Develor Network 

AN INTERVIEW WITH ZSOLT POZVAI, CEO OF DEVELOR CONSULTING ZRT.

There Are no Miracles, But Effective Training Programmes

You can’t work miracles in only two days. But if training is combined with appropriate consultancy, good results can be achieved, believes Zsolt Pozvai,CEO of Develor Consulting Zrt.

ZSOLT POZVAI There’s a growing trend for companies to look for training programmes that produce visible and measurable results.

Barbara Molnár

- Develor is now the largest consulting and training firm in Hungary and the Central and East European region. Can you tell us something about the company’s past?

- We set up the company in 1992 under the name Door Training and it was one of the very first training companies, and then from 1998 onwards we started to build up the company on the basis of what we refer to as the second generation philosophy, which replaced our original general operational model. This philosophy basically means that we only employ trainers who have several years experience in sales or management. The second big change came in 2003, when Door training was already the largest player on the Hungarian market. We took the decidedly risky step of splitting from our Dutch parent company and leaving the safety of its network, and it was then that we adopted the name Develor Consulting Zrt.

Even though conventional wisdom teaches us not to change a winning formula, my own belief is that the right time to change is precisely when everything is up and running, and running well. When you’re at that stage, the company as a team and every individual in it is bursting with confidence about the chances of pulling off the change successfully, and the financial wherewithal is usually there as well. Looking back, I do think that it was the right decision at the right time. The best result of the overhaul – and it’s now our distinguishing feature – is that Develor is not a classic training company any more, but a performance management company, that uses a variety of tools – consultancy, coaching, organisation of business events – to supplement its training programmes. So we are able to offer a structured methodology combined with an effective array of business tools.

- Can you explain what that means exactly? Have you lost faith in training per se? And can a few days’ training produce miracles anyway?

- I don’t believe that training programmes on their own are effective enough; it’s certainly not possible to work wonders in just a few days. But if we supplement sales training with a review of certain corporate systems and introduce some changes – I’m thinking of a firm’s system of incentives, performance appraisal or its management coaching system – then these things taken together really can bring about remarkable changes. To give you an example, one of our clients, a bank, saw a 30 percent rise in its turnover for certain products as a direct result of our series of sales training programmes and the consultancy services that went with them.

The results can be quantified and I would urge all corporate managers and HR specialists to measure the effect of the work carried out by training and consulting firms. I believe that a well-thought out development package – assuming it is accompanied by the right support tools – can achieve an impact on your business which is at least as good as a marketing campaign that costs five or even ten times more. Our clients recognise this, and the result is that not only have we stayed at the top of the market, but this year we’re heading to double our six-hundred-and-fifty-million-forint turnover of a couple of years back.

- Is it possible to speak of trends on the training market?

- It’s certainly true that the expectations of clients are getting higher all the time. The number of training programmes of the "we’ll give it two days and see what comes of it" type is noticeably falling. The Develor philosophy is that the aim of the training programme is not to deliver knowledge but to effect a lasting change in behaviour. This is what will make it possible for a manager to give his employees more feedback, and a different kind of feedback, in the future.

If it’s possible to speak of a trend, then it would be the growing tendency for firms to look for training programmes that produce visible and measurable results.
 

Developments in HR are playing a big part in this trend. Nowadays, the main task of HR is not administrative management but making an active contribution to the creation of corporate strategy. Training is not an end in itself; it is a tool to help businesses meet the specific business objectives they have set themselves.

- Even so it does seem as though extraordinary, even extreme, solutions are on the increase, especially when we think of team building training courses.

- It’s true that there is another trend, especially where team building programmes are concerned: it’s getting more common for the focus to be on the experience itself, while the actual impact on the organisation takes a back seat. This is why people go off to do paint-balling, rafting or a desert tour.

What bothers me is that these events are also called team-building training programmes when it’s obvious that their aim is for people to enjoy a reward or to share an experience – not to foster professional development or growth. Programmes like these can be useful in some circumstances or perhaps to achieve certain aims, but please let’s not call them training. Worse still is when you have an organisational unit that is rife with conflict, where you can almost touch the tension: here it can be a very misguided management decision to take staff paint balling, because this can simply add fat to the fire. It’s obvious that it’s not going to solve any problems either if everyone simply wants to shower the hated boss with a hail of paint pellets.

- What step of the corporate ladder should employees be on to be eligible for training?

- It’s worth starting at a point where you can easily measure the added value of the training in terms of skills development. So, a person who only does operative work probably doesn’t need it, because he or she doesn’t have to delegate any work, or solve any serious problems. With managers, once they get past a basic level of professional knowledge, then we can talk about the skills that go with their management responsibilities. This means that all managers of any rank are candidates for some form of training. This is particularly true of lower-level managers since they are often in the position of ’piggy in the middle’ and suffer an identity crisis about their own roles as managers. The reasons for this are that the top management by and large doesn’t think of them as belonging to the management of the company, while the operative employees regard them as bosses, so they don’t belong to the operational ranks either. To make matters worse, they are the most neglected class of employees, and HR pays little attention to their development, even though in a lot of cases it is precisely these managers who have the greatest need for training. Fortunately, though, more and more companies are realising this, and are training their works managers, technical managers and supervisors as well.

- How much is training used in the public sector?

- The term ‘training’ has been banded about for a long time in the public sector, but the need for more profound professional training has not so far been expressed. However, we’re expecting to see a change in this regard before long, because a top-tier body responsible for HR matters has been set up recently within the state administration system, staffed by professional managers, and it has been given the remit and responsibility to make significant changes. But we have to be realistic that the biggest factor in any state tender process is the cost, and this does not necessarily favour companies whose services are better quality but more expensive. In spite of our size, market position and professional reputation we have never received any serious assignments from the state sector, although we would most probably give this sector a more attractive price quote – if only for corporate sponsorship reasons – than a purely profit-oriented company.

- Develor now has several subsidiaries abroad. How important is regional expansion to your corporate strategy?

- There are limits to how much we can grow in Hungary – limits that can be overcome by regional expansion. A multinational company does not prepare a separate strategy for each and every country; instead, it manages the organisation in regions. There’s a general awareness that what worked in say, Sweden, will not necessarily go down equally well in Bulgaria. We now operate in eleven countries in the region, mostly in the form of joint ventures, though in countries like Switzerland, Russia and Egypt, for example, we have strategic partners.

- What can a Hungarian consulting firm offer an Egyptian or Russian company? Aren’t the differences too great?

- Of course. If we didn’t have local consultants and trainers we wouldn’t be able to cope, because these cultures are alien to us. At the same time, we aim to provide top quality European services. Russia, for example, is an incredibly exciting market; there is enormous demand from multinational companies for the level of services that we in the west have got used to. We have plans for twelve subsidiaries by 2010 as well as seven or eight strategic partners. We would like to cover the whole of Central and Eastern Europe, but, at the same time, we have our eye on the Near East as well.