Case Study: Controlled Trial ofFriday5s in Management Training Program

Situation

A leading Silicon Valley technology firm wanted to increase the impact of its management training program for new managers. The program included five days of classroom instruction in two sessions and was highly rated by participants.

Two groups were compared: 44 managers who attended the program as traditionally offered and 44 managers who attended the same program, but with the addition of theFriday5s Follow-through Tool.

Three months after the classroom session, participants in both groups and their managers were polled and the results compared

Results

Friday5s significantly increased the interaction between participants and their managers. In the control group, only 40% of managers were aware of their direct reports' learning goals. In contrast, 100% of the managers of theFriday5s groups reported being aware of their direct reports' goals.

Both the participants and their managers in theFriday5s group reported a greater level of post-course effort. Moreover,Friday5s significantly increased the amount of interaction between the participants and their managers.

Whereas 35% of the control group never had a conversation with their manager about the course, 97% of those in theFriday5s group discussed the program with their manager and 70% had two or more discussions - significantly more than the control group.

This is important. Research on transfer of learning has shown that a person's manager plays a critical role in the amount of learning that is actually applied.

Not surprisingly, participants' managers observed greater overall improvement in theFriday5s group. Managers rated 12% of the participants in theFriday5s group as "markedly improved" (the highest rating), but none of the control group participants earned this rating.