words of wisdom: sir martin sorrell

At the risk of looking like a hopeless sycophant, I came across a perspective from WPP group CEO Sir Martin Sorrell today on the imperative for professional services businesses – and particularly those in the marketing communications industry – to invest in training.

I thought it was interesting not only because training is a part of my remit at Burson-Marsteller but because one of the most consistent answers I get from job interviewees when asked “Why do you want to join the firm?” is “Because I want to learn.”

“In our industry we win a piece of business and we steal people from the competition.  There is no desire to continuously train.

Our industry is very poor in the management of talent. The biggest issue is finding the right people, keeping them and motivating them.

I still think that Goldman Sachs and McKinsey are some of the finest in talent management.  They consistently recruit and train the best people.  There is no accident to their success because some hell or high water, recession or bust, they are recruiting the best people, training and developing them. It’s fundamental and our industry still does not get it.”

At the end of the day, the responsibility for professional development lies largely with the professional.  The company should, of course, provide training on core skills and capabilities.  More importantly, though, knowledge workers need to be given the explicit mandate and the necessary support to to pursue their own learning agendas.

Unfortunately, the public relations industry does not attract the kinds of fees that Goldman Sachs and McKinsey do, and so our financial investments in training are necessarily more modest.  However, the cost of building an environment that values and supports individual learning is comparatively low.

We generally hire people who want to learn.  So long as we provide them the opportunities to do so and encourage them to take advantage of those opportunities, we will tend to retain those people.  However when we put the short term needs of the business ahead of the desire of our people to further their own professional development, we alienate the very people we want to retain.

We also inhibit their ability to provide our clients with the best work.