Secondments

Where someone is 'lent' to another department or organisation for an agreed period in order to help them out and to provide fresh learning opportunities.

A secondment is where someone is retained on the payroll but lent to another organisation for an agreed period of time, often for a year or more. Some large organisations regularly second senior managers with a wealth of experience to the voluntary sector. To do so is regarded as a mutually advantageous formula. The voluntary organisation, strapped for cash, gets a free manager and the donor organisation gains a manager who has learned from the novel experience of working in a totally different set up.

From a development point of view, the most potent secondments are where there are stark contrasts between the two working environments; from order to chaos, from centralisation to decentralisation, from large to small and so on. The greater the contrasts, the more old assumptions, working practices and paradigms are challenged and fresh learning is generated. It is significant that secondments are often cited by those who have experienced them as the time they learned most in their whole career.

You need not contemplate secondment with a big 's' to gain some of the benefits for your staff. It is probably inconceivable to have someone on your headcount who is absent for prolonged periods working elsewhere. Instead, think of secondments with a small 's' where for a day or two, or for a maximum of a week, you lend someone to another department within your organisation or, more ambitiously, to an outside body. Obviously short secondments are unlikely to have the full impact of longer ones, but at least they are a realistic second best and still have the potential to generate developmental opportunities that it might not be possible to provide in any other way.

For maximum effect arrange mini-secondments to places where the nature of the work and, preferably, where the whole ethos and culture significantly differ from your own. The whole idea is to use the contrasts as the main stimulus for learning. Always get secondees to articulate what they have learned, irrespective of whether they can see direct and obvious relevance to their normal work.

Predictably, most of the lessons are likely to be about differences rather than similarities; differences in values, in style, in pace, and in quality. Some of the differences will provoke questions about 'why do we do it this way?' and cause a re-examination of things that were previously taken for granted. Some of the lessons will lead to increased confidence that 'we are doing it right' and the realisation that many working practices that had seemed ordinary are in fact superior.

Secondments 'break up the concrete' in rather the same way benchmarking does (see Benchmarking). Both trade on the simple but profound truth that there is no perception without contrast. Give people contrasts and you will help to open their eyes and heighten their perceptions.