Tech-Reach: A learning program for budding technical leaders :

Situation

A leading global mobile handset manufacturer had launched a Technical Expert Growth Program (TEGP) initiative worldwide in order to strengthen its technical leadership. As a first step role clarification and re-designation exercise was carried out. 1500 people strong India R&D center identified "influencing" as an important comptency to be developed for engineering experts. To this effect, management decided to launch a learning intervention engineers with 7 to 10 years of experience.

Objective

There were two objectives for the intervention: (1) Engineers should improve how they communicate technical ideas and concepts to broader technical community (covering people with a range of competence levels, experience and personalities) and (2) Engineers should improve how they communicate technical issues and solution proposals to the non technical business leaders in business terms

Actions

The program had two workshop sessions, 3 1-1 coaching sessions, 1 presentation rehearsal and 1 final mini-conference event. The program was spread over 2.5 months. Each participant was supposed to identify a business relevant problem, do mini-research, do feasibility study and/or prototyping exercise, propose a solution and present it along with a short demo. The coaching sessions helped the participant voice their anxieties and explore half-baked ideas to be developed further.

Results

The most challenging step during the intervention was a surprise for many participants and to the facilitators. It was the first step where the participant identifies a business relevant problem. Fortunately, the 1-1 coaching sessions helped in this step. All participants improved designing a better presentation and it was visible from the rehearsal round to the final round. Many participants were convinced that they need to expore channels like blogs in expressing their opinions.