IT leaders are approaching training and development with a much stronger focus on “soft skills” than ever before, says Dan Roberts, president of Ouellette & Associates. And that approach is already yielding results in value-creation, effectiveness and morale.

IT training isn’t all about technical certifications anymore. And it’s about time.

Dan Roberts, president of Ouellette & Associates, a New Hampshire-based training and development consulting firm, has been working with IT leaders for 25 years. In recent projects and conversations with CIOs and IT staffers, he’s noticed a marked change in the way IT organizations are building and maintaining their training offerings.

Keeping up to speed on the newest technologies is important, but the big objective today is to arm IT workers with the skills they need to become more consultative, strategic partners to their business clients.

Roberts spoke recently with Workforce News Editor Brian P. Watson. This is an edited, condensed version of that conversation.

WORKFORCE NEWS: What broad trends are you seeing in how CIOs are staffing and training their teams?

Roberts: I’d say there are probably three things. One, CIOs are really looking more strategically at training today. They’re using training to leverage a larger cultural or transformational initiative. Two, they’re investing more in what we call “core skills.” Third, they’re focusing more on using training as a vehicle to sustain their transformation initiatives—using training to reinforce it, and not let people back-slide to their old comfort levels.

Going back to the cultural/transformational, I’m hearing that CIOs want to move away from “aligning with the business.” We’ve heard all about this for years—it’s always been on the CIO’s Top Ten list. Today they’re getting away from that. In fact, they’re passionately saying, “We can’t do that anymore. We are the business.” Their whole focus now is integrating IT with the business. It may sound like a subtle difference, but it’s actually a very different way of how we look at our role and how we approach our impact and value to the company.

So CIOs really need to focus on changing the mindsets of their people and build new skill sets for their teams to be able to integrate with the business. That leads to the second trend. CIOs are becoming laser-focused on moving IT out of a reactive, technology-centric, order-taker comfort zone that we’ve been in for so long. They’re working hard to make their people become consultative business partners. I was with a CIO last week who said she’s told her HR department that she wants people with consulting backgrounds. So they’re looking for that skill set to help become more client-focused. That isn’t necessarily new, but there’s a new focus on how they do it. It’s not about being service- or customer-oriented, but how they become the client “provider of choice.”

Other core skill sets they’re looking for are in change management and innovation. The world is changing so much, so fast; IT is changing daily. So IT leaders are looking to help their people become better skilled in leading change. Marketing savvy is another important one. A few years ago, “marketing” could barely roll off an IT person’s tongue. But today it’s becoming instrumental, and not just for the most senior people—it’s needed to build awareness across the organization. Another one is political savvy, or organizational awareness. That’s something we haven’t done well in IT. And the last one I’m seeing is in vendor management. We don’t necessarily have people who have titles that say “vendor management,” but we do have a lot of people who manage those relationships.

So when I think of core skills—what we used to call “soft skills”—those are just some of the ones IT leaders are looking for to increase the value of their organization.

It sounds like this new take on alignment and becoming the internal provider of choice could run counter to each other. Are CIOs doing a good enough job communicating these visions?

I’ve seen it boil down to one sentence: We have to move our people from being order-takers to being consultants or strategic partners. That’s what they’re communicating to their people. And then they’re looking for help on how to do it—how to instill it in their people.

Once you build it, how do you sustain it? There’s so much cynicism built up in organizations today, because most of them are guilty of buying into a new “flavor of the year.” Every year it’s a new mantra, and IT people often say, “This too shall pass,” and don’t buy into it. Now CIOs are actively engaging and getting their direct reports actively engaged. They are getting involved directly in training. They’re looking to training as a way to communicate their visions and strategies, and to be committed in very visible ways. IT leaders know that there is cynicism, so they’re taking a different, healthier way of looking at it overall.

Whenever you’re changing or transforming a culture, it’s a two- to three-year endeavor. It’s a journey; it’s not something you do, check off the list, and you’re done. Savvy CIOs know this going into it. They know that there will have to be short-term results that essentially feed the long-term, but they know they have to be in it for the long haul. I even hear CIOs today say they’ve been in their positions for almost two years, and they’ve gotten some wins and made progress, but now they really need to get the people side of their organization up to speed.

Are training budgets coming back?

There are two perspectives. One, CIOs and IT leaders are investing heavily in training and developing their people—they’re just doing it in a much more focused way. It’s less willy-nilly now. IT leaders are more laser-focused on making training more in line with their objectives for transformation. It’s not as much of a budget issue—it’s more of a focus issue.

But the biggest barrier today is committing the time. CIOs who are really transforming their organizations are committing more time, and making sure their people have the time, to get the most out of training. And it’s not just in the classroom—it’s what they do before and after. They’re just making it more of a priority.

With the economy the way it is, there’s been downsizing, so the workload is being managed by fewer people. So IT leaders are being asked to become more creative with the time they can devote to training. Some people have asked if we can chop a two-day training program into one day. But if you want to change a culture—and really get to the hearts and minds of your people—you have to take them through a journey. People need to get it in their gut that this is good for them, that this training will help make their lives better, help them have better relationships with clients, help them add more value to the company.

How are CIOs balancing technical training and the need to make their people more business-savvy?

Organizations still need to maintain their technical certifications and skill sets, but more and more it’s moving toward the stronger core skills. That’s where the real Achilles heel is, but it’s also where there’s real opportunity to make some leaps.

What are CIOs’ biggest motivations for keeping training programs going?

They’re looking for their people to operate more as a consultant—to be an individual, but organizationally, to be better able to compete. They want improved business relationships. They want IT to be viewed as a strategic partner that has to be at the table—whether it’s launching a new business initiative, being involved in due diligence in a merger or acquisition, etc.

On the individual level, CIOs are really looking to training to provide a spark to engage and motivate their people in new ways, and get them to see that they’re part of a viable and growing profession. There’s obviously a lot of disenchantment around the future of IT careers. The profession is changing, but there’s still a great future ahead. Those who complement their technical knowledge with these core skills will be better prepared for IT roles that will become increasingly business-facing and client-facing. It’s not going to be hiding in the back room anymore.

With these shifting mindsets about training, and obviously some urgency and challenges in certain areas, what are some “best practices” CIOs should use to build effective training programs?

Senior management’s commitment and participation is mission-critical. The days of senior managers signing off, checking a box and moving on are over. They’re talking about strategic transformation initiatives, and they need to be actively involved. They have to be ready to get their hands dirty.

The middle management layer needs focus as well. More and more, CIOs are realizing that middle managers are the key to success—they’re the ones who are in the trenches, touching our people and our clients. So you have to win their hearts and minds, because they are the ones who will sustain it.

We suggest that clients come to training with IT people. IT needs to be consultative, integrated with the business and client-focused, so how better to do that than to include their clients in training? The IT folks walk away with much more in-depth knowledge of their clients’ needs. The clients walk away with new-found respect for IT—particularly in how challenging and complex IT is. Some organizations are leery about doing this, but those that are bold enough are benefiting from that real-time dialogue.

The last piece is focusing on sustaining, following up, and reinforcing. You can’t let people revert back to their comfort zones. I’ve been at this for 25 years. I’ve worked with great organizations that we’ve gotten to “world-class” status. But things change—new management, new focus, etc.—and within months, these organizations can revert back and take an inward focus. Things can change so fast. And then we’re going back in to work with them again. I’ve seen that pendulum swing so many times. It’s fascinating, but also very frustrating.

Think about your IT staff on a continuum. On one side you have people who are not at all consultative or client-focused. On the other extreme you have the rockstars that live it and breathe it—the ones who have those core skills oozing out of them. Most of your people are somewhere in the middle. The goal in training is to move them [from the former to the latter]. Are you going to take people who are 1’s or 2’s and make them 9’s or 10’s? Absolutely not, but you can move them over the hurdle and get them to be strong contributors. Because IT is so complex and so fast-moving, organizationally, you’re only as good as your weakest link.

When it comes to these core skills, we want to increase the four C’s across the board: Competence, confidence, commitment, and, most importantly, their consistency.

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