How a Bristol firm replaced monthly 360s with weekly check-ins for new managers

The Chartered Management Institute reported in 2023 that 82% of UK managers are "accidental managers" — promoted into the role with no formal training. Gemma Sinclair, Head of People at Harbourside Group, a 240-person professional-services firm in Bristol, built a 10-week programme to close exactly that gap. It was well designed and it kept leaking: on monthly 360-degree reports it finished barely half the managers who started. One Bitir cohort took completion from 58% to 92%.

Where she started

Harbourside promotes its best specialists into management, which is how most firms its size grow their leaders and also how most of them create struggling first-time managers. Gemma's programme was her answer: ten weeks of structured development for each new cohort of team leads.

The design leaned on a tool she had inherited and trusted — the 360-degree review. Each manager got feedback gathered from their reports and peers once a month, plus a live workshop every few weeks and a workbook to complete in between.

The parts never joined up:

• The monthly 360 arrived as a dense report that landed with a thud and was rarely acted on before the next one replaced it.
• The workbook was completed the night before the workshop, if at all.
• Between the live sessions, the cohort went silent, and Gemma had no idea who was applying anything until the end-of-programme survey told her, too late, that half of them hadn't.

She was running a development programme that gathered evidence of development once a month and generated no development habit at all.

The breaking point

One cohort of twelve crystallised it. Four managers engaged fully and clearly grew. The rest drifted — not because they didn't care, but because nothing in the programme touched their actual week. A capable new team lead told Gemma at the wrap-up that she had found the workshops interesting and changed nothing about how she managed, because there was never a moment that asked her to.

The 360s, meanwhile, cost a fortune in everyone's time and produced reports that mostly confirmed what people already suspected, a month after they could have used it.

"I was measuring these managers to two decimal places once a month and developing them not at all," Gemma says. "A 360 tells someone how they were seen four weeks ago. By the time they read it, the moment to do anything differently has passed, and they've got a new report to digest instead of a habit to build. I had the diagnosis industry running and the treatment missing."

What she set up in Bitir

Gemma rebuilt the programme around a weekly rhythm instead of a monthly report, on the principle that development is a habit, not a document — the shift from event to rhythm we set out in team coaching vs team training.

1. One private cohort per intake. All twelve new managers in one closed Bitir group, with each week's theme and materials pinned rather than emailed and lost.
2. A personal development goal per manager. Each writes their own outcome for the ten weeks — a specific way they want to manage differently — visible only to them and Gemma, following the manager-led approach in our guide to running accountability groups as a manager.
3. A weekly check-in that replaced the monthly 360. Three fixed prompts each week: what did you try, what happened, what will you do next. Feedback moved from a quarterly snapshot to a weekly reflection managers acted on while it was live.
4. Assignments tied to each week's theme. The workbook became a sequence of dated weekly tasks — run a one-to-one this way, have this difficult conversation — so the learning attached to real work.
5. The cohort as a peer group. Managers saw each other's commitments and wins, so first-time managers learned they were not the only one finding it hard.

Gemma kept the occasional live workshop — the human element still matters — but the between-session rhythm, the part that had been dead air, now carried the programme.

What changed in the numbers

Gemma compared the last 360-based cohort with the first full Bitir cohort, each twelve managers.

The confidence figure is self-reported and Gemma treats it with appropriate caution, but it moved in step with what she saw in the weekly check-ins: managers trying things, reporting back, and adjusting. The completion jump is the one she trusts most, because it is simply counted.

What she credits, in order:

1. Weekly beat monthly. A small reflection every week changed behaviour where a heavy report every month had only described it.
2. The personal goal gave each manager a point they owned, rather than a set of competencies handed down by HR.
3. The cohort made struggling normal. A first-time manager who sees peers naming the same difficulties keeps going; one who thinks they alone are failing quietly checks out.

The cost comparison sealed it internally. Running the rhythm in-house, with external facilitators kept only for a few live sessions, delivered better outcomes than the previous 360-heavy model at a materially lower cost per cohort.

What she would tell another People lead

Gemma's advice to other HR and People leaders is direct.

• Development is a weekly habit, not a monthly report. If your programme's centre of gravity is a 360, you are measuring more than you are developing.
• Give managers one thing to change and a place to reflect on it every week. That single loop outperforms most of what a workbook contains.
• Run intakes as cohorts. First-time managers need to see that their peers find it hard too, or they conclude the problem is them.
• You can run most of this in-house. Keep external facilitation for what genuinely needs an outside voice; own the rhythm yourself.

For the sponsor summary she gives the executive team at the end of each cohort, Gemma uses the outcome-first structure in our guide to reporting coaching results — lead with what changed, keep individual detail private.

What's next

Gemma is extending the model to a second-line programme for managers-of-managers and building a rolling alumni group so managers who finished a cohort keep a light peer network as they grow. She is also training two team leads to co-run future cohorts, with the per-manager view making it straightforward to share the load without losing sight of anyone.

Related reading: how managers run structured accountability groups for their teams, and team coaching vs team training: what the research says.