Chief Learning Officer - January 2016

January 2016 | CLOmedia.com

➤ Culture Can’t Wait to Be King ➤ Looking at the Bigger Strategic Picture ➤ Why Failing Fast Is Good for Business ➤ Machines Will Change How We Learn ➤ When Learning Functions Merge ➤ Creating Layers of Competency ➤ Vanderbilt Dictates With Dragon

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EDITOR’S LETTER

A Resolution I Can Believe In I

don’t do New Year’s resolutions.

That’s not to say that I don’t have goals. One day, I aim to read all of the nearly 1,500 pages of “War and Peace” as well as the many other volumes collecting dust on my bookshelves.

I’d also like to add a few new skills and additional knowledge. Boosting my high school Spanish beyond the ability to ask where the bathroom is as well as learning the ins and outs of economics are top of the list. If time permits, an MBA would be good.

My avoidance of resolutions doesn’t mean I’m not in dire need of improvement either. I could stand to forgo a cookie or two and get more organized as well.

Going for a daily run, practicing yoga and meditating regularly are additional to-dos.

Helping others achieve their goals isn’t just a New Year’s activity.

realization suddenly dawns as we once again swing open the freezer door, “You know, maybe this bowl of ice cream drowned in a pool of chocolate isn’t the best choice for my health.” I don’t know about you but I’ve known that all along.

Resolutions are really about reinvention. And reinvention is hard. It takes real work to shed bad habits and old ways of thinking in the ongoing quest to be better. That’s why I’m so impressed by people who make reinvention a lifelong habit.

Take the example of former president Jimmy Carter.

He’s been a naval officer, peanut farmer, businessman, state governor, national leader, Nobel prizewinner and global humanitarian. At 91, he still teaches Sunday school at his home church in Plains, Georgia, despite ongoing treatment for cancer in his brain and liver.

In business, restless Silicon Valley figures like Tesla boss Elon Musk are constantly testing new ideas and launching new ventures. In his case, elegant and powerful electric cars and commercial space flight are some of the results.

Then there’s Prince. Four decades after his debut, the multi-Grammy winner is still writing songs, making music and spreading the gospel of purple. He’s sold more than 100 million records over his career and with his 38th album released last September, that number is set to go even higher.

Those kind of lifelong records of achievement only come from a consistent process of reinvention, a constantly moving flywheel of goals, experiments and lessons learned. While I can’t be Prince, I can learn from the examples of high achievers like him. Reinvention is not a once-a-year activity. It’s a daily slog requiring persistence, hard work and action. Resolution is only a necessary first step.

That’s what is so exciting about the work of chief learning officers. You play a pivotal role in helping others set clear goals. But more importantly, you commit to help people take the unglamorous steps along the way to make transformation happen.

Now that’s a resolution I can believe in. CLO

In fact, if all goes to plan, I’ll be the most well-read, versatile, multilingual, Zen-like person with six-pack abs you’ll ever meet. But in reality, this time next year I’ll be the slightly older, mildly healthier but by-and-large the same moderately literate person with the consistently cluttered inbox and inexorably expanding midsection.

That reality is part of my skepticism about New Year’s resolutions. The evidence of success is slim, unlike my growing waistline. Nearly half of us regularly make a yearly resolution but only 8 percent actually keep them, according to a University of Scranton study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

Most resolutions fade even before the end of January. Newly bought gym memberships go unused, diet and exercise fall prey to the predatory cookie, organizational habits get lost in the clutter. What begins as a commitment rarely makes it to full-blown habit.

New Year’s resolutions are also desperate. It always struck me as strange that we wait until one particular day to make a healthy lifestyle change, whether it’s as simple as forgoing the midafternoon cookie or something more challenging like, say, cutting the Kardashians from your media diet.

If something is so important to deserve a resolution, why wait to do it? If you want to reconnect with old friends, do it now. It’s not like there’s a shortage of ways to get in touch. If you want to share your knowl- Mike Prokopeak edge or expertise, start a blog. Now. No need to wait.

Editor in Chief It’s not like the end of the year rolls around and the mikep@CLOmedia.com 4 Chief Learning Officer • January 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

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EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, CREATIVE SERVICES Gwen Connelly gwen@CLOmedia.com VICE PRESIDENT, CFO, COO Kevin A. Simpson ksimpson@CLOmedia.com VICE PRESIDENT, GROUP PUBLISHER Clifford Capone ccapone@CLOmedia.com VICE PRESIDENT, EDITOR IN CHIEF Mike Prokopeak mikep@CLOmedia.com GROUP EDITOR/ASSOCIATE EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Kellye Whitney kwhitney@CLOmedia.com MANAGING EDITOR Rick Bell rbell@CLOmedia.com ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR James Tehrani jtehrani@CLOmedia.com SENIOR EDITOR Frank Kalman fkalman@CLOmedia.com ASSOCIATE EDITORS Lauren Dixon ldixon@CLOmedia.com Bravetta Hassell bhassell@CLOmedia.com Sarah Sipek ssipek@CLOmedia.com

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ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE Brian Lorenz blorenz@CLOmedia.com DIRECTOR, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND EVENTS Kevin Fields kfields@CLOmedia.com MARKETING ASSOCIATE Max Mihelich mmihelich@CLOmedia.com AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR Cindy Cardinal ccardinal@CLOmedia.com

LEAD GENERATION ADMINISTRATOR Nick Safir nsafir@CLOmedia.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Ken Blanchard Kate Everson Sarah Fister Gale Jim Graber Ia Ko Elliott Masie Lee Maxey Bob Mosher Levi Nieminen Sarah Patrick Clark Quinn Colin Sloman Jesse Sostrin Bob Thomas Alice Wastag Wendy Webb George Vukotich

DIGITAL SPECIALIST Lauren Lynch llynch@CLOmedia.com MARKETING MANAGER Taylar Ramsey tramsey@CLOmedia.com

John R. Taggart

Gwen Connelly

Kevin A. Simpson

PRESIDENT

EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT

CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER

LEADERS

January 2016 | Volume 15, Issue 1 PRESIDENT John R. Taggart jrtag@CLOmedia.com

Provide PROOF of Performance

Norman B. Kamikow CO-FOUNDER (1943-2014)

CHIEF LEARNING OFFICER EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Cushing Anderson, Program Director, Learning Ser vices, IDC Frank J. Anderson Jr., ( Ret.) President, Defense Acquisition Universit y Cedric Coco, Senior Vice President, Learning and Organizational Ef fectiveness, Lowe’s Cos. Inc. Lisa Doyle, Vice President, Learning and Development, Lowe’s Cos. Inc. Tamar Elkeles, Vice President, Learning and Development, Qualcomm Thomas Evans, Chief Learning Of ficer, PricewaterhouseCoopers Ted Henson, Senior Strategist, Oracle Gerry Hudson-Martin, Director, Corporate Learning Strategies, Business Architects Rob Lauber, Vice President, Chief Learning Of ficer, McDonald’s Corp.

Maj. Gen. Erwin F. Lessel, ( Ret.) U.S. Air Force, Director, Deloit te Consulting Justin Lombardo, Interim Chief Learning Of ficer, Baptist Health Alan Malinchak, Executive Advisor, Talent and Learning Practice, Deltek Universit y Lee Maxey, CEO, MindMax Jeanne C. Meister, Author and Independent Learning Consultant Bob Mosher, Senior Par tner and Chief Learning Evangelist, APPLY Synergies Rebecca Ray, Executive Vice President, The Conference Board Allison Rossett, Professor of Educational Technology, San Diego State Universit y Diana Thomas, Vice President, U.S. Training, McDonald’s Corp.

Annette Thompson, Senior Vice President and Chief Learning Of ficer, Farmers Insurance David Vance, Former President, Caterpillar Universit y Kevin D. Wilde, Chief Learning Of ficer, General Mills

ROI METRICS that show how learning programs impact performance...and that go a long way in the C-Suite.

Let’s build your learning program today – with PROOF of PERFORMANCE built in.

Chief Learning Officer, ISSN 1935-8148, is published monthly by MediaTec Publishing Inc., 318 Harrison Street, Suite 301, Oakland, CA 94607. Periodicals Class Postage paid at Oakland, CA and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Please send address changes to: Chief Learning Officer magazine, P.O. Box 8712, Lowell, MA 01853. Subscriptions are free to qualified professionals within the U.S. and Canada. Non-qualified paid subscriptions are available at the subscription price of $195 for 12 issues. All countries outside the U.S. and Canada must be prepaid in U.S. funds with an additional $33 postage surcharge. Single copy price is $29.99.

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CorporateLearning.com A non-profit university, Bellevue University is accredited by The Higher Learning Commission • hlcommission.org • 800-621-7440

TABLE OF CONTENTS JANUARY 2016

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22

18

Features

18 26 30 36 40

Culture Can’t Wait to Be King Ia Ko, Levi Nieminen, Sarah Patrick and Alice Wastag In the private equity industry, cash used to be king, queen and everything else. But these days, culture is making a serious play for the high-performance crown.

Why Failing Fast Is Good for Business George Vukotich In a startup — or in any business environment — failing fast, or knowing when to fold and when to redirect, not only offers key development opportunities but also is great for business.

Looking at the Bigger Picture Clark Quinn When it comes to creating the business outcomes that companies want, keeping a 360-degree view of what strategic learning is and how initiatives are built can make all the difference.

When Learning Functions Merge Wendy Webb What happens to the learning departments when two companies combine? Well, that depends on the learning leaders’ attitude and strategy.

Creating Layers of Competency Jim Graber Competency modeling has typically been a mishmash of too much, yet not enough to accomplish anything. A multilayered approach can change all that.

CORRECTION In the November 2015 issue, the story “Golden Arches of Opportunity,” p. 44, incorrectly stated how many employees were affected by McDonald’s Corp.’s education programs.

Nearly 2,000 employees have been affected.

8 Chief Learning Officer • January 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

ON THE WEB Join the CLO LinkedIn Group What hurdles have you faced when implementing social learning tools? How do you establish a learning objective when someone does not self-identify a skills gap?

Discuss these topics and more in Chief Learning Officer’s LinkedIn group. Plus, we’ve been featuring reader comments in the magazine, so come chat with us and get your thoughts published.

Join today to engage with peers and post your own questions at CLOmedia.com/LinkedIn. ON THE COVER: PHOTO BY DREW ALTIZER

TABLE OF CONTENTS JANUARY 2016

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40

Departments

36

Experts 10 IMPERATIVES

22 Profile SAP’s Learning Superhero Kate Everson The software company’s learning leader saves the day with a business-focused approach that incorporates metrics and culture to engage learners across the company.

44 Case Study Dictating With Dragon Sarah Fister Gale DIY learning modules and live-support clinics helped Vanderbilt University Medical Center train 3,000 physicians and providers to use Dragon software in just six weeks.

46 Business Intelligence Machines Will Change How We Learn Colin Sloman and Bob Thomas Companies must come to terms with the digital transformation and lay the foundation for change.

Elliott Masie Specification or Personalization?

12 SELLING UP, SELLING DOWN

Bob Mosher 3 Ways to Flip the Classroom

14 LEADERSHIP

Ken Blanchard Why New Year’s Resolutions Don’t Work

16 MAKING THE GRADE

Lee Maxey Higher Education Needs Higher-Level Tech

50 IN CONCLUSION

Jesse Sostrin Going Beyond Can Make You Fall Behind

Resources 4 Editor’s Letter

A Reslution I Can Believe In

49 Advertisers’ Index

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Chief Learning Officer • January 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

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IMPERATIVES

Specification or Personalization?

Weave design knowledge into a world of learning choice • BY ELLIOTT MASIE

T

Elliott Masie is the chairman and CLO of The Masie Center’s Learning Consortium and CEO of The Masie Center, an international think tank focused on learning and workplace productivity. To comment, email editor@ CLOmedia.‌com.

he future of learning has embraced the fascinating reality of personalization. More than ever, our workers expect to be able to select, sequence, manage and access learning resources in a manner of their choosing.

Personalization is the ability to choose time, device, style and even intensity of content, context or collaboration. But is personal choice the learning goal?

The learner might have some ingrained preferences.

They might like video more than reading or practice more than theory. A learner might be drawn to one topic and have no interest in another key element of a curriculum. Or, they might feel fully competent in an area and skip a learning offering altogether.

Let’s add a few elements to the concept of personal choice that might more deeply serve the needs of the learner, the employer and the enterprise learning culture.

• Machine learning: What if our learning management system and other learning systems could track each learner’s behaviors and modify the content and activity elements accordingly?

• Continuous assessment: What if our assessment systems were continually mapping the readiness of each learner — finding knowledge gaps — and the readiness of groups of workers? For example, what is the readiness of all new hires in a certain division of the company?

• Stretch offers: What if we could offer the learner an occasional stretch content cluster, which does not map to their personal preferences, but that is a powerful accelerator of time to competency?

A desire to extend personalization to specification is fueled by a desire to not throw out the best learning design with the advent of new technology choices.

• Learner dashboards: Imagine if each learner had a dashboard of their required skills, renewed certifications, emerging product knowledge and personal development targets. The dashboard would blend a learner’s choices with organizational assignments.

I advocate that we embrace the excitement and en10 Chief Learning Officer • January 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

gagement of learning personalization. And let’s add learning specification to the mix.

Let’s shift our thinking to younger students still in school. Innovation models are already combining learner choice with more specification based on assessment and content mapping. There is even movement toward a “curriculum of one,” where learner preferences are blended with machine mapping of the most high-impact activities and effective ways to teach a given topic to a group of students are regularly resourced. Each week, a learner receives a curriculum that combines personal choice with learning specification.

My desire to extend personalization to specification is also fueled by a desire to not throw out the best learning design with the advent of new technology choices.

We have a great deal of experience that shows design can help optimize and support individual and community competency and readiness outcomes. Just because learners can quickly swipe past an offered module does not mean we want our nurses to skip content on infection control in the operating room.

Learning specification will be a technical, internal concept that will weave personalization into the enterprise optimization of learning. To prepare for this shift, learning leaders should begin to deepen their exploration of the following: • Cognitive and brain science: What are researchers learning about content sequence, collaboration, simulation and even support from peers?

• Evidence approaches to innovation: Move to an evidence model, continually testing alternative strategies. What if orientation was done on Day 14 rather than Day One? Gather evidence and compare.

• Machine learning: Track the use of all data to construct the ideal next activity, assignment or example.

• Memorization shifts: As learners memorize less of the searchable content, how can design adapt?

• Failure as a tool: How can we specify practice moments where the learner will positively “fail” as a step toward gaining the ability to succeed soon?

• Learner self-awareness: How can we increase the learner’s awareness of their own skills or gaps?

• Learning style choices: How can we create engagement styles that range from introvert to extrovert?

Learning specification can help build skills, increase readiness, stay compliant and focus on the learner, all while honoring their desire to personalize. CLO

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SELLING UP, SELLING DOWN

3 Ways to Flip the Classroom Classrooms can be a place of enablement, not just where information is shared • BY BOB MOSHER

I

Bob Mosher is a senior partner and chief learning evangelist for APPLY Synergies, a strategic consulting firm.

To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

’ve always been tickled by our industry’s obsession with buzzwords and trends. There have been many in my 30-plus years in this industry. My one pet peeve with all this is that we often “brand” first and “define and refine” second. This has gotten us into trouble a few times.

Setting expectations and boundaries for learning efforts too early can slow down adoption and inhibit growth. Many a great idea or method has taken way too long to develop because we jumped to an early assumption regarding its preferred or most effective format.

I’m seeing the same thing with the flipped classroom.

The classroom does need help. We all agree that it’s not going away anytime soon, but at the same time, it’s taken some hits lately from other competing approaches.

The exciting potential of the flipped classroom is that, if done right, it can help free the classroom to do what it does best, which is to be a safe environment for experimentation, collaboration, remediation, failure, creative thinking and critical thinking, as well as help employees learn how to become independent self-directed learners. These are incredibly powerful things that are hard to do in the regular, day-to-day workflow. The last thing a classroom needs to be is chained down to delivering content through endless lectures, demonstrations and PowerPoints.

In my travels, having looked at many efforts to flip the classroom, I’ve seen three effective approaches emerge: Flipping before the classroom experience. If you research this method, you’ll find it has dominated our thinking. In this approach, we have learners do work before they attend the classroom. Learning leaders assign videos, e-learning and other pre-work so students enter the classroom having already mastered some of what was historically been saved for the classroom itself. Often these skills are assessed prior to, or even as a prerequisite for, attending the class itself.

This way, valuable classroom time can then used for exercises, projects or discussions building on what was already learned. But flipping the classroom doesn’t have to stop there.

Flipping during the classroom experience. We often teach information that builds on prior knowledge. A colleague of mine argues that few adult classes are entirely about new information. Many are an extension of a lifetime of experiences. For instance, I recently attended a class for new managers. Because

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12 Chief Learning Officer • January 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

none of the students had ever held the title of manager at this particular firm, the class followed the classic lecture, lab, assess model. Was this the best use of valuable class time? Because each employee had to have been with the company for at least a year to qualify as a manager, didn’t they possess a year’s worth of experience observing and being managed? This

If done right, the flipped classroom can free the classroom to be a safe environment for experimentation, collaboration, failure and critical thinking. happens way too often in corporate training. The correct model was to flip the classroom itself where they followed an assess, lab, lecture model. Each lesson started with an overall assessment of background with the content, then they entered a discovery lab activity where they used prior knowledge to approach a managerial issue. Lastly, the instructor facilitated a discussion and, at times, lectured around the overall principles to be learned.

Flipping after the classroom experience. This could be one of the most misunderstood flips in the model. This approach uses the classroom to teach only the critical skills needed to survive, and tools such as performance support, along with methods such as coaching and mentoring. Then the learners leave the classroom and intentionally extend their learning out into the workflow where learning is best done in the first place. The classroom becomes a place to ready students for learning, not the end of the journey.

If we flip the classroom correctly, it can become a place of enablement and not just a place where information is shared. Let’s push the model before it’s baked and branded. CLO

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LEADERSHIP

Why New Year’s Resolutions Don’t Work Goal setting, diagnosis and matching can help achieve even stubborn goals • BY KEN BLANCHARD

N

Ken Blanchard is chief spiritual officer of The Ken Blanchard Cos. and co-author of “Collaboration Begins With You: Be a Silo Buster.” To comment, email editor@ CLOmedia.com.

early all of us have made a New Year’s resolution and then not followed through. Why? Because accomplishing the goal is tougher than we thought.

Plus, when we get discouraged, we get little, if any, help from the people around us. In fact, they often smile and say, “We’ll believe it when we see it,” and walk away to let us tackle the resolution on our own.

But if we could achieve the goal by ourselves, it wouldn’t need to be a New Year’s resolution — we would just do it.

For example, for years I struggled to manage my weight and fitness. I would start with the best intentions but inevitably get sidetracked by my busy schedule of traveling, writing and teaching. Time and again I would lose weight, only to regain it and then some.

One day, I had a blinding flash of the obvious: Why not use the time-tested principles I’ve been teaching over the years — namely, Situational Leadership II — to help me figure out the kind of leadership I needed to achieve my fitness goals?

That realization led me to apply the three skills of Situational Leadership II — goal setting, diagnosis and matching — to manage my physical health. The results have been excellent.

1. Goal setting: All good performance starts with clear goals. But what makes a goal stick is having a compelling reason that motivates you to achieve the goal. I had set the goal to become fit many times. This time, I found a compelling purpose to get healthy: my new dog, Joy. I was just turning 70 when I got her.

Knowing dogs can live 15 years or more, I decided to stay healthy until my mid-80s, so I would be around not only for my family but also for Joy. Most people worry about outliving their dog; I worried about my dog outliving me.

When it came to making sure my goals were SMART— specific, motivating, attainable, relevant and trackable — it was very helpful to have direction from my trainer and “Fit at Last” co-author, Tim Kearin. By taking my measurements and monitoring my progress bit by bit, Tim saw to it that my goals were achievable.

2. Diagnosis: Once goals are set, the next step is to diagnose your development level on each of the tasks related to your goal. Development level is a function

of competence — your skills/experience — and commitment — your motivation and confidence.

It was important for me, and it will be important for you, to realize that you’ll need different leadership styles, or help, depending on your development level — your competence and commitment — related to each task.

For example, suppose your New Year’s resolution is to become physically fit: strong, lean, aerobically conditioned and flexible/balanced. Let’s say you’re excited about learning to lift weights. That makes you an enthusiastic beginner in strength training. You have no competence but high commitment. When it comes to weight control, you’re a disillusioned learner; you not only lack competence but also you’ve lost your commitment. In the area of aerobics, you’re a capable but cautious performer; you know how to use a treadmill but your commitment fluctuates with your mood.

You’ve taken yoga for years, so in the area of flexibility/ balance, you’re a self-reliant achiever, both competent and committed.

3. Matching: This third step involves finding someone who can provide you with the directive behavior or supportive behavior you need, given your development level. Using our example, because you’re an enthusiastic beginner in weight training, you need direction — someone to tell you what, when, where and how to lift weights.

As a disillusioned learner about diet and nutrition, you need not only direction but also support — someone to listen to and praise you as you change your diet. As a capable but cautious performer in aerobics, you don’t need much direction, but you do need support — an accountability partner — to get on the treadmill or jogging path. Your passion for yoga makes you a self-reliant achiever in the area of flexibility/balance, so congratulations. Just keep hitting the yoga mat.

Few people can accomplish a major life change by themselves. I finally succeeded when I accepted more direction and support to achieve my fitness goals.

How much direction and support do you need to succeed? Don’t go it alone. Find help to push through the paralyzing disillusioned learner stage and reap the rewards of becoming a self-reliant achiever. CLO

How much direction and support do you need to succeed?

14 Chief Learning Officer • January 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

MAKING THE GRADE

Higher Education Needs Higher-Level Tech CLOs and academics have to partner up and scratch each other’s backs • BY LEE MAXEY

L

Lee Maxey is CEO of MindMax, a marketing and enrollment management services company. To comment, email editor@ CLOmedia.com.

earning is a lot like golf. If you want to excel, pair up with someone better than yourself.

Here’s how that applies to learning technologies: In most cases, corporations are far ahead of higher education in experimenting with, deploying and using learning technology. So I encourage university presidents to open their doors to chief learning officers.

I’m also asking those technologically advanced companies’ CLOs to make the time to walk through that door. It will help both parties succeed. Corporate CLOs can bring proven technologies to increase a school’s revenue stream and enhance the student learning experience.

Better prepared students turn into quality workers.

To kick off 2016, I asked a few experts what they would like to see from higher education. I’m bookending this wish list with three things CLOs can do to help higher education take its technology game to the next level.

When asked for his wish list, Geoffrey Colvin — author of “Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers From Everybody Else” and senior editor at large for Fortune magazine — said, “The learning technology I’d most like to see higher education adopt is high-fidelity, real-time, team-based simulations. Some schools use these already, but many more would benefit by doing so. They powerfully develop the skills of collaboration, which are increasingly important and are rarely trained.”

When asked what he would like universities and colleges to embrace, Justin Lombardo, chief learning officer for Baptist Health, said, “I think the technology that offers the best opportunity is simulation technology. Many institutions of higher learning use simulation, but they use it for narrowly focused exercises.

“If they explored the full range of simulation possibilities,” Lombardo said, “they would recognize greater opportunities to integrate knowledge, advance critical thinking and improve leadership skills such as teamwork.”

David Strainick, global head of learning for NCR Corp., hopes to see higher education widely adopt “3-D simulations, gesture-based simulation and gamebased learning.”

Some of these concepts may even be new to corporate CLOs. For example, to understand Strainick’s wish for gesture-based simulation, think about studying a chemical compound such as water by reading

16 Chief Learning Officer • January 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

about it in a textbook. With a gesture-based simulation, a student can pick up a virtual water molecule, examine the hydrogen and oxygen atoms, and turn the compound in a circle to see its different bonds.

It’s not that higher education is filled with Luddites.

It’s quite the opposite. For instance, at Ohio University’s

Higher education is at the forefront of much technology.

But experts want universities to use learning technology on a wider scale.

Language Resource Center, students have been using a “holodeck” to interact and work within a space created by images. Higher education is at the forefront of much technology. Rather, these experts want to see universities deploy and use learning technologies on a wider scale.

Remember the words of American humorist Will Rogers: “Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.” So bring your expertise to the university door with a dash of humility and be willing to learn, too.

Here are three things CLOs can do to help higher education ratchet up the use of higher-level technology and develop tomorrow’s workforce today: 1. Make contact with a president or provost — a chief academic officer — from a local college or university. Ask them to connect you and your learners with the right part of their institution to engage with you.

2. Be clear about the certifications, certificates and competencies you want from higher education, and partner with a school to build out a curriculum.

3. Work with a larger group of CLOs to develop a common core curriculum that would be relevant to all of you. If your company already belongs to a consortium of companies, pull together a cogent, concise set of requirements your companies need to develop future talent.

Savvy CLOs know where their industries and companies are headed. They have a much better vision of this than a university dean will have. The dean and university president, and to a much larger extent higher education as a whole, however, have to produce tomorrow’s workers. This is learning leaders’ chance to help everyone graduate to the next level. CLO

Culture can’t

WAIT to be

KING In the private equity industry, cash used to be king, queen and everything else. But these days, culture is making a serious play for the high-performance crown.

18 Chief Learning Officer • January 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

BY IA KO, LEVI NIEMINEN, SARAH PATRICK AND ALICE WASTAG

P

rivate equity firms have a strong history of driving organizational performance through financial engineering. However, gone are the days of buying, stripping and flipping “fat” companies to see huge returns.

The competition has grown tougher and smarter.

Infusions of capital, talent and strategy combined with cultural development that drives value are the new success tools.

Firms that effectively measure, manage and intervene on organizational culture have a competitive edge. An increasing number of private equity companies recognize that culture is one of the right metrics to pay attention to for value creation in their portfolio firms as well as in their own organizations.

The Impact of Culture Organizational culture refers to how things are done in an organization: the norms, values and underlying assumptions and mindsets that manifest as observable everyday behaviors.

High-performing organizations share certain cultural elements.

They engage, develop and empower their people mission through these three elements: • Involvement: Facilitate coordinated actions and promote consistency of behaviors.

• Consistency: Translate learning and the demands of the market to responsive and anticipatory actions.

• Adaptability: Provide a clear sense of purpose vision and goals.

These elements have been linked to companies’ short- and longterm performance, including financial performance, quality, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, innovation and safety.

These relationships are often consistent across a variety of organizations and over time.

To better understand the specific role of culture in private equity-owned firm performance, Denison Consulting conducted a

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study using data from 38 portfolio companies and their lines-of-business — about 32,000 employees total (Editor’s note: The authors work at Denison Consulting).

Data were gathered from 2011-2014 to examine the effect of organizational culture on financial performance, including EBITDA — earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization — and sales revenue.

To standardize these metrics across industries, average growth rates were calculated over a three-year period. To measure culture, this study used the Deni-

High-performing organizations share certain cultural elements. For instance, they engage, develop and empower their people. son Organizational Culture Survey, or DOCS, a validated survey based on the culture model (Figure 1).

High scores on the DOCS reflect greater levels of clarity and alignment on the cultural elements being measured, which lead to better performance.

Overall, the findings confirmed a positive link between organizational culture and financial performance among private equity-owned portfolio companies and their lines-of-business. There were strong positive effects of involvement, consistency, mission and adaptability on EBITDA growth and sales growth. Regression analysis showed the comFIGURE 1: THE DENISON ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE MODEL

bination of the aforementioned four culture elements predicted 19 percent of the difference in sales growth and 4 percent of the difference in EBITDA growth across portfolio companies.

To help illustrate this relationship, researchers compared financial metrics from the top and bottom scoring cultures. Companies with the top scoring cultures had 8 percentage points greater EBITDA growth (10 percent vs. 2 percent) and 8 percentage points greater sales growth (5 percent vs. -3 percent) over a three-year period. These differences can amount to millions of dollars in EBITDA and sales for a large organization.

While many cultural elements contributed positively to financial performance of private equity-owned portfolio companies, the strongest and most consistent links were around employee involvement, or the bottom-up, active participation from employees. A focus on developing involvement empowers and engages a workforce and continually develops employee capabilities.

Organizations vary in the degree to which they involve employees in decision-making and invest in people to grow within the company. The best firms invest in their employees’ capabilities, empower them to act in accordance with those capabilities, and facilitate effective teamwork (See “When Learning Gets Loud” on p. 21).

Developing a culture around learning and involvement is important in virtually any organization, but it might look and feel unique in private equity or private equity-owned firms. In this particular environment, the investment needed to build associates’ capabilities is important because the industry is competitive and turnover is usually high at the junior associate level. Development can help to better retain top talent. For instance, private equity firms can adopt an apprenticeship approach to teach valuable on-thejob skills, provide various types of on-the-job training, and sponsor opportunities to purse an advanced degree in business and management.

Learning in Private Equity

Source: Denison Consulting, 2015

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Private equity firms can achieve significant learning and development success with a solid cultural foundation. For example, in the apprenticeship model, junior associates could shadow senior colleagues. They could also be paired with a partner who can act as a mentor.

The private equity firm also could emphasize onthe-job learning. Associates are required to travel intensely and “be on the ground” with portfolio companies. While the purpose of these hands-on apprenticeships is to understand the business challenges and provide the right level of support to the portfolio firms, it forces associates to learn quickly and expand their business knowledge.

They also can facilitate on-the-job learning by ask-

ing junior associates to give their perspectives on investments early and expanding their critical thinking abilities by exposing them to a heavy feedback and fast decision-making environment. According to the Denison study, private equity firms where young associates are involved in deal decisions and portfolio operations and have opportunities to learn and grow often have associates who are highly engaged at work and feel comfortable speaking up.

In this developmental scenario, junior associates could create a one-page summary about a potential target and share their ideas about the pros, cons and value creation opportunities with the team. They are

When Learning Gets Loud

L

oud Technologies Inc., a private equity-owned firm, is the corporate entity that oversees a number of brands in the music industry. The company designs and manufactures sound equipment ranging from entry-level bass guitar amplifiers to major sound systems for touring bands, stadiums and houses of worship.

Case Kuehn, chief financial officer and culture steward at Loud, has worked with dozens of companies globally in his career and is familiar with the importance and impact of culture, especially in private equity where building value and returning capital is core. When starting organizational culture development, one of the areas Loud chose to focus on was increasing employee involvement by improving capability development.

Kuehn said he quickly recognized the importance of leaders committing to a vision by “putting a stake in the ground and initiating actions to get” culture change going.

The vision was to create a new mindset around organizational development and learning, and specifically to start by rethinking training and performance management.

Directives started a cycle of activity where employees prompted each other to identify ways to improve their workplace. The company also introduced a new approach to performance management that evaluated how employees contribute to creating a high-performance culture by rating them on competencies related to elements of the Denison Organizational Culture Model.

After about a year, Loud reassessed its organizational culture and saw improvement in all aspects of its Denison model (Figure 1, p. 20), helping the company along on its journey to build a high-performance culture and organization. Business performance also improved during this time with significant sales and EBITDA growth.

—Ia Ko, Levi Nieminen, Sarah Patrick and Alice Wastag

not just encouraged to participate in investment committee meetings, weekly deal meetings and various others, but also expected to take the initiative and voice their opinions. In this business-learning environment, associates will have more opportunities to receive feedback on their work. Further, when they make mistakes, attempts to do early course corrections can be encouraged through open, straightforward communication.

In addition to on-the-job learning experiences, some private equity firms encourage and support participation in industry and professional conferences.

Recognizing the importance of managing leadership, talent and human capital, these firms also can invest in the learning and involvement of portfolio firms they acquire. Post-acquisition, they might start by increasing the organizational bench strength at the leadership and management levels — with talent from inside and outside the organization — by restructuring portfolio firms.

The compensation plans for management teams are often tied closely to organizational success factors, giving the team a strong personal interest in business success. During these change processes, portfolio firms often rely on the deal team members to provide support and resources so that transitions are smooth and successful. Putting the right people in the right position at the right time to grow the investment requires a tremendous level of knowledge and a strong skill set in leadership, human capital and management.

Private equity firms have different strategies to effectively transfer knowledge and best practices among their portfolio companies. The organizations that do this best are intentional about creating a community and infrastructure around their portfolio, emphasizing that knowledge-sharing across portfolio companies is a top tier strategy to directly transfer best practices. For example, private equity firms might have annual executive forums, events that bring together the C-level executives for each portfolio company for a day of learning and discussion.

Employee involvement, centered on building employee capabilities and empowering people to act in accordance with those capabilities, is a powerful element of culture that has strong relationships with financial growth in this context. For the CLO or culture enthusiast at the management table, a focus on organizational culture is an opportunity to add value in a new way. CLO Ia Ko is the director of client services, Levi Nieminen is director of research and senior consultant, Sarah Patrick is a client manager and Alice Wastag is a research consultant with Denison Consulting, a global consulting firm. To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

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PROFILE Jenny Dearborn

SAP’s Learning Superhero

BY KATE EVERSON

The software company’s learning leader Jenny Dearborn saves the day with a business-focused approach that incorporates metrics and culture to engage learners across the company.

S

uperheroes inspire people by the work diagnosed with acute dyslexia, attention deficit and hythey do and by the personal barriers they peractivity disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder. overcome. They successfully face chal“To take a gifted kid, tell them they’re retarded, put lenges and dedicate their lives to saving them in special ed and tell them that you’ll never be and bettering the world around them. anything but a pretty face and you’ll be lucky to get a Jenny Dearborn, chief learning officer for software husband who can take care of you — who would do company SAP, has had a longstanding affection for su- that to a child?” she said. “I was just so angry, and it perheroes. She used comic took me a long time to books to learn how to read turn that energy into despite a series of undiagmaking the world a better nosed learning disabilities. place as opposed to being “The selflessness, the sense ready to snap at anybody.” of justice and self-sacrifice, Dearborn found ways the doing what’s right for to function beyond the dithe greater good and being agnosed barriers. It takes the underdog, and all of her longer to read because —Jenny Dearborn, chief learning the values around superheof her dyslexia, so she takes roes really speak to my in content through audio officer, SAP core,” Dearborn, 46, said. recordings. Her staff makes At home, Dearborn paints giant canvases of her fa- sure papers are immaculate so she doesn’t obsess over unvorite heroes for stress relief. And since entering the even spacing or punctuation errors. workforce development profession, she has come to the She has also used her disorders to her advantage. To rescue for multiple companies in need of her assistance. her, the hairier the dilemma, the more likely she’ll be Like the best superheroes, she doesn’t see her work as engaged. Despite coaching that told her early in her heroic but as using her abilities to help others. career that she jumps around too much, Dearborn em“I don’t think I bring any kind of magic epiphany,” braces her ability to fix something and hand it over to she said. “I think when the student is ready, the teacher someone — and the companies she has worked with will appear.” have benefited from it.

And so she did — but only after she had conquered “People with dyslexia view things in different ways, her personal villains. and they prefer challenges,” said Ben Shifrin, head of the Jemicy School for Dyslexics and vice president of Disorderly Advantage the International Dyslexia Association. “They are When Dearborn was growing up, she wasn’t sure global thinkers and not so much logistical thinkers. what she wanted to be. Trick skateboarding was on the Dyslexics can come up with big picture concepts and list. “The Pink Panther” movies provoked interest in work well in teams, but they may need help with orgamilitary espionage. For a brief time, she even pursued nization and are not good at mundane tasks.” acting and modeling in New York.

Luckily, nothing would be mundane about DearThere was one problem — she couldn’t read basic born’s future. content until she was in sixth grade. Only when she started attending and working at a community college’s Prove It front office did someone recommend she get tested.

Dearborn’s life and career have revolved around her Despite scoring high in intelligence, Dearborn had mantra: “Prove it.” some clear learning disabilities. As a young adult, she was “I wanted to prove that I could overcome this thing

‘It’s cruel to hire people and not give them the tools and resources they need to be amazing.’

22 Chief Learning Officer • January 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

PORTRAITS BY DREW ALTIZER

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PROFILE Jenny Dearborn

One of Jenny Dearborn’s goals is to have all 7,500 SAP managers to experience the free management training program.

I had learned about myself,” she said. “What could I pick that would be the hardest possible thing that I could do to prove to myself that I was stronger than this diagnosis?”

The answer: teaching high school English.

After getting her degree and spending two years in the classroom, Dearborn realized teaching “Romeo and Juliet” each semester wasn’t what she wanted. She started watching VHS tapes of interviews with former teachers who had gone on to other careers. Corporate education caught her attention.

After researching the industry and deciding she wanted to stay in Silicon Valley, Dearborn started interviewing at the Hewlett-Packard Co., where her fatherin-law worked. Between September and June, she had 36 informational interviews in-person with different employees. By the end of her tour, she had a job offer.

“I graduated my seniors on June 16, and I started my first day on Monday, June 19,” she said. “I had an offer and everything, and it was because I kept exploring.”

Within a week, she was teaching a “Welcome to Hewlett-Packard” course to classes of 50 new hires.

She taught other classes before moving into management. Over the next four years, she moved from services to software to sales and support and different education groups within the organization.

She left to become director of education for learning management startup Docent Inc., now known as 24 Chief Learning Officer • January 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

SumTotal Systems Inc. After that came Sun Microsystems, where she created learning for employees and customers alike as senior manager of training and development and then chief learning architect between 2003 and 2007.

After a brief return to HP as a senior director of learning for technology services, global sales and enterprise marketing, and corporate learning and development strategy, Dearborn was recruited by human capital management software company SuccessFactors.

“I was not hired to make sure employees are happy, that everyone gets 40 hours a year of training or to switch the consumption model from instructor-led to e-learning,” she said. “The only thing I was asked to do when I was hired was to fix business metrics.”

The company’s attrition rate was nearly four times as high as industry standards. Some 70 percent of the sales force wasn’t bringing in any revenue, while a small group brought in triple- or quadruple-digit percentages of their quotas.

Dearborn brought in psychologists to help identify what top performers did differently from bottom performers, matching the findings — personality, behavior, skills, etc. — to a revised boot camp class she delivered to SuccessFactors’ sales team.

Coming to SAP’s Rescue Less than a year after Dearborn joined SuccessFactors, SAP acquired the company. The software company had about 65 separate corporate learning teams, but Dearborn wasn’t interested in being No. 66.

“Either I’m going to clean up the whole thing, which I love to do — the bigger the hairball the better — or I’m going to politely step away and find something else to do at another company,” she said.

One day SAP’s CEO, Bill McDermott, happened to be in her office, unannounced and entourage-free.

“He was making a beeline to the men’s room, and I literally jumped in front of him and blocked his path,” she said. She introduced herself as SuccessFactors’ chief learning officer and offered to take the same position for SAP as a whole. He asked her to put together a proposal for the board. She did, and they appointed her to be the company’s first CLO. Like SuccessFactors, SAP had a learning problem when Dearborn came on board. Of its 75,000 employees, 7,500 are people managers. Originally, these employees had to travel to Waldorf, Germany, or New Town Square, Pennsylvania, and pay thousands of dollars out of their budgets to get basic manager skills training — a barrier that left successive generations of managers untrained and dangerous to the company’s success.

“It’s cruel to hire people and not give them the tools and resources they need to be amazing,” Dearborn said.

She said she wanted to get rid of the double standard

that SAP put forward by placing importance on learning but making it hard to access. Since the beginning of 2015, management training is free and trainers travel to managers, not the other way around. By 2016, she wants all 7,500 managers to have experienced the program.

During Dearborn’s first month on the job, Stefan Ries returned to the company as SAP’s chief human resource officer. Since April 2014, they’ve worked hand-inhand on some of the major global challenges that thwart its transition into a fully cloud-based company.

“Business transformation, especially when you have a CLO in your organization, plays a very important role,” Ries said. “She has to be the enabler, and at the same time also the role model.”

By broadening leadership and management learning programs’ reach, Dearborn enabled and modeled the principles that guide SAP’s learning culture. The

‘I don’t think I bring any kind of magic epiphany.

I think when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.’

—Jenny Dearborn, chief learning officer, SAP organization’s motto, “Run Simple,” encourages open debate and discussion over what’s working and how her department could work better.

“When you have been a very successful company in the past, to make the people believe we need to change for the better, it’s very hard,” Ries said. “But when you can prove it, when you go out there with very ambitious goals and deliver against them, that’s when people follow you.”

The Metrics Justify the Ends Justifying and inciting change in an engineering organization like SAP requires hard metrics. Dearborn would argue that’s the case for CLOs in general. “As a learning professional, if you can’t provision your program without affecting those metrics that an executive thinks about, then you really shouldn’t be having this conversation,” she said. “If you can’t speak that language, you’re out of your league.”

Dearborn connects with leaders to learn what metrics they’re most worried about, then uses that information to justify the need for her work. She has been successful, too — in the last year and a half, SAP reassessed more than $28 million to renovate, revitalize

and relaunch the new management program.

She used the same evidential method when at SuccessFactors, where she opened sales boot camps by delivering data that showed how actively participating in the training helped sales people make their quota.

But not everything is numbers. “If you do a sales development program, you can see the changes within two quarters in sales metrics,” Dearborn said. “But in leadership development, sometimes the metrics are harder to get in real time because some of the surveys are annual.”

Dearborn said she sees evidence of her success through the palpable shift in leadership engagement.

Managers are on campus more and engage in conversations about employee development in ways they never have before. They want to know what they can do to get involved, such as teach classes.

Unlike financial departments that only have so many ways to approach a task, learning leaders deal with flexible definitions of development, leadership and talent. Ries said the HR function is measured on simplicity, standardization and customer satisfaction.

“You always have to do that from the heart of the business,” he said. “We spend so much money — what’s the outcome of it, and how are we going to use it to innovate our products and services?”

Superheroes Don’t Retire Dearborn plans to dive deep into learning technology. Although SAP has used massive open online courses, or MOOCs, she wants to deploy more blended solutions and deliver a greater variety of modalities. She also wants to boost informal learning by putting in rotation programs for high potential employees by moving them between business units and countries.

SAP’s coaching practice, which won the 2015 Prism Award from the International Coaching Federation, is also on her to-do list. Her goal is to get 1 percent, or 750, of SAP employees externally certified as coaches. With 350 already in the practice, she’s almost halfway there.

But when all of the learning-based crises at SAP are fixed, what will Dearborn do? She’s still interested in improving the country’s education system so children with learning disabilities don’t go through the same ordeal she did. She’s also interested in world events and humanitarian projects.

“I don’t plan on ever retiring,” she said. “I hope to continue to grow and make an even greater impact, to go from tens of thousands of customers to hundreds of thousands of customers to millions of customers. When I say customers, I mean learners — people who are consuming the learning intervention that I can help bring into fruition.” CLO Kate Everson is a former Chief Learning Officer associate editor. To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

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In a startup — or in any business environment — failing fast, or knowing when to fold and when to redirect, not only offers key development opportunities but also can be great for business.

BY GEORGE VUKOTICH

T

he idea of failing in any context often has a negative connotation, but there are times when not only failing but also failing fast can be the quickest and least expensive way to learn — and in many cases create the shortest path to success.

In a startup environment, funds and other resources are often limited and only provide a short runway, or amount of time, for the entrepreneur to be successful before packing it in and going home. They tell a few friends and neighbors about their dream, and the friends and neighbors want to help so they give them some money to get started. Not always because they think the idea is good, but because they care about and believe in the person. The money entrepreneurs receive from family and friends is often referred to as “love money.”

So, now the entrepreneur is off on their venture developing the product or service they feel will change the world. The problem is the entrepreneur likely doesn’t know if there’s a market — essentially, is anyone willing to pay for what they are developing? This “build it and hope they will come” model rarely works, and there’s only so much love money to go around if things don’t work out.

Further, once entrepreneurs take their family and friends’ money, they feel obligated to give it their best effort no matter what. Stopping or admitting the product or service is not viable is not an option, so they keep pushing. This can lead to frustration and disappointment as individuals will stick with an idea or a concept long after they realize there is no market to support a company.

Pivoting Being able to identify customer segments and the level of interest in the market is key to determine whether to keep going down the same path or try to come up with something new and different. In the startup world, this is called “pivoting,” when a company realizes what it set out to do has no market or the market is so insignificant it cannot make money from the offering as it exists.

Knowing when to pivot or move on is tough because failure is not always easy to quantify.

Entrepreneurs are often pursuing a dream, which makes it difficult to give up. They’ll limp along for a long time, and then realize there is nothing left and that it’s better to move on. By this point, they’re so demoralized and depressed that they give up other ideas of entrepreneurship and settle for a less-than-satisfying job to pay the mortgage and feed the kids.

Pivots can happen in different areas. The most common is around the product, but they also can happen around target customer segments, pricing and sales approaches such as a “freemium” vs. pay-as-you-go models, funding sources, marketing approaches such as online

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or retail, distribution channels such as direct to customers or through resellers, and even technology platforms. Using pricing as an example, someone may have a great idea, but will anyone pay enough for it to allow them to build a business?

An approach known as “getting out of the office” to see what potential customers think is a common learning mechanism in a startup environment.

Emotions also can keep individuals from pivoting.

Even when data clearly says it is time to move on, no one wants to give up and admit they made a mistake.

Pride is tough to overcome. As the saying goes, no one wants to admit their baby is ugly.

Research supports these facts. CB Insights published the Top 20 Reasons Startups Fail, which offers multiple reasons why failing faster is a good thing (Figure 1). For example, the No. 1 reason startups fail is there is no market for their product — some 42 percent of failures are attributed to this. The sooner a startup realizes this, the less time, money and energy are wasted. It also allows the entrepreneur to move on to a new, hopefully better researched opportunity.

Failing faster also can prompt after action reviews

of what happened sooner. Then individuals can avoid waiting too long before making the necessary pivot and becoming successful.

For example, Groupon Inc. started out as an online platform for activists, which the public found little interest in.

Then the company tried an online coupon for a pizza restaurant in the lobby of the building it was in; it was the start of a new business that was scalable and sustainable.

Failure is valued in a startup environment for the many lessons it teaches.

FIGURE 1: TOP 20 REASONS STARTUPS FAIL No market need: 42% Ran out of cash: 29% Not the right team: 23% Get outcompeted: 19% Pricing, cost issues: 18% Poor product: 17% Need/lack business model: 17% Poor marketing: 14% Ignore customers: 14% Product mistimed: 13% Lose focus: 13% Disharmony on team, investors: 13% Pivot gone bad: 10% Lack passion: 9% Bad location: 9% No financing/investor interest: 8% Legal challenges: 8% Don’t use network, advisers: 8% Burn out: 8% Failure to pivot: 7% Source: CB Insights, 2015 Note: Based on an analysis of 101 startup post-mortems.

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Methodology Development in a startup environment is different than in a traditional organization. In a traditional company, development is a step-by-step process from beginning to end. The process is known as “waterfall” (Figure 2). One step is based on what was done in the previous step. This takes time and money to get to the end point before identifying product viability and potential customer acceptance. In a startup environment, a more common process is known as “agile.” In an agile approach small steps are taken in an ongoing iterative process, which continually acquires feedback from customers and other stakeholders on product or service direction and development.

The quicker entrepreneurs learn lessons, the more effective a startup can be. A commonly used tool in the startup world is known as the Business Model Canvas.

It’s a quick one-page view of where a company is in nine strategic areas and helps identify the things it needs to consider. It can help company leaders think through their strategy, and it can be used as a tool to describe to others what they are doing. It is also an effective tool to get feedback and identify when a pivot may be in order.

Measurement Measurement and the metrics startups use also can be challenging. Individuals need to determine what metrics to measure. A startup may not have the same type of data that existing firms do, and even if they do, it may not be as relevant. For example, many startups don’t have sales, so fixed and variable costs are not real indicators of success or failure at this stage, and market segment growth does not fit.

Some areas to consider instead are, how much funding is available, and will it last until goals are met? Are estimates for things like websites and operating expenses in line with predictions? Also, it helps to have a baseline and to measure regularly. Monthly is a good starting point. For some measures, weekly would be better.

FIGURE 2: DEVELOPMENT METHODOLOGY The Waterfall Development Process, where one step is based on the previous step.

Requirements Scope

Implementation

Show Me the Money

F

unding is the biggest challenge for startups. Often individuals have saved a few thousand dollars, or they have “love money” from family and friends, but love money runs out quickly.

For instance, the cost of building a functional website while building the business strategy and a product or service often costs more and takes longer than most entrepreneurs anticipate. It helps to have a plan to address what funding will be needed at what stage.

Individuals who don’t have money or who have a limited amount can try crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo. They are fairly easy to work with and primarily need a good video to help the audience understand the campaign’s goals.

But while a successful crowdfunding campaign can help a company raise money, it is not a substitute for showing there is a viable product the market has an interest in.

—George Vukotich

Iterative Process

Define

Design

Lean Lean is a common term in the startup environment. It is focused on speed and efficiency. Eric Ries, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, pioneered the concept and has a book on the topic, “The Lean Startup.”

Lean focuses on designing a product or service with minimal features. The idea is that rather than spend a lot of time and money to bring a product to market, it is better to bring a simple version, also known as the minimum viable product, to market and evaluate customer feedback. It is an iterative process of improvement with a continuous cycle of feedback and improvement.

Testing and getting customer reaction to a product saves time and money in the overall development process, and can help build customer loyalty along the way. For example, entrepreneurs can use A/B testing to

On the other hand, the agile development process is an iterative process with continual feedback.

Evaluate

This goes back to failing fast, and pivoting faster so as not to burn through revenue and waste time. Accurate verification and validation are important and can be used together to check that a product, service or system meets requirements and specifications and to ensure a product or service fulfills its intended purpose.

The speed of innovation and pace of change also can have a major effect on a startup. Since these companies have no established customer base or customer loyalty, changes in laws, technology, taxes and globalism can quickly affect the product or service a startup is trying to create.

Verification

Maintenance

Develop

Source: George Vukotich, 2015

help quickly determine product or service viability. In an A/B test, different versions of a product are offered to customers at the same time to determine which is more accepted and why.

Rapid learning and access to mentors who can help identify issues also can help entrepreneurs fail fast and find out where to pivot to become effective. Learning comes in many ways and not just from formal classes.

Access to other startups that have been there and done that can help identify issues to watch out for. Further, because there is no formal corporate structure, startups need to be good at finding mentors and developing relationships. Various stakeholders, investors, potential customers, business partners and peer companies can help in the learning process.

Failure is valued in a startup environment for the many lessons it teaches. There are even conventions such as FailCon that take place solely to look at and learn from startup failures. It’s not about pointing fingers in blame, but analyzing what went wrong and learning from it. Events like FailCon bring together a wide range of individuals, not just the entrepreneurs who failed. Investors, designers and technical developers all have a perspective on why an organization failed and what can be learned from it.

There is no question we can learn from failure. The question is how to fail faster to learn when to change direction and move to something that will help us become more successful. CLO George Vukotich is the senior vice president of programming at 1871, a business and innovation incubator. To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

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LOOKING AT THE

BIGGER

30 Chief Learning Officer • January 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

PICTURE ESSAY BY CLARK QUINN

When it comes to creating the business outcomes that companies want, keeping a 360-degree view of what strategic learning is and how initiatives are built can make all the difference.

W

hen Frank Nguyen took on learning for Sears Holding Corp. as divisional vice president for integrated learning and performance, he faced what he called a “compliance culture.”

To onboard an employee required a six-week course. Nguyen looked at the practice more broadly and recognized that this was too long. But too little information wouldn’t stick, and the information offered had to be “in the world.” Using podcasts and performance-support tools, he was able to drop onboarding to two to three weeks — all because he looked at the bigger picture of learning in the organization.

As context, the nature of what people do, day-to-day at work, is changing. It has been gradual, but the increasing rate of change has shifted tasks from the ability to execute against well-defined parameters to situations that are frequently ambiguous and uncertain — and that is a good thing. As our ability to make intelligent systems increases, people doing mundane work decreases in viability.

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Our brains do well at making patterns and establishing meaning. We are designed to make decisions in complex circumstances, a task that technology finds quite challenging. Consequently, our cognitive architecture argues for a shift, as knowledge work is increasingly the necessary component of organizational success. This requires a shift in organizational learning and in technology use. It’s time to go bigger when assisting the organization’s efforts to effectively leverage available talent and the power of computing.

What’s Stopping Us The premises we’re currently operating on in the workplace — about how we learn, think and work — are out of date. Several long-standing assumptions underpin existing approaches, and they don’t make sense in light of what’s coming out in new research. Learning leaders need to understand these shifts, and then realign what they do to accommodate this awareness.

The information dump and knowledge test strategy common in organizational learning, for example, is out of date. Science tells us that learning should be focused on sufficient and meaningful practice, supported by annotated examples and models to guide performance, supplemented with emotional engagement. Then, we should extend that learning via the 70-20-10 framework, with mentoring, coaching and stretch assignments to reactivate and reinforce desired outcomes. In short, most of what learning and development leaders are doing, they’re doing badly.

Tools such as checklists and lookup tables are perfect learning supplements, but too often they’re neglected in favor of formal learning to cover all ills.

Cognitive scientists also have begun to expose how much of our thinking is not in our head, as we’ve assumed, but distributed across the world with representations like diagrams and thinking tools like spreadsheets. There are flaws in learning architecture as well; we often have trouble recalling arbitrary information and miss steps even in well-practiced tasks.

Thus, tools such as checklists and lookup tables are 32 Chief Learning Officer • January 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

perfect learning supplements, but too often they are neglected as opportunities in favor of formal learning to cover all ills.

Nguyen leveraged these opportunities to outperform the old approaches. Amy Rouse, a director in AT&T University Operations Training, had a similar experience as the company re-instituted performance consulting. With business units as partners in determining the problems and opportunities for solutions, AT&T Inc. is using performance support instead of training as the only tool.

Rouse is also looking at social networks as a mechanism to address another opportunity. Research has shown that innovation is often the result of people working together. We also know that formal and informal learning outcomes improve when learners work together. With this in mind, she said AT&T is “tightly combining and aligning traditional learning with informal and social opportunities.”

Going Above and Beyond Not everyone knows how to ask for help in ways that are likely to get viable responses, nor do all people know how to offer help in ways that will lead to acceptance. Learners’ ability to effectively access resources on their own isn’t a given either. Similarly, it would be a mistake to assume that everyone has problem-solving skills, or the ability to brainstorm well. On principle, these meta-cognitive and meta-learning skills about how to think, work and learn should be actively developed and assessed. Arguably, this is the best investment in developing agility learning leaders can choose.

For this to work optimally, learning leaders need to create an environment to nurture these skills. That means the learning organization must help to create a culture to optimize knowledge outcomes. That includes valuing diversity, openness to new ideas and psychological safety as well as allowing reflection time.

Leaders need to not only support learning but also model it. Facilitators need to explicitly develop and reward appropriate interactions. Continual experimentation has to be the norm. Yes, leaders can get some benefits without this culture, but such companies will be passed by those that understand that culture eats strategy for breakfast.

Learning leaders can’t detect what is happening, whether and how people are interacting, and whether development experiments are working, if they don’t collect data and evaluate the outcomes. Measurement is one of the big gaps in learning and development. The large proportion of effort is about efficiency — How much does it cost to have a body in this seat for one hour? — instead of effectiveness — Is this body in this seat for one hour affecting key performance indicators? Until we start working with our business part-

ners to determine the necessary changes, and work until we achieve them, we will not be a strategic contributor to the business.

An open question is whether these are roles for learning leaders — should they be responsible for job aids and portals as well as social networks? Let’s consider the alternatives. While the information technology group likely has responsibility for the infrastructure, they’re highly unlikely to be skilled at designing and developing performance support, let alone facilitating innovation.

Similarly, while business units are the end customers for these types of support, and will similarly need to be involved, again the specific skills for curation and productive interaction are best left to skilled learning facilitators. Of course, if human resources is doing any of these activities, they are acting, de facto, as learning and development. The key argument is that no one has more appropriate expertise to facilitate the learning. The corollary is that if it’s not performed by learning leaders, then what is the learning function’s role?

So, how to get started?

performance ecosystem cannot be developed.

These changes are worthwhile. The benefits are tangible, as are the results.

By switching the focus to more naturally match how employee’s think, learn and work, and instrumenting the environment to evaluate the outcomes, Nguyen established a development approach that produced millions of dollars in benefits.

By moving beyond formal learning to performance consulting and supporting informal learning, Rouse demonstrated similar outcomes. Implementing the Kirkpatrick model, her organization identified measurable business impact in Level 3 and 4 evaluations. Further, by more closely aligning resource expenditure with outcomes, she documented that “our cost to the business has significantly decreased as we are able to do the same or more work with fewer people and better tools and processes.”

In short, taking a broader view of what learning is can create better outcomes. This includes formal learning to meet known needs, and informal learning to meet new challenges.

Learning tools go beyond courses. The learning management system and authoring tools are only a component of the whole picture. Consider media production tools to generate performance support, as well as portal software with robust search capabilities to make information accessible in ways that focus on the learner, not the business unit. Consider using tools for both communication and collaboration, such as social media.

Ultimately, the bigger picture integrates infrastructure, strategy and culture together into a coherent whole that improves people’s ability to work effectively, alone and together. Our goals are to achieve performance on what we know we have to do and to continually develop our abilities, individually and collectively, and address the increasing changes we face.

This is the opportunity that learning organizations face, to be more efficient in resources by not only removing sources of errors that courses alone can’t address, but also improving the ability to adapt, the most valuable activity in the organization. It’s time for learning leaders to look at the bigger picture and move to a more strategic contribution to their organizations. CLO

Most of what learning and development leaders are doing, they’re doing badly.

Moving Forward We need to drive change across three elements: 1. Doing learning better to share organizational knowledge.

2. Supplementing learning with performance support to operationalize organizational knowledge.

3. Supporting people working together to continue developing organizational knowledge.

For each of these areas, we need to institute change. To do so is to not merely initiate change but also create a strategy that takes the organization from where it is now to where it could and should be in ways that build upon one another in a sustainable way. This requires a systematic process. This is cyclical, to be followed initiative by initiative and to feed back to new priorities and choices.

This is not done by the learning function in isolation. One of the clear implications of looking at the bigger picture is that partnerships with both business units and information technology are necessary. To truly deliver on performance consulting, identifying gaps and remediating, learning leaders must work with the business units using their metrics. Similarly, if the learning function doesn’t participate with IT on the infrastructure, a coherent

Clark Quinn is executive director for Quinnovation, an independent consultancy. To comment, email editor@ CLOmedia.com.

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LEADING THE WAY IN HR TECHNOLOGY

Has Human Resources Lost Its Edge in a Tech-driven World?

BY THE WHARTON SCHOOL – UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA Decades ago, HR was widely Peter Cappelli Professor of Management considered one of the best fields for The Wharton School ambitious people to pursue at such high-profile companies as IBM, Pepsi, GE, and AT&T. During a recent Wharton Global Human Resources Exe c u t i ve Su m m i t , W h a r t o n management professor Peter Cappelli noted that surveys taken during the 1950s showed that HR was viewed as “the most glamorous sector.” In many of the prestigious firms where people stayed for life, he said, HR people “decided everything,” including where and when people were promoted.

To d a y, t h e g l a m o u r a n d prestige have faded, and often human resources departments are finding they lack the relevancy they once had in company decision-making. In the most sophisticated consulting and technology firms, for example, there is a substantial gap between HR and such newly hot areas as Big Data and machine learning. “HR used to tell everyone everything,” but that is no longer the case, Cappelli noted. Rather than communicate with one another effectively, HR personnel and computer science staff are “talking completely past each other.

The HR people know nothing about computer science, and the computer science people know nothing about HR.”

“We in HR have to figure out how we can contribute to business strategy.”

– Peter Cappelli, The Wharton School One reason for the decline in HR’s prominence is the condition of the labor market. When the economy is booming and labor markets are tight, HR comes to the forefront. “People start quitting, and HR becomes very important,” Cappelli pointed out, because it provides expertise, matching up valuable talent that is hard to find with important job functions. However, during economic downturns, “everyone whales on HR [because] we are the only function telling other people what to do all the time. We hate nagging people, but without our nagging of our managers, life would be so much worse.”

In an effort to help HR executives achieve greater influence and impact, Cappelli suggested that they “get in front of the data engine,” which has become such a vital component in the modern corporation. “Right now, the HR function is behind the data engine,” but HR should “try to get away from just nagging” and use the new data tools available as the foundations for important decisions.

“We know that you shouldn’t just manage from your gut.”

He advised HR executives to link up with “your own data person or find someone in your computer department who has skills in data [analytics]” or machine learning. Cappelli cautioned that executives must learn to distinguish between the more traditional discipline of statistics, in which models look at the relationships between variables using mathematical equations, and machine learning, a subfield of computer science and artificial intelligence that involves building systems that can learn from data.

It’s important that HR be involved in these processes, Cappelli explained, because if the ideas about how to improve the business of managing people are coming from the IT department, the company is in serious trouble.

Another high-level consideration, noted Cappelli, is to realize there is no single strategy that works in each case.

“The strategy guys were wrong; they thought you just had to pick one strategy, and that’s it.” Rather, “there are a million strategies, and they are changing all the time.”

In that regard, he added, “We [in HR] have to figure out how we can contribute to this [or that] business strategy. We can show other people what the research shows. HR can tell other departments: ‘I can’t make you change if you want to go with your gut,’ rather than consider what machine learning can teach us about which strategy has the best chance of success. HR personnel can explain why data analysis gives them a lot of confidence that a certain strategy won’t work, but it’s still up to the rest of the business to listen — or not.”

For more information about Wharton Executive Education, visit www.WhartonForOrganizations.com

When Learning Functions

Merge

BY WENDY WEBB

36 Chief Learning Officer • January 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

What happens to the learning departments when two companies combine? Well, that depends on the learning leaders’ attitude and strategy.

E

very day, it seems, there’s news of a major merger or acquisition. Time Warner or Comcast trying to swallow DirecTV, Verizon gobbling up AOL. They’re rarely seamless transitions. When two companies become one, it can cause growing pains similar to those of a newly blended family. Whose holiday traditions do they use? Whose rules will the kids now have to follow?

Just as it can be tough for the families to figure out everyone’s roles in their new family unit, so it goes when companies merge or one acquires the other.

People in both companies may worry about losing their jobs or their stature. Employees wonder if their leadership teams will stay intact. And through it all, departments with different ways of doing things now must work together as a unit, despite clash-

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ing procedures and policies, bruised egos and simmering resentments.

The chief learning officer and the learning team are a first line of defense for worried employees who are questioning the new status quo. Navigating people through these choppy seas can be a tricky business, because not only might the chief learning officers not have all of the answers employees are seeking but also they must deal with the merger or acquisition within their own departments as well.

Greg Moran, CEO of Chequed and Assess Systems, an HR technology firm created in August 2015 when then-separate Chequed and Assess Systems merged, understands completely.

He said learning is a key part of the company, and learning leaders are working hard to integrate its training programs and strategies in a practical way that serves current and potential clients’ needs.

Through the process, he said he has found four keys CLOs should remember for a successful transition: 1. Take the time to educate internally. Moran said it’s vital for the learning teams at one company to understand how their counterparts at the other company operate. What processes are used? What programs are most important? What projects are in the pipeline? “Getting everyone on the same page is a critical initial step toward a smoother transition.”

2. Review program and product details. Key individuals from each company’s learning team should teach their counterparts from the other company how their programs and products work, including how each is pitched to potential customers, Moran said. This will not only educate everyone about what the combined company has to offer, but also might spur ideas on how to package programs and products for maximum effect.

3. Bring the entire company together. By joining the learning teams with employees from other departments companywide, with leaders taking an active role, everyone can become clear about where the new entity is headed. “You can discuss plans for the future, the business plan, and changes to the business model and/or processes, and conduct team-building exercises,” Moran said. “Getting everyone on the same page is particularly important to those involved in building and executing learning and training programs, which are a key factor in the success of the new combined company.”

4. Share research. Encourage employees to share links to articles, white papers, news stories and other items about important topics related to the company’s industry and its learning programs. This pays dividends in multiple ways. It keeps employees on top of key issues affecting its industry, gives them an opportunity to contribute to the new company’s direction 38 Chief Learning Officer • January 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

Reader Reaction In the midst of a merger, what happens to learning? What is the most important thing learning leaders need to know?

Bill Bruck: One of the most important things in major M&As, that experienced consultants know but often is unnoticed by the rest of us, is how the corporate cultures will fare. My very limited experience suggests that the acquiring company’s learning culture winds up dominating the company being acquired. In the three situations I’ve observed closely enough to have an opinion, the technology, roles and responsibilities, and approach to learning of the acquirer completely took over that of the company being acquired.

Maitreye Reddy: During mergers there is a complete restructuring of the learning department, roles and responsibilities. The learning department may be decentralized to a large extent to cater to individual department needs. Until the time various processes are stabilized within the organization, the focus of learning is usually limited to meet only the department’s goals and needs.

The good thing is: More opportunities get created; new training approaches can be leveraged; there are faster learning curves at the department level.

The flip side is: Absence of a learning culture at the organization level; delay in implementing organization wide strategies; unrest amongst employees.

There is tremendous pressure on the L&D department in not only molding the employees’ attitude back towards a more positive outlook, but also to run the show. During an organization’s restructuring process not only are the employees attitudes filled with resentment, uncertainty and lack of perspective, their receptivity toward any learning programs/ initiatives is also usually low.

Nick Tatone: Many L&D type of areas talk about the importance of vision, purpose, engagement (etc.) to business results. When an L&D shop is undertaking changes, we should be walking that talk. It is very easy to overlook change management or the people side of change in many organizational changes.

When the work of any large change starts getting to smaller department levels, the originally communicated reasons for the change need to be more specific. The “it’s good for the business/customers/ our future/etc.” reasons don’t get as much buy-in when we get down to department and more role-specific changes.

What do you think? Join the discussion at CLOmedia.com/ MergingLearning, follow us on Twitter @CLOmedia

and growth, and builds camaraderie between members of the new combined organization.

Opposite Ends of the Spectrum That’s solid advice when companies are merging, but learning departments don’t always stroll hand-in-hand into the sunset after one company acquires another. Now the CLO at enterprise application software giant SAP, Jenny Dearborn has been on both sides of an acquisition — one that went smoothly, and one that did not (Read the profile of Dearborn on p. 22).

A decade ago, when Dearborn was in the learning department at Sun Microsystems Inc., Sun acquired a much smaller company for $1 billion.

“Because we paid so much for the company, its executive team came in with an overinflated view of themselves,” she said.

“They fought our learning system from day one, and it was a struggle.”

Despite the fact that Sun had a centralized learning team of 500 people and solid programs, courses and procedures in place, the smaller company’s team refused to integrate with them and continued with its way of delivering learning to its employees.

“They put on their own learning events; they put out their own newsletter. We couldn’t figure out why they were fighting us on everything,” she said. “It sends a signal to the whole company about the value of integration.”

She said it was a painful and drawn-out process.

“We were the bigger company, we were going to use our system and our tools, period. At one meeting, they were putting up a fuss, and at one point one of our execs said: ‘What part of you’ve been acquired don’t you understand?’ ” Through that experience, Dearborn said she learned plenty about how not to handle the new world order when your company has been acquired.

That learning paid off 18 months ago when SuccessFactors, where she was CLO, was acquired by the much larger SAP. The first thing Dearborn did when she learned of the acquisition was research. She said it should be the CLO’s goal to deeply understand the acquiring company, its learning functions and its culture in order to pass that information along to employees.

“People will be looking to the learning leaders for answers,” Dearborn said. “So it’s up to us to be clear about why the company was acquired and what will happen to employees and departments after the deal is done. Look into how the culture of acquisitions works at the company that’s acquiring yours. Employees will want to know if they’re going to retain leadership.

They want to know, ‘Will they keep us on?’ ” Another critical piece in the smooth transition puzzle was training the SAP sales team about SuccessFactors’ products and tools, which they would now be selling to their customers. One of the first things Dearborn did, literally Day One post-acquisition, was to prepare training literature for SAP’s sales staff. She said as soon as the news release about the acquisition hit the streets, she knew customers would ask about it.

The sales team had to be brought up to speed quickly.

As to the merging of learning functions themselves, she said it’s critical to remove emotions from the process and respect the other department’s systems, tools and programs. That doesn’t mean rolling over and giving up all of the tools and courses the parent learning department has put time, effort and passion into creating. It means evaluate both teams’ offerings, and make a solid business case for courses based on data and facts. “You lose credibility if you get emotional,” she said. “Advocate for your programs but also know when to acquiesce.”

When her company was acquired by SAP, Dearborn looked into SAP’s learning functions and found they were very decentralized. She said, “There was no CLO at SAP. They had 65 learning teams all operating sort of independently, but there was no big-picture learning strategy.”

So she went to her new CEO and made a case to become the CLO. She proposed integrating the learning teams, centralizing the learning functions and strategically helping to drive the company’s goals through learning. He bit. That was some 18 months ago. She has gone through the 65 departments’ catalogs to merge them, find redundancies and decide what will stay and what can go. But she’s doing so carefully, respecting the time, effort and

Inflexibility can sink a learning leader whose business was just acquired. Don’t hold onto an old learning strategy for an old environment, act in a vacuum, or take the toys and go home.

MERGER continued on page 48 Chief Learning Officer • January 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

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Creating Layers of

Competency

BY JIM GRABER

Competency modeling has typically been a mishmash of too much, yet not enough to accomplish anything other than spending lots of time to create really long lists. A multilayered approach can change all that.

40 Chief Learning Officer • January 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

I

n this era of lean staffs and resources and “do more with less,” it might seem unnecessary to reaffirm the importance of identifying learning priorities. Yet, it wasn’t that long ago that learning functions operated with very different paradigms.

Recall the “tidal wave” training where the same learning washed over the entire staff, or the learning and development “grocery store” where employees or their supervisors selected any learning that looked appealing, such as location or convenient timing.

In 2016, thousands of organizations have incorporated competencies into their learning and development efforts.

Competencies focus development efforts, and more broadly they fuel every element of talent management, including staffing: onboarding, career development, succession, promotion and transition/termination. Competencies are the foundation of integrated talent management.

Granted, competency modeling presents quite a few challenges. Many progressive organizations are getting rid of performance reviews and competency frameworks because leaders say they don’t add value. It’s a hotly debated topic. Those who defend competency models do so because their organizations have clearly benefited, there are currently no better alternatives, and because getting rid of them would leave a vacuum that would put us back 20 years into far more subjective, undefined territory.

Many organizations like Deloitte or Cigna Corp. that are said to be getting rid of performance reviews aren’t. Instead, they’re addressing shortcomings because employees continue to need feedback. Competency modeling is equally critical to modern talent management, and like performance reviews, practitioners are crying out for improvement.

Some of the challenges include: • The time required to create competency models.

• Lack of internal bandwidth and/or knowledge.

• Rapid change/job evolution means competency models may quickly become out-of-date.

• Quick-pick methods, especially without professional facilitation, may not accurately identify critical competencies.

• Selection of easily visible skills while subtle but important qualities are missed.

• Learning and other processes that are not designed to use competencies.

• Increasingly popular strengths-based programs suggest that employees should use their own strength set to be successful.

There is a variety of competency modeling best practices in the learning industry. One of the most promising ap-

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proaches, multilayer competency modeling, hasn’t received much visibility. In this approach: • Competency models are assembled with components — different sets of core competencies that apply to multiple job roles/individuals.

• Much of each role-based competency model is preselected, which leads to saving time, greater quality and tighter career ladders.

• Competency models are more dynamic and easily updated because changing the cores updates multiple competency models.

• Managerial and technical paths are accommodated.

• Cross-functional and technical competencies are included.

• Common cores result in a smaller, cross-functional competency library, which increases focus on the remaining few, eases communication, and simplifies integration with learning and other talent management processes.

The Journey to a Competent Model CME Group Inc., a global financial services company with roughly 2,500 employees, provides a marketplace for buyers and sellers of diverse asset classes such as interest rates, foreign exchange, real estate and weather through its electronic trading platforms. Nate Aramovich, senior director of organizational effectiveness, and Fernando Arena, manager of organizational effectiveness, have managed and implemented CME’s competency modeling.

The company initiated its work with competencies to achieve several key talent management objectives: • Empower individuals to plan and advance their careers.

• Improve capabilities to develop internal talent.

• Identify best talent to fill critical positions or assignments.

• Attract and retain talented employees.

• Foster engagement and a more positive organizational culture.

• Catalyze higher performance.

CME’s competency modeling developed and evolved in three phases. Phase One began in 2012 with a plan to quickly create impact and value by focusing on leadership-level core competencies. Taking into account business drivers and associated leadership tasks, CME identified four to seven critical competencies for each of five leadership levels within the organization — consistent expectations for leaders across all functions and development targets for leaders at each level.

By focusing initially on this limited objective, the company quickly had results it could apply to multiple talent management processes for critical layers in the organization. At the same time, it began socializing the 42 Chief Learning Officer • January 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

Reader Reaction What do we absolutely need to know about competency modeling? Is it all about: Brevity? Innovation? Seek and destroy?

Bart Mosele: Poorly and/or incomplete competencies are a blight on corporate America. I spend months on end unwinding stuff that no one even knows how it got there in the first place. Stuff like “Jimmy in IT wrote the JD and competency description because no one else knew the job.” Or, and this is a real example, a client with 5,000 employees and more than 4,500 job descriptions.

We need is to look at things through a new lens. Work needs to be architected by people who know what they are doing. Not by someone in a line of business who happens to have some domain expertise; they are a valuable component but surely not the architect.

We improve through reduction in variation.

Mark N. Tuggle: I was part of a team that had the luxury of dedicating the time and effort to develop a custom competency model for a sales team. We were able to measure performance against, and identify skills to achieve proficiency, in those competencies. We took nearly two years to get there. The next organization essentially said, “That all sounds great, but my sales people need training right now, not two years from now. So, can you just train them in sales skills across the board?” It’s a tough challenge. People want and need training now, but taking the time to develop a good competency model and measuring against it can significantly improve the training that will have the greatest impact.

Graeme Dick: One of the difficulties in a discussion such as this is competencies are different across the globe. In North America, competencies may mean the behaviors, abilities, knowledge and skills, and other characteristics an individual needs to work. In Australia, the United Kingdom, South Africa, the Caribbean region and other parts of the world, the term competencies refers to the application of skills and knowledge in the workplace. These are defined in industry developed competency standards and packaged into nationally recognized qualifications.

These competency standards are remarkably consistent across these countries and are generally freely exchanged. There is no intellectual property, but there is in the training and assessment systems developed to meet the specified performance criteria for the competency standards.Competencies along with a regulated Vocational Training Sector can take the guesswork out of training.

What do you think? Join the discussion at CLOmedia.com/ CompetencyModeling, follow us on Twitter @CLOmedia.

notion of competencies among stakeholders who would need to be onboard and supportive.

In Phase Two, CME identified functional competencies for each function, IT, HR, etc., and competencies for job families within the functions using a fivestep process (Figure 1). In CME’s building block approach, the company built sets of core competencies that could be incorporated into numerous jobs. For example, a CME recruiter can be assembled from three sets of core competencies: 1. Organizationwide competencies: For the recruiter, the individual contributor core competencies apply.

2. Functional core competencies: For the recruiter, HR functional competencies apply.

3. Family competencies: The recruiting family competencies from junior recruiter to recruiting manager apply.

FIGURE 1: MULTILAYER MODELING AT WORK This overview details Phase Two in CME’s three-phase competency modeling process, with a focus on functional competencies for each function.

Job Descriptions created for all in scope roles Functional Competencies identified by leaders Proficiency Benchmarking proficiency levels assigned to functional competencies for benchmark jobs Job Specific Competency Workshop(s) job family reps select job competencies and proficiency levels for their jobs Validation and Final Review review competency models with team members and final review by leadership Source: CME Group Inc., 2015

FIGURE 2: COMPETENCY FRAMEWORKS CME’s category-driven framework simplified phases Two and Three of its multilayered competency model.

Phase 2

Phase 3

1. Core competencies – required based on organizational level

1. Core competencies – required for all CME Group staff

2. Functional competencies – same for all employees in a function regardless of level

2. People manager or individual Contributor competencies

3. Job specific – specific to job or job family

3. Organizational leadership competencies for directors and above 4. Technical/job specific competencies unique to role

CME also identifies proficiency — the level of competency expertise required for success in a position — using a five-point scale ranging from awareness to expert.

Job incumbents and their supervisors establish the proficiencies with guidance from a knowledgeable facilitator.

Setting proficiencies is valuable for several reasons.

First, they create a realistic picture of hiring and training needs, and avoid the recruiting, training and turnover costs associated with overqualification. Second, they help develop clearer career ladders. Finally, they are a good way to fine-tune competency models built with level, functional and family core competencies.

That is, the required competencies of a senior recruiter and a junior recruiter may be nearly identical, but needed levels of expertise may vary.

To promote greater understanding and acceptance, CME brings together its jobs profile and competency information into a user-friendly, graphically pleasing format (Figure 2). The one- to two-page printouts provide users with the most critical information about a position. A more detailed report is available to talent management professionals.

Based on lessons learned in Phase Two, CME re-engineered its process, extending use of predeveloped cores even further (Figure 3). Highlights of Phase Three include: • Four sets of core competencies are selectively applied to all jobs. This replaces a much larger number of cores used in Phase Two. • The cores result in eight to 12 predetermined competencies per job role.

• Only four additional competencies are selected for each job. Subject-matter experts select these functional or technical competencies guided by previously selected functional competencies.

• Competency model is reduced to 12 to 16 competencies from 18 to 20.

• Managerial and technical career paths are accommodated.

• Talent management processes will be simplified. For example, learning and development, resources can be reduced, and the best can be aligned to fewer competencies.

In the End, We Learned …

According to CME’s Aramovich and Arena, these are some of the most important lessons from the company’s foray into multilayered competency modeling: 1. Focus sufficiently on end processes. Detailing competency-based talent management processes from the start provides valuable insight into what competency model data will be most useful. Further, competency models

Source: CME Group Inc., 2015

COMPETENCIES continued on page 48 Chief Learning Officer • January 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

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CASE STUDY

Dictating With Dragon

BY SARAH FISTER GALE

Getting physicians to participate in training can be difficult, especially if it’s training for an optional tool not tied to regulations or required education.

“We can force them to take training if we have to, but it’s definitely not the most effective strategy,” said Dr. Paul Sternberg, chief medical officer for Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee.

So when the learning department wanted to get doctors to switch from using a transcription service to voice recognition software to record patient notes in their electronic health records, or EHR, they had to take a different approach.

VUMC is a network of award-winning teaching hospitals and clinics in the Nashville area, as well as the schools of medicine and nursing associated with Vanderbilt University. The network has nearly

‘Dragon isn’t something they have to use, but it is something that we think will improve workflow and the quality of their work.’

—Dr. Paul Stenberg, chief medical officer, Vanderbilt University Medical Center 20,000 employees, and at least 3,000 employed physicians and health care providers.

These health care providers have extremely busy schedules. A big portion of their days were spent on handwritten patient notes to be sent to a transcription service — at roughly $8 per job, said Dr. Ian Jones, head of the emergency medical department. His department alone was spending about $500,000 per year on transcription services, and the department is just a fraction of the physicians 44 Chief Learning Officer • January 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

SNAPSHOT Do-it-yourself learning modules coupled with live-support clinics helped Vanderbilt Medical Center train 3,000 physicians and health care providers to use Dragon, a critical piece of new software, in just six weeks.

and support staff who use the service.

In 2013, Jones’ group created a pilot for Dragon, speech recognition software that translates voice to text, and offers customer versions for medical professionals dictating notes into EHRs. “It’s like Siri for health care,” said Brent Moseng, health operations system consultant for VUMC. The software would allow them to dictate all of their notes and eliminate transcribing costs. To teach the physicians how to use the software, the learning department arranged for one-on-one training sessions with each doctor. Trainers often worked overnight shifts to accommodate the entire staff. “It took two months to train 80 staff,” Jones said.

But the effect was significant. Within months, the department cut its transcription costs by 90 percent.

“We are just a small fraction of people using dictation at Vanderbilt,” he said. “If we put this software in the hands of everyone who takes patient notes, the savings would be monumental.”

How Do You Like to Learn?

The leadership at Vanderbilt agreed. Following the success of the Dragon pilot, the information technology department decided to roll out the software to the rest of the organization, and the learning and development group had to figure out the best way to get all 3,000 physicians and staff trained.

They quickly realized that a one-on-one training model would be too expensive and time-consuming —

they estimated it would take 18 months and several trainers to get it done. It also wasn’t the most effective learning environment for most of the staff, said Anne Marie Danko, managing director of operational performance. “We know everyone learns differently, and each person knows how they learn best.”

To figure out the best learning approach, she created a short survey to find out how Vanderbilt physicians and staff preferred to learn. The survey asked questions like, “When you need an answer quickly, what is your preferred search method? Search the Internet? Read a manual? Email a colleague? Call a help desk?” Their responses would not only reveal their learning style but also identify how likely users would be to embrace the new technology.

Based on their answers, Danko ranked respondents into three categories: early adopters, majority users and late adopters. “Early adopters want the latest and greatest technology, and they are not afraid to figure things out on their own,” she said. Late adopters, on the other hand, are cautious and require more handholding.

She found most respondents fell into the “majority user” category, open to learning on their own but like to know they can get help if they need it. Only 10 percent were considered late adopters, who would likely need instructor-led training.

Based on the results, Danko’s team decided to build a do-it-yourself online learning course with optional drop-in clinics to provide additional live help if needed. Making the live training optional had a powerful psychological effect, she said. “If we told them they had to go to a clinic, they would have grumbled, even if they needed it. By letting them know it was just an option, we got no complaints.”

The DIY online course began with the basic learning modules provided by Dragon, then Danko’s team added short modules customizing the software for the Vanderbilt environment. They included quick start guides, videos of staff physicians using the tool with Vanderbilt EHR templates, screen shots demonstrating how to set up the system, and tips on how to adapt the software to specific dialects and medical specialties.

Once the modules were developed, they rolled out a controlled training pilot to a volunteer group of early adopters. They completed the training and gave Danko’s group feedback on its effectiveness and potential areas for improvement. “We also encouraged this group to be champions for other users,” she said.

Superusers Drive Interest Those champions were key to get more cautious physicians to make the leap, said Dr. Shubhada Jagasia, vice chair of clinical affairs and one of the early adopters. She used Dragon for dictation prior to the

roll out, and was featured in some of the videos in the training module. She also became one of the program’s biggest champions. “My role is to let everyone know how I use the system, and how it has made my life easier. Once people see the time and efficiency of doing it this way, it wins them over.”

Having these superusers scattered throughout the population was key to get people to try the software and take the training, said Sternberg, an executive

Robust software adoption cut transcription costs by $1 million in the first three months. sponsor for the initiative. “Dragon isn’t something they have to use, but it is something that we think will improve workflow and the quality of their work,” he said.

Because it wasn’t tied to a regulation, the only way it was going to be effective was if physicians wanted to take the training. Early adopters created a buzz about the software’s benefits, and the training team built on that buzz by sending out emails, talking about the training in faculty meetings, and handing out headsets and information about the software to the staff. After that, getting buy-in was easy, Sternberg said, noting that even radiology physicians — who they expected to be slowest adopters — are now totally on board.

“Once they took the training, it stuck like glue.”

More impressive, within six weeks all 3,000 physicians and staff completed the training and were using the software. “The time savings alone was huge,” Danko said. During this six-week time frame, her team created a schedule of drop-in support clinics at each facility site where users could stop by to practice with the software and get help if desired. They also staffed a 24/7 help line for additional support.

Sternberg was one of the doctors who took advantage of this added face-to-face training. “I’ve been practicing medicine for a long time, and while I knew I could figure Dragon out, I wanted to be able to ask for help if I needed it,” he said. He used the online training to figure out the basics, like how to activate the software and turn on his mike, but when he had questions, like how to edit a mistake, he stopped by one of the clinics and spent an hour working with a coach. “It was really helpful to have someone walk me through it.”

CASE STUDY continued on page 49 Chief Learning Officer • January 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

45

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

Machines Will Change How We Learn

BY COLIN SLOMAN AND ROBERT J. THOMAS

Companies must come to terms with the digital transformation and lay the foundation for change.

In 1921, Czech playwright Karel Capek wrote a play called “R.U.R.,” which depicts a factory that makes machines that closely resemble human beings. Ultimately, the factory automatons rebel against their masters and wipe out humanity. Capek coined a word for these humanlike machines — robot — changing the global lexicon and creating a plot device that lives on in films like “Blade Runner” and “Terminator.”

In reality, technology via robotics and other digital innovations are changing how organizations learn and pass on skills vital to success. To gain the full advantage, companies need to come to terms with the digital transformation of the workplace, and lay the foundation for the change throughout the organization.

to the overall success of an organization’s digital journey, they express concerns about talent readiness. In an Accenture Strategy survey, 44 percent of business leaders reported “lack of skills” as a key barrier to digital transformation (Figure 1) (Editor’s note: The authors work for Accenture). Only 49 percent said they already have a strategy to manage and develop skills in a digital world.

While the skills and capabilities required will vary based on industry and role, some factors are broadly relevant. Employees will need to be comfortable working with technology, and as more basic tasks are automated, workers can expect to take on higher value roles that require data collection, data analysis and problem-solving skills.

Foundational skills also will be in high demand, including strong business acumen and communication and negotiation skills.

Virtual sensors, analytics, 3-D printers, wearable devices and more are reshaping work practices and the way employees learn like never before. Pilots show plant workers can gain 1½ hours per day in work time using mobility-enabled, electronic work packages, boosting productivity up to 25 percent.

Advances like these lead to greater levels of on-thejob training and empower the people who use the technology. Technology allows leaders to make more strategic decisions at a local level and frees up workers’ time to focus on higher-level tasks. This approach also allows the workforce to collaborate better to boost productivity and ultimately improve organizational performance.

Digital is tearing down the hierarchy, bureaucracy and functional silos that have been pillars in organizations since the Industrial Revolution.

Reshaping Work Organizations are challenged by the changing roles, skills and technologies in an increasingly digital world.

Even as business leaders signal the importance of talent FIGURE 1: SKILL BARRIER Lack of skills is a key barrier to digital transformation.

LACK OF DIGITAL SKILLS

44%

Tearing Down Old School Structures Source: Accenture Strategy, 2015

46 Chief Learning Officer • January 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, “Nothing tends to materialize man, and to deprive his work of the faintest

FIGURE 2: DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION A majority of employees expect digital to transform their work experience in the next three years.

tal tools and technical skills to prepare them to adapt to digital advances (Figure 3).

81

%

Source: Accenture Strategy, 2015

FIGURE 3: EMBRACING DIGITAL Employees are ready to embrace digital transformation.

64%

Proactively learning new digital skills

Source: Accenture Strategy, 2015

trace of mind, more than extreme division of labor.”

What was true nearly 200 years ago is still true today: The very concept of a job can effectively kill autonomy, inspiration, innovation and increase monotony, making tasks seem less significant and meaningful.

Now, digital is tearing down the hierarchy, bureaucracy and functional silos that have been pillars in organizations since the Industrial Revolution. Functional roles and rigid job descriptions are giving way to people coalescing around joint goals and forming collaborative teams. This, in turn, enables the flow of critical information throughout organizations. These new ways of working promote feedback, learning and innovation at all levels.

Accenture Strategy research of European workers found that 81 percent of employees acknowledge that digital technologies will transform the way they work in the next three years (Figure 2). Half of those employees say the level of transformation will be to a significant extent. Employees know they need to adjust — but more than half fear their leaders are not ready.

Rather than waiting, employees are honing their own skills and capabilities in readiness. Sixty-two percent said they are assessing the new skills and capabilities that will be required of them in the future. Almost two-thirds said they are proactively learning new digi-

Fundamental Changes The shift to horizontal leadership is clear: 58 percent of executives felt technology improved communications. High-performing companies that have invested in collaborative tools like interactive portals and social networking, finding them to be 80 percent effective at improving productivity.

To adapt to the changes digital is bringing, accommodate changing demands and help employees prepare for the transformation, organizations will need to adopt the following three strategies: 1. Encourage talent to regularly refresh their skills.

Coach and enable employees to constantly develop new skills the organization needs and seek out new opportunities to create value. Have them focus on human skills that machines aren’t likely to take over: ideation, communication, analysis, experimentation and making sense of data.

2. Flatten hierarchies. It’s also time to shake up organizational structure and exercise influence without formal authority. This transition encourages collaboration and learning. Across the enterprise, including third-party suppliers and independent agents, this eventually allows workers to hone specialized skills and define their own jobs.

3. Embrace digital tools and technologies. Robotics, automation, technological augmentation and collaboration tools are here to stay. Embrace them proactively instead of playing catch-up to competitors that have already improved the work experience through digital — and gained the advantages.

Today’s machines are proving to be more friend than foe. Through digital, people can co-create highly personalized work experiences and lead and manage in ways that free employees to exercise judgment and unleash their creativity at all levels of the organization. Leaders will need to loosen the “command and control” grip on hierarchies and instead manage networks of employees and external talent pools.

Digital isn’t a cure-all. But organizations that embrace these changes will be able to enjoy more engaged, satisfied employees, improve workforce productivity and effectiveness, and achieve new levels of meaning, innovation, agility and operational excellence. CLO Colin Sloman is a managing director of Resources, Talent & Organization for Accenture, and Robert J. Thomas is a managing director of Strategy, Talent & Organization and Executive Research Fellow in the Accenture Institute of High Performance. To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

Chief Learning Officer • January 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

47

MERGER continued from page 39 love people put into building courses and tools.

“I have to earn credibility and trust with the learning teams, and show value upfront,” she said. “It’s: ‘How can I help you? What are the frustrations I can help solve?’ Instead of: ‘I’m the boss.’ ”

Keep an Eye on Culture That’s the right attitude to have, said Erin Rocchio, FMG Leading’s vice president of leader development and learning who guides companies through mergers and acquisition like the one Dearborn described. Her best advice to CLOs to ensure a seamless M&A transition? Keep an eye on culture, and focus on business goals.

Address culture right away. “When companies merge, learning strategies often get hijacked by the flurry of activities related to the integration,” Rocchio said. “The key human capital issue immediately becomes culture integration, which learning helps to reinforce. If culture isn’t addressed as a strategic priority in a merger, huge issues arise, and no learning strategy will suffice to resolve it. “ She said integrations go poorly when the two company cultures aren’t fully understood before the transaction. It’s even worse if culture fit is left unmanaged post-transaction.

“The CLO is also the chief culture officer during a merger or acquisition,” Dearborn said. “Culture comes through learning. It’s the best way to teach it.”

Look at big-picture business goals. The best way to integrate learning strategies in a merger or acquisition environment is to focus on the big-picture business strategy, Rocchio said. What is the new enterprise’s focus in the market? What are the short- and long-term business goals? What will company leaders, departments and employees need to deliver on that strategy? From there, build a learning strategy, perhaps from the ground up, addressing the new world order.

Rocchio said inflexibility can sink a learning leader whose business was just acquired. For instance, don’t stubbornly hold onto an old learning strategy for an old environment, act in a vacuum, or take the toys and go home. “Before you disengage or check out, seek first to understand the strategic objectives, align people and ideas, then support the new enterprise with creativity.”

Bottom line? Mergers and acquisitions can be rocky, uncertain times. The CLO is often the person employees look to for help and answers. Keep an open mind, check emotions at the door and be willing to work together to make the transition a successful one. CLO Wendy Webb is a freelance writer and author based in Minneapolis. To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

48 Chief Learning Officer • January 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

COMPETENCIES continued from page 43 should be tailored to the capabilities of the talent management technology being used.

Finally, tangible benefits help engage supervisors and individual contributors.

2. Use facilitators as competency experts.

Trained facilitators yield superior results compared with having supervisors and job incumbents pick competencies unassisted. Over time, CME doubled down on facilitators, transitioning from meeting leader and data collector to competency expert. Experienced facilitators learn the competency library and gain valuable cross-functional knowledge.

This enables them to preselect lists of competencies. Subject-matter experts validate the list and suggest what is missing.

3. Shorten the competency library. Having a good competency library with cross-functional and technical competencies, behavioral indicators and behavioral interview questions was a boon. CME was able to simplify by removing competencies that no longer fit and reduce the number of variations for a single competency. For example, while there may be different critical behaviors for “making presentations” and “verbal communications,” one competency can cover both.

4. Craft a story. Rather than having subject-matter experts pick competencies, have them describe upcoming goals they need to accomplish, such as operational efficiency or opening new markets. Include questions about how their work affects the organization and industry, followed by what skills managers and teams need to deliver the desired impact. Then validate the preselected competencies against that story.

CME realized several benefits: • The competency modeling meetings are helpful when setting expectations.

• Managers are happy they now have a means to articulate career paths.

• Hiring managers no longer have to create interview guides. It’s also easier to compare candidates.

• Everyone sees the new role profiles, and managers and individuals can agree on up to three critical competencies to focus on for the year as part of CME’s performance management process. This helps to make feedback richer. CLO Jim Graber is managing director of Business Decisions Inc., a talent management software company, and co-founder of The Competency Toolkit. To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

CASE STUDY continued from page 45 The learning and development team doesn’t have hard numbers on how many people used the clinics, but estimates come in at roughly 10 percent of the user population. Compared with the original plan to offer live training to all 3,000 staff, training time and cost savings were substantial, Danko said. The robust software adoption cut transcription costs by $1 million in the first three months.

Just Ask When it comes to training doctors, or any busy professionals, learning leaders have to first determine whether it’s a requirement or something that will add value. Sternberg said each requires a different psychology around implementation. If it’s training for something that adds value, like the Dragon software, communicate why the new tool or process will make users lives better, and how the training will help

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VUMC made an effort to understand learners’ attitude about the training need, asked them how they wanted to learn the material, and accommodated those needs in the instructional design. “If you give people information in the format that is easiest for them to use, they are more likely use it,” Danko said. That may require creating multiple learning paths, and incorporating a variety of learning styles in content, but it’s worth it to ensure learners’ needs are met, without wasting a lot of time and money on resources no one will use.

Taking the time to survey users and to build training to meet all of their needs was key to the success of this program, VUMC’s Moseng said. “We listened to what people wanted, and it really paid off.” CLO

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Chief Learning Officer • January 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

49

IN CONCLUSION

Going Beyond Can Make You Fall Behind Self-defeating habits are the hidden costs of doing more with less. • BY JESSE SOSTRIN

I

Jesse Sostrin is the author of “The Manager’s Dilemma.” To comment, email editor@ CLOmedia.com.

n my 2013 book “Beyond the Job Description,” I wrote: “In today’s competitive landscape, standing out, getting ahead of the change curve, and staying relevant at work comes from the ability to go beyond your job description and continuously improve your learning and performance as you confront the hidden demands of work.”

Unfortunately, some people have taken quotes like these and either co-opted them to echo corporate America’s unsustainable mantra of “do more with less” or erroneously interpreted them to suggest that pushing yourself longer and sacrificing more is the only viable path to success.

However, the brute force of going above and beyond can actually cause more damage and make you fall behind. That is because today’s emerging and established leaders face an intractable situation where there is not enough time, energy, resources or focus to meet the increasing demands they face.

This impossible circumstance is a true dilemma with no easy answers, and the scale of the problem is significant. Some 61 percent of managers say they are working below their optimal energy level according to the eePulse June 2014 study “Leader Energy and Confidence Ring Alarm Bells.”

That rather large number only tells part of the story.

When the gap between the demands you face and the shrinking resources you have to meet them widens past the point of no return, the manager’s dilemma takes hold.

The moment the inverse equation of increasing demands and shrinking resources kicks in, managers get caught in firefighting mode as they face a series of impossible trade-offs: Which goal rises above all other priorities? Which “fire of the day” gets extinguished while others are selectively ignored because there are too few resources available to put them all out?

If you manage people, priorities or projects, you are susceptible to the dilemma. And if you lead teams and organizations, then you are the steward of a culture that makes it more or less likely the dilemma will take effect for others. The good news is the underlying factors that create and sustain the manager’s dilemma can be addressed to actually boost your capacity to lead effectively.

Here are two strategies to avoid falling into the trap: 1. Distinguish your contribution. When the dilemma sets in, it spins your wheels, causing extra effort with less effectiveness. This can turn even the most talented individual into a mediocre performer. When you need your contributions to the team and organization to be at their best, the dilemma lulls you into thinking the best way to keep your head above water is to do a little bit of everything. Rather than saying “yes” to every request, hone in on your distinctive contribution. Be selective with which projects and priorities you accept. This gives you leverage because your impact is clearer, and the recognition you receive for doing great work in your area of desired expertise produces more and better opportunities to shine.

2. Determine your line of sight. When things get busy, it is easy to slip into firefighting mode and simply react to the demands you face. This can turn you around and distort your values and goals. A line of sight is a visible connection among your priorities, desired outcomes, and the factors that influence your pursuit of those things. When others are turned around, chasing their tails and following shiny objects, you’re tethered. To establish a clear line of sight, start with these questions: What aspect of my work requires greater focus? In this area, what factors matter to me and other people, such as bosses, that I have to satisfy?

To catch up and stay afloat, you inadvertently begin Which of these specific factors are important enough to work against yourself in counterproductive ways that to track in my line of sight? make your solutions powerless, your advantages weak, Implementing strategies like these can help you avoid and your already scare supply of time, energy, resources burnout and deliver more value. Over time it will have and focus even more tenuous. These self-defeating hab- the same effect of going above and beyond as well as reits are the hidden costs of doing more with less. duce your susceptibility to the manager’s dilemma. CLO

Today’s leaders face an intractable situation where there is not enough time, energy, resources, or focus to meet the demands they face.

50 Chief Learning Officer • January 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

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