INSPIRATION - IT ’ S ESSENTIAL ! actively demonstrate as a role model that you ’ re prepared to do this yourself , so you demonstrably take time ,” he says . “ I tell my team , for example , that I expect them to give up at least one day a month to do nothing but stand back , learn , think and develop . You know , 12 days a year with which to maintain and cultivate human capability is definitely worth the investment .
“ We all live in a world of constrained budgets for what you can spend on training , but my own view is that faceto-face training is the most effective .
Alexander continues : “ I always make sure that the money I spend is focused on a small number of key capabilities – in my world that ’ s really negotiation , sourcing and argumentation skills ; that ’ s the kind of thing that marks us out and it ’ s very much in keeping with our strategy . “ The really interesting thing , I think , is what happens when you ’ ve spent your training budget … or , as I found out a couple of years ago when the price of oil fell , when you have no training budget at all . That was a really , really interesting experience and kind of a test for me because I wanted to keep inspiring and wanted to keep the team learning and developing , but I had no money to spend . So , I had another think and did a number of things , things which we still do and which I think have been fantastically successful .
“ I tapped people like the Armed Forces , people I know in procurement , politicians … and I invited them in as guest speakers . Apparently , if you go to Eton , what they do every year is get the boys to write to somebody and ask them to come in and speak , and that ’ s where I got the idea from .
“ BP is a well-regarded company and people will come and speak so immediately you get these great speakers who will come in and do what we call ‘ lunch and learns ’, so most weeks here we ’ ve got somebody coming in to talk to us about all sorts of subjects .”
It ’ s not just about getting people to come in and talk though , it ’ s also about the staff getting out and about and doing new things , which develop their own abilities . Alexander ’ s team does everything from helping out at local schools to acting as mentors for new start-up businesses to aid their
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