Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company that collaborates with clients to solve complex business problems and helps them become high-performance organizations and governments.

A team leader receives a call from the client at the end of the business day, demanding major changes in the work product. Deadline extension? Not a chance. As he and his team dig in, and as he cancels his other meetings, he asserts his assumptions on having time for people development:
No Time 1
It’s clear that people development is important – but, the team lead says, he has no time for it. At least not until the changes are finished.

He’s making several assumptions about people development:
• Serving the client must be the only priority at this time
• People development means performance reviews, mentoring meetings, and other formal interactions separate from the task at hand
• People development serves various individual, team, and institutional long-term goals, but has little direct connection to the immediate goal of serving the client
• In other words, the hypothetical team leader assumes that people development goals must be balanced against the goal of serving the client, rather than contributing to serving the client. That it is “on top of” doing business, rather than “how we do business.”

Do you recognize these assumptions in yourself? How about the rest of your company?

It’s easy to relegate “people development” to a low priority. After all, operating the business and creating value are urgent needs that demand our attention. There’s rarely a deadline around developing people... until it’s too late.
In the scenario described above, what would happen if the team leader continuously acts according to those assumptions?

Over time, the likelihood is that these people will not want to work for him. They’ll be tired, demotivated, and disengaged.  That’s disastrous for the business and for the client. So in the medium to long-term, as his team
members lose productivity and maybe even leave the team or the organization, he’s not doing his client any favors. He’s doing them a disservice.

In this next video, the panellists are operating from a different set of assumptions. They don’t see people development as something done “in addition” to getting the work done – they see it as integral to how one does get the work done.
No Time 2
In summary, in Accenture we believe that:
• People development that only happens “after the work is done” is not real people development
• A team that is being developed every day is better able to handle the most challenging times
• It is during the challenging times, and not after the work is done, that a leader’s feedback and support matter most.

We cannot just add “develop people” to our to-do list and check it off when we’re done. We need to integrate developing our people into everything we do. Every interaction, every conversation, and every piece of work is an opportunity to develop our people. As we operate the business and create value for our internal and external clients,
developing our people enables us to reach higher performance.

In other words, at Accenture it’s not something we do in addition to our business. “Developing People Is our
Business”.

Paradigm shifts
This was the business problem we wanted to solve, moving our people from seeing people development as something that happens after the work is done, to something that is integral to accomplishing the work.  A belief shift, rather than a skill development need.

Part of the paradigm shift was around the amount of time available for people development. Leaders saw it as time-consuming, taking them away from the business for an hour or more at a time. We needed leaders to view people development as multiple, very short “micro-actions” on-the-job. Actions which build trust, engagement and productivity when applied little and often.

Previously, we had successfully used Socratic Dialogues as one way to achieve this shift, where people have
their own aha moments in dialogue with their teams about people development. Those aha moments shifted
beliefs, and with them also behaviours.  The question was how to build on that success, and how to model the micro-action philosophy.

Continuous Learning Model
The continuous learning model differentiates Accenture.  It is driven by formal learning, collaboration (interacting
with peers and experts) and on-the-job experience.  So I really wanted to design a learning experience that fit into the on-the-job experience part of our continuous learning model. Something that would get people to apply their learning right there on the job, rather than having to translate what they learned in a classroom into their daily work lives. After all, learning and training lead to better performance when properly aligned with work activity.

Pay-it-forward
While I was scratching my head and searching for the right answer, I stumbled across a news article about a colleague, Marissa Gilbert, who had used blog posts to send out a “pay-it-forward”- type of 30 day challenge every day for a month. I immediately saw the applicability to the business problem I needed to solve.

And our participants rated this experience highly, as a fun, experiential way to learn and to collaborate with
others. I knew that providing a phenomenal learning experience for Accenture people is one of the key drivers
behind our learning innovations.

And thus the 30 Day Challenge: “Developing People Is our Business” was born.

What is the 30 Day Challenge?
30 Day Challenge consists of thirty micro-actions. Micro-actions are activities that can be integrated into the daily work, things that take less than ten minutes to accomplish. Usually, the actions we request of our people take time in preparation and implementation. I wanted these micro-actions to stand in contrast to that typical approach. Given
that I wanted people to take the actions every day, they needed to be manageable. Not only that, I wanted to show that it’s the “little” things that make all the difference.  They add up over time, contributing to people’s engagement bit by bit. Here are a couple of examples.Notice just how “micro” – and common sensical -- they are:
• Write a note/letter to someone today. Perhaps a thank-you note or a note that simply says you’re thinking about the person.
• Pay yourself an act of kindness, to congratulate yourself on a job well done this week, no matter how great or small.

So the micro-actions were sent out one at a time, over a month.  Participants in the challenge would, ideally, take the challenge each day. You can read all the challenges in Part II of the e-Book in the materials section.

Before the campaign officially began, people signed up to receive the challenges in their inbox, from my blog. Ideally, I wanted people to comment, within the blog, on the actions they had taken and the impact they noticed on themselves, the people around them, and the business. Those who did comment seemed to learn more about their
beliefs and actions by this simple act of reflection. I also summarized the comments the next day, to draw out the themes in the learning, for the benefit of those who had not read the comments.

This was social media on its best day, encouraging on-the-job learning, reflection and behaviour change. A kind of action learning, if you like.

The challenge also enabled us to connect people to job aids and other performance support tools, which they might otherwise not have had access to.

Our guiding principle was that everything must be readable and actionable in less than ten minutes, to be sure that people would take action that day.

Taking the challenges
A couple of people told us that once they had missed a few challenges, they became disheartened and then didn’t take any at all from that point on – and then felt guilty for it. This parallels a typical workplace process, so this in itself is good learning for people about their own motivation. I learned that we should encourage participants not to
worry if they miss a day or two or ten, but instead to pick up where they left off and keep going. Any action is better
than no action.

We integrated this learning into the second 30 Day Challenge.

Technology
In the second year, we had some issues with the technology just before the challenge month.  Unbeknownst to me, Accenture was moving onto a different platform right at the crucial moment, and a couple of things got messed up.  I apologied profusely to the blog readers, and worked closely with our technology folks, keeping the followers informed of progress, so luckily they were patient and stuck with the challenge.  After day 2, things were back to normal. 

A picture speaks a thousand words
For the second 30 Day Challenge, we choose pictures that conect at an emotional level, and embedded these into the blog posts.  We had used these pictures in the e-Book that summarised year one's 30 day challenge, and people had responded extremely positively to them. 

Who signed up?
3500 people signed up in the first year, and 8650 signed up the second year, to receive the challenges each day.

That so many people voluntarily signed up tells us how much our people value people development, and how seriously they take the responsibility.

Because we used social media to distribute the challenges, we were able to reach a global audience. In fact, we had
participants from fifty-two different countries. They were from all levels of the organization, and across all
our workforces.

Another Accenture belief is that you can be a leader at any level, and from any seat. This was a great way to
encourage our pipeline of leaders to embrace the Developing People Is our Business belief, and to start applying that philosophy early in their careers, so they can make a habit of it.

A few teams took the challenge together to provide encouragement and learn from each other through conversation.

The ripple effect
Immediately after the challenge, we asked each participant how many other people they felt they had impacted as a result of the challenges.  According to the self-reports, each participant had  an impact on an average of seven people as a result  of the challenge. If we extrapolate that out to the 8650 people who took part in year two, we had a positive impact on over 61,000people.

Popular challenges
Thirty days after the challenge finished, we sent a survey to participants, asking which challenges they completed and the business impacts they observed. One hundred and sixty-one people responded.

We found that the typical respondent engaged in thirteen challenges during the month.

Over 60% of respondents completed the following challenges:
• Ask two people how their days are going or how their days went, and really listen to them
• Think about someone who inspires you and to tell that person why he/she does
• Remember to make eye contact and listen with genuine interest
• Write a note/letter to someone. Perhaps a thank-you note or a note that simply says you’re thinking about the person
• Sit down and take the time to have a conversation with someone, without rushing on to the next task or meeting.

We draw two conclusions from this:
1. It seems that those challenges which were already likely to be part of their working day, which simply needed a
tweak in the way they did them, were more likely to be undertaken
2. Those which are about recognizing others were more likely to be undertaken, especially as we gave them a
link to a neat e-postcard tool for the thank you note challenge, which many of them had not previously seen (the usage of this site increased by 300% on the days surrounding this challenge).

In addition to the recognition challenges, we also saw that challenges to do with networking were popular.

Change in behavior
In the thirty days after the challenge month, people reported that they were still taking actions as a result of the challenge, more so than they did before the challenge (though not to the same degree as during the challenge month). However, people were more likely to be engaging in behaviours that increased the quality of their communication, or coached and developed others.  People observed moderate business impacts in a number of
additional areas, with the largest being their own level of engagement, and increased opportunities to collaborate with others.

Cost and value
In summary, we must ensure there is value in what we spend on learning. At Accenture, we continue to look for ways to deliver that learning as cost-effectively as possible. This was one way of creating value for our business, at an ultra lowcost per person. The entire project cost around 20 cents to set up and run for each participant.

Success Factors
• Be very clear about the business outcome you hope to achieve
• Identify your target audience
• Identify your criteria for choosing challenges. At the very least, choose challenges that are short (less than 5 minutes) to put into practice, and relevant to your performance outcomes. If you work in a virtual environment, make sure the challenges are possible in that context
• While challenges may look like common sense at first glance, the ones that provide a “twist” seem to be received the best, e.g., “Ask someone how their day is going, and really listen to their reply”
• Tell people how to sign up to receive the blog/micro-blog each day via alerts, as they are unlikely to go into the post without the reminder. Advertize verbally and in writing for the month before the 30 days start, sending out teasers at minus 30 days, minus 10 days, minus 5 days, minus 1 day
• Keep the challenges secret, to create a buzz of anticipation ahead of the 30 days
• Post the challenges every day, at a consistent time, so people don't e-mail wondering whether they have missed it that day
• For best results, the blogger should summarize the themes coming out of the comments, so participants see the connection to the new belief you want them to have.

Development and Delivery Considerations
• Choose the business-relevant challenges carefully, such that they meet your criteria
• Think ahead about how you want to evaluate success. For example: number people signed up to
receive alerts, demographics of people signed up, comments related to each challenge, demographics of commenters, asking participants about the impact on the business.

Challenge month minus 30 days: Advertising the challenge
• Write a succinct invitation about the purpose of the challenge, and sign-up instructions to receive an alert every day
• Identify relevant meetings where you can let your target audience (or those who communicate to them) know about the challenge. Talk to as many people as you can, and follow up with the invitation
• Include HR in your communications, as they will be in a position to pass on to those they support
• Encourage people in the invitation to send it on to at least three other people in their network, to create viral spread
• Continue to encourage sign-up during the 30 days, as it doesn’t matter if people join late.  We had over 2000 people join during the month in the second year.

Challenge Month: Sending the challenges
• Send out challenge at consistent time each day (otherwise people contact you via e-mail wondering if it’s got lost)
• Encourage all communications to happen through comments for everyone to read, rather than directly to your inbox
• Encourage reflection on the actions taken through comments. Ask participants specifically “what was the impact on you, others and the organization?” or “what are you learning?”
• Summarize the comments, especially the learning and the impact, the next day
• Choose challenges for the weekend that can be conducted with family and friends; send Friday, Saturday and Sunday challenges on the Friday
• Given that your aim is to change habits for the longterm, encourage participants to come up with their own challenges on the last day, and to share those with others through the comments
• Bear in mind that if your participants are from multiple
geographies, they may not all receive the challenge on the correct day, due to time zone differences. In order
to be inclusive, I recommend that you recognize this in an early post.

Challenge month plus 30 days: keeping the learning going
• Send the full list of the 30 challenges in one handout, along with any other resources that would be useful to
your audience to continue to meet the business need
• Immediate survey: Ask participants to comment on the impact of the challenge: for example, which challenges
did they take, how many people did they impact as a result of the challenge, and how would they summarize
the impact on themselves, others and the business performance. The very act of asking them which
challenges they took reminds them again of the actions they can continue to take
• You could also encourage participants to create a pod/ vod-cast about what they learned
• Summarize the learning and the impact to the business, and communicate both to those who took part and to
your other stakeholders
• Include a news article about the success of the challenge, in your company’s newsletter, if this is a global challenge, or in a local communication as appropriate
• + 30 day survey. Ask participants which challenges they have continued to put into practice. Again, this serves
as a reminder to them to take the micro-actions.

Marissa Gilbert for her original Pay-it-Forward Challenge idea.
The 8650 participants in the challenge, for developing people every day.