When not taking steps to “Avoid the Noid,” the leadership and organizational development team at Domino’s Pizza incorporates technology into its overall leadership development efforts to facilitate a blended learning approach.
With more than 8,000 locations in more than 54 countries, Domino’s needs a cost-effective way to reach out to a broad audience to support leadership development. Offering a variety of programs through its homegrown learning portal, DPZ University (which houses e-learning content from a variety of vendors), accomplishes this strategic objective.
“The nice thing about this is, from home, at night, I can access it; I don’t have to be at work,” said Patti Wilmot, executive vice president of PeopleFirst, Domino’s Pizza’s training program. “With the business that we run, a lot of our team members work odd hours, particularly our leaders that run our stores. This gives them the opportunity to do it in the morning or whenever they want to do it.”
John Kissinger, manager of leadership organization and development, said the training is empowering for employees in leadership or managerial roles.
“This allows us to put tools in the hands of each and every one of our leaders in an instant, and now we’ve got a very broad reach out into the marketplace, across this building, into our distribution centers and out into the stores,” Kissinger said. “Otherwise, we were challenged in having large infrastructures and training departments.”
Through its Web portal, Domino’s provides access to this tool for about 1,000 of its team members. Kissinger describes the program as ‘cascading’ through the organization from the top down, to where new leadership is in development.
Wilmot said the bottom is where it’s most useful.
“It’s primarily for an early-career leader. Maybe it’s their first time managing people, and he or she is having an issue with someone around attendance or has lack of results-oriented performance management skills,” she said. “They can go in and get some quick tips on how to sit down with this team member and have a good one-on-one discussion to address those skill deficiencies.”
This allows for a self-directed approach to leadership development.
“Because it allows us to effectively and efficiently get down to lower and lower levels in the organization, regardless of what level of leadership you’re at or aspiring to, you are able to get access to a particular suite of content for that,” Kissinger said. “So, for someone who might be aspiring to become a manager or a strategic leader at the director or vice president level, there’s content on there that’s relevant to each and every level of the organization.”
One source of this content is a desktop reference tool called ManageMentor from Harvard Business School Publishing. Domino’s has mapped the tool against three distinct levels in its organization.
“There are some topics that are relevant to all team members, even ones that don’t get heavy direct reports,” Kissinger said. “Those topics are then also relevant to folks who manage others and who do have direct reports, and then there’s some topics in there that are really specific to strategic levels of leadership, so they might not be as relevant to someone who’s in that middle-management role.
“Everyone has access to it, but we’ve put some recommendations and guidelines in place to help steer them to the topics that are most relevant to their unique needs.”
— Daniel Margolis, dmargolis@clomedia.com
