How can ‘Stretch Assignments’ Help a Small Business to Achieve Its Goals
Having recently prepared a white paper for a major corporation on how ‘Stretch Assignments’ are used within these businesses to deliver competitive advantage , I thought it would be useful to see how these so called ‘Stretch Assignments’ can be made use of in smaller businesses.
What is a ‘Stretch Assignment?’
Larger businesses, which tend to have an established training programme and defined training budget find it useful to divided training up into ‘instructional’ and ‘experiential’, or on the job learning. >Instructional training tends to involve formalized internal and external training courses. Experiential learning simply means putting somebody into the job and then letting them learn as they progress. Smaller businesses tend to have a more limited capacity to establish formal training and training is usually much more of the experiential/on the job kind.
Stretch Assignments are a form of on the job training. Robert HR Smith Business School defines them as ‘those assignment which challenge and potentially broaden a person’s current capabilities. These assignments are highly developmental because they require new managers to learn new skills in order to be successful in the assignment, and they have significant challenge which motivates new managers to work hard to improve their capabilities.’
Typical Stretch Assignments might include:
1. Your business has a taken on a new client which requires a new level of project management above that which your business has achieved before. One option would be to recruit in an interim project manager to handle the project, or alternately you could promote one of your junior members (using a fair selection system) up to this position for as long as required. Taking on this Stretch Assignment would require the employee to develop greater skills in project coordination and people management and customer relationship management. Here, you will provide the employee with vital training and development opportunities while achieving your business aim.
2. You want to grow into a new business vertical, but to do this you need to conduct research, develop a business plan, define a new product, secure funding and launch the product. You need someone to establish and lead an internal taskforce. You have a team of more junior commercial staff, none of whom have done this before, but all of whom had good business skills in their own right. Promoting one of the team up to head the taskforce would be a challenging ‘Stretch Assignment’ and a massive developmental opportunity for this employee.
What Place Do They Have in a Small Business?
As I have said, many small businesses are unable to invest in formalized training programmes (internal or external), be that for reasons of affordability or time.
This means that the only training available is experiential learning or on the job training. This is often frowned upon by employees as it seen as reflecting the company’s failure to invest the time to properly train using formal means.
This perception is wrong as the research from the Smith Business School shows that ‘Stretch Assignments’ and on the job learning may be the primary vehicle for learning critical leadership skills.
This is supported by research from the Harvard Business Review which shows that ‘Stretch Assignment’s are one of six key factors which businesses can use to keep top talent. They go on further to assert that ‘true leadership development takes place under conditions of real stress’, and that ‘the very best programs place emerging leaders in “live fire” roles where new capabilities can—or, more accurately, must be acquired
Research from Wharton business school suggests that ‘Stretch Assignments’ can also be used to raise morale during a recession. Recessions can create crisis situation for businesses resulting in more needs within the business, e.g. need to make less mistakes, need to get products to market faster. This can be made worse by layoffs which can lead to a scarcity of skills and or simply less hands to man the posts. The Wharton school have found that this is the perfect situation for ‘Stretch Assignments’, because the remaining employees may be forced to stand up and be counted and take on new assignments causing them to ‘Stretch’ in the process. Wharton believes that such ‘Stretch Assignments can raise morale and commitment. This is because staff believe they are carrying out work that is vital to the future of the business during a period of crisis. This will build commitment.
A word of caution
Research and case studies have shown that employees should be stretched and not overwhelmed during a ‘Stretch Assignment’. An employee on a stretch assignment should be able to call the ‘lifeguard’ the boss for help and support.
There should also be help and support during the assignment and at the end there should be a de-brief with ‘lessons learned’, rather than a situation of blame if the goals of the stretch assignment are not achieved.
For ‘Stretch Assignments’ to succeed they must exist in a learning organization in a culture where all employees are encouraged to extend themselves and take manageable risks and where failure while stretching to succeed is accepted and not pilloried.
