Chief Learning Officer - January/February 2017

January/February 2017 | CLOmedia.com

➤ Pulling Back the Curtain on L&D’s Myths ➤ Learning and the Flexible Workforce ➤ The Cognitive Science Behind Learning ➤ Choosing Your Words Carefully ➤ Show Me the Money — and the Strategy

Ecolab’s

ROZ TSAI

EDITOR’S LETTER

Predictions and Fiction Y

ogi Berra had it right. “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future,” the legendary New York Yankees player and manager was reported to say.

Look no further than the U.S. election for proof. A year ago, vanishingly few experts gave a reality TV show host turned politician a chance to make it through the primary election let alone become president-elect. But Donald J. Trump is set to be inaugurated in Washington, D.C., this month nonetheless.

The difficult nature of predictions hasn’t stopped the rise of an industry chock-full of pundits and experts offering up their forecasts on what’s next. From politics to sports to business and technology, an ever-growing corps is always at the ready with quick analysis of the latest news and what it means for the future.

Predictions are fun but what’s important isn’t what’s hot.

rising tide of top 10 trends and 2017 outlooks.

It can be a fun exercise and is not without a certain educational value. Taking a moment to step back, examine what’s working and peer at what’s ahead is a form of learning. The most successful CLOs I’ve met are voracious learners always on the lookout for a new idea to borrow or a new person to follow.

But something is lost in the quest to identify the latest trend. What’s trendy isn’t always what’s important, especially when it comes to corporate learning and development.

Take technology. Besides fashion, there’s not a topic more full of breathless analysis and frenetic trendspotting. Corporate educators have a long history of chasing shiny new objects and expecting them to redefine how we learn. From laser discs and e-learning to social networking, artificial intelligence and chatbots, there’s been no shortage of revolutionary new trends to follow.

What’s important — and lasting — isn’t the technology itself. It’s how employees use it. It’s how technology integrates with how work gets done, not the other way around. Simplicity and ease of use are hallmarks of successful technology. Whether it’s the latest software application or a new LMS platform, technology should help workers do their job better, not take them out of it. User experience is a lasting feature of successful tech, not a trend.

A technology executive recently told me employees are feeling “software fatigue” as a result of being forced into applications and systems that take them out of the flow of their daily work. Good learning technology, he argued, should push content where they already are, into systems like Salesforce, Slack or SharePoint, and make that content easy to share and edit.

The wave of new technologies continues to rise and the ensuing predictions about how they will reshape the learning landscape crest along with them. But beyond the trends, at its root, technology should enhance employee experience, not subtract from it.

Fail to do that and I boldly predict your new technology will flop. CLO

The problem is the average expert is only as good as a chimpanzee chucking a dart at a dartboard. That’s a real analogy from the researchers behind a two-decadeslong study that found a random guess about the future to be about as accurate as your average pundit’s prediction.

We’re remarkably bad at predicting the future because, well, it’s tough and most predictions aren’t really about rigorous statistical analysis. Rather, they’re stories we make up to make sense out of a messy reality.

By and large, predictions are fiction.

Some predictions look spectacularly bad in hindsight. In 1903, a Michigan banker advised a client to steer clear of investing in an upstart company founded by a man named Henry Ford. His reason? The automobiles Ford produced were just a passing fad but “the horse is here to stay.” He was right about one thing: there are still horses.

Even visionary innovators and savvy entrepreneurs can be remarkably bad forecasters. In 1943, Thomas Watson, former chairman of IBM, said there was a potential global market for five computers, at most.

That’s right: five. In the whole world. Watson completely missed the rise of personal computers, let alone the supercharged mini-computers most of us now carry around in our pockets and purses.

But that track record doesn’t stop the prediction industry from marching on, especially this time of the Mike Prokopeak year. As the calendar flips from December to January, Editor in Chief there’s a deluge of projections and prognostication, a mikep@CLOmedia.com 4 Chief Learning Officer • January/February 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

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A PUBLICATION OF

January/February 2017 | Volume 16, Issue 1 PRESIDENT John R. Taggart jrtag@CLOmedia.com

EDITORIAL ART DIRECTOR Anna Jo Beck abeck@CLOmedia.com

VICE PRESIDENT, CFO, COO Kevin A. Simpson ksimpson@CLOmedia.com

EDITORIAL INTERNS Alice Keefe akeefe@CLOmedia.com Nidhi Madhavan nmadhavan@CLOmedia.com

VICE PRESIDENT, GROUP PUBLISHER Clifford Capone ccapone@CLOmedia.com VICE PRESIDENT, EDITOR IN CHIEF Mike Prokopeak mikep@CLOmedia.com EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Rick Bell rbell@CLOmedia.com GROUP EDITOR/ASSOCIATE EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Kellye Whitney kwhitney@CLOmedia.com CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Frank Kalman fkalman@CLOmedia.com ASSOCIATE EDITORS Andie Burjek aburjek@CLOmedia.com Lauren Dixon ldixon@CLOmedia.com Bravetta Hassell bhassell@CLOmedia.com COPY EDITOR Christopher Magnus cmagnus@CLOmedia.com

VICE PRESIDENT, RESEARCH & ADVISORY SERVICES Sarah Kimmel skimmel@CLOmedia.com RESEARCH MANAGER Tim Harnett tharnett@CLOmedia.com DATA SCIENTIST Grey Litaker clitaker@CLOmedia.com RESEARCH ASSISTANT Kristen Britt kbritt@CLOmedia.com RESEARCH GRAPHIC DESIGNER Theresa Stoodley tstoodley@CLOmedia.com MEDIA MANAGER Ashley Flora aflora@CLOmedia.com PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Nina Howard nhoward@CLOmedia.com

EVENTS MARKETING MANAGER Anthony Zepeda azepeda@CLOmedia.com WEBCAST COORDINATOR Alec O’Dell aodell@CLOmedia.com EVENTS GRAPHIC DESIGNER Tonya Harris lharris@CLOmedia.com BUSINESS MANAGER Vince Czarnowski vince@CLOmedia.com REGIONAL SALES MANAGERS Derek Graham dgraham@CLOmedia.com Daniella Weinberg dweinberg@CLOmedia.com Nick Safir nsafir@CLOmedia.com ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE Brian Lorenz blorenz@CLOmedia.com

DIGITAL COORDINATOR Mannat Mahtani mmahtani@CLOmedia.com LIST MANAGER Mike Rovello hcmlistrentals@infogroup.com BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION MANAGER Melanie Lee mlee@CLOmedia.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Julie Abel-Hunt Robert O. Brinkerhoff Ken Blanchard Jeff Carpenter Robert B. Cialdini Amar Dhaliwal Sarah Fister Gale Joelyne Marshall Elliott Masie Lee Maxey Bob Mosher

DIRECTOR, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND EVENTS Kevin Fields kfields@CLOmedia.com

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EVENT CONTENT MANAGER Ashley Collins acollins@CLOmedia.com

DIGITAL SPECIALIST Lauren Lynch llynch@CLOmedia.com

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, EVP, Chief People Of ficer, Brookdale Senior Living Inc. Lisa Doyle, Vice President, Learning and Development, Lowe’s Cos. Inc. Tamar Elkeles, Chief Talent Executive, Atlantic Bridge Capital Thomas Evans, ( Ret.) Chief Learning Of ficer, PricewaterhouseCoopers Ted Henson, Senior Strategist, Oracle Gerry Hudson-Martin, Director, Corporate Learning Strategies, Business Architects Kimo Kippen, Chief Learning Of ficer, Hilton Worldwide 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, ( Ret.) Chief Learning Of ficer, Baptist Health Alan Malinchak, CEO, Éclat Transitions LLC and STRATactical LLC 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, ( Ret.) Professor of Educational Technology, San Diego State Universit y Diana Thomas, CEO and Founder, Winning Results Annette Thompson, Senior Vice President and Chief Learning Of ficer, Farmers Insurance David Vance, Executive Director, Center for Talent Repor ting Kevin D. Wilde, Executive Leadership Fellow, Carlson School of Management, Universit y of Minnesota Chief Learning Officer (ISSN 1935-8148) is published monthly, except bi-monthly in January/February and November/December by MediaTec Publishing Inc., 111 E. Wacker Dr., Suite 1200, Chicago IL 60601. Periodicals postage paid at Chicago, IL and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Chief Learning Officer, P.O. Box 8712 Lowell, MA 01853. Subscriptions are free to qualified professionals within the US and Canada. Digital free subscriptions are available worldwide. Nonqualified paid subscriptions are available at the subscription price of $199 for 12 issues. All countries outside the US and Canada must be prepaid in US funds with an additional $33 postage surcharge. Single price copy is $29.95 Chief Learning Officer and CLOmedia.com are the trademarks of MediaTec Publishing Inc. Copyright © 2016, MediaTec Publishing Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Reproduction of material published in Chief Learning Officer is forbidden without permission.

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ONLINE EVENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017

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Features

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Pulling Back the Curtain on L&D’s Myths Bravetta Hassell Learning and development strategy has to turn a corner. Calling out the persistent misperceptions that still affect corporate leadership development practices can only advance that process.

Learning and the Flexible Workforce AnnMarie Kuzel In today’s anywhere-anytime workplace, the willingness and ability to bend, stretch and remain agile are keys to not only surviving but also thriving.

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The Cognitive Science Behind Learning

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How to Overcome a Learning Disaster

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ON THE WEB

Clark Quinn We can change learning practices for the better, and impact outcomes, by understanding cognitive science in general, and the learning sciences in particular.

The Week That Was

Bravetta Hassell Sometimes learning and development programs don’t succeed.

Occasionally they’re abject failures. However, there are ways to turn potential disaster into a learning opportunity.

Each week, we compile a list of the top five stories on CLOmedia.com as well as the week’s top business and industry news so you can catch up on what your peers are reading.

Choose Your Words Carefully

Look for this section in every Friday’s newsletter, or visit us on the web and tell us what you’re reading.

Jeff Carpenter If senior executives aren’t asking learning leaders for business metrics, it’s probably not because they’re not interested. They may have lost faith in the CLO’s ability to provide them.

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ON THE COVER: PHOTO BY STEVE WOIT

TABLE OF CONTENTS JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017

40

18

Departments

36

Experts 10 ON THE FRONT LINES

22 Profile A Journey of Learning Bravetta Hassell For Ecolab’s global learning leader Roz Tsai, learning is necessary to achieve big, sometimes unexpected goals, and it shouldn’t be taken lightly or for granted.

52 Case Study Voya: We Can Always Do Better Sarah Fister Gale Continuous improvement became the key element in changing cultures at Voya Financial.

54 Business Intelligence Show Me the Money — and the Strategy Cushing Anderson Learning budgets are showing a slight uptick, and CLOs are investing in technology and tools that promote a strong link between learning and strategy.

Dave DeFilippo The Education of a CLO

12 SELLING UP, SELLING DOWN

Bob Mosher Do We Practice What We Preach?

14 LEADERSHIP

Ken Blanchard Self-Leadership: More Important Than Ever

16 MAKING THE GRADE

Lee Maxey Teachers, Thinking and Learning in 2017

58 IN CONCLUSION

Jeanne C. Meister How to Create Tomorrow’s Learning Today

Resources 4 Editor’s Letter

Predictions and Fiction

57 Advertisers’ Index

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ON THE FRONT LINES

The Education of a CLO The journey to become a learning leader doesn’t follow one set path • BY DAVE DeFILIPPO

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Dave DeFilippo is the chief learning officer for Suffolk Construction. To comment, email editor@ CLOmedia.com.

ne of my favorite books is “The Education of a Coach” by the late David Halberstam. The book focused on Bill Belichick’s formative years as an athlete and student, as well as his progression from an assistant football coach to his current role as head coach of the NFL’s New England Patriots.

The main points are that Belichick’s love of the game and his unwavering pursuit of excellence drove him to become one of the greatest coaches in the NFL. There is a funny part in the book where we learn that in 1975, when Belichick was in his first role as a special assistant to the head coach with the Baltimore Colts, he earned a mere $25 per week.

Even in that era, $100 per month was probably more like an unpaid internship than a full-time job.

Fast forward to 1988. I had recently graduated from Union College in Schenectady, New York, and I started my first job as a high school Spanish teacher and track coach. I wasn’t much older than the students I was responsible for, and I was literally one

coach, and the final part is as the standard-bearer for organizational performance. First, as the head teacher, a CLO is responsible for the architecture and design of the technical, professional and leadership development of the workforce. Further, a CLO maintains the learning infrastructure, facilitated by talent management platforms and curriculum libraries, as well as partnerships with universities and other experts. In this way, the role is much like that of a traditional teacher, except there are no parent-teacher conferences at midterm.

Second, as head coach, a CLO is focused on optimizing the organization’s potential at the individual, team and firmwide levels. Potential is something I often think about, as the concept was spurred on by a conversation with my college track coach many years ago. I’d had a bad race, and he said, “I don’t want you to have permanent potential, so pick your head up and let’s get ready for next week.” CLOs are in a unique position to focus both on the near-term skill and knowledge requirement while also reading the organization to determine its future capability needs. This facet of the CLO’s role is focused on defining and facilitating how an organization wins; it’s a lot like coaching a team.

Finally, this idea of leaving potential on the table is why CLOs are well-positioned to set workforce performance standards. It’s part of how they can create a culture of learning where both the individuals and the firm can achieve their potential. This culture starts with a CLO modeling the behaviors and expectations for high performance. This point was made clear to me back in 1988 when I got into a little trouble with our dean of faculty for not setting page ahead of them in the Spanish texts as I pre- the right example in front of some students. His pared for class each night. After about three months, feedback was sage, concise and has stuck with me I remember a conversation with my father where I ever since, “You ARE the role model now!” said, “This doesn’t feel like work to me — I love I feel fortunate to have both purposely and acciteaching and coaching these kids.” dently found the CLO role. Most days feel like In my first job, I was earning a bit more than 1988, where I truly enjoy the time I spend teaching Belichick did in his, but the common thread was our and coaching colleagues. In the course of this collove of teaching, coaching and a desire to create an umn, On the Front Line, I’ll provide a point of view environment where the students could put their best on learning and development-related issues, share effort forward to reach higher levels of performance. examples and solutions, and offer knowledge and This formative career experience shaped how I see stories from my experience as a working learning the role of a chief learning officer. and talent practitioner. I invite feedback and diaIn my view, the role is one part educator, one part logue, so don’t hesitate to reach out to me. CLO

The CLO role is one part educator, one part coach, and the final part is as the standard-bearer for organizational performance.

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SELLING UP, SELLING DOWN

Do We Practice What We Preach?

What we’re told we want and what we do to get it are two different things • BY BOB MOSHER

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

To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

hen I do my typical debriefing at the end of each conference I try and consider two perspectives: What were the running themes, and what is the collective buzz, or the overall feel of the event? This year, two conflicting topics were common.

With the movement toward more personalized learning there is a lot of talk about the power of failure and mistakes in the learning process. It’s definitely a running theme. For years, research has supported that we learn more from failure than success, and with the advent of immersive technologies such as performance support, mobile, and virtual/augmented reality, the practical and safe application of this research is quickly becoming more common. Under the category of collective buzz, we’re still talking about some of the same old problems: • When will we have a seat at the table?

• When will we be more than just order takers?

• How do we align better with strategic business outcomes?

• How do we motivate the lines of business to value learning deliverables?

• How can we best work with IT to deploy learning systems?

Is it me, or are these two perspectives contradictory and a bit hypocritical? On the one hand we want a less risk-averse learner and overall learning culture. One that will forego the fear of failure and courageously stretch themselves when adapting new learning strategies and approaches. At the same time, we as an industry continue to spin on old issues, too afraid to put ourselves and our deliverables at risk to innovate and to meet our learners where they live.

Do we have the courage to do what we ask of our learners? Do we have the leadership skills and vision to risk a few failures; to put our reputation and record of delivering successful learning solutions in peril? I’d say we have no choice. How can we ask our learners to do something we won’t ask of ourselves?

Look at the world our learners are asked to survive in every day. Three things rule the landscape: less time, higher demands and constant change. This world is dominated by risk and a high probability of failure. To support employees, we need to break the friendly confines of our classrooms, LMSs, e-learning, coaching programs and virtual sessions, and risk offering a more robust array of options. Those options change often.

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To enable a more risk-minded learner, we need to model the same behavior. We need to get beyond the common perceptions, fears and myths that prevent change. We need to scrutinize and evaluate our old methodologies, deliverables and organizational structures. If they don’t meet the needs of today’s learners, let’s be courageous enough to adapt them or to simply

To enable a more risk-minded learner, we need to model the same behavior. let them go. Let’s be open and honest with those that we support, and let’s experiment and, in some cases, fail our way to success.

I’m not saying do this in a vacuum or at the expense of our learners; there is such a thing as safe failure. Not everything we try will cause the learners we support to come to a grinding halt. They get it. Many have lapped our ability to keep up and are innovating in spite of us, using tools and resources created outside of L&D. If we don’t jump in and learn right alongside them, they will continue to distance us from what they need to continue learning and performing.

This will take a candid and transparent approach; one we’ve not had in a while. But the learning organizations I’ve seen that put themselves out there are experiencing a resurgence and buy-in from the lines of business like never before. They are seen as learning partners, not training providers; as performance consultants, not instructional designers.

It’s a new day, my friends. Performance demands are staggering. Only those who risk, grow and stretch in the workplace survive. Will we be courageous, or will we lag back and defend our turf? Who will take the lead in the discussion? Will we create and model the next generation of learning solutions that step up to this daunting, yet exciting challenge? I hope so, so that next year’s conference buzz is one of excitement, examples and best practices that finally address what we’ve talked about for way too long. CLO

LEADERSHIP

Self-Leadership: More Important Than Ever Employees need collaboration and development, not command and control • BY KEN BLANCHARD

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

n the old days, command-and-control managers made all the decisions and oversaw people’s tasks.

These days, managers can no longer tell people what, when and how to do things.

The 21st century workforce demands a more collaborative work environment and more work-life integration. Further, advances in technology are decentralizing the workplace. More people are working remotely and using cloud-based tools to move projects forward.

Things are changing so rapidly; direct reports often know more about their work than their managers do.

In this collaborative, decentralized environment, training people to become self-leaders — team members who set priorities, take initiative, and solve problems — is more important than ever.

Fortunately, self-leaders can be developed. Self-leadership is not a rare ability reserved only for the Mark Zuckerbergs and Oprah Winfreys of the world. It is a mindset and skill set that can be taught. In “Self Leadership and the One Minute Manager,” Susan Fowler,

Self-leadership is not a rare ability reserved for the Mark Zuckerbergs and Oprah Winfreys of the world. It can be taught.

Laurie Hawkins and I discuss three primary skills people need for self-leadership: learning to challenge assumed constraints, using your points of power and getting what you need to succeed.

Challenge assumed constraints. An assumed constraint is a belief based on past experience, which limits new experiences. For example, when he challenged the assumed constraint that severe physical disabilities would limit his career, Stephen Hawking used his knowledge and personal power to become one of the most celebrated physicists in history.

Or, consider the case of the Nordstrom sales associate whose customer requested a perfume for his wife’s birthday that the store didn’t carry. The associate said, “I’m sorry, we don’t sell that perfume. But I know where I can get it in the mall. How long are you going to be in our store?”

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“About 30 minutes,” he said.

Rather than accept the assumed constraint of not having the right inventory, the associate went to another store, purchased the perfume the customer wanted, came back to Nordstrom, gift wrapped it, sold it at cost — and made a raving fan customer.

Use points of power. The second skill of self-leadership is learning to use points of power — whether it’s knowledge power, personal power, relationship power, task power or position power.

For example, many people assume that because they do not have direct authority or position power, they cannot be leaders or influence outcomes. Believing that you can’t make a decision or take initiative because it’s not specifically spelled out in your job description is an assumed constraint.

People can tap into several different points of power, and those who do sometimes change the world. Mother Teresa — a minority Albanian who spoke broken English — did not begin her amazing career with a high position and authority within the church. She used her personal power to achieve her goal of bringing dignity to the destitute. Fame and success followed.

Get what you need to succeed. This third self-leadership skill requires that people learn to diagnose their own development level. If people don’t have the tools, skills and competence to do a specific task or solve a specific problem, they need to ask for direction — someone to show them how. If people doubt themselves and are wavering on their commitment to do the job, they need to ask for support — someone to cheer them on.

To give you a personal example, in recent years I realized I needed help with my diet and exercise routine. While I thought I knew about nutrition, aerobic exercise and strength training, my knowledge and good intentions hadn’t produced good results. Why? Because I needed direction to develop the skills to stay fit. I also needed support — in the form of a coach — to keep my commitment. The willingness to look inside, assess your shortcomings, and ask for help is the hallmark of a self-leader.

A culture that fosters self-leadership is a characteristic of great organizations. By training people to develop into self-leaders, organizations become more customer driven, cost effective, innovative, fast and flexible. They have mastered a key best practice: making sure that leadership happens everywhere, not just in the C-suite. CLO

INTRODUCING

CLOshow The CLO Show is a podcast dedicated to helping companies build better businesses through modern learning, training, and talent development.

If you’re a Chief Learning OďŹƒcer, SVP of Talent Development, Senior Training Manager, or aspiring to be one, and are looking for the best strategies, tools, and resources to develop your team and grow your business, this podcast is for you.

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MAKING THE GRADE

Teachers, Thinking and Learning in 2017 Change is coming. Don’t cling to the status quo • BY LEE MAXEY

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

redictions are a good way to start a New Year’s column. But as much as we all like predictions, I don’t think prognosticators are held to very high standards.

So, I’m going to report back at the end of the year on how many, if any, of these predictions pan out.

To start, brace yourself for a continued significant shift from teaching to learning. The drivers behind this prediction are twofold. First, a learner’s accessibility to information has never been greater. Students can lay their hands on research and findings and data faster than — and beyond the knowledge of — their teachers. The computing power of your average mobile phone now rivals what was available to NASA when it launched Apollo 11 in 1969. Any teacher who clings to their status as the font of knowledge in front of classes armed with smartphones will be one-upped in short order. And information has been increasingly personalized for learners. People’s web experience serves up exactly what data they need, when they need it, in the amount they want to consume.

A teacher’s role in the future will be to help learners discern fact from fluff. Teachers will help learners become discriminating consumers of knowledge. And that need won’t go away. Technology can blind us to the facts. Remember when merely launching a website gave a company credibility? But outside that virtual façade, how many companies, especially dot-coms, were really going concerns?

Going back even further, the advent of PowerPoint in 1990 made some pretty light-on-the-facts presentations look downright prodigious. But we face a rising tide of information; the teacher will become a purveyor of discernment for students.

The rise of whole-person thinking: Learning isn’t just what we fill our heads with. It’s about understanding our bodies, brains, health and learning with a greater consideration for who we are. Because we have a growing file of digitized data on who we are — everything from psychology assessments such as Myers Briggs or Inside8 to physical fitness data from devices like Fitbit or Polar — we will know not only what we need to learn but the optimal time of day when we learn best. We’ll see with better clarity when we’re at our peak for study, exercise and work. Knowing all of this will help us integrate our whole body into learning. Think of it as becoming body smart, and using that information to better approach learning and develop mastery of a subject.

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Bye-bye paper? Maybe not: According to a 2011 survey of millennials by TNS Research Global, 79 percent receive electronic bank statements online and 61 percent read newspapers online. Seventy-six percent also believe it’s easier to keep track of documents in digital format. Those numbers have undoubtedly increased.

As learners, many millennials take notes on tablets and

We face a rising tide of information; the teacher will become a purveyor of discernment for students. use voice memos and dictation with smartphones. All the indicators seem to chart a trajectory toward a future without paper. In spite of the convenience of digital records and the appeal of digitized documents vis-à-vis millennials’ environmental concerns, the TNS Research Global survey showed Generation Y still has a powerful attachment to paper. In fact, 78 percent couldn’t see themselves parting with paper. My prediction is increased security concerns or a large-scale cyberattack will halt the accelerating pace of paperless study and work.

Decentralized learning: Gaining access to learning from many points of entry has been true for corporate universities for years. But higher education is starting to mirror the private sector. Gaining credentials as a learner will increasingly become localized, instead of centralized. For example, New York University now has 13 campuses, in addition to its main campus in New York City, from Abu Dhabi to Sydney. Colleges and universities, driven in part by companies’ expectations for accessible learning will also greatly expand their brick-andmortar programs with online offers to meet learners where they work. This higher education outreach to geographically distributed regions will make them a better partner with corporate learning organizations.

To some extent, many of the things discussed here are already happening. My prediction is that they’ll happen in a much more significant way. We’ll see a seminal moment, if you will. Whether I hit — or miss — the mark with these predictions, I’ll recap it for you at year’s end. CLO

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PULLING BACK THE CURTAIN ON

L&D’S MYTHS Learning and development strategy has to turn a corner. Calling out the persistent misperceptions that still affect corporate leadership development practices can only advance that process.

BY BRAVETTA HASSELL

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ifteen-plus years ago Robin Lucas, vice president at Fredrickson Learning, was working in learning for a different organization. The team had identified a program that seemed effective for its leadership development needs. It taught principles the organization wanted its leaders to have. It had a nice model around it, and it had a sustainable plan. The department even brought in and certified trainers to deliver the program.

Sounds great, right? No. The audience didn’t buy into any of it, nor did they support the program when it was rolled out. Even though it was a proven model, supported by research, because they weren’t part of the decision-making process, neither upper nor middle management were on board.

After the failure, the company turned its attention to something else, without stopping to reflect on what happened and why. “If we had been smart, we would have turned that on its head and asked: Why wasn’t it success-

ful? Where did we make the mistakes along the way? How can we build that support and relaunch the program?”

Lucas said.

But lessons have to be learned. To do that, learning leaders will have to let go of what they know and do currently, and confront and debunk some of the more persistent myths around leadership development that impact how they do their work and measure its value to the business.

Myth 1: It only takes one training event for learning to take place — and stick. Learning is a one-time event, not an integrated process.

Reality: It is possible to make an impact with a one-time event, for instance, through a forum or a workshop. But approaching leadership development at a company with a one-and-done attitude will yield few sustained results over the long haul, said Devin Bigoness, executive director for Cornell Executive Education at Cornell University’s Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management. Further, the chance for

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leadership development failure is compounded when organizational culture is not supportive, as was the case in Lucas’ earlier story.

“One of the things that we often see in learning is that we think we can fix something by just putting a program out there when in fact, there’s a lot of different things that allow that program to be successful,” Lucas explained. Two of the main factors that make a program successful are whether the culture supports and buys into it and whether there is a strategy in place to promote lasting changes.

Bigoness said learning leaders have to be aware of their organization’s cultures at the team and companywide level. They also have to know their company’s formal and informal cultural norms. Get beyond the design of the program, how it is delivered and to whom.

Culture is key. A company with a strong learning culture provides the psychological safety for vulnerability, smart risk taking and even some mistakes.

Some markers of a supportive learning environment easily rise to the surface, but in other cases learning leaders have to dig into the culture, and then they have to keep digging if they want to deliver a program that is effective because it is acutely attuned to its audience and the environment it exists in.

When creating a leadership development model, for instance, a learning leader may ask “How are decisions made here?” After the initial response, there may be a meeting to hash out details. The team decides on various pieces of the model and then proceeds. Lucas said at this point learning leaders must keep probing if they want to be effective. When they continue to ask questions, they may discover that things are not exactly as they seem. Perhaps there was a meeting after “the meeting” where a select few settled on different next steps — subtly undermining the collaboration that just took place. Lucas said you have to keep asking questions.

“You feel like a 3-year-old, but keep asking that

Myth 2: Leadership development is for, well, leaders — people leaders.

Reality: “You’re not thinking more holistically about the needs of your business if that is your sole focus,” Bigoness said.

When learning leaders take this narrow approach to leadership development, they’re leaving out individual contributors and managers who may lead smaller teams and are critical to the business moving forward.

Learning leaders have to really understand their audience, then get to know what are the critical capabilities that a leader needs to develop to lead themselves, lead the business, lead or be part of high-performing teams, and lead change. These are skills needed up and down the leadership pipeline and across the organizational structure, Bigoness explained. “You don’t have to lead a large team to need to know how to have self-awareness and how to lead yourself.”

When organizations embrace the myth that leadership development is for people leaders only or for senior people leaders, “You’re not necessarily leveraging all of the advantages and resources that you have as an org leader,” Bigoness said.

Here are some indicators that a company is clinging to this myth, effectively disempowering employees and placing its future in a precarious position: • The company leadership pipeline lacks vibrancy. If there are critical skill gaps, and it’s been years since anyone from an emerging leadership level moved into a senior leadership role, that’s a problem.

• There is substantial outside hiring for frontline managers. Many of the employees in this group should be coming up from the individual contributor ranks.

• Pulse survey and anecdotal employee feedback tell a sorry tale. People are reporting they don’t see a way to be promoted to their boss’ job, or they don’t see a future at the organization for related reasons.

Smart organizations see the importance of leadership development taking place throughout the company, said Lucas, of Fredrickson. “I recognize that things are going to change and that the growth of my organization is dependent on innovation of ideas and changes of leadership to Learning support my business model, my growth expectations, the business outcomes that I’m looking for,” she said. “Over time, I as a leader have seen that we stagnate if we don’t support that change and if we don’t support that growth.”

Myth 3: Leadership development isn’t leadership development if the company doesn’t contract out for it.

“We think we can fix something by just putting a program out there when in fact, there’s a lot of different things that allow that program to be successful.”

— Robin Lucas, vice president, Fredrickson question,” she said. “You eventually get down to the root of what is either happening or why people believe that is the way it is in your culture.”

These deeper conversations will help the learning leader decide how to best proceed.

20 Chief Learning Officer • January/February 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

Reality: “If you bring in other people and rely on be done with internal sponsorship, guidance and leadthem to tell you what you should be, you’re not going to ership. Plus, a high level of internal involvement prohave the ownership you have to reflect as a team,” said motes greater sustainability. “No matter how long the Noelle Gill, vice president of leadership development at engagement, the organization is going to be the orgaLear Corp. “You have to decide what you want to be. nization for the foreseeable future, so it makes sense to When you outsource that, it just doesn’t become au- have champions of change in-house.” thentic. You have to be true to your culture.”

Conversely, organizations that fixated on looking In 2009, the nearly century-old automobile seat- inward but now want to look externally to their maring manufacturer and distributor filed for bankrupt- ket would benefit from having an external partner facy. Gill said during those dark days, human resourc- cilitate the process. “You might be a very successful es continued succession planning and annual company but you might not see what’s in your blind performance reviews, but that was the extent of the company’s talent management activities.

Associating the company’s lack of a formal leadership model with its humble, “scrappy roots,” as the business worked to recover: “Training and development, and certainly the notion of leadership and their role in the organization, was not necessarily at the top of our pri— Devin Bigoness, Cornell Executive Education ority list when it came to keep the business alive and functioning,” she said. spots,” he explained.

When Lear emerged from bankruptcy, Gill said Further, depending on how a company wants to the company’s new chief human resources officer, roll out an initiative, it might have the knowledge, caTom DiDonato, recognized an urgent need for a pacity, capability, experience or bandwidth to bring leadership model for mid and upper-level managers the vision to fruition on its own. Still, an external partto sustain the progress it had accomplished. In pull- ner could help there, too, said Bigoness because in deing itself back to its feet, Lear was hyperfocused on sign and sustainability the best programs are a hybrid results, but it was important that leaders were en- of external and internal resources. couraged to work together to reach company goals However, learning leaders should hesitate before the “right” way, Gill said. turning over the entire job of developing and running The team developed a model based on behaviors a leadership development program to outside help. A the company wanted to promote and rolled out a suite consultant can bring capacity and a unique view to the of learning solutions to help ensure company interests business dilemma at hand, but the company must be were prioritized, collaboration was emphasized and ac- involved. The course content, the phraseology, the countability was valued. New leadership at the top of marketing, these are just some of the characteristics in the house initially partnered with outside consultants an initiative that can’t be simply plucked from a catawho proposed plans that amounted to a heavy invest- logue or off a web site. They likely need to be customment, but Gill, along with DiDonato, soon convinced ized using insights and objectives from the requesting executives to take a different route that wouldn’t force company to meet its unique needs — “not to be overthe company to lean on external resources for leader- looked or taken lightly,” Gill said. ship guidance.

Myth 4: Learning and development is a cost center.

Gill said with the groundwork DiDonato laid, the That’s expected. It’s the corner learning leaders are learning organization developed a leadership assess- constantly fighting to get out of because learning and ment tool to identify the company’s leadership chal- development isn’t a value creator. lenges, then developed its own programs. “What’s exReality: If a learning leader isn’t in this position citing now is seeing us step up ourselves to address now, there’s a good chance they were at one point, them in the way that we run our business day to day.” and it’s likely one of their peers still is. Strategic The Johnson School’s Bigoness said when it comes planning time comes around, and rather than look to companies moving forward, there are components of leadership development programming that should MYTHS continued on page 56

“Looking at accepted vernacular around learning and development isn’t a tried-and-true gauge for its place among company priorities, but organizations that see learning as a differentiator speak of it as such.”

Chief Learning Officer • January/February 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

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PROFILE Roz Tsai

There and Back Again: A Journey of Learning

BY BRAVETTA HASSELL

For Ecolab’s global learning leader Roz Tsai, learning is necessary to achieve big, sometimes unexpected goals, and it shouldn’t be taken lightly or for granted.

R

oz Tsai’s fascination with learning is rooted in her history. She grew up during China’s Cultural Revolution and Mao Zedong’s Communist movement.

“My kids grew up in the U.S. They have access to libraries everywhere, and when I was growing up, most libraries were closed for examinations and censorship,” she said, recalling the distance she had to walk to reach a neighborhood bookstore, only to find empty shelves.

Tsai’s father, then a factory worker, befriended a librarian at his job who allowed him access to the factory’s library where he took the thickest book he could find. He brought it home to his daughter, taught her how to use their dictionary, and she learned to read before finally getting to attend school at age 8.

“If you think about the Chinese culture with such a deep, deep reverence for learning and for self-cultivation, having access to learning so limited it probably shaped this hunger in me all my life,” said Tsai, vice president of human resources-enterprise learning at the St. Paul, Minnesota-based Ecolab, a global water, hygiene and energy technologies and services company.

Life has shown her that learning should not be taken for granted. “Being given this opportunity to build a learning infrastructure and provide learning programming — to help people propel their own personal growth and career growth — there’s nothing more fulfilling.”

Tsai has been with Ecolab for almost seven years but only recently transitioned to her current role. Prior to it, she oversaw learning strategy and execution for one of the company’s largest global lines, the institutional business that provides clients with products and services like onsite employee training and inspections.

Leadership at the $13.5 billion company has declared its ambition to become the destination for the

22 Chief Learning Officer • January/February 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

world’s most capable talent to join Ecolab and propel its growth. “Given the importance of talented associates to our business model and our increasing need for talent to meet our future growth, we developed Destination Ecolab, an integrated talent management approach to enable us to attract the world’s best talent to our organization,” said Anne Gotte, HR vice president of talent and organizational development. Part of this strategy included creating Tsai’s corporate learning officer role to ensure learning and development is a key enabler for the company’s talent ambition.

“The only thing you have is what you leave behind, and in my work the only impact I can offer is helping people see things in a different light.”

— Roz Tsai, vice president of human resources enterprise learning, Ecolab Employing roughly 47,000 people worldwide and operating in 170 countries, Ecolab, which was founded in 1923, boasts a business portfolio that includes clean water, hygiene, oil and gas, and manufacturing.

As such, expectations are high when it comes to the corporate capabilities and leadership strengths needed to deliver against the 2020 vision that includes growing its workforce.

Making Ecolab “the destination for the world’s most capable talent” means becoming a leading employment brand for existing associates as well as prospective employees.

Accordingly, Destination Ecolab comprises four levers that the company’s talent management organization is working on: Amplifying and articulating the employment proposition by telling Ecolab’s story; en-

PHOTOS BY STEVE WOIT

Chief Learning Officer • January/February 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

23

PROFILE Roz Tsai

suring that leadership pipelines are strong, purposeful CEO, Douglas Baker, regularly declares that talent is and strategic about building the necessary skills and one of the key drivers for Ecolab’s growth, and he perexperiences for the company’s most critical roles; offer- sonally encourages managers to make sure they are ing diverse career paths and increasing growth oppor- growing talent and fostering an engaging and inclusive tunities; and promoting learning through a deliberate environment. execution of the 70-20-10 learning model.

With a culture led like that, Tsai doesn’t need to ask That last learning lever has three arms: perfor- for executive sponsorship — leaders are practically mance management, career framework and formal knocking down her door. It doesn’t hurt that relationlearning investment, which Tsai said were identified ship-building is one of the many strengths Tsai brings through an in-depth dis- to her work, Gotte said. “Roz thinks big, builds relecovery process with the ex- vant solutions and activates them through others. It’s “When we say our ecutive team and the HR amazing to watch.”

Ecolab’s culture is also customer-focused, Tsai said. customers come first, it global council, which includes Ecolab’s CEO, The organization thrives on its expertise, its in-depth means that our COO, division presidents, customer relationships and its genuine understanding. associates are utilizing region presidents and oth“When we say our customers come first, it means er function leaders. that our associates are well-trained, and they are utiliztheir knowledge to solve A few key learnings ing their knowledge to solve complex challenges our complex challenges our emerged. Many of Ecolab’s customers face. If we can help our customers be sucsenior-level leaders came cessful, we will be successful,” she said. customers face.” up through the company It’s a perspective shared across Ecolab’s learning orranks, so career paths were ganization.

The function includes more than 20 differ— Roz Tsai, Ecolab a huge talking point. Some ent learning teams embedded inside the company’s leaders mapping out their various businesses and regions. This way, learning and personal career journeys could look all the way back to development is intimately connected to the employees their first profit-and-loss management or function and customers they serve. More than 200 learning leader role at the company, Tsai said. As a result, there professionals report in to their respective businesses was almost 100 percent consensus from leaders advo- and ultimately to Tsai. cating the learning function provide a transparent career framework for all associates.

The importance of performance management in Tsai said she never imagined as a little girl that she business growth and success also bubbled up in the would one day run a learning strategy for a global enterDestination Ecolab discovery process. Executives ex- prise poised to employ 50,000 people. pressed a need to make sure all leaders become better At Nankai University in Tianjin, China, she maperformance coaches and even better at providing on- jored in English and minored in French. She went going performance feedback in areas like goal setting, to grad school in the United States, earning a masperformance review processes, ongoing performance ter’s degree in library science at St. Cloud State conversations, and tying performance and results to rewards and recognition.

Tsai said the company’s performance culture has helped drive its near-century success in business. When it comes to Destination Ecolab, she wants to advance that story to existing and future employees, that performance has allowed the company to attain such growth. “Ours is a virtuous cycle — with strong performance, the company grows, which provides continued career opportunities for our associates.”

Executives rallying around Destination Ecolab and learning’s key role in it is a testament to the type of support Tsai finds for the work she is so passion- From the left: Laurie Marsh, HR executive vice president, Roz Tsai and Anne Gotte, HR vice ate about doing. She said the company’s president of talent and organizational development, of Ecolab.

24 Chief Learning Officer • January/February 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

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PROFILE Roz Tsai

University in St. Cloud, Minnesota. “I could imagine no career more exciting than sitting in the library and having access to all the resources, but there were unintended benefits.”

When she joined the library science program, microcomputers had just come out and the education market was being transformed by new technology. So, while getting her graduate degree, she picked up courses in instructional design and instructional technology and became quite adept at using microcomputers. She later pursued her doctorate in curriculum and instruction from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.

“An unplanned journey has its own rewards” is one of the two taglines defining Tsai’s professional journey.

The other is “trust your curiosity to guide you,” she said. “Because I didn’t know. Nobody sat down and said here’s your journey to CLO.” Tsai said she chose an internship at Wilson Learning strictly for career purposes, but she walked away with an understanding of what it meant to apply theory to practice and what disciplined, evidence-based research looked like. She spent about a decade at a software company where she built a learning department from the ground up as the organization prepared its workforce for Y2K. After Tsai spent some time working as a consultant, she was called to be part of learning at Honeywell, a multinational commercial and consumer product conglomerate. That opportunity helped her add value when she joined Ecolab in 2010.

For Tsai, learning is never for the sake of learning.

When a learning strategy is executed right, everyone understands not just what their job entails, but its purpose, and in the case of Ecolab, how that purpose fits into the company’s heritage.

“It’s always going to be in the context of the work we need to do today, the work that we need to prepare for tomorrow, and for individual associates, it’s also in the context of, ‘How do I boost my performance in my role today,’ and ‘How do I prepare for future opportunities in my career.’ ” Tsai said employees often tell her stories about their climb through the organization with learning and development support. “You realize at the end of the day, it’s not me doing the work. I’m the advocate, strategist.

I coach our learning leaders and our learning teams, but you see the ripple impact, and it’s powerful.”

“Learn, do, give” is how Tsai describes her self-development efforts. She makes studying a daily habit. Lately, she’s been on a behavior economics kick to better understand what drives decision-making and change. She’s also familiar with Ruth Clark’s study of expertise and theory on the amount of practice it takes be an expert, but that’s not what she’s going for. It’s more about obser26 Chief Learning Officer • January/February 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

Roz Tsai, vice president of human resources-enterprise learning, Ecolab.

vation, watching other leaders organize their lives and articulate their business challenges and solutions.

“To me, nobody has 10,000 hours to stop their life to study. Instead my mantra is, if I make every hour a learning hour, it all counts,” Tsai said. “Every meeting, every presentation, every coaching conversation gives me a moment to think about how did that go, did that go well, why did that go well, and how could I have done better. So, I study.”

Tsai is also a mentor, speaker, coach, and a hands-on doer. Even though she is a chief strategist in role and responsibility, no work is ever beneath her, whether it is data analysis or tactical facilitation. She also teaches training and development courses at the University of St. Thomas, in St. Paul, Minnesota. “I delight in just doing the work because in the process, it makes me better, makes me more confident and makes me faster at everything I do.”

Day-to-day interactions with her father, now 92 and in declining health, also offer learning as Tsai works to grasp how every piece of her life’s journey has conspired to bring her to where she is now. “I think a lot about the things he taught me.”

Zhongzhou Cai grew up during World War II and had no education beyond trade school, but he was determined that Tsai and her brother would experience far more than he had. “He made education available to us kids, encouraged us to pursue education in the U.S. when he could have used our help to care for my mom,” Tsai said. “All of those things kind of shape who I am in terms of purpose on this planet.”

Learning opens up the world and makes one a richer and better person. Meaning can be found in learning every day because every day, Tsai finds, there is more for her to do. CLO Bravetta Hassell is a Chief Learning Officer associate editor. To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

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a d v e r t i s e m e n t

BEST PRACTICES IN L&D

L&D, as global as possible, as local as necessary – Finding beauty in the balance

BY CROSSKNOWLEDGE

An increasing number of learning and development (L&D) professionals are struggling to find a good balance between their global L&D initiatives and their local and business unit operations. In this article, on behalf of the CrossKnowledge Corporate Learning Institute, I aim to provide insights and a few proven answers for CLOs to handle the global-local L&D balance.

It is no news that the world is changing at an accelerating pace. In order phrase these complex changes consulting firms and researchers have identified several megatrends that lead to the main challenges for corporate organizations to adapt to in order to stay competitive (fig 1).

Figure 1 Technological convergence: New technological breakthroughs transform many areas of everyday business.

Digitization: Work goes remote, and people increasingly live online.

Individualism: Growing freedom of choice and options for work Demographic change: The population is aging and the workforce is composed of 3 to 4 different generations.

Economic downturn: Climate change and scarce raw materials.

Globalization 2.0: Economic power shifts and growing competition.

(Source: Hay Group, 2015)

Within corporate organizations, L&D teams are being asked to do more with less, produce higher quality, and achieving greater consistency which puts them under greater pressure to redefine their roles and reevaluate their structure.

A large international Telecom provider faced major challenges in the L&D area following a recent acquisition: L&D was managed at a business unit level (strategy, content, budget) and skills training was not consistent across those BU’s with the outcome that workforce exchange between BU’s was challenging in terms of skills gaps – common capabilities.

Recommendations from a global L&D review included: • Develop & implement a global core skills curriculum • Determine the optimum for design & deployment for the core curricula: what’s global, what’s B

• Improve the curriculum design: blend classroom & digital learning and add social and workplace learning elements In today’s globalizing business environment it is a risk for the L&D function to hang-on to traditional structures and remain focused on the local workplace. There are opportunities in building on local best practices and leveraging these at global L&D level, linked directly to the core business strategy. In order to achieve this, the L&D organization must find the best possible balance between Global and Local (local can also to be read as Business unit).

The challenge is getting the balance right between local autonomy and global scale and in recent years there has been a swing in balance from local to global L&D. In the case of a global bank a review revealed 12 LMS systems, overlapping technical, skills & leadership curricula and a lack of clarity on measurement and governance. In reaction a 1st time global L&D strategy was developed and launched which implied a shift away from local to global which turned out to be a rough ride in practice. Despite the efficiency opportunities it quickly became clear that there were downsides to centralization: loss of flexibility and commitment at local level were prime examples.

It took the bank in question approximately 5 years to get its balance right and benefit from synergies.

Conversations and surveys with various Chief Learning Officers in Europe provided a high level overview of the pro’s and con’s of centralizing L&D (fig 2).

Figure 2 PROS

CONS

Efficiency – cost saving at global level

Increase of local costs (short-term)

Scale and consistency

Reduced flexibility

Global control

Loss of local commitment (L&D + sponsors)

Clarity on decision making and investments

Loss of local autonomy

Quality of technology and content

Standard <> customized solutions

Elevate best practices

Reduced time-to-market

Vendor sourcing – preferred suppliers

Flexibility of local vendors

a d v e r t i s e m e n t

BEST PRACTICES IN L&D

Conversations and surveys with various Chief Learning Officers in Europe provided a high level overview of the pro’s and con’s of centralizing L&D (fig 2).

L&D drivers: strategy; technology, measurement; governance; methodology (702010); L&D staff and its steps on the bandwidth global > local without being directive.

CrossKnowledge Learning Institute (CLI) model Recognizing that globalizing L&D in a corporate environment is a long and painful journey that should be tuned to both the structure and culture of the business it became apparent that the only answer to where the optimal balance lies is covered by “As global as possible, as Local as necessary.

The model provides the opportunity for each corporate organization to define both the as Is and to Be for each L&D driver and develop an action plan. The model does not have the rigor to globalize in every dimension: 100% globalized strategy and technology can go hand-in-hand with a more collaborative governance.

This in essence does justice to both the Pro’s and Con’s stated above and provides corporate L&D leaders the opportunity to define the gap between reality and ambition in their business environment. A deep-dive into a professional services’ global L&D operation revealed all the described opportunities and challenges and led to the initiative to develop a model that could be used by CLOs to identify the global-local ‘gap’ and use that as a basis to develop and implement action plans to progress. This model has now been optimized by the CLI for the needs and challenges of global companies (fig 3).

Various CLOs have used the model successfully in the past 2 years to plot their specific L&D situation and make Current and Future of their L&D operation transparent. In addition they’ve identified where and how they could progress towards as global as possible, taking the pro’s and con’s into account.

Figure 3 L&D scan Global – Local Global As Possible, Local As Necessary

Local As Possible, Global As Necessary Strategy

Domination of local strategies

Some countries share strategic principles but operate autonomously

High level agreement on strategy, with particular focus on a small number of high profile priorities

Global strategy for L&D, agreed and championed by business leaders, HR leaders and L&D practitioners Aligned KPI’s and metrics, locally and globally, embedded in a firm-wide scorecard Robust governance, strongly led by business leaders, with strong oversight of priority setting and the achievement of KPIs

Measurement

Various country specific benchmarks. No common definitions. Local reporting

Some benchmarks common to some practices. Little or no global reporting

Broadly similar benchmarks allowing for country specific tailoring. Reporting loosely linked to firm-wide scorecard

Governance

Local L&D sounding boards largely focused on knowledge sharing & local priorities

Learning Councils encouraging collaboration on cross –border initiatives & best practice sharing

Governance over global investments and collaboration on cross-practice initiatives

Learning content is locally developed & delivered, no globally driven content development

Content development & delivery mostly local with limited global initiatives focused on new topics

L&D organization

Separate country teams with occasional knowledge sharing.

Separate country teams. Some cross-border collaboration. Small global teams focused on needs of smaller practices

Technology

Local technology platforms

Some cross-practice technology solutions

Content

Best (content) practices identified and leveraged at global level; strategy to reduce overlap in development & contracting

People working on global programs report globally, even when funded through regional/local budgets

Greater commonality, but...

Clear global-local development & delivery strategy with major investments driven by global priorities

Global reporting and funding of all globally focused L&D resources

Integrated Global technology platforms

The beauty of the model is that it provides insights in the core

Global L&D strategy and local optimization are twin goals attainable through exploring the “as global as possible, as local as necessary” balance. Local flexibility drives agility, growth, and L&D community and business sponsor engagement. All these ingredients are necessary to develop an L&D organization that is globally “fit for purpose.” In one of our next Learning Wire articles we’ll explore how CLOs can achieve higher efficiency, higher quality and consistency in their L&D operation by leveraging the a global-local technology and content framework.

The Crossknowledge Learning Institute (CLI) is an independent entity that enables Crossknowledge clients to tackle strategic L&D challenges by providing expertise, partnership, insights and solutions.

The authors of this article is Jan Rijken - director of the CLI and former CLO of KPMG, ABNAMRO and Mercedes-Benz.

COMPANY PROFILE CrossKnowledge is an engaging, forward-looking digital learning solution, driving business outcomes and the ability to transform individuals and entire organizations. We provide a customized, fully integrated learning solution and implement it at unmatched velocity.

CrossKnowledge’s learning solution is complete – bringing together our cutting-edge technology and world class content into a blended environment. Only CrossKnowledge has the experience, agility, and foresight to help you build an innovative and more effective learning solution. CrossKnowledge, a Wiley brand, serves over 10 million users in 130 countries. http://www.crossknowledge.com

n i n r g an a e L d the

e l b i W x e orkforce Fl The willingness to bend, stretch and remain agile are key to thrive in today’s alternative anywhere-anytime workplace.

BY ANNMARIE KUZEL

A

ny learning leader will tell you that developing and implementing the best learning and development programs while making the necessary learning tools easily accessible to an entire workforce is tough work.

Worse, the learning leaders’ job appears to be getting more difficult, or a bit more unclear.

Today’s consumers and producers are showing extreme interest in the “gig” economy, one in which businesses are transitioning from parttime and full-time employees to a flexible workforce comprised of independent contractors, or gig workers.

Gary Browning, chief executive officer for U.K.-based Penna PLC, an interim management, coaching and HR services company, said this popular economy is characterized by “people working on temporary assignments and moving transiently around the workforce, selling their project skills on a project-by-project basis.”

While this sort of flexible economy has gained strong momentum in recent years, Browning said it’s not new. “It goes back — particularly in areas such as IT and contracting — to the 1980s/1990s,” he explained. In the past five or six years, however, he said technology, millennials, the VUCA — volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous — work world and globalization have caused the flexible economy to really take off.

CLOs have a challenge on their hands. This workforce is remote, determines its own hours, and requires unique learning and training opportunities, all of which make a learning leader’s job more difficult.

32 Chief Learning Officer • January/February 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

Chief Learning Officer • January/February 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

33

Who Are the Flexible Workers?

The flexible economy — or the on-demand economy, the gig economy, collaborative consumption or the sharing economy — has kicked the idea of establishing and maintaining a career to the curb. Instead, jobs are defined by “a patchwork of temporary projects and assignments, with the help of apps and platforms with perky names,” according to “Goodbye Jobs, Hello ‘Gigs’: How One Word Sums Up A New Economic Reality,” an NPR article by Geoff Nunberg.

The perky names that Nunberg refers to describe companies like ride sharing company Uber and global homestay network Airbnb.

While Uber and Airbnb lay at the extreme end of the gig economy spectrum, these types of companies are gaining popularity and inspiring workers to ditch their conventional 9-to-5 job for one that lets them pick the hours.

The list of goods and services available from companies in the gig economy seems endless. Unfortunately, so is the list of questions that many learning leaders face — Morne Swart, vice when dealing with this conpresident, global product tingent workforce. The first strategy and transformation, of which is, who exactly is in the flexible workforce?

SumTotal Systems There is a strong misconception that the entire flexible workforce is composed of millennials with a unique opinion regarding work.

But Morne Swart, vice president of global product strategy and transformation at SumTotal Systems, said this is not the case. “We’re seeing more generations in the workplace than ever before, with nontraditional expectations for the employment relationship that include a greater value on experiences, development opportunities and nonlinear professional growth.”

Essentially, the flexible workforce is comprised of a diverse group of workers who are prepared to give up security and consistent earnings for the ability to gain more flexibility, freedom, control, autonomy, variety and the option to pursue only their key interests. That agility in work translates to a similar desire in learning opportunities — regardless of their age.

Using a flexible workforce in conjunction with a traditional workforce allows employers access to a larger, more diverse talent pool, but Patricia R. Hume, chief commercial officer for global mobile connectivity company iPass Inc., said it’s important for employers to balance employee desires with business needs. That’s where learning leaders come in. They help to create a

We’re seeing a greater value on experiences, development opportunities and nonlinear professional growth.

34 Chief Learning Officer • January/February 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

culture that fosters flexibility in learning and new skill application while still delivering results.

Becoming a Gig-Friendly Organization As the flexible workforce gains momentum, learning leaders have to adjust their strategies to work cohesively with the gig economy. Organizations — whether it’s a large company like Google or a small, local business — must develop a culture and brand that appeals to gig workers, Browning said. Development is important. He said members of the flexible workforce have a strong desire and need to invest in themselves.

They want to be able to provide their services or products better than their competition, so they will be attracted to companies who provide them with learning opportunities that increase their professional worth.

Flexible Security?

T

he flexible workforce has benefits for workers and employers, but it may pose a potential threat to an organization’s security, and learning leaders should take proper precautions. Companies that use public Wi-Fi might have to take extra security precautions before using independent contractors or permitting their employees to work remotely.

Patricia R. Hume, chief commercial officer for iPass Inc., a global mobile connectivity company that offers secure, always-on Wi-Fi access on any mobile device, said, “Traditional companies often hesitate to implement policies that involve working remotely due to data and privacy concerns, primarily associated with the use of public Wi-Fi and other sources not secured via VPN.” According to a global iPass survey, 62 percent of enterprises don’t permit use of public Wi-Fi as a result of security measures. This is a significant concern that learning leaders must consider before permitting remote workers to access learning resources via public Wi-Fi. One solution is to use a network that is both secure and accessible from distant locations. Hume said iPass offers secure global connectivity that allows workers to choose where and when they work while eliminating an employer’s fear of a security breach. Of course, employers have other options to maintain security, such as using a virtual private network, installing software protection and content filtering on laptops, or using a third-party VPN service.

So, before an employer decides to meet their employees’ desire to work remotely, they should take precautions to ensure their organization’s security does not become an unwilling sacrifice. Workers may want more flexibility, but an organization’s desire for and insistence on security should remain inflexible.

— AnnMarie Kuzel

Essentially, by investing in contract workers, companies are investing in themselves. Those contract workers might only work at an organization for six or nine months, but Browning said they could come back to work for them in the future. Providing them with valuable training each time helps them hone and develop useful skills and establishes that company as a desirable, learning-centric employer brand.

However, because these workers are filling temporary or flexible roles, the type of training they need is different than what traditional workers require. Learning and development initiatives will need to be more specific, on-demand, bite-sized and focused around the specific job or task at hand. “The sort of softer training we saw around communication skills or personality building — there will be a tradeoff of those for much more job specific training and development,” Browning said.

Further, as learning leaders shape their organization’s learning and development strategies, they will impact more than just the flexible workforce. Swart said learning leaders are taking on a new role, strategizing to fill the balance of skills needed across the entire workforce. “That includes determining which capabilities you grow and invest in through employee development programs and determining when you tap into valuable external experience.” It is crucial for learning leaders to coordinate their full-time employees’ development with their contract workers’ development so that all employees can work seamlessly together.

Lastly, learning leaders should not forget the power of technology. Technology can enable scalable, customized content creation to meet the demands of both traditional and gig workers. “There’s already some really interesting gamification products out there, real-time, online delivery products, where people can get skills,” Browning said.

CLOs need to do their research to determine which tools will best promote learning for their independent contractors. The best tools allow learners to access content on their own time, in their own way.

“Technology impacts the entire experience — from condensing the time-to-hire, to delivering a pre-boarding experience before day one, to mobile and curated learning programs that meet the precise needs of each worker,” Swart said.

In a continuously changing economy with an equally changeable workforce, learning leaders need to increase their organization’s agility, adopt more job-specific learning strategies and use technology to the make sure contingent workers have access to resources. The future of the workforce is uncertain, but the flexible economy is not likely to go away anytime soon. “It’s no surprise that the gig concept is gaining momentum,” Browning said. “Things are moving and changing, and organizations — the ones that will survive — are the ones that are flexible and agile.” CLO AnnMarie Kuzel was an editorial intern for Chief Learning Officer.

To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

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The Cognitive Science Behind Learning The most complex thing in the known universe is the human brain. We can change learning practices for the better, and impact outcomes, by understanding cognitive science in general, and the learning sciences in particular.

BY CLARK QUINN

I

n most any profession, there is a body of knowledge that drives decisions. Whether it’s medicine-based physiology or flight in physics, practitioners need to understand what’s happening to make appropriate decisions. It’s the same with learning. To be able to determine whether a planned intervention — training, e-learning or otherwise — is appropriate, one must understand learning.

This understanding isn’t simple. The claim has been made, fairly, that the most complex thing in the known universe is the human brain.

Therefore, to believe that a systematic and persistent change in operation can be done without a fairly deep understanding of the brain is simplistic. Instead, learning should apply the results of learning science research, a veritable learning engineering. As Will Thalheimer, president of Work-Learning Research and author of “Performance Focused Smile Sheets,” said, “The learning-design process is transformed when scientific research is used.” He cited specific benefits including team direction, innovation and planning.

The consequences of not understanding the brain’s impact on learning, on the other hand, can be costly.

Time invested in developing learning that is ineffective is only one aspect. Another is using training or e-learning when other solutions would be more effective. There is a whole suite of solutions currently being sold in the learning industry that have a questionable scientific provenance. “Be skeptical of claims you hear by vendors, bloggers, friends and coworkers. There are innumerable myths and mythologies floating around the learning field,” Thalheimer said. The nuances are subtle. Well-produced experiences aren’t noticeably different from well-designed and well-produced learning, but

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37

the outcomes are. Plus, there are some misunderstandings that interfere, for a variety of reasons.

For instance, there’s quite a lot of hype about neuroscience implications for learning, but researchers are quick to point out that most of the important results come from another level. There are levels of analysis; neural is one, but the next level up is the cognitive level.

That’s where most of the important implications come from, as well as the social level above the cognitive.

The Cognitive Umbrella Cognitive science is the most accurate description as it was specifically created as an umbrella term to incorporate all levels of human behavior from neural to social, and it includes contributions from many disciplines including philosophy, anthropology, neuroscience, psychology, sociology and more.

If leaders aren’t aware of the nuances, they can fall prey to some persistent — and expensive — myths.

Learning styles, for instance, have been robustly demonstrated to be of no practical value, yet instruments and arguments for sensitive design are still in play. Also, a variety of opportunities to support learning are focused more on aesthetics than effective outcomes. It takes a real understanding to discern the difference between learning and the folk psychology that many people wrongly follow.

“I see a lot of wasted efforts in learning and development that assume that information delivery is going to solve the problem,” said Julie Dirksen, principal of Usable Learning and author of “Design for How People Learn.”

Learning leaders need to know more, to do more. Consider the following simplified version of the cognitive science of learning to draw some important implications on what should happen in organizational learning.

Let’s start at the neural level to get down to the basics. At its core, learning is about strengthening the connections between certain neurons. It’s safe to say the neurons that fire together, wire together. Let’s be clear, it’s not like learning strengthens the link between the manager neuron and the leader neuron. The brain doesn’t work like that. Instead, it’s about patterns of activation that represent various things like concepts and actions. Think of a TV set. Different patterns of activation in the pixels that make up the screen create different pictures. Similarly, different patterns of activated neurons represent different ideas and thoughts.

When activated together, the links get stronger.

Note, there’s only so much strengthening that can happen at any one time before the brain literally needs sleep. Strengthening takes energy and resources that are depleted and need to be refreshed. Therefore, to make learning persistent, it needs to be spaced, or reactivated and strengthened over a period of time. The amount of time over which to practice, and the total quantity needed, depends on the complexity of the task and the amount of time between practice and performance as well as the time between performance opportunities.

Obviously, if the learning is complex, and there are longer times between performances, more practice is needed. For example, for pilots practicing for emergencies, the amount of practice is ongoing and deep.

There we’ve already transcended the neural level and moved into the cognitive level.

At this higher level, learning and instruction is about designed action and guided reflection. Learning leaders should create practice opportunities that require action, and facilitate reflection around that action. Of course, there’s a role for content, providing a framework to guide choices of action in the practice, and to provide a basis for reflection, but the focus is on action.

At the cognitive level, content ideally is a mental model, a suite of causal and conceptual relationships that provide a basis for explanation of what happened and predictions about what will happen. This model, or suite of models, then provides a basis to guide learning actions for reflection, assessing learners’ actions against the model.

One robust finding around models is that learners will build them, and they’re remarkably hard to extinguish if wrong; instead, they get patched. A plausible approach is to make sure there’s a model to begin with, and then refer to that model in examples and in feedback on practice. The alternative is a Frankenstein’s monster of pieces patched together and liable to still have fatal flaws.

Another robust finding is that learning leaders go wrong by bringing in inappropriate models. Most of the mistakes we see are systematic, not random.

Therefore, provide the opportunity to make mistakes and to detect and remediate the wrong models in the learning experience before it counts. Also, having silly or obvious alternatives to the right answer doesn’t facilitate learning.

It takes real understanding to discern the difference between learning and the folk psychology that many people wrongly follow.

38 Chief Learning Officer • January/February 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

Pattern-matching and Meaning-making There is some randomness in our actions. However, it’s evolutionarily adaptive. Our cognitive architecture has been successful at pattern-matching and meaning-making, not at the ability to perform by rote repeatedly and accurately. As a consequence, putting rote information in the world instead of the head — using performance support tools such as checklists, decisions trees and lookup tables — makes more sense than courses in situations where the information is dense, arbitrary or changing quickly. Too often learning leaders make courses when the information doesn’t have to be in the head, it just needs to be on hand.

What has to be in the head is the ability to retrieve and apply the information to problems like those learners will face in performance situations. The way to develop that ability is, not surprisingly, practice that requires learners to solve such problems in context.

Two critical things here are: tasks that require retrieval of the appropriate knowledge and skills, and creating contexts that resemble the performance situation.

So, create meaningful practice. To train in sales, have salespeople make calls, write proposals and

address objections. If employees are in operations, have them trouble-shoot problems, design new processes, write requests for proposals, evaluate responses and so on. What doesn’t work is having them recite back information about these things; they need to actually do them.

Further, part of our learning is aggregating patterns into larger ones, chunking information into coherent wholes. Our working memory, our consciously considered thinking, is limited to only a few chunks. Using a computer metaphor, we compile those chunks, giving us greater facility as we can operate on one chunk instead of several parts. This effectively gives us more operating room.

However, there are several entailments to this. For one, learning should progress in sensible steps and provide sufficient practice to develop the necessary level of performance. These chunks need to be used over time to be automated. If it’s too complex, there’s too much overhead, and the learning isn’t efficient or effective.

Another side effect is that as learning becomes compiled, the information about what we’re doing also is compiled. That is, most people literally don’t have COGNITIVE continued on page 57

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40 Chief Learning Officer • January/February 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

How to Overcome a

Learning Disaster

BY BRAVETTA HASSELL

Sometimes learning and development programs don’t succeed. Occasionally they’re abject failures. However, there are ways to turn potential disaster into learning opportunities.

B

e prepared to fail, or come close to it. Those may be harsh words to dispense, but in business — and especially in learning and development — the menacing word “failure” is part and parcel of innovation.

While organizations continue to learn that what worked in the past might not work any longer, the prospect of navigating uncharted waters to produce something new is scary. After all, things can end badly.

“Innovation requires you to have a stomach to experiment,” said Shabnam Irfani, director of learning strategy for Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc. Innovating requires varying degrees of risk-taking and a sincere belief that the job can be done. It also requires the right mindset.

“Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat,” Denis Waitely, author of “The Winner’s Edge,” once said. The business world may be slowly warming to the fact that failure isn’t all bad, that it has some virtues, but it’s far from cozying up to it.

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Still, it could benefit learning leaders to embrace the developmental opportunities inherent in failure. How they weather the storm from a failed initiative or an unpopular program and apply the learning from these types of disasters or blights will determine how they fare in the future.

Navigating Mishaps Irfani, who leads sales learning and development at Janssen Pharmaceutical, said the company’s roughly 3,000 sales representatives are responsible for making sure doctors and health care providers have the information they need to make decisions about the medications they prescribe to patients. Their impact is measured in a number of ways, including sales-effectiveness data, which indicates how knowledgeable the sales people are about product information and clinical work.

Management believed while these representatives were incredibly knowledgeable, that knowledge could be elevated to produce deeper, more productive conversations with health care providers and make representatives more confident in the way they overcome objection.

Irfani and her team explored the idea of creating a diagnostic tool they could use to test salespeople on different knowledge areas with questions at the novice, intermediate and expert levels; the objective being to identify knowledge gaps. The team developed and validated a bank of test questions, and considered how they would administer them.

Along the way, however, bad things started to happen.

Through the pilot, Irfani — Shabnam Irfani, director of discovered salespeople were learning strategy, Janssen not ready to be tested.

Pharmaceuticals Inc. “There was a lot of resistance toward this notion of testing or being diagnosed, even if it was for the betterment of their own personal development,” she said.

Further, Janssen operates in a heavily regulated industry, which meant compliance had to weigh in on the questions developed. Sometimes a question’s true intent would be diluted because of the way it was compliantly used in the field. Salespeople questioned the relevance of the questions to their jobs, then questioned the diagnostic altogether, and the team ended up shelving the product.

Despite the pilot’s disappearance, it was still important for Janssen’s sales representatives to beef up their product and clinical information knowledge. A new marketing leader inspired Irfani to breathe new life into the diagnostic, but it would take a different shape.

The marketing department ran cycle meetings two

“Innovation requires you to have a stomach to experiment.”

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to three times a year for the sales team. Meetings were packed with critical information on products and clinical knowledge; here was an opportunity for learning to slip in and meet the business’ objectives.

After the engagement, Irfani said she imagined employees would do a knowledge check followed by a message check where people discussed the message, and managers followed up with coaching. The team is approaching its third time using this assessment method, which was gamified in later iterations and made mobile accessible. Representatives were slightly reluctant to do the knowledge checks, but by the third round, they were onboard.

Irfani learned several lessons from her pilot: Apply some design thinking. When Irfani attached the diagnostic tool to cycle meetings as a knowledge check, it lost some foreboding but kept its power. By walking along a path the employees already travel — the meeting — being asked to reflect on what they’ve just learned made sense.

Play directly to the audience. Irfani and her team were more intentional when revamping the pilot, meeting salespeople at their current knowledge level and ensuring knowledge checks were relevant. “This was much more about ‘What are you doing in the job’ and ‘What have we just taught you,’ ” she said.

Transparency Never Hurt Anybody

C

reate everything in a fishbowl. That’s Stephanie Waite’s advice to learning leaders preparing to launch into the design, development and delivery of a new program or initiative.

“If you create something in a black box and deliver it, you’re going to get all your feedback on the back end, but you can save yourself the time,” said Waite, director of leadership and organizational development at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.

Improve a program’s effectiveness, efficiency, value-add and attractiveness by creating it with a large group of people. By inviting as many key stakeholders as one can to be part of the process, learning leaders can keep people up to date on their vision and ensure they feel like a part of it.

Everyone is invited to share their input, and while all of it may not be implemented, there’s going to be a “Yes, and,” Waite said, which invites new, potentially valuable insights. “Being open to feedback and inviting others into the process of development has been such an eye-opening and transformational experience for me.”

— Bravetta Hassell

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Let objectives guide development. Historically, learning tests never told people the correct answers. In this iteration, they did. Irfani said this approach also reassured employees that no one was out to punish them. “This is not a game of ‘I gotcha,’ ” she explained. “If you got it wrong, we want you to learn what you got wrong so you can be the most competitive salesperson out there.” Now, testing was being used as a way to reinforce key learnings.

we definitely had some key stakeholders into the process.”

Waite learned several lessons from her risky development venture: Collect data. She said what was crucial to finding greater program success was talking to the people who would receive value from it, conducting a gap analysis of sorts to determine what they loved, liked and what went well and what didn’t. Waite now requires a survey to complete the program.

Risking Good for Great Make revisions based on the data. Once Waite Stephanie Waite, director of leadership and organi- surveyed the landscape, she collaborated with teamzational development at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Chil- mates and applied her learning knowledge to decide dren’s Hospital of Chicago, doesn’t consider the experi- on a solution. End of program surveys provide addiences she’s had as hiccups, disasters or anything tional insights for future cohorts. negative. She sees them as Align with overall opportunities. strategic vision. MeetSuch was the case ing with each senior when she saw a need to, leader for about 30 minas she put it, swerve on a utes, Waite asked about program and do some retheir strategic priorities assessing. A high-potenand how her team could tial leadership developbest grow their leaders. ment program called She asked what was — Joshua Gilliam, director of Thrive, for managers all missing from their leadthe way up to vice presicurriculum design and development, ership populations as dents, did decently in its well as where leaders exSuffolk Construction first year but didn’t deliver celled, “so that we’re not any groundbreaking results. reactively building leaders, we’re proactively building “People weren’t exactly excited about the program leaders for tomorrow.” because there wasn’t a huge stickiness or value-add factor,” she explained.

Heading Off Disaster The project team did a stakeholder analysis, talked A tremendous lesson came for Suffolk Constructo past participants and asked tough questions that tion Director of Curriculum Design and Developcould potentially change everything: How do we recre- ment Joshua Gilliam at a previous employer where ate this curriculum? What do we add to make it more he was in a similar role. He was part of a team rolling effective and efficient? How do we make this some- out an LMS for an organization with four distinct thing that’s really attractive, not just a requirement? businesses under an umbrella brand spread in reAs a result of the research, the team decided to add gions across 36 states. an action learning project, which created a sense of “Instead of launching the learning management community and connectedness within the cohort. system … all at once, we were rolling through some of People couldn’t just attend the sessions and leave; they the different regions, but the first larger region we got had to work on their project outside of the learning to, we starting hitting stagnation,” he explained. environment. In its first year following the addition of At a gathering with HR business partners and dithe action learning project, feedback has been strong, rectors, Gilliam found himself in conversations about Waite said; people credit the action learning with more the rollout; leaders expressed their lack of understanddeeply enabling their growth and development. ing and confidence in the project.

The program’s reputation is also stronger, and nomiHe said then he recalled there were a lot of “confernation numbers show it. Its first year with the action ence call head nods” while the company’s learning learning project, Thrive received 65 nominations for 40 team was having project calls with stakeholders. Now spots. Last year it received 120 nominations for 45 spots. he saw the disconnect. A few colleagues even told him Waite said she could have run a program that some people hoped if they kept their heads down long was good with a couple of workshops, or they enough the program would just go away. could raise the stakes, and really stretch and challenge participants. “It was a big risk to take, but DISASTER continued on page 56

“You’ve got to provide some ‘What’s in it for me’ so people find it easier to jump on board.”

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If senior executives aren’t asking learning leaders for business metrics, it’s probably not because they’re disinterested. They may have lost faith in the CLO’s ability to provide them.

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BY JEFF CARPENTER

I

n general, there are two types of learning leaders. Those who came up through the ranks of learning and development, who wax poetic about Malcolm Knowles and ADDIE and can break down the components of a properly written learning objective. And those who were successful business people prior to landing in learning and development, sometimes by happy accident. Both types bring valuable skills to bear on their learning organizations, but the folks with the business background often have an easier time gaining traction with their business peers and early-stage initiative planning influence.

To be sure, some of that is the result of existing relationships with stakeholders on the business side. But the biggest reason for the influence gap is the language barrier; the way learning leaders tend to define and talk about success differs from the way business leaders measure and discuss it.

Learning leaders often reflexively default to speaking in terms of learning-centric key performance indicators — training hours provided, e-learning modules created, average test scores, butts in chairs — rather than numbers that have meaning to business leaders and drive their decision-making, such as ROI, effectiveness and other metrics that illustrate bot-

tom-line impact. By rephrasing and swapping terminology — underlined by better front-end planning around metrics and measurement — learning leaders can better convey their learning initiative successes and connect with their business counterparts in a more meaningful way.

Speak the Language of Business To be clear, there’s nothing inherently wrong with learning KPIs, or key performance indicators. They can offer valuable insight into the efficiency and effectiveness of learning initiatives, serve as progress milestones and act as an internal measuring stick. Just understand that it’s inside baseball, and no matter how impressive the results may seem to the learning organization, if they’re conveyed in learning-speak, business stakeholders probably won’t care about them.

Learning-speak often comes across as annoying to leaders outside the learning function, said David Voorhees, director of learning and development for Waste Management Inc. Learning professionals who make the effort to use business language are more likely to instill confidence that learning and development has the capacity and desire to be a real partner, he explained. It’s something he demands of his own learning team.

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“We deliberately use client business terminology in our meetings as a part of the immersion process. The client’s terminology is their reality, and we want to be a part of that reality.”

What business stakeholders really want to hear is the impact and value of any given learning initiative.

Learning leaders must prove that they understand the business objectives, and illustrate how learning interventions will help their peers and their employees achieve them.

To illustrate, imagine the following scenario. A newly hired call center training director is tasked with identifying and implementing a learning intervention.

On his first day, he spends an hour in a room with a couple of managers who go into great detail about the call center and its operations. After they finish talking, they ask if he has any questions. “Yes, I do: Can you please repeat all of that, but this time in English?”

They had explained things in jargon, making assumptions about prerequisite knowledge and failed to fill in knowledge gaps for a layman. At that moment, the training director realized that before he could address the workers’ performance needs, he would need to gain a fundamental understanding of the business and its industry.

That language barrier works in reverse, too. Had the training director started talking to the call center managers about ADDIE and LMSs, they would have been similarly lost.

The difference is, they don’t care, nor should they. Learning leaders exist to support them, not the other way around. So, while the call center training director needs to be able to speak competently about first call resolution and computer telephony integration, he also must adjust the way he speaks about the learning side of things.

Being able to communicate effectively with stakeholders ties directly to the learning leader’s ability to align with business goals, which ought to be at the apex of the learning organization’s mission. Every development initiative must be tied to enterprise objectives, and learning leaders need to be able to clearly and directly articulate how development activities fit into that overarching business strategy.

The business discussions that happen in the C-suite ultimately center on at least one of the following three topics: increasing revenue, decreasing

Learning leaders need to be able to clearly and directly articulate how development activities fit into overarching business strategy.

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Reader Reaction How Do You Translate L&D for the Business?

Thomas Petro: The critical functions in the organization — sales, marketing, IT, operations — all have business plans that define how they are going to contribute to the company’s overall goals. This is a good place to start for the learning function.

Develop a learning strategy with specific goals tied to the goals of the business, then measure your success at that. No one in the C-suite gives a rip about how many courses you delivered.

Nettie Nitzberg: The biggest challenge has been not hiring HR leaders who have the skills and knowledge to “sit at the table,” instead hiring lower level L&D practitioners who do not have business and strategic experience. Learning leaders need to understand both the people and operations side of the business. That is why L&D is now a key part of strategic HR. HR should be a key part of the overall business strategy and held accountable for critical metrics.

Peggy Scrivens: Act and speak like a business partner. It’s L&D’s role to partner with internal customers to learn their business challenges and vision, then help them see how to reach that vision.

Metrics should be tied closely to learning outcomes as well ROI. What do you think? Join the discussion at tinyurl.com/ gwsmt44, follow us on Twitter @CLOmedia or join our Chief Learning Officer LinkedIn group.

expenses or managing risks. So, when learning leaders insert themselves into these conversations — and they should, because proactively sharing relevant information is sometimes the only way to be heard — they need to frame their input around these areas of interest.

When people talk about speaking the language of business, what they mean is, speak the language of the people whom learning supports. The truth is, there is no universal learning-to-business translation because every business is different, and every business cares about different things. Jargon and internal shorthand is part of that, but more to the point, KPIs and relevant business metrics will differ based on organizational objectives. As a rather obvious example, a learning organization that supports a call center might be wise to measure things such as one-call resolution and handle time. But those metrics would carry little relevance for executives in a fast-food chain. And neither company’s stakeholders are going to care much about average e-learning scores.

To that point, when crafting a presentation for business stakeholders, learning leaders should be selective in what they share. They should absolutely paint a complete picture, but should also consider what information business leaders really need to hear. To draw an analogy, think about when an accountant does a person’s taxes. Ultimately, that individual only really cares how much money they owe or are owed.

They want the accountant to share enough detail

what questions to ask, and the only way to know that is to truly understand the ins and outs of the business that they support.

Once learning professionals have that foundational understanding of the business they support, they’re now on steady footing to ultimately explain learning initiatives — their business case, their ultimate objective, their anticipated bottom-line impact — in ways that resonate with stakeholders. This enables the C-suite to recognize the positive results in an intervention, because it’s already been framed for them in a context they understand.

While the need for better communication between learning and the business seems obvious to many learning leaders, it remains a tough sell among a large segment.

That’s because, after decades of failing to receive business plans and impact reports from the learning function, plenty of executives have simply given up asking — and those learning leaders incorrectly interpret their silence as affirmation.

“If I’ve worked my way up to being head of a learning department for a major corporation, and nobody has ever asked me to put together a proper business plan, why would I suddenly start now?” said David Vance, executive director of the Center for Talent Reporting. “These learning leaders feel they’ve done just fine in their career without doing what we’re talking about. The fact is, if learning professionals take the time to put together a detailed plan, they will provide better value to the business.”

The takeaway here is, if business stakeholders are not even attempting these conversations, it’s not because they aren’t interested, it’s because they’ve simply lost faith in learning’s ability to provide any relevant info. That has a material effect on the learning organization’s influence and budget. In those cases, Vance said the decision-makers just figure, “ ‘We’ll give them the least amount we can get away with, because who even knows what they’ll do with it?’ ” To be frank, it’s frustrating and counterproductive that the learning industry remains reluctant to assimilate to the wider business world. “We are proud to be learning professionals; we are even more proud to be business-learning professionals,” Voorhees said. “It is a conscious choice to be both and to demonstrate that you are focused on the client’s business outcomes, metrics and success.” CLO

By rephrasing and swapping terminology, learning leaders can better convey their successes and connect with their business counterparts in a more meaningful way. about the return that they are confident in his or her competency, and that the critical information is accurate and complete. But the person may feel like their time is being wasted if the accountant reads off portions of the federal tax code that apply to each line item. Likewise, most business stakeholders only really care about the bottom-line results and some high-level takeaways that explain those results. Of course, learning leaders should be ready to provide additional details if asked.

To Understand Business Language, Understand the Business Communicating more effectively with business leaders starts with acquiring a nuanced understanding of the business itself. This includes conducting a gap analysis, but unfortunately, that’s often as deep as most learning leaders delve. Instead, find out what are the practical, functional challenges facing the business and its stakeholders. Who are the customers, and how is the business solving their needs — or not? Who are the company’s main competitors, and why or why are they not a threat? Where is the industry going?

This deeper business understanding is necessary to have an intelligent conversation with stakeholders on how to identify whether there is even a performance need to be solved. Learning leaders must examine the performance system from all angles, including external factors that may impact performance, like resources, policies, procedures, tools and incentives. Failure to consider underlying causes for performance issues could result in misidentifying the proper learning intervention, never mind how to adequately measure the solution’s effectiveness. For this important conversation to take place, learning professionals need to know

Jeff Carpenter is CEO of Caveo Learning. To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

Chief Learning Officer • January/February 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

51

CASE STUDY

Voya: We Can Always Do Better

BY SARAH FISTER GALE

I

n 2013, after Voya Financial spun off from ING Group, its leaders had to rebuild and rebrand the investment and insurance firm, with a goal to make it “America’s retirement company.”

The $11 billion investment firm went public in April 2014, and two years later, Voya has achieved that goal. The company now serves more than 13 million customers and has been named one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies by the Ethisphere Institute for three consecutive years, and been listed as a Best Place to Work by Pensions & Investments.

But getting to this point was no small feat, said CHRO Kevin Silva. Along with establishing a new corporate structure and hierarchy, the company’s leaders knew the only way they could establish Voya as a service-driven customer-centric financial institution was to align the company’s financial strategy with a talent development strategy that would cultivate a culture of continuous improvement — despite facing major organizational change. “Our CEO unOne of Voya’s learning and development consultants leads a course derstood that to achieve on situational leadership for new managers in the company’s Windsor, aggressive financial obConnecticut, office. jectives, we had to have a human capital plan that focused on ‘how we work’, not just what we accomplish,” Silva said.

Leaders built a framework around nine core behaviors aligned with the new company’s mission and values. The framework focuses on things like demonstrating integrity, leading with passion and clarity, Heather Lavallee, right, meets with the employee benefits team and delivering continuin Minneapolis as they celebrate problem-solving solutions in a ous improvement continuous improvement deployment.

52 Chief Learning Officer • January/February 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

SNAPSHOT Voya Financial made continuous improvement the lynchpin of its leadership development program strategy and changed its entire culture.

through talent development and customer service.

“The nine competencies help define what it means to be a Voya employee,” said Brannigan Thompson, senior vice president for talent organization and leadership development.

Once the framework was defined, Voya worked with McKinsey & Co. to find a baseline measure of organizational health and to identify key metrics to track whether employees were adhering to the new culture. They wanted to look beyond employee engagement to track results-focused measures, such as leadership outcomes and differentiated performance.

“We knew some of these metrics wouldn’t be well received,” Thompson said, which is one of the reasons that learning and coaching was such an important part of this transformation process.

A New Way to Lead The Voya team developed a core leadership program that includes three flagship courses on change management, situational leadership and the art of performance management. These three courses were designed to educate managers about the importance of the leadership framework and to help them make the nine competencies part of their leadership style.

The Voya training and development team also designed the 6P workshop for managers — purpose, people, performance, process, partnership and problem solving — on how to accelerate and sustain continuous improvement through their leadership efforts. A Civil Treatment course taught participants how to create an environment that demonstrates value, respect and fair treatment for all individuals. “If we were going to make the change stick, we needed to be sure all of our leaders had the knowledge, ability and awareness of how to manage in the Voya way,” Thompson explained.

Some of these courses were developed externally by

leadership development vendors and then customized for Voya, but the program’s flagship Art of Performance Management course was custom-designed by the Voya team, Thompson said. In the day-long session, participants learn to recognize their own barriers to communication and develop skills to help them provide feedback, coaching, recognize and reward, and foster a more collaborative culture.

All of the courses reinforce the importance of how people do their work, not just what outcomes they achieve, Silva said. “How we perform our duties is a core principle of the Voya culture.”

This concept is so important to the Voya leadership team that 50 percent of senior management performance appraisals are now based on how they manage; the other 50 percent are based on whether they meet their performance goals. The company is also not afraid to let people go if they don’t demonstrate Voya values in how they work — even if their performance results are strong. “Culture can’t just be a sign on the wall,” Silva said. “There have to be real consequences if people don’t adhere to our values.”

The Secret Sauce Once the courses were in place, Voya rolled them out first to all new managers — including employees promoted to management roles — to ensure they had the skills to manage the Voya way. Then they rolled the courses out to existing managers to reinforce the corporate culture throughout the organization.

Heather Lavallee, president of tax-exempt markets for Voya, was in the first group of managers to complete the 6P course, which was originally only offered to leaders as their department went through a CI deployment. Lavallee has been with Voya/ING since 2008, and she said while there was always talk about the importance of leadership and mentoring as a way to drive business value, before becoming Voya, it was mostly lip service. It was only after Voya rolled out the new leadership framework that learning aligned with the company’s culture and drive for continuous improvement. “The training was the secret sauce in our transformation,” she explained.

Lavallee first heard about the 6P course in January 2012, when it was piloted among management staff. At the time the company was growing rapidly, and she said there was not a lot of trust between teams or departments. Employees had little power, and most problems had to be brought to management to solve. “There was no notion of empowerment or working together.”

When she heard the leadership team was looking for managers to try out the program, she volunteered. “I

had nothing to lose, and if it helped us transform the culture, I was all in,” she explained. She said the training had a profound impact on the way she led her team and the way she thought about her role. “I learned that as a leader you have to take a step back,” she said. “You can’t just come in and solve everyone’s problems. You have to listen, and ask questions, and celebrate front-line workers who come up with solutions themselves.”

Now she actively looks for opportunities to drive continuous improvement, and she encourages her

“Culture can’t just be a sign on the wall.”

— Kevin Silva, CHRO, Voya Financial team to talk about problems rather than hiding them, which has led to real business results. For example, every year in the employee benefits department, 70 percent of the work comes in around January 1 — during open enrollment. “It’s a huge surge in work, and it hits different teams at different points in the process,” she said. Over the course of eight weeks, there are many points where one team might have nothing to do, while another is overwhelmed.

Rather than addressing a single bottleneck, her team addressed the problem holistically. They calculated the number of hours spent on each task across the entire claims processing lifecycle, then asked for volunteers to be cross-trained to fill gaps. “I thought people would be unhappy being asked to take on extra work, but they saw it as an opportunity to gain career mobility,” Lavallee said. After implementing the change, the benefits team was able to process twice as many plans in half the time, and the group now has eight cross-trained employees who can move fluidly across teams as needed.

Silva said that follow-up surveys report more than 80 percent of managers say the training has had a positive impact on their performance as a manager, and 93 percent say it is helping them perform their job better. Voya also has seen a 10-point improvement in its organizational health survey from 2012 to 2015, and high-performer retention climbed to 94 percent.

“Empowering people to work in different ways and problem solve is the most powerful tool a leader can give to their employees,” Lavallee said. “It had really transformed the way we work.” CLO Sarah Fister Gale is a writer based in Chicago. To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

Chief Learning Officer • January/February 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

53

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

Show Me the Money — and the Strategy

BY CUSHING ANDERSON

Learning budgets are showing a slight uptick, and CLOs are investing in technology and tools that promote a strong link between learning and strategy.

G

ood news, learning leaders. Learning and development investments are growing. Spending priorities appear to be greatest in strategy, technology and content. Most enterprises expect to continue their technology investment in assessment systems, learning management systems and analytics.

In the 2016 CLO Learning Investments Survey, published this past October, more than 120 CLOs described their intentions to expand learning technology and services use and detailed how their spending will change between 2016 and 2017.

Overall, 53 percent of CLOs see learning technologies as a significant priority, and 57 percent expect to increase their technology spending in 2017.

Budgets aren’t crazy different, but there have been some changes. For the first time in four years, less than half of CLOs report their budgets in 2016 were bigger than 2015. About the same percentage of CLOs report their budgets were the same or growing in 2016. (See Figure 1.)

Also encouraging, for the third year in a row, CLOs who saw a budget increase reported an increase of almost 20 percent. However, CLOs who reported a decline estimated their budgets shrank by almost 20 percent. So, while gains were bigger, and there were fewer 54 Chief Learning Officer • January/February 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

declines, not all organizations are seeing an uptick.

The trend for budgetary changes looks good for 2017, too. More than 50 percent of CLOs expect their budgets to increase in 2017 and only about 10 percent of firms expect a decrease. Overall, we project training budgets for 2017 will grow about 6 percent on average; about 30 percent of firms expect no change from their 2016 budget.

While some CLOs will see increased budgets, almost all will focus on improved outcomes and continue efforts to link learning and business strategy. More than half of CLOs expect to increase spend on learning technology, strategy and their content libraries — with a focus on leadership and executive development, business skills and general management training, areas to help them run the enterprise as opposed to any specific skills for specific roles — and learning strategy. All of these areas support increased relevance and efficiency, and all offer the most visible results. (Figure 1.) This expands on a pattern to link training to business objectives, and seems to reflect an aim to increase the impact of training spend and delivery.

Other findings related to key budget priorities include: • Learning technology: Learning analytics, assessment tools and learning management systems will be an investment focus for most enterprises. Organizations want to better evaluate training and to promote high performance. Enterprises are also increasing their spending on performance support technologies. While these take a variety of forms, on-the-job assistance is increasingly recognized as an inexpensive way to increase capability in a workforce that might have expanding responsibilities.

• Learning strategy: The distance between learning strategies and organizational success is narrowing. Learning strategy has increased in importance over the past several years.

• Content development: Leadership development remains a core focus. Learning leaders must prepare the next generation of executives to replace retiring leaders. Other business skills, including negotiation and teamwork, are also important.

Providing employees with the appropriate career development has been a high priority since the employment market began to tighten in 2014.

While spending on technology, content and strategy are increasing, after several years “out of favor” and declining as an investment priority, outsourcing learning services remains stable.

Compared with priorities from previous years — blended content, leadership and executive development and e-learning delivery — ILT content delivery continues to decline for CLOs. This reflects the continued and growing acceptance of e-learning, and a focus on cost effectiveness in other spending areas.

Spending on certification content is declining slightly, reflecting a continued need to demonstrate relevance and on-the-job applicability but not an increasing demand for the process or perhaps the specific certification content. Informal learning content is a somewhat lower priority — acknowledging the somewhat ironic requirement to formalize informal training. (See Figure 2.)

Technology remains a major source of efficiency gains, and those efficiencies often come through learning administration. Assessment and evaluation technologies are top priorities as combining these with learning management enables CLOs to target training for maximum benefit.

Overall, 53 percent of CLOs see learning technologies as a significant priority, and 57 percent expect to increase their technology spending in 2017. Learning technologies are behind learning strategy as an overall priority; 74 percent say strategy is a significant priority, though more CLOs expect to increase technology spend more than they expect to spend on strategy.

CLOs are typically conservative when managing their learning investments and aligning these with enterprise priorities. This research suggests learning executives hope to increasingly leverage learning technologies and improved content development. CLOs also will include a healthy dose of learning strategy development, performance and organizational assessments to improve organizational learning’s impact. CLO Cushing Anderson is program director for learning services at market intelligence firm IDC. To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

FIGURE 1: CHANGES IN TRAINING SPENDING Less than half of CLOs reported that their budgets in 2016 were bigger than 2015.

■ Increase ■ Remain the same ■ Decrease ■ Don’t Know 59 %

53 %

53 %

48 % 33 %

28 %

29 %

24 % 18 %

18 %

16 %

10 % 1

%

0 2014-15

2013-14

2

%

8%

%

2015-16

2016-17 (projected)

Source: IDC, 2016

FIGURE 2: GREATEST INVESTMENT PRIORITIES Over the next year, how do you expect your investment to change in the following areas?

57% 57% 50% 36%

3%

Learning technology

2%

Content development

5%

Learning strategy

9% 29% 11% 30% 13% 26% 16%

Source: IDC, 2016

Increase Decrease

Performance consulting Learning administration Learning personnel Outsourced learning services Note: Multiple answers accepted

FIGURE 3: CONTENT DEVELOPMENT PRIORITIES Content Area Blended content Leadership and executive development Development of e-learning content Learning assessment development Certification programs Informal learning Proprietary content Development of ILT content Other

2016 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

2015 1 2 2 6 7 4 5 8 9

Source: IDC, 2016

FIGURE 4: LEARNING TECHNOLOGY PRIORITIES Highest priorities Learning management system Learning analytics applications (measurement and metrics) Assessment and evaluation Collaborative and social software for learning Performance support

Lowest priorities Mobile and portal technology Content authoring software Learning portals Podcasts Technical help desk

Source: IDC, 2016

Chief Learning Officer • January/February 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

55

MYTHS continued from page 21

DISASTER continued from page 44

at learning and development as a performance strategy that can facilitate business impact, learning is treated as a line item. Measuring learning’s value is hard, Bigoness said, but that’s evolving. Nevertheless, without creating business value, learning and development loses credibility, trust, and flops or founders in the company budget.

Learning leaders can get a pretty good feel for whether their organization sees learning as primarily a cost center by considering the answers to the following questions: • When does learning appear in strategic planning conversations? Learning should be part of the original conversation, not the downstream discussion, Bigoness said.

• Can the learning leader answer strategic questions on where the business is going? If not, they’re probably not at the table. Learning in these environments isn’t seen as a driver of competitive advantage, it is merely training — a work enabler.

• Is it just training? Bigoness said looking at accepted vernacular around learning and development isn’t a tried-and-true gauge for its place among company priorities, but he said he’s noticed that organizations that see learning as a differentiator speak of it as such. Instead of training, it’s leadership development, talent development or executive learning, for example.

There is a cost to delivering leadership development, but hopefully what inspires greater buyin among leadership is learning’s ability to create more business value than cost. Proving learning’s value is the Holy Grail for executive education providers, Bigoness said. It can feel like an elusive task for learning organizations as well. But it has to be done, and increasingly learning leaders are creating and identifying ways to measure and make learning’s impact tangible. They’re asking: What kind of ideas came out of the program?

Were there any new inventions or process improvements, for instance?

“Part of the task is to try to get the participants and the stakeholders to quantify those so that while yes, there is an investment to run a program, time, money, everything else, you also look at it as a value creator that hopefully far outweighs the direct cost of running the program,” Bigoness said.

Line up the outcomes, learning leaders. Then, when the corner office is enamored with the results, remind them where they came from. CLO

“I knew at that moment, from that conversation … we’re in a lot of danger of failing,” Gilliam said.

So, he went to his team and began work on a recovery strategy. The main shortcoming was team members didn’t have the buy-in they thought they had.

“You have a lot of individuals who would be doing the work — because we’re changing a system on them — who didn’t necessarily understand or like the change, and they didn’t have someone in their regions explaining it to them, supporting the project and driving it along at the ground level,” Gilliam said.

His team broke down the work to be done — not so much the actual project and plan — but communication for it, messaging, and — this was completely new — who would be responsible for different changes.

There was a realization that while they had assembled all the people needed for the implementation, they had left too-broad a stroke across roles and responsibilities.

Gilliam learned several lessons from this near miss: Talk it out. He received the bad news about his project four or five months away from its rollout. His team concentrated on changing project perception, assigning ownership to regional stakeholders and making sure business leaders anchored the strategy.

Business leaders’ investment and buy-in was imperative, so Gilliam and his team reached out to them to hear their fears and offer clarity. Their support on the ground in their respective regions represented critical glue to hold the program together and ensure its success.

Be an initiative’s biggest spokesperson. “I really tried to put a little bit of a sales hat on, which I think you need in any sort of project management and especially in L&D,” Gilliam said. “Get the client excited for the product, support them in their decisions and make sure there’s buy-in.” Clients need to know what’s in it for them at the individual level so they can find it easier to jump on board, he said.

And, amid any corrective action, learning leaders should find and take hold of wins where they can. Irfani said she reminded her team there was a lot of good work in the initial tool that was shelved. It was only a matter of time before it manifested itself in different ways. And it did in how the group operated as a team, among other things.

There are also some non-negotiables Irfani said she hopes will save her some trouble in the future. In addition to pilots being indispensable, “Now when we have test questions, they have to be instructionally sound, they need to be tested and they have to be relevant,” she said. “If we’re not willing to do those three things, I’m not willing to sign up for this.” CLO

Bravetta Hassell is a Chief Learning Officer associate editor. To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

Bravetta Hassell is a Chief Learning Officer associate editor. To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

56 Chief Learning Officer • January/February 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

COGNITIVE continued from page 39 access to what they do. The implication here is that asking subject matter experts to provide the necessary background for learning is fraught with trouble. There are a variety of heuristics for working with SMEs, but requirements that they have to be the source of expertise can be problematic.

At a higher level, one might consider social learning. If a person hears a particular recitation of a concept, they’re likely to take one version of that. When people can experience other interpretations, their learning increases for several reasons. For instance, there’s additional processing that reactivates and strengthens the learning. And, particularly if there’s a requirement to find a resolution among different ideas, negotiation of a shared understanding generates considerable processing and an outcome that’s stronger than any individual component.

Recursively, we can also apply our thinking to our design processes. Just as learning implications arise from our cognitive architecture, so do limits to our design abilities. Externalizing our processes via checklists, for instance,

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minimizes the problems that occur in random errors. Similarly, templates oriented around the aforementioned principles help keep us from bringing in misconceived ideas about good design.

And working together, at least at critical ideation stages, can keep us from a limited experience conceptualization.

The end result is that we can change our learning practices for the better, and impact our outcomes, by understanding cognitive science in general, and the learning sciences in particular. “One of the encouraging things I’ve seen in more effective organizations is programs that are spread out over time so people can practice, get feedback and space out their learning,” Dirksen said.

It’s time to take our profession seriously and avoid learning malpractice. We must not falter, our organizations need us. CLO

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57

IN CONCLUSION

How to Create Tomorrow’s Learning Today Workplace disruption has created some new roles for learning leaders • BY JEANNE C. MEISTER

A

Jeanne C. Meister is a partner at Future Workplace and coauthor of “The Future Workplace Experience: 10 Rules For Mastering Disruption in Recruiting and Engaging Employees.” To comment, email editor@ CLOmedia.com.

company’s commitment to provide learning of all types is increasingly important to attract and keep top talent. According to Universum Global’s 2015 “Generation Z Grows Up,” a survey of 49,000 members of Generation Z (born between 1994 and 2009) from 47 countries, 15 percent of Generation Zers would consider joining the workforce instead of getting a college or university education. What’s more, 60 percent say they welcome getting information on learning that companies can offer to those with no university degree.

Employees will deliberately select employers based upon the breadth, depth and access to lifelong learning. This transformation of learning from designing formal training to creating on-demand learning experiences requires learning leaders to shift their mindset, budget and give up some control to their learners.

Learning leaders need to rethink and reimagine what constitutes learning and how they communicate this.

The focus must be on how employers enable learning — not just create it — and three new roles have emerged as corporate learning departments embrace these changes: Curator: “Big breakthroughs happen when what is suddenly possible meets what is desperately necessary,” said journalist Thomas Friedman in a May 16, 2012 op-ed in the New York Times. Freidman was talking

Learning leaders need to rethink and reimagine what constitutes learning. about the MOOC movement’s impact on the democratization of higher education. This revolution caused

by MOOCs is now impacting corporations. Learning leaders are increasingly voicing a need to curate open learning assets as well as explore development of their own MOOCs for key job roles.

The learning landscape is changing rapidly to account for this new mandate. New corporate learning partners are cropping up, such as Coursera, Udacity, Degreed, Grovo, EdCast, and they provide access to high-quality learning content. Content ranges from MOOCs to Micro Masters, certificates and nanodegrees where learners create their own learning pathways for career development. As a result, learning leaders in58 Chief Learning Officer • January/February 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

creasingly focus on facilitating and orchestrating learning aligned to their organization’s growth priorities.

Design thinker: These days it pays for learning leaders to use design thinking to understand how exactly they should serve learners. Design thinking is defined as a human-centered, prototype-driven process for innovation that can be applied to product, service and business design. This is now being touted as the must-have skill for corporate learning practitioners.

Companies like Cisco, Capital One and MasterCard are using design thinking to reinvent corporate learning with a human centered approach.

The design thinking approach often includes a fivestage process; empathize with the end user, define the problem, ideate new offerings, prototype possible solutions, and test the offerings. The Cisco Breakathon gave birth to more than 105 new HR prototypes covering talent acquisition, new hire onboarding, learning and development, team development and leadership.

For example, “Ask Alex: Your Personal Intelligent Compass,” is a voice command app offering fast, accurate and personalized information on HR questions.

People analyst: More companies are creating a people analytics role to use data to improve HR decisions and to uncover exactly how learners are learning. Essentially this role accomplishes a few things. First it collects and analyzes HR data, and then it offers actionable analysis to turn this data into usable business insights.

For instance, IBM is actively using people analytics to aid recruitment of computer scientists. The company’s head of people analytics even has a patent (US 8600847 B1) to help predict the retention risk for employees in key roles. The People Analytics team uses machine learning to calculate the relative importance of geography, compensation, employee and manager engagement at the aggregate level to identify employee groups in key job roles at risk of finding opportunities outside of IBM. These insights go one step further, as the company created a manager playbook to help prevent departures. This initiative has saved IBM about $130 million dollars, as measured by avoiding costs associated with hiring and training replacements.

The future workplace will be nothing like what we know today. Learning leaders must become activists, seeking out new skills like design thinking, adding new roles like people analytics and creating learning experiences, not just formal programs. CLO

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