It can be tough for first-level managers to find their way.They might excel at specific job skills, but if they’ve never led a team orproject before, they’re likely to have a lot of questions about managing others.An enormous industry provides management research and advice, but it primarilytargets executives and corporate leaders. The managers in the trenches, formingthat middle layer between the rank-and-file employees and the executives, are oftenleft out in the cold.
Particularly when newly promoted, managers need a source forobjective, in-depth advice and coaching. The lack of useful, practical advicegeared toward first-level managers inspired co-founders Rob Cahill, the currentCEO, and John Howard to create Jhana. The innovativeSan Francisco company offers just-in-time eLearning for first-level managers. Believingthat “first-level managers are the real key to organizational health,” Jhanadelivers microlearning nuggets via a weekly email, providing performancesupport, coaching, and curated content to these crucial ambassadors.
“We see that first-level manager as a real linchpin of theorganization,” said Loren Mooney, Jhana’s vice president of product. “Ifthey’re successful, you’ll have engaged individual contributors; people areengaged at the employee level. You have company changes successfullyimplemented, so a much healthier organization overall.”
Training is essential, of course, and some companies run orsend new managers to seminars. But training tends to be concentrated—amanagers’ retreat or a multi-module, in-depth eLearning course. A team leadercan attend training, engage in the group bonding and morale-building exercises,and return to work with fresh enthusiasm and great ideas. But none of that willhelp several weeks down the line when she’s struggling to set the agenda for ameeting or broach a difficult conversation with a direct report.
Here’s where performance support comes in. The weeklymessage from Jhana includes tips, new content, and links to previouslypublished articles and curated content. In addition, the growing library oftopics on the Jhana website, always available to subscribers, is likely to havecontent that meets managers’ needs. It includes:
- Templates and checklists
- Suggestions for starting or navigating toughconversations—with direct reports and with higher-level managers
- Webinars
- Resources, organized by topic, listing books andfurther web-based reading
- Video interviews with managers
Some of the content is created by Jhana’s in-house team,based on advice from Jhana’s expert panel of managers; some is curated contentfrom outside experts. Topic development begins with a survey of the “expert”literature but brings it into the real world via interviews with as many as twodozen first-level managers. “I think when things are theoretical, they are notvery grounded in real-world experience,” Mooney said. “One of the things thatwe stay really focused on in our content approach is really blending the bestpractices from management scholars, from the top-tier management consultants,with real-world, lived experience.”
The video interviews, for example, feature a manager—fromthe expert panel or from the community of Jhana customers—describing an actualproblem-solving experience. “Those kinds of stories are actually much higherimpact than a theoretical video that talks about somebody’s research,” Mooneysaid.
Just as smaller companies might outsource human resources orpayroll, outsourcing managerial coaching offers a broader range of material,perspectives, and content than a single manager—or even a fantastic humanresources department and willing cadre of upper-level managers—can provide. Anew feature Jhana is adding in 2017 leverages the broad experience of managersin the user base. Called “Help a Manager,” it will offer members a way to makesuggestions to other managers, facilitating a collaborative learningenvironment that, Mooney said, is what “modern learners” prefer.
“Help a Manager” will consist of a question or problempresented in the weekly newsletter, along with a call for solutions. Managerscan respond via an email form, describing their experience with that issue.Jhana staff will edit the responses, contact some contributors for additionalinformation, and craft a response that represents a variety of viewpoints andexperiences. “We’ve done this once, and we were blown away by the quality ofthe responses, how thoughtful people were, and how useful it turns out thattheir experiences can be to others,” Mooney said. “One of the things that werealized when we got those answers from the group—we were able to present arange of experiences and contexts that really gave advice and answers much morerobust than we ever could’ve developed on our own. That real-world experienceis essential.”
Jhana considers a topic area to be fully developed only when“we’ve canvassed the landscape appropriately for our audience,” Mooney said. That“landscape” is uniquely focused on first-level managers’ experience. She citedthe topic area of “managing company change.” Much of the published work talks aboutleading corporate change. “What we realized is that, for the average manager,they’re not necessarily devising the company change or determining thecompany’s direction. In a lot of cases, they’re receiving the company changeand then turning around and having to implement that company change. They [theteam leaders] are a middle piece of the process—an essential piece of theprocess—so we constructed the topic from that particular perspective. Weweren’t resting on a lot of the more executive-level company change researchthat’s out there,” she said.
Jhana’s approach to eLearning performance support understands that managersare busy. Articles are short and focused. Templates and checklists aresimilarly uncluttered. The writing style is conversational, intelligent,comfortable. Mooney likens it to providing recipes—step-by-step instructionsfor implementing solutions to real problems. “Our goal is reducing as manybarriers as possible to people being able to use it [the content] and apply itin their day,” she said. “That can come across as stripped-down, but we like tothink of it as the most efficient way to reach these learners.”
