Ahlstrom - The magic is still there
Text: Peter Herring, Pictures: Sanna Liimatainen
Sixteen years is a long time today, in politics, in business, and certainly in terms of the life of corporate human resource development programs. That’s how long Ahlstrom’s Jump Program for its young professionals has been going, though – and it ’s still going strong, according to Michela Tomei of the company’s HR function. This includes the program’s pre-Jump personal-evaluation component, which is coordinated in cooperation with Psycon.
– THE JUMP PROGRAM was a pretty progressive initiative when it was launched all those years ago, and as someone who has gone through the program myself and is now responsible for managing it, my feeling is that the ‘magic’ is still very much there, says Michela Tomei, Ahlstrom’s Corporate Human Resources Manager with special responsibility for training and competence issues.
A global leader in developing, manufacturing, and marketing high-performance, fiber-based materials, Ahlstrom uses the Jump Program to help the company identify and bring on young potential candidates for future leadership positions, and stimulate the people concerned to discover their strengths and evaluate where they want to go in relation to this potential.
– This combined approach, which emphasizes both corporate and personal aspects and benefits, is a key strength of the program, Michela believes.
– The program gives us the opportunity to review up-and-coming talent and form our own, in-depth opinion outside their normal home office context, and with the help of isan outside expert perspective, of the potential they have to offer us.
– For participants, it represents a chance to step back and look at themselves and what they want out of their career, and what progressing in the company will require of them. It also strengthens their personal foundation for moving forward, and gives them a rounded idea of what the company has to offer them.
Tapping into true talent
The Jump Program is intended for people in the early stage of their career development and who have been with Ahlstrom for between two and three years, and are typically aged anywhere between 25 and 35. The annual process begins with Michela consulting Ahlstrom’s Corporate Executive Team to identify potential participants and putting together a shortlist from which the final 20 to 25 participants are selected.
The size of the group has proved a good compromise, according to Michela, as it is small enough to ensure that it really does focus on targeted potential’, and yet is large enough to provide a good cross-section of participants from Ahlstrom’s businesses, functions, and locations around the world. It is also intimate enough to create a motivational atmosphere for participants and their mentors, and makes detailed, postprogram follow-up practical.
– Jump is part of our proactive search for people who understand where their strengths and potential are, and want to make the most of those capabilities. We’re talking about people who are ready and willing to move around the Ahlstrom organization, who don’t need others to motivate them and who can build teams, ‘energize’ people, and make things happen through their personal example and drive.
Input and output
Jump itself consists of four main phases: a self-study introduction; a pre-Jump stage devoted to helping participants’ discover more about themselves and their potential for personal and professional growth facilitated by Psycon; a team leadership seminar featuring extensive business situation-based exercises and role plays, in which four to five Ahlstrom executives play an important role as mentors; and a feedback and follow-up process involving participants, mentors, and participants’ superiors.
Following a team-based warmup, the initial stage of the pre-Jump process involves an in-depth psychological assessment-based analysis designed to identify people’s expectations, interests, and personal resources. This is followed up the next day by individual, in-depth interviews with Psycon consultants to ‘flesh out’ the ground covered by the assessment. After the data from the assessment has been processed, participants meet with their Psycon consultant again to review and share what both sides have learned. This ‘output’ then forms an important part of the input that participants bring to the team leadership stage of the program and to their relationship with their personal mentors. The latter begins then, through general interaction and one-onone interviews, and continues into the feedback and follow-up process and a ‘learning contract’, both of which take place subsequently.
An expert eye
The ‘expert eye’, as Michela describes it, brought by Psycon has proved very valuable.
– The expertise they bring to the table is a clear-cut benefit, and is something that we’ve fine-tuned with them over the years the program has been in place. Involving Psycon also brings a sense of neutrality to the evaluation process and eliminates the subjectivity that could creep in if we were to do the whole thing ourselves. Participants also get the chance to address is an sues, which they might not so readily do with our own people.
Participants have very much appreciated the amount of time devoted to personal issues, and which is quite unusual for a corporate training program, she continues. All in all, the pre-Jump process takes around two and half days, and involves five Psycon consultants.
– If people go into the process, and the program generally, running at a 100 % energy level, they come out of it with 150 %. At least, that’s how I interpret the very positive feedback we regularly get. It’s also where a lot of the ‘magic’ of the program on the personal level lies, it seems to me. The discovery process can be a little intense, and stressful too sometimes, but the benefits far outweigh any such downsides.”
The process is designed to help participants get the big picture about themselves and then focus in on issues that they will need to address, as they grow in their careers and as their personalities mature.
– I remember my own experience with the program back in 1999 very clearly, and the ideas that I explored and the advice I received at the time. I remember, in particular, that I liked the chance the pre-Jump gave me to review not only my strengths, but my weaknesses and areas that I wanted to work on as well. Doing this in a separate context from my day-to-day work and day-to-day colleagues – with outside experts and people from around Ahlstrom who were new to me at the time – made it all possible.
– The fact that the information generated during the pre-Jump process is treated confidentially, and that the evaluation report is not normally passed on to superiors unless participants want it to be, reinforces the feeling of participants that the process is really about them and their personal development.
After participants have built up a better picture of what they are capable of, or could be capable of, it is much easier, and very logical, for them then to move on to interacting with their colleagues in the team leadership phase of the program. The feedback they get from working through the practical case scenarios helps put the pre-Jump learning into immediate perspective as well, and can act as a quick ‘reality check’.
Participants very much appreciate the role the program’s mentors play in moving things along following the pre-Jump, says Michela.
– Mentors give them access to senior executives who they would not normally meet and provide them with a more general insight into what Ahlstrom and its business is all about, all of which provides a further perspective on their own future.
The fact that a number of our mentors – who we select to represent a cross-section of our business in the same way that we select Jump participants – have themselves been through the program is a plus, as it helps reinforce the learning that everyone takes away.
It may be being a little over-optimistic to imagine that the Jump program will exist for another 16 years, at least in its current form. Even so, Michela Tomei believes that the basic structure – and the role of personal growth – still has a lot to offer.
– I’ve been working with the program for the past four years now, and it’s certainly still delivering what we expect of it. Of course, we’re always looking ways for making incremental improvements. One question that has come up, based on feedback from participants and our own feelings in HR, for example, is whether we could expand the coaching content, to help participants leverage more out of what they learn.
– As with any course or program really, follow-up always seems to benefit from as much attention and resources as you can give it. This is an important way of ensuring that you maximize the long-term benefits of a program like Jump.
– All in all, whether you’re talking about the pre-Jump part of the program or the main seminar section, what we want participants to take away with them is a belief in their potential for growth, within their careers and as people, based on an understanding of what that potential, on a personal level, is in the first place. We also believe that it will give us, as a company, better and stronger leaders as well.