"It's time the IPA dropped the 7-Stages" says Bartle Bogle Hegarty's Nick Kendall...

"Men exist for the sake of others. Teach them then or bear with them." Marcus Aurelius

In the current climate the danger is of course that we will simply bear with them.

Most of us are currently offering our clients advice to invest through the storm. The question is, will we take our own advice?

My guess is we will not. We will actively disinvest in our fellow men (and women) and simply bear with them or, even more simply, fire them and hope that the next one will be the perfect one, i.e. the miracle.

The evidence backs up my hunch. The last recession saw spend and numbers on training down viciously and as we look forward to next year, the indications are that we will repeat our history rather than learn from it.

The irony of this is we have never needed training and development more.

The world goes global. The world goes digital too. Ideas are content. Ideas are integrated. New lessons on collaboration and copyright need to be learned. As we change the way we work, we need new practices and processes. As the pressure for accountability builds on all of us, client and agency alike, we need to ensure our commercial nouse is ever sharper.

In short, we need to teach our fellow men and women ever more, not less.

The best advice on how to deal with a recession I have ever received was "use it to further your goals faster, not push them further away and slow them."

So this is the perfect time to look with clarity at our end game, especially as the IPA, under the professional development directorship of Patrick Mills, is reviewing its training offering and seeking out industry opinion.

What do we want in terms of training and development for our industry and the people we invite to join it?

Both the IPA and I would love to hear your views.

But first, let me offer my own very personal one.

I never thought I would say this but I think the IPA's current 7-Stage model is dead. And if it's not already dead we should quickly kill it and put it out of its misery.

I never thought I would say it because I have always admired it as one of the industry's great visionary products - the IPA Effectiveness Awards being the other. Both products of great brains way ahead of their time.

I have boasted about it to other industry people around the world. My experience is few have come close to equalling it.

We all remember with fondness some of its glories - IPA Stage 2, Stage 5 and Stage 7 as turning points in our life.

We all continue to help and volunteer  to support it. And we do so magnificently. Few industries give up their own time quite so much.

But I think it may be time for a new vision for the next 20 years.

The mental model of 7-Stages is too narrow as a product architecture and as a brand.

Take a look at it.

Do the job titles still feel right? Does the division of skills by job title sound wrong?

Does it cover all the new world and new skills that we need?

Does it look clumsy in its attempt to 'add on' courses on integration or effectiveness.

Does its picture of a 'career ladder' step-by-step really reflect how people think about how they want to flourish in the business?

More importantly, behind these obvious points is a deeper question on the model on which the initiative is predicted. 

First is the model of 'choosing' some people to go on a course really the way forward when all our people need and deserve to be stimulated?

The days of training as a reward vs. a right are surely over.

Second, is the model rooted in teaching craft skills, e.g. better account direction, the right one? Or are there deeper values and capabilities, e.g. leadership, brands, commercial perspective, ideas and how to manage them, that we need to develop the priority?  After all, craft skills change yearly at the moment.

Third, should a 25 year old have to wait to learn certain skills until he is old enough? Or are all these capabilities relevant at every stage?

And, even deeper still, do we still really believe that the only way to learn is to go and sit at the feet of experts and older men (me included!) who tell us what to think?

I for one don't think so. The product feels decidedly behind the changing times.

And as a brand - a strong one in CEO's and MD's eyes, it actually restricts perceptions of what the IPA actually offers. How many of us know the many other things that are offered beyond Stage 2?

So how to drive faster to our future?

We need to go back to our vision and objective. 

Is our aim to supply training courses, or is our aim to develop and facilitate a culture of learning and development in all our agencies for all our people?

My view is that I do not believe we are best placed to supply everything for everyone, even if every agency and everyone in them did everything - which I assume they don't.

Our role should be to create the conditions for agencies to create their own success.

That is why I like initiatives like Best Practice Guides on 'How to develop a training strategy', or 'Train the Trainer' or 'How to manage appraisals and feedback.'

The core of what the IPA should do is not to supply product, but supply know-how. Like a bad bank we lead with X or Y product, when really we should be leading with advice on training and development culture. Our core product should be a personal audit or health check.

Within that plan the agency can then decide what products are suitable and how to supply or tailor-make for the agency.

That is why I also incline towards taking the best of what we have in product terms and open-sourcing it to agencies. Why can't all my young account managers, planners, creatives etc learn how to do a pitch together one week, rather than two people who are my 'stars' being sent away?

And if you can't manage it because of lack of resource, why can't the IPA supply the managed product through third parties? (My recent speeding education was not carried out by the Ministry of Transport but by an outsourced training company, of which there are many of quality.)

Further, if we all know that the best learning is doing, why can't the IPA offer systems to facilitate this? An IPA swap-shop with clients or maybe other creative industries? After all, don't we need to learn about how to develop new ideas and creativity from outside, not just inside our world?

I do not exempt the IPA Excellence Diploma from that vision. We have just finished our third year. The delegate feedback is fiercely supportive. The content is high quality - I have no doubt.

The question that troubles me is how to invite more people to enjoy it? How to liberate the content to all and distribute it through new channels?

Finally, the one thing the Diploma has taught me is the quality of our fellow men and women is as high as ever. When you teach them they learn. They learn with vigour, stamina and creativity.

As individuals they are magnificent. Our future is in safe hands.

Which brings me to a last thought for overhauling our vision.

If we as employers cannot be trusted to supply the money and resources (in good times let's be honest, let alone bad times), maybe we should reverse the whole equation?

Maybe we should take the gift of teaching and learning out of our hands and allow individuals to drive their own lives and careers.

We could decide that all people should have 5% of their wages and 5% of their time to do with what they will and need as a basic part of their contract. 

Learning and developing is personal not one size fits all. Let the person manage himself.

Then maybe our fellow men and women will teach us a thing or two.

Certainly I think the Diploma delegates have done that for me.

What do you think?

Email me (nick.kendall@bbh.co.uk) and the IPA (Patrick@ipa.co.uk) with your views.

Nick Kendall is Group Strategy Director at Bartle Bogle Hegarty and Chairman of the IPA Excellence Diploma.

The opinions expressed here are those of the author and should not be interpreted as representing the opinion of the IPA.