation you can carry out a detailed business plan. Once the plan is defined you determine what education and training must be conducted to reinforce the plan. These steps are all part of a business planning cycle that has been tested with real businesses making significant improvements in their performance.