Chief Learning Officer - February 2016

February 2016 | CLOmedia.com

➤ Speak Your CEO’s Language ➤ Let Learning Leaders Upgrade You ➤ Wanted: Employees With Grit ➤ How to Extend Learning Beyond Training ➤ AAMCO: Training in the Fast Lane ➤ HR Will Seat You Now

EY’s

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There are many ways to approach your learning strategy…

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EDITOR’S LETTER

TV Time Out I

f you watch any TV this year, it’s more likely than not that you’ll be on a binge.

Collins, a British dictionary publisher, named “binge-watch” — watching a large number of TV programs from the same series in a row — its word of the year for 2015. It cited a whopping 200 percent increase in use over last year.

To be clear, binge-watching isn’t a new. TV junkies have made a habit of watching back-to-back episodes of their favorite shows for many years. Last month, PBS kicked off the sixth and final season of “Downton Abbey” with a 40-plus episode marathon of the wildly popular English period drama.

That point aside, something has changed in the way we entertain ourselves with our screens. Not too long ago,

What binge-watching can teach us about learning investment.

pioneered the model in 2013 when it released all the episodes of the first season of its political drama “House of Cards” for viewers to watch in one big splurge. A glut of online-only shows streamable at any time on TV, phone or tablet has followed. We no longer have to wait for our weekly appointment to get our fix.

To be fair, linear TV is not going away anytime soon. The enduring power of competition shows such as “American Idol,” now entering its 15th and final season, attests to that. TV watchers tune in for live events and compelling episodes.

But future demographics are clear. According to a Pew Research Center study, 15 percent of American TV viewers have cut the cord and ditched paid cable TV. That same study found that young viewers aged 18 to 29 are the least likely to pay for traditional cable TV. These cord-cutters and so-called “cord-nevers” aren’t giving up on TV. They’re just not getting it in the same way. They head online to stream or download shows on demand, often in bunches. And they watch only what they want to watch when they want to watch it, uninterrupted. I recently had to explain what a TV commercial is to my perplexed 4-year-old son.

To him, having to stop watching a show for an ad was a foreign concept and a huge inconvenience.

What has emerged is a new model for investing in, creating and distributing entertainment, driven partly by changing viewing habits but primarily by the sheer volume of entertaining, high-quality content available.

Here’s where it gets tricky for you, dear reader. For a growing number of workers, learning is no longer appointment TV. Workers have a growing number of sources, most of them beyond the walls of your content library or the gates of your LMS, for high-quality learning content. They can browse at their convenience and use as much, or as little, as they’d like.

The question for you is whether your investments in learning content and systems are keeping pace with the new reality. Are you prepared for a learning environment that is both linear as well as open? In short, is the learning you provide binge-worthy? CLO

we had “appointment TV.” On certain nights at the hour appointed by network bosses, viewers gathered ’round the set to watch the latest episode of their favorite shows.

Some of those moments became cultural milestones. In 1980, legions of “Dallas” fans asked “Who shot J.R.?” after the long-running drama’s season-ending cliffhanger. In more recent years, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” director J.J. Abrams mystified fans and sparked countless workplace water-cooler conversations with the intricate plot of his show “Lost.”

Cable channels like HBO and AMC elbowed their way into the conversation with “The Sopranos,” “Breaking Bad” and “Mad Men.” But these award-winners still fit the old mold of “linear TV,” traditional serialized shows released one episode at a time.

What the cable channels were able to do was get us to cough up money to watch a show. We’ve long been willing to pay a few dollars for a movie, but paying to watch a TV show was foreign until HBO released a series of critically acclaimed, uncensored television shows. The network changed the model, but it didn’t break the mold.

It would take new Internet-enabled content creators to do that. Spurred by Netflix and Amazon, an increasing number of viewers are cutting the cord on cable and going online to stream or download their favorite shows. And they’re not just doing it one episode at a time. They’re going on a binge, watching a Mike Prokopeak dozen or more episodes in a single weekend.

Editor in Chief Show producers are feeding their appetite. Netflix mikep@CLOmedia.com 4 Chief Learning Officer • February 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

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COPY EDITOR Frannie Sprouls fsprouls@CLOmedia.com

EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, CREATIVE SERVICES Gwen Connelly gwen@CLOmedia.com

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

Joe Dixon jdixon@CLOmedia.com VICE PRESIDENT, RESEARCH & ADVISORY SERVICES Sarah Kimmel skimmel@CLOmedia.com RESEARCH MANAGER Tim Harnett tharnett@CLOmedia.com RESEARCH ANALYST Grey Litaker clitaker@CLOmedia.com TECHNOLOGY & DESIGN MANAGER Cheryl Myers cmyers@CLOmedia.com EDITORIAL DESIGNER Anna Jo Beck abeck@CLOmedia.com WEB COORDINATOR Sam Dietzmann sdietzmann@CLOmedia.com MEDIA MANAGER Ashley Flora aflora@CLOmedia.com

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BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION MANAGER Melanie Lee mlee@CLOmedia.com

BUSINESS MANAGER Vince Czarnowski vince@CLOmedia.com REGIONAL SALES MANAGERS Derek Graham dgraham@CLOmedia.com Marc Katz mkatz@CLOmedia.com Daniella Weinberg dweinberg@CLOmedia.com ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE Brian Lorenz blorenz@CLOmedia.com DIRECTOR, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND EVENTS Kevin Fields kfields@CLOmedia.com AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR Cindy Cardinal ccardinal@CLOmedia.com

VICE PRESIDENT, EVENTS Trey Smith tsmith@CLOmedia.com

DIGITAL SPECIALIST Lauren Lynch llynch@CLOmedia.com

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MARKETING MANAGER Taylar Ramsey tramsey@CLOmedia.com

LEAD GENERATION ADMINISTRATOR Nick Safir nsafir@CLOmedia.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Cushing Anderson Sebastian Bailey Josh Bersin David J. DeFilippo Lauren Dixon Michael E. Echols Sarah Fister Gale Robin Hoyle Jack J. Phillips Patti P. Phillips Richard Ruhe Pearl Sumathi Dave Ulrich

John R. Taggart

Gwen Connelly

Kevin A. Simpson

PRESIDENT

EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT

CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER

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

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

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

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

LEADERs

February 2016 | Volume 15, Issue 2 PRESIDENT John R. Taggart jrtag@CLOmedia.com

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

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TABLE OF CONTENTS FEBRUARY 2016

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26

22

Features

18 26 30 36 40

Wanted: Employees With Grit Sebastian Bailey There are many admirable traits that employees are lauded or hired for. Grit might not roll off the tongue when naming these, but perhaps it should.

ON THE WEB

Speak Your CEO’s Language Sarah Fister Gale When learning leaders trade learning talk for specific business goals, their CEOs listen — and the business benefits in tangible, measurable ways.

Let Us Upgrade You Dave Ulrich Leaders have a tough job, and businesses need them to do it and do it well. It’s up to the CLO to provide the right learning solutions to keep their minds — and skills — agile and growing.

How to Extend Learning Beyond Training Richard Ruhe It’s important to make the transition from learning to doing. But there are some tried-and-true tactics that can help make learning stick and be used on the job.

HR Will Seat You Now David J. DeFilippo With continually raised questions about human resources’ value, let HR leaders set the table, and questions about the department’s relevance will subside.

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

We Want to Hear From You! #ReaderReaction You’ve probably noticed we’ve been featuring reader comments on the issues that affect you as a learning leader. So come chat with us and get your thoughts published. Keep an eye out for questions from our editors on the following social media platforms: @CLOmedia CLOmedia.com/facebook CLOmedia.com/LinkedIn ON THE COVER: PHOTO BY DAVID LUBARSKY

TABLE OF CONTENTS FEBRUARY 2016

30

36

Departments

40

Experts 10 BUSINESS IMPACT

22 Profile For the Love of Learning Lauren Dixon Brenda Sugrue, global chief learning officer at EY, always brings her passion to work.

44 Case Study Training in the Fast Lane Sarah Fister Gale AAMCO’s new training facility and curriculum helps franchise owners increase revenue and ensure every customer experience is worthy of a four-star review.

46 Business Intelligence A Look Ahead: Learning in 2016 Cushing Anderson The forecast for learning in 2016 suggests that leadership development, informal learning and technology will remain essential pieces of the learning leaders’ toolkit.

Michael E. Echols The Perennial Thorn in Learning’s Paw

12 PERSPECTIVES

Pearl Sumathi Learning Needs a Makeover

14 BEST PRACTICES

Josh Bersin Will Video Kill the LMS?

16 ACCOUNTABILITY

By Jack J. Phillips and Patti P. Phillips 7 Reasons to Measure Learning ROI

50 IN CONCLUSION

Robin Hoyle Liking Ain’t Learning

Resources 4 Editor’s Letter

TV Time Out

49 Advertisers’ Index

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

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BUSINESS IMPACT

The Perennial Thorn in Learning’s Paw Want to spark a passionate debate? Talk measurement • BY MICHAEL E. ECHOLS

I

Michael E. Echols is the vice president of strategic initiatives at Bellevue University and the author of “Your Future is Calling.” To comment, email editor@ CLOmedia.com.

n all of my years in the learning industry, I have seen no issue that creates more passion than learning measurement. In a recent conversation with David Vance, the issue once again moved to the top of the discussion. He and I agreed that our experience working with corporate learning leaders has revealed the divide over and over again.

There are two widely divided camps on the issue.

In the first camp are those who see a need to measure learning. In the other camp are the traditionalists who see no need to measure. This is likely the largest group of learning leaders, and it is certainly the one most widely embedded in corporate learning’s heritage.

Like an iceberg, there are the reasons to measure that are more visible above the water line as well as a large mass of reasons not so visible below the water.

One above the water line reason is that an organization’s culture doesn’t require a rigorous financial measurement of outcomes or return on investment. The iconic example of such an organization is Qualcomm, where Tamar Elkeles led learning initiatives for years.

The 2015 Chief Learning Officer LearningElite award winner’s announcement captures the root of the learning culture at Qualcomm: “Learning has been a part of Qualcomm’s founding DNA since the 1980s.”

A stronger cultural statement would be difficult to find. Elkeles has been a passionate and outspoken advocate of the not-to-measure camp. The implication is that resources committed to measure would be redundant and wasteful. I get that, and if I were a learning leader in such an organization, I probably would take the same position.

But Qualcomm has been a unique enterprise — one where intellectual property is the ultimate corporate value creator and where the strategic importance of learning is fundamentally understood and is an important strand in the organization’s DNA. The problem for the vast majority of chief learning officers and learners is that intellectual property is a support asset, not a core asset, in the business model — one that aids value creation activity and is not a primary revenue and profit driver. In these organizations, learning is often viewed as overhead, an expense to be minimized. Resources are allocated largely based on financial considerations, not DNA. In these organizations, I argue, it is more important than ever to measure, to show the C-suite the financial return on learn-

10 Chief Learning Officer • February 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

ing investments. In these organizations, the answer is “to measure.”

So, if it is so important to measure financial impact, why do so few do it? At the risk of agitating some of my colleagues, I am going to get a bit personal here. I believe we sometimes avoid measurement because: 1. Asymmetry of risk: We fear that the measured result might not validate the original learning effort, and that this might lead to suspicion about the learning program itself. To the sponsoring learning executive, this risk looks like it’s all downside with little to no upside potential. Also missing is the

It is more important than ever to measure and show the C-suite the financial return on learning investments.

C-suite’s concurrent commitment that learning initiatives with attractive financial returns will receive adequate funding required. To my learning colleagues, I assure you that I understand the risk asymmetry. So, as a risk management prototype, do financial measurement on a small initiative, then scale the effort as the financial results are produced.

2. Absence of know-how: I believe the best way to measure financial impact is with an experimental design that has an intervention group — the learners — and a propensity scored matching control group. The analysis is done with multivariate statistical analysis. But, most learning leaders are not trained in experimental design and statistical analysis, and a natural discomfort is often the result.

In the end, the question of whether to measure learning has much more to do with organizational culture and individual behavior than it does with financial analysis and return on investment. Despite this reality, designing the experiment and doing the analysis is more important than ever. Financial ROI is the language of the C-suite, and executing it well provides the CLO with a golden ticket to that coveted seat at the table. CLO

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PERSPECTIVES

Learning Needs a Makeover Rapidly changing workforce learning preferences demand it • BY PEARL SUMATHI

W Pearl Sumathi is vice president and head of talent development for Lincoln Financial Group.

To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

All contributors to Perspectives are current students or alumni of the PennCLO Program, the University of Pennsylvania’s doctoral program for senior-level talent and learning executives.

ith every passing year, the learning and development function ascends in importance. According to the Deloitte Human Capital Trends Report, learning and development rose from No. 8 to No. 3 within the past year. The report also highlights the need to transform and accelerate corporate learning as the third-most important challenge to be tackled.

We can no longer operate on a status quo basis where we continue to model traditional learning methodologies. Learning is disseminated beyond classroom walls, and we need to be creative, introducing nontraditional learning formats to engage employees. There is no magic formula on what percentage of learning should take place in a classroom vs. virtually.

According to ATD’s “2014 State of the Industry,” organizations deliver 55 percent of their learning via instructor-led classes. The benefits of classroom learning cannot be negated. However, it might be wise to ask ourselves whether continuing with our standard approach will equip us to meet the workforce’s rapidly changing learning preferences.

Some 75 percent of the global workforce will be millennials by 2025, according to Deloitte’s “Millennial Survey 2014,” and they favor networked learning and learning through social media. We could lose this audience if we continue to use classroom learning as the primary method of instruction.

Learning is not an event but an experience. We need to ask: Does our learning function evolve and adapt to the changing learning expectations of the workforce? Is learning a catalyst for business performance, offering innovative methodologies to accelerate employee development? Are we reinventing the way learning is delivered to employees and shifting the learning paradigm from an event to an experience outlook?

Here are a few ways we can challenge ourselves to create a nuanced view of learning.

Applied learning: Many organizations have an abundance of learning options for employees. The effectiveness of most of these programs stops with Level 1 evaluation, except for a few niche programs where efforts are made to track learning and behavioral transference. How can we ensure we take learning beyond a classroom or virtual environment so employees get

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

opportunities to apply skills on the job?

One way to do so is to integrate job aids and tools within courses to guide employees to apply skills as well as cascade learning further within their teams.

Or integrate experiential learning components like job shadowing and stretch assignments alongside

We can no longer continue to model traditional learning methodologies. high-potential training to create solid talent pipelining with hands-on experience.

Storytelling by leaders: Storytelling is often viewed as a folklore idea, but within corporate settings, crafting good stories around leaders’ career paths and what made them successful in their roles can get the audience engaged and disseminate learning by offering practical tips for success. While storytelling cannot be used in all learning situations, it can be an exceptionally powerful tool when used in the right context, such as when leaders share their own personal success and failure stories.

Create communities of practice: Network learning is an increasingly popular concept in corporate learning. It enables learning beyond the classroom, which creates a feeling of inclusion as learning takes place in a group or community. Because workforces are increasingly diverse in nature and often contain employees with different learning needs, communities of practice help employees to collaborate, develop relationships and obtain informal mentoring from support groups.

The aforementioned strategies are by no means comprehensive methods with which to reinvent learning, but they are great starting points for learning leaders to think about as we work to reinvent learning strategy and practices.

Continually innovating our learning strategies will raise the prominence of the function and position learning entities as active enablers of talent development. CLO

When learning is done right—when it integrates the right content and technology, when it’s consumable, inspiring, and culturally on point—the effects are transformational. Employees feel better, work harder, and their positivity spreads.

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Visit www.grovo.com today.

You can feel it working.

BEST PRACTICES

Will Video Kill the LMS? Few vendors have come to grips with video-based learning • BY JOSH BERSIN

T

Josh Bersin is founder of Bersin, known as Bersin by Deloitte, and a principal with Deloitte Consulting. To comment, email editor@ CLOmedia.com.

echnology has affected learning professionals for many decades.

In the early days, we had slide projectors so we built plastic foils to draw and explain ideas. Then came PCs, and we built slide presentations with graphics and charts for learning. With the CD-ROM, we built interactive graphics, full-motion video and gamified learning. After the Internet came along, we had Adobe Flash, a tool to build animations, simulations and even more interesting interactivities.

The learning management industry, which is more than $3 billion in size — and growing 20 percent per year — tries to keep up with all the tools we use to build and deliver content. Every time a new technology comes along, we find new ways to use it, manage it and track it for learning.

Today, we carry around devices that can capture high-quality streaming content, and the changes taking place in learning are the most disruptive, transformational and potentially exciting ever. Video, for instance, is nearly ubiquitous. We can see it in nearly every device, publication and communication medium available.

The disruption is there.

Vendors who don’t keep up with this latest evolution in technology will fall behind.

YouTube statistics show more than a billion people regularly watch video, and the number of hours spent watching video rose 60 percent in the last year alone.

More than 2 billion people have video-enabled smartphones, and video now makes up 64 percent of Internet traffic on mobile phones. Our children share video on Snapchat and Facebook the way we used to share email, and nearly every magazine and media company has built video channels to make it easier to watch news.

In the learning industry, companies like BigThink, General Academy, Khan Academy, Pluralsight, Skillsoft, Udacity and Udemy produce thousands of hours of high-quality instructional video — much of it authored by experts, not instructors — which is easy to 14 Chief Learning Officer • February 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

find, use and absorb on the Internet.

But, as we’ve seen in past technology evolutions, this rapid adoption of new technology has left learning management system platform providers scrambling.

While there are more than 300 LMS vendors in the market, according to Bersin by Deloitte 2015 LMS research, the majority are focused on traditional training management; only a few have come to grips with user and corporate needs for video-based learning.

Consider some of the issues we now face: • How do we rapidly develop and publish video for fast and easy use?

• How do we tag content easily and make it discoverable?

• How do we recommend video to users based on their profile and activity?

• How do we track usage of video, bookmark video and create interactivities and branching?

• What types of video are best for learning? Comedy? Experts? Teachers online?

• How do we protect copyright and other possible rights violations as we snap videos at work all day?

• How do we arrange and manage video for serious professional development and career growth?

• How do we create a user experience that is as easy and compelling as a consumer website or TV set?

Most of these problems are being solved — or have been solved — by massive consumer Internet companies already, yet they barely exist in corporate learning platforms because LMS vendors are scrambling to catch up. Workday’s new market entry focuses on this area; Skillsoft is announcing a variety of new video options in its platforms; Oracle announced a new video-based LMS; SAP is evolving its video platforms and opening up application programming interfaces to massive open online courses.

Will today’s LMS be left behind? Or will it adapt and evolve like the chameleon it has been for years? I suggest that disruption is here, and new vendors like Degreed, Pathgather, Wisetail and even Workday may change the LMS market in a major way.

Will video kill the LMS as we know it? Probably not, but vendors who don’t focus in this area will likely fall behind. Those of us who build learning solutions have to push for the products and technologies we need. I look forward to watching this market evolve as video becomes a central part of our learning lives. CLO

#LearningElite

Monday, April 4, 2016 6-10 p.m.

Workforce magazine’s sister publication, Chief Learning Officer, would like to invite you and your colleagues to the 2016 LearningElite Gala on Monday, April 4, at The Ritz-Carlton, Amelia Island, Florida. During this celebration, we will unveil the best companies in learning and development, and enjoy an evening of entertainment.

For more information and to purchase tickets, visit events.CLOmedia.com/gala

ACCOUNTABILITY

7 Reasons to Measure Learning ROI One big reason? The boss wants it. • BY JACK J. PHILLIPS AND PATTI P. PHILLIPS

I

Jack J. Phillips is the chairman, and Patti P. Phillips is president and CEO of the ROI Institute.

To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

3.

ROI proves that you have an impact. Most team members want to know they make a difference and that they contribute business value to the organization. Having a credible analysis that connects learning to impact and isolates the program’s effects from other influences is satisfying. It is even more satisfying when the results show a positive ROI has been delivered. Reporting a positive ROI allows learning to move from being perceived as a cost to being perceived as an investment.

The boss wants it. For executives, the No. 1 desired category of results from programs is business impact; No. 2 is ROI. Contrast this with the number of learning and development functions that actually provide that level of results; it is easy to visualize a huge gap.

ROI can protect your budget. In tough economic times, budgets are often under scrutiny. Programs could be eliminated. The strategy is simple: To continue funding or increase funding, show the business value of current and proposed programs. Impact and ROI is a must. With this approach, many organizations have reported progress in maintaining and enhancing their budgets, even in downturns.

ROI helps to build key relationships. To survive and thrive in the learning and development function, you must have key relationships, particularly with important executives and administrators. These executives support you, provide your funding and request projects and programs. They need to see business value for what you do. Showing the impact and ROI is a great way to be perceived as a business contributor, and that will help create these necessary relationships. tive ROI or a positive ROI, this analysis will provide ROI can build the support you need. We information to improve them. In essence, evaluation frequently hear comments that operating at this level leads to optimization where a higher re- units will not allow access to data, or that managers turn on investment is attainable. Ultimately, this can do not support learning programs. These are often lead to allocation, stakeholders investing more in pro- midlevel managers who see learning as a disruption, grams that deliver more value. not as an investment. They only support what they ROI helps you keep programs, not eliminate have to. The problem might lie in the results that them. When a program has a clear business we show to this important group of people. Conconnection, it will stand the test of time. A negative necting learning to impact is often connecting to program does not mean you eliminate it. Instead, it is their key performance indicators. When you do usually improved to deliver more value. It is rare to kill that, you will get their attention and more than a program because of a negative ROI. likely, their future support. CLO

n the Chief Learning Officer Business Intelligence Board 2015 Measurement and Metrics Survey, 36 percent of chief learning officers surveyed report they use business impact data to show training impact; 22 percent of the CLOs use return on investment data for the same purpose.

Some 23 percent of respondents plan to implement ROI in the next 12 months and about 10 percent plan to implement it in the next 12 to 24 months. Also, 18 percent plan to implement it with no particular time frame. This means about 50 percent of CLOs plan to implement ROI in the future.

Your organization must be ready to address the challenge. Taking a more serious approach to measurement requires moving to impact and ROI analysis, connecting programs to business measures, and isolating program effects from other influences. A few projects might need to measure financial ROI as the impact is converted to money and compared with the program’s cost. When learning leaders pursue serious evaluation on key programs, the payoffs are huge.

Here are the seven reasons to do it.

ROI can make programs better. The No. 1 reason to measure impact and ROI is to improve programs, particularly ones designed to add value to the business. Whether the program has a nega-

4.

5.

1.

Showing ROI is a great way to be perceived as a business contributor; that will help create key relationships.

6.

7.

2.

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

2016 Chief Learning Officer

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

There are many admirable traits that employees are lauded for or hired for.

Grit might not roll off the tongue when identifying these, but perhaps it should.

BY SEBASTIAN BAILEY

S

ome people seem to have all the luck. They land the enviable job.

They fly over life’s hurdles while others get stuck, and overcome obstacles to achieve remarkable things. Although their peers have equal intelligence and similar opportunities, they might not fare as well in life. Why? Brains aren’t everything. The answer to this type of success might lie in possession of another trait: grit.

An evolving area of behavioral psychology, grit can be loosely defined as passion and perseverance for long-term goals. It’s our ability to remain unshaken in pursuit of objectives and our stamina in the face of adversity. People with grit not only ride out the rough times but also emerge stronger and performing better. Setbacks don’t set them back. Their sheer determination means they consistently achieve the toughest of targets.

Research shows grit can be a better predictor of long-term success than IQ and conscientiousness. Talented people stop where gritty people continue. Men with higher grit levels are even more likely to stay married. Another study links it with children’s success in a Scripps National Spelling Bee. Another paper published in the journal of Military Psychology states that grit and hardiness predict persistence and achievement in the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Essentially, people with grit reach higher levels of education, stick at their jobs longer, are more committed to their employers and work harder.

Research from the University of Sheffield, United Kingdom, conducted this year shows

that grit has a significant effect on work performance. Across a wide variety of roles including sales, marketing, client services, finance and human resources, people who were grittier had higher self-rated performance.

Workers with high levels of self-belief and confidence in their ability to succeed were more likely to display higher levels of grit, as were workers who had good support from their managers, team and company. The best environment, therefore, to strengthen grit in others is one that promotes confidence and self-belief and actively develops a culture of social support.

Recognizing and celebrating grit is key because rewarding a moment of grittiness in one employee can foster it in others. At Cancer Treatment Centers of America, or CTCA, a peer-to-peer program creates a socially supportive working environment to recognize those moments when someone achieves the remarkable against the odds. Colleagues are nominated, appreciated publicly and rewarded.

When the cancer care organization opened a hospital in Georgia in 2012, 92 percent of the leadership team was new to the organization, and the hospital was experiencing accelerated growth. Learning leaders launched an extensive leadership development program for managers, and perseverance was the major theme to assist managers in opening the new cancer hospital.

“Passion for delivering the highest standard of care consistently, in the face of adversity, is an attribute we encourage every employee to demonstrate,” said Princess Cullum, CTCA’s senior manager, leadership and culture. “Grit is embedded in everything we do because we’re

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

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fighting for patients who are literally fighting for their lives.”

Cullum said grit makes up for a lot of what someone might lack in qualifications and current skills.

“We can always train and develop people, but the desire to succeed, the perseverance, is the most important thing for us.”

Identifying Grit American Express Global Business Travel is one of many companies piloting tools to test for grit during the interview and assessment stage.

Danielle McMahan, vice president of global talent development, said the organization looks for candidates who can talk about past challenges and how they changed outcomes by persevering.

“Whether someone has demonstrated grit in either their personal or professional life is a key indicator of whether they are likely to thrive in our rapidly changing business environment,” she said. “In interviews, we look for examples where individuals have overcome adversity, and persevered in the face of obstacles to achieve long-term goals.”

In a 2015 study by Paul Stolz among recruiters, the chances of being hired increased when people described their experiences as goals achieved by overcoming obstacles.

The Duckworth Lab at the University of Pennsylvania has a useful tool called a Grit Scale, a self-report instrument with surprising reliability. Participants are asked a series of questions about their interests, how often these change, and how they persevere in the pursuit of them. The scale seeks to measure consistency of interest and perseverance of effort. Participants rate themselves from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree” for statements such as: • “I focus on my existing projects without getting distracted by new ideas.”

• “I am actively working to achieve a personal goal I set more than a month ago.”

• “I push myself to meet goals, even when it would be easier to reduce my targets.”

• “I have accomplished something that took me several years to complete.”

“In discussions about people’s advancement, we look specifically at their track record,” said Maureen Whatley, vice president of global talent management and talent acquisition at health care diagnostic company Alere Inc. “We look well beyond the last six months. We look at their career. We look at the last two to three years. Have they been a consistently great performer? Grit is definitely something we look for when considering who to advance further in the company.”

Alere is in the midst of a major transformation of 20 Chief Learning Officer • February 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

Reader Reaction What’s more important to achieve success: grit or brains?

Thomas Capone: Grit. Over time, grit looks like brains.

I have known many brilliant but lazy people.

Dianne Sutton: You really need both. But please include common sense. You can be brilliant but you must have common sense — enough sense to get out of the rain or use political savvy. I also agree with Thomas Capone that grit keeps you going over time.

Paul Young: Grit! Give me a team of people with a strong work ethic and a passion for discovery, and we will show you success.

Mark Tuggle: I hate to weasel out of an either/or question, but it really depends on what success you are pursuing. Take Thomas Edison for example. You could argue that grit kept him going — failure after failure, experiment after experiment. Yet it was his brains — both IQ and creativity — that allowed him to learn from his failures and to change his approach on so many things over so many tries.

If you know what you’re doing, grit works great. If you need a creative, insightful solution to a problem to achieve success, there’s no substitute for brains.

What do you think? Join the discussion at CLOmedia.com/ GritOrBrains , follow us on Twitter @CLOmedia or join our Chief Learning Officer LinkedIn group.

its talent approach since it stopped annual appraisals and abolished performance rankings. Rather than hold up a list of behaviors and rate people against them, leaders hold talent discussions, or talent summits, where managers and leaders get together to talk about their people. “It’s a conversation,” Whatley said. “Who are our strongest performers? Who has high potential?

Who are the people we can stretch further, give more responsibility to or even promote?”

In these discussions, two of the core attributes Alere leaders look for are determination and learning agility — the perseverance to achieve long-term goals and the ability to quickly and effectively find solutions to new challenges. “This is a powerful combination which expresses grit for us, and goes beyond IQ or brains,” Whatley said.

“We look at successes and say ‘there’s no way this

person could have achieved this without high levels of grit.’ That helps us to identify who can excel in the environment of massive change in which we operate,” she said. “There are so many challenges to overcome and so much adversity to rise above, grit is one of the key attributes our people need to have to reach their ambitious goals.”

Change Is the New Norm Last year, American Express Global Business Travel became a privately held joint venture, with ownership equally shared between American Express Co. and an investor group led by Certares. Building a culture of entrepreneurship, innovation and collaboration was, and continues to be, vital for the company’s highgrowth aspirations.

The best environment to strengthen grit in others is one that promotes confidence and self-belief and actively develops a culture of social support.

“We are attempting to do extraordinary things,” McMahan said. “We need people who are willing to take risks and, if they fall, can bounce back quickly.

Change is an iterative process, and we know it will take grit to navigate the continuous change and come out with even greater success in the future.”

High levels of ambiguity are often associated with a high-growth business environment. McMahan said those with exceptional abilities to handle and manage change, and to deal with the associated shades of grey, are employees who will successfully navigate their way to positive solutions. Further, they are often decisive and have the courage to speak up.

“We say to candidates, ‘Here’s the job we’re hiring for today. But we might look very different a year from now, so you have the opportunity to shape how your role develops.’ You can tell immediately who is excited by this and who isn’t,” she said. “Those who are are more likely to be successful here and are the people we seek to hire.”

The extent to which grit can be learned — vs. identified and hired as an existing trait — is a source of lively academic debate. It is clear that

people who demonstrate grit are: • More likely to give optimistic explanations for events.

• Able to focus on what they can do rather than what’s outside their control.

• Able to draw on whomever and whatever they need for support.

These are qualities learning leaders can develop in themselves, and that managers can help to foster in their direct reports and in the organizational culture at large. There are two ways to create a culture of grit in organizations: by working to shift people’s mindsets and by developing others’ ability to handle stress.

To change minds: • Look at the big picture. Grit is about playing the long game — remaining consistently committed as well as pushing past challenges. But with any long-term goal or project, interest will wane occasionally. Leaders can help to keep people engaged and committed by reminding them of the journey and end result.

• Encourage others to increase their sense of control. Constantly focusing on things outside one’s control can leave anyone feeling overwhelmed. Instead, help employees to focus on what they can influence.

• Empower managers to be open to change.

Grit isn’t about following a single course of action no matter what. Being flexible and seeing obstacles to goals as a challenge, not a threat, is key to creating a culture of grit.

• Share confusion and frustration at all levels.

These emotions aren’t signs someone should give up; they are markers that a breakthrough is on its way. Leaders and managers who share their frustrations and keep going despite them, will inspire others to do the same.

Essentially, use stress to develop personally and professionally. To do so, create an environment where failing fast is acceptable. A business where occasionally failing is encouraged will mean everyone puts in more effort to overcome challenges and performance will improve. In the same vein, urge leaders and managers to aim for excellence, not perfection. This will keep momentum going and everyone moving forward.

Then, be sure to engage with others. Encourage individuals to be more interested in other people to avoid isolation that can dampen energy.

So, is having brains everything? Probably not, so don’t think, “Why is this person so much luckier in their career than me?” It might come down to one fundamental quality: grit. CLO Sebastian Bailey is co-founder and president of Mind Gym Inc. To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

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PROFILE Brenda Sugrue

For the Love of Learning

BY LAUREN DIXON

Brenda Sugrue, global chief learning officer at EY, always brings her passion to work.

B

renda Sugrue is constantly learning.

“I’m probably one of the world’s best learners and students,” she said.

“I’m always learning. Every day is a new experience.”

As the global chief learning officer at EY, this is a good thing. Sugrue’s passion for learning flows into her job, where she’s responsible for expanding the knowledge of more than 210,000 employees.

This is a tough job because EY’s learning and business functions are global. By centralizing learning operations from various regions and service lines, a more cohesive and consistent learning function can be found.

Sugrue is charged with transforming the learning function, and her background shows that she’s prepared.

“So I think that’s why EY chose me … because of my strong learning background.”

Sugrue said her career path took a lot of twists and turns. “I never planned my career, unlike the advice I give now, which is to be more planful. I took opportunities as they came, and I did my best in those.”

Learning has been a common thread throughout her life. “I loved learning from the beginning. I was a good student. I love school. I wanted to stay in school, so why not become a teacher?”

Sugrue is from County Kerry, Ireland, where she became a teacher for all subjects in first through fourth grades, despite the country’s competitive environment for that field, she said.

To further her education, she completed her master’s degree at Trinity College Dublin. After running an educational technology unit, she received a Fulbright scholarship to come to the U.S. and earn her doctorate at Iowa State University, working with a computer-based instruction research and development center.

She focused on pursuing an academic career, working as a researcher and part-time professor at UCLA. Through a tenure track, she moved to various universities, ending up at the University of Iowa.

She then had an idea for her own learning business, eLearnia, with an integrated online system called CaseLearn. The system allowed for the automation of au-

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

thoring, delivering and tracking case-based learning.

She left university life to work on her business for a few years. Then the American Society for Training and Development, now known as the Association for Talent Development, hired her as its director of research. In this role, she worked with many chief learning officers at various firms, which sparked her interest in corporations and led her to work with IBM Corp. and ITT Corp. With these companies, Sugrue was “applying science and research to really practical problems and issues in corporate learning,” she said.

Education company Kaplan Inc. then hired her to work on large-scale product research. After three years, she thought she would return to university education,

‘The job of learning is to make sure that our professionals are the very best they can be in the industry.’

—Brenda Sugrue, global chief learning officer, EY but when someone told her EY was looking for a global chief learning officer to spearhead a major learning transformation, she went for it and became the first person in the role at the company.

Nancy Altobello, global vice chair of talent at EY, thinks highly of Sugrue. “She has found a deeply rooted connection between her life’s work and her life’s purpose.”

High-Quality Learning What interests her the most about learning, Sugrue said, is the science of how the mind works. But with EY adding 23,000 new employees in fiscal year 2015, it’s difficult to know how all of their minds work.

PHOTO BY DAVID LUBARSKY

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Throughout various roles in her career, Sugrue said what interests her most about learning is the science of the mind.

In addition to growth in staff numbers, she also must keep up with service expansions all while centralizing the learning operation. “The greatest challenge is actually maintaining and expanding the current learning operations to keep pace with the growth,” she said. “It feels like we’re rebuilding the plane while we’re flying it.”

EY’s 210,000 internal learners include about 170,000 client-facing professionals as well as 40,000 employees in internal finance, legal, information technology and other departments. All employees receive technical and leadership development.

To build personalized development plans, employees use EYU, an internal learning framework specifically built to accommodate a high volume of learners.

The title, “EYU,” is a combination of the company, EY, and the individual employee — you. “We, the firm, and you are jointly responsible for your development,” Sugrue said.

EYU’s purpose is to help employees receive the right learning, coaching and on-the-job experiences to accelerate career development. An emphasis on providing exceptional learning and development for current workers has a dual purpose in that it promotes on the job success, and what they’ve learned will stay with them after their time at EY has passed.

“We say: Whenever you join, however long you stay, the exceptional EY experience lasts a lifetime,” Sugrue said. While employees are with EY, “we want it to be the most valuable time of their careers. Therefore, we want to provide one of the most comprehensive training programs in the business.”

She said partnering with other EY leaders to build this high-quality experience is very easy. People at EY 24 Chief Learning Officer • February 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

are the product, so it only makes sense that the structure of the learning function mirrors the business. “We don’t see ourselves as isolated,” Sugrue said. “Everything we do is in the service of the business.”

To keep up with rapid changes in the global marketplace, learning leaders are constantly in conversation with business leaders. Therefore, if EY is investing in new services, Sugrue follows up by investing in learning programs to provide the right content for employees when, where and how they need it.

Altobello said EY is constantly on the lookout for innovative ways to deliver learning that is customized for individual preferences, regional requirements and global needs. “Brenda is energized by this mandate,” she said.

Learning Logistics To invest in and develop herself, Sugrue uses a variety of approaches to stay challenged and ensure she continues to grow as a learning leader and as a business leader. For instance, she reads psychology and business books, as well as Harvard Business Review.

A big proponent and consumer of formal programs, Sugrue is also a vocal advocate for online, internal and even free learning programs. She said she does a lot of reflection and coaching, learning tactics that are also available at multiple stages of EY employees’ careers. Sugrue said she likes to have her own coach to help with personal and professional growth.

“Brenda’s indefatigable nature has reminded me that development never stops,” Altobello said.

That need and push for continual development is a sound learning strategy, as personal insight can only go so far. Shir Nir, the CEO of corporate coaching

PROFILE Brenda Sugrue

service Handel Group, said it’s important to use Insights, involved a two-day simulation. The program coaches because people can get stuck in various as- was piloted with four sectors in 2014, and then scaled pects of a job, thus limiting success. The problem is for 13 sectors in 2015, allowing all 4,000 newly prothat “it can be hard for us to see what’s keeping us moted senior managers to take it that year. stuck,” he said. “What’s really in the way are our own By measuring its effect, EY determined the value of patterns of thinking and behavior. … That’s where a client opportunities. Participants in this program idencoach comes in.” tified four times more valuable opportunities than Aside from using coaches, Sugrue also helps to those who didn’t attend. This information provided develop them. Although the coaching practice at EY the evidence needed to mandate that every senior is separate from the learning function, they are de- manager participate. Now, its success has prompted its signed to work together. Her team helps develop expansion to other ranks at EY, Sugrue said. training for the counselors and coaches, creating forWhile retention rates are not tracked in correlamal online and classroom learning programs, along tion with the learning function, Sugrue said, “Learnwith toolkits and additional materials that guide ing is definitely driving engagement, which has been each type of conversation a counselor might have driving retention.” with a counselee, including goal setting, career planShe has plans to simplify, standardize and globalning and performance reviews. ize the learning function to make it easier to learn EYU employs a traditional balance of corporate anywhere. When employees are away from the office learning, with 70 percent or work off-site, it’s hard of learning occurring on for them to get a full the job, 20 percent from hour of learning at a coaching and 10 percent time, she said. from formal learning.

So if they can absorb And while Sugrue said she formal learning in smaller didn’t develop this system, chunks, this can help inshe likes it. “For me, EY crease learning delivery. was the first firm where I Employees can then bring really saw coaching be that knowledge to a flipped given such emphasis and classroom where in-class structure and formalized time focuses on practicing in the way it is right now.” what these corporate stu—Brenda Sugrue, global chief Nir agrees. “Coaches dents have learned. are an essential and critTo gain efficiencies, learning officer, EY ical component to learnSugrue said her team is ing and development,” he said. “I think the whole in the process of moving more learning to a virtual concept of how we educate people needs to shift. method, “which is going to significantly decrease our You can have your employees learn a new concept delivery cost.” and check off a box, … or you can have them on By reducing learning delivery costs and increasing the edge of their seats, engaged and excited to take employee access to formal learning, the business beon new challenges.” comes more efficient. Sugrue said the associated savings lead to more funds for coaching or learning simuMeaningful Measurement lations, further developing EY’s fast-growing staff.

Engagement is important in any business, but at Other improvements include the transformaEY, it’s a focus that Sugrue’s job directly drives. To de- tion of talent operations at EY, combining talent liver exceptional client services, “our people have to be processes with the learning function. Having a at the top of their game all the time,” she said. “The seamless experience for employees throughout all job of learning is to make sure that our professionals phases of their EY careers will elevate learning and are the very best they can be in the industry.” work experience quality.

To accomplish this, EY deploys learning programs “We don’t want them going to one system for goals specifically designed to accelerate employee perfor- and development plans and another system to take mance. The results Sugrue and her team have pro- e-learning,” Sugrue said. “We want everything to be duced have led to increases in client opportunities, one, seamless experience.” CLO thus growing EY’s business.

“You cannot manage what you don’t measure,” Su- Lauren Dixon is a Chief Learning Officer associate editor. grue said. For example, one program, Building Sector To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

‘EY was the first firm where I really saw coaching be given such emphasis and structure and formalized in the way it is right now.’

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Speak Your CEO’s

LANGUAGE

26 Chief Learning Officer • February 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

BY SARAH FISTER GALE

When chief learning officers trade learning talk for specific business goals, their CEOs listen — and the business benefits in tangible, measurable ways.

C

EOs today are worried about whether they have the talent and skills in place to take their companies into the future — and they have doubts about whether their learning leaders can help them close existing skill gaps.

Deloitte’s “Human Capital Trends 2015” report shows that business leaders rate corporate learning as one of their top three priorities, yet only 40 percent rated their organizations as ready to take on the challenge — compared with 75 percent in 2014. Further, just 30 percent of executives believe their HR team has a reputation for “sound business decisions.”

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This should be a wake-up call for chief learning officers who want to take a more strategic role in shaping their companies’ future. To be viewed as a partner to the CEO and the rest of the C-suite, learning leaders have to take a more business-centric approach to learning, said Holbrook Hankinson, chief learning officer for Delta Global Services, a subsidiary of Delta Air Lines Inc. “CLOs get in trouble when they work in a vacuum and only focus on the training,” he said. When CLOs align learning with business strategy, they can establish themselves as a vital member of the C-suite and a key enabler for success. “If you know what’s going on in the rest of the business, you can come up with the solutions to help it succeed.”

Metrics Are Good When Hankinson joined Delta two years ago, the first thing he did was get invited to meetings with business-unit leaders and chief executives across the company. In those meetings, he didn’t talk about

Collaborations between CEOs and CLOs can help the learning function pinpoint exactly what it needs to do to help achieve the company vision. learning. Instead, he asked business-focused questions related to finance, operations and management challenges. “When people realize that you care about what they care about, they take you more seriously,” he said.

He discovered in those early meetings that the newly hired president of the company was very metrics-driven, specifically when it came to compliance at the airline’s 170 locations. The learning organization was in charge of making sure everyone had compliance training, but they had no formal metrics in place to track it. So Hankinson partnered with the information technology department to create software integrated with the learning management system that could pull compliance training records and track whether each site was meeting its compliance training goals. He now delivers a monthly report that includes percentage rankings of compliance at each site to stakeholders.

28 Chief Learning Officer • February 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

“He never specifically asked for these numbers, but he talked about them a lot, so I knew I had to figure it out,” Hankinson said. The new tracking tool not only won the president’s approval but also spurred site managers to pay closer attention to their compliance goals and meet training criteria faster.

Hankinson found another opportunity to address a business problem when he heard operations managers talking about the high turnover rate among ramp workers. He did some research and found that ramp workers spent the first two weeks on the job in a warm office, filling out paperwork and completing 40 hours of online training, only to quit once they got on the ramp and found out how cold it is and how heavy the bags are. He created a 12-minute video of a “day in the life of a ramp worker” to be used on the first day of orientation. He also plans to implement it as part of the recruiting process so prospective employees know what they are getting into before they take the job. He doesn’t have numbers yet, but he expects turnover for that position to go down because of the new training.

These solution-focused learning efforts have helped Hankinson gain traction with the new president and the rest of the leadership team. “If you start by asking what problems people are facing, it changes the way people think about training.”

On Becoming an Icon Taking such a business-centric approach is key to winning the respect and appreciation of any CEO, said David DeFilippo, chief learning officer for Suffolk Construction. However, it helps if the CEO already values learning as a key component of business success.

Suffolk is a rapidly growing, privately owned building contractor in Boston with more than $3 billion in annual revenue. Suffolk CEO John Fish wants to continue that growth trajectory, and he actively sought out DeFilippo, who comes from the finance industry, to become the company’s first CLO — despite having no experience in construction.

DeFilippo said no at first: “I can’t even fix things in my house.” But when he heard Fish’s vision — to turn Suffolk into an iconic global brand alongside the likes of Apple Inc., Google Inc. or General Electric — and how learning would play a strategic role, he was intrigued. Fish “talked about how anyone can build a building, but how he wants to build people who build buildings,” DeFilippo said. He took the job in the summer of 2015.

Fish said learning is vital to the success of any business, and every employee. He attributes this viewpoint to his own life. He struggled for years with severe dyslexia but eventually graduated from college and built his business from the ground up. “That experience gave me a tremendous respect for education,” he said.

“It’s the only asset you can’t take away from someone.”

It is also why he said DeFilippo is a strategic partner helping Suffolk reach its business goals. “Our biggest challenge and opportunity is in being able to deliver a predictable customer experience for our clients so they keep coming back,” Fish said. “That’s why training is so important.”

Together Fish and DeFilippo are aligning key business goals with learning components — such as expanding their pipeline of talent so they can develop organically and creating channels for knowledge-shar-

tomer demands require them to develop new skill sets; they rely on their learning leaders to chart that path.

This is an opportunity for CLOs to suggest how to ramp up a more diverse and flexible workforce that will be better positioned to help the business compete, said Kirk Messick, senior director of the CLO Group at Educational Testing Service, or ETS. That was the challenge Messick faced in 2014, when the leader of his group identified innovation as a key competency the ETS workforce needed to more effectively bring new product ideas to market. “People

‘Training has to serve a purpose for it to be valued.’

—David DeFilippo, chief learning officer, Suffolk Construction ing to enable more agility among team members.

They’re also building a three-year learning plan to achieve them. “We are maniacally focused on business drivers and the idea that you have to develop people to optimize the business,” DeFilippo said.

One of the early programs to emerge from this partnership is a subject-matter-expert network in which senior workers are anointed as adjunct faculty to run lunch and learns and offer training and mentoring to other staff as a way to formalize the knowledge-sharing process. “Our people love to talk about what they do, and this gives them a lot of pride in their work,” he said.

Suffolk also instituted monthly site reviews with report cards to assess specific performance measures related to safety, quality, site management and specific job skills relevant to each role and project. “Every team knows the dimensions we are measuring, and if we identify a deficit, we provide training to fix it,” Fish said.

In the end, he said providing people with learning and development and support will enable them to achieve their potential and deliver quality and consistent customer experience. “If you want to be a leader, you need to exceed expectations,” Fish said. “When you give people the tools to fulfill their potential, that’s how you achieve success.”

Innovation as a Competency Collaborations between CEOs and CLOs can help the learning function pinpoint exactly what it needs to do to help achieve the company vision. But CLOs also should bring new ideas to the table to help the company address future challenges that might not have been identified yet. For many organizations, changes in the business climate, new competitors and shifting cus-

would come up with a lot of great ideas, but they could never gain traction with them,” he said.

In response, the CLO group spearheaded development of an innovation team, and brought in outside consultants to help them develop innovation processes that would help find and bring good ideas to market, and to create an innovation academy that would teach employees in every department the skills they need to be more innovative. Messick said that while the innovation initiative has a learning element to it, it began by focusing on what the company would need to thrive 20 years out.

In the year after the launch of the innovation academy, ETS rolled out one new product, with two more expected shortly after, and several others are in the planning stages. “The CLO department doesn’t generate revenue, so we always have to be looking for opportunities to support the business and drive our mission forward,” he said.

All of the aforementioned learning professionals have been able to win the ear — and accolades — of their CEOs because they broke out of the learning mold, and started thinking like business leaders. DeFilippo said the only way the CEO will take learning leaders seriously is if they are connected to what the business needs, and they align every learning effort with business goals. “Training has to serve a purpose for it to be valued,” he said.

The only way to know how learning will align with the business is to get out of the learning function, and start talking to business leaders. “If you ask them what they need, they will tell you,” Hankinson said. “Otherwise you are going to miss out.” CLO Sarah Fister Gale is a writer based in Chicago. To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

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Leaders have a tough job, and businesses need them to do it and do it well. It’s up to the CLO to provide the right learning solutions to keep their minds — and skills — agile and growing.

ESSAY BY DAVE ULRICH

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M

ost chief learning officers recognize that leaders make a difference in organization results. Leaders boost employee productivity, create organization capabilities, increase customer loyalty, build investor confidence and ensure community reputation. To continually deliver these outcomes, leaders at all levels need to demonstrate agility — the capacity to learn, develop and adapt their thinking and actions to new business requirements.

CLOs are charged to develop leaders, yet we find the following often limits leadership development outcomes: • Nature/nurture: About 50 percent of how leaders behave is tied to their personal DNA — nature — and about 50 percent can be learned — nurture — so any leader’s development is constrained by predispositions.

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• Leadership learning formula (50-30-20): About 50 percent of what leaders learn comes from job experience — including coaching; 30 percent from guest-focused training; and 20 percent from life experience — an update from the 70-20-10 formula — so investments in leadership improvements need to be multifaceted.

• Limits of leadership experiences: Many companies lack the breadth of leadership experiences that will help leaders fully develop, so leaders learn to lead primarily from those who led them which limits their ability to adapt to new situations.

• Leadership sustainability: About 20 percent of what leaders learn in training actually gets applied back on the job.

ture, but these leadership development innovations should be encouraged.

Behind many of these leader development innovations is an evolving awareness of how CLOs can best build future leaders. This evolution pivots from traditional classroom presentations by faculty or trainers to facilitated groups, case studies of other companies, action learning and learning solutions (Figure 1).

The evolution from action learning engagements to learning solutions increases the likelihood that leaders will master and use new skill. Learning solutions will be a part of investing in future leaders. Consider the following examples illustrating the difference between action learning and learning solutions.

In light of the greater need for adaptive leaders and of the limits and challenges inherent in leadership development, CLOs must continually find new ways to upgrade leaders to respond to changing business conditions.

Many innovative leadership development initiatives exist: involving customers as participants and trainers the way General Electric does in its customer training, using social media to connect participants like Accenture’s global learning platform does, using philanthropy as a development opportunity as is the case with the IBM Corporate Service Corps, doing explicit development projects as does Procter & Gamble Co.’s leadership through experience, tailored individual development plans that lead to internal promotions as General Mills Inc. does, targeting future leaders through talent scouts the way ICICI Bank in India does, and coaching as is the case with Mobily in Saudi Arabia.

None of these isolated initiatives will be a magic bullet to fill the leadership requirements for the fu-

Let’s say there is a fast-growing organization.

Learning leaders are trying to build a more disciplined approach to managing change. To help leaders manage change, a faculty team is created to codify lessons on change from heaps of research and practice. From this synthesis, faculty members create a typology of seven key processes that are important to enable successful change.

Participants attend a change leadership development program to learn these disciplines of change and are then asked to apply the disciplines to a problem within their business. As participants apply these lessons of change, they are engaged in action learning efforts to help translate their ideas into action. Action learning workshops can work for a number of relevant topics such as innovation, globalization, customer service, cost and quality. The starting point for these leadership investments likely should be a business process, with a distillation of the tools to make progress and application to a project.

Action learning has been appropriately lauded and

Action Learning

FIGURE 1: ACTION LEARNING VS. LEARNING SOLUTIONS The two often have the same goal — to develop leaders — but they go about it in different ways.

Dimension

Action Learning

Learning Solutions

Starting point

Theory, insight or tools

Phenomenon or problem

Begin discussion with

Presenting the theory or idea

Presenting the problem and asking a question

Focus

Applying tools to solve a problem

Understanding a problem and creating tools to solve it

Role of faculty

Present theory, insights and tools through lecture or case, then encourage actions based on the tools

Listen to problem; separate symptom from problem; co-create solution; have live mini-case studies

Role of participant

Be prepared to learn and apply tools

Be prepared to define and solve problems

Ending point

Take action based on learning tools

Solve problems based on creating new tools

Measures

Understanding and use of tools

Resolution of business problem

Source: Dave Ulrich, 2016

32 Chief Learning Officer • February 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

offers a dramatic improvement over traditional learning approaches such as lectures, case studies, readings, demonstrations or discussion groups. But in a rapidly changing business context, leaders need to learn how to learn. They need to carve out their business challenges into discrete but connected problems, separate symptoms from problems, create insights from both their and others’ experiences as well as theory and research, and continually develop ways to approach and solve ongoing business problems.

Learning Solutions Learning solutions start with leaders being developed, defining what it means to master a skill or task and scoping out a current business problem or challenge in need of leadership attention. This sounds easy, but it is not. In the midst of many competing and complex demands on leaders, they need to distill the challenges they face, and then recognize the underlying symptoms they can address. They need to learn how to solve that problem by examining theory and by accessing others’ experiences, and inputting all relevant pieces into a solution that is tailored to their particular business situation. As they apply their insights to the problem, they are much more likely to have ownership of the solutions they craft. Instead of learning being an event when leaders learn and act, it becomes an experience that teaches them how to think about and solve business problems.

One application of this idea is to start a learning program by asking the participants to write down the biggest challenge they currently face on the job. These challenges then become the case studies used in a learning experience. Rather than using prewritten and formatted case studies, let the faculty and participants discuss fresh, live cases that pull directly from participants’ challenges. This requires that faculty come less with prescribed answers and more with co-creation facilitation skills. Further, participants likely will leave less impressed with faculty and more impressed with their enhanced ability to respond to their work challenges.

Another example of learning solutions is to start leadership development by reporting how investors perceive a firm’s leaders by comparing a firm’s price-earnings ratio to its competitors over a decade.

When a firm’s P/E lags its competitors, investors are discounting the quality of leadership in the organization. This market discount is a real and timely problem. Then, learning leaders can work with leaders to help create a learning solution to this problem that might include consistent and sustainable earnings, investment in leadership development and reporting on a leadership capital index that gives investors’ confidence in leaders.

When chief learning officers master a learning solu-

tions approach, they are less interested in leadership competencies, skills or even authenticity and more aware of, and committed to, how investors, customers and employees perceive and access those skills. Learning solutions require that participants do the hard work of problem identification, make real commitments to actively solve problems during development

When CLOs master a learning solutions approach, they are less interested in leadership skills and more aware of, and committed to, how investors, customers and employees perceive and access those skills. rather than be passive listeners, and become engaged in creation of applicable insights that will help them improve as leaders.

Faculty play a dramatically different role. Rather than rely on teaching notes for lectures, tools or cases, they have to facilitate learning among participants.

They are required to bring theory, research and experiences from other companies working on the problem that participants identify. They ask more questions than they give answers. They co-learn, and they do live consulting to help participants make progress. Then, they draw conclusions about how the learning solution’s progress can be applied after a workshop.

Learning solutions supplements other leadership investment techniques. They will not be a panacea to help leaders lead, and they require a dramatically different commitment from leaders and skills from faculty. Coupled with other innovative leadership investments, they might help leaders adapt to the changing business requirements. CLO Dave Ulrich is the Rensis Likert Professor at Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, partner at The RBL Group and author of “The Leadership Capital Index: Realizing the Market Value of Leadership.” To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

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a da vd ev re tr i ts i es me em ne tn t

BEST PRACTICES IN HR TECHNOLOGY

Do you need an Annual Learning Report? (and how to build it)

BY CROSSKNOWLEDGE Why do CLOs struggle with their L&D credibility and visibility?

This burning question was the rationale for research and conducting interviews with 50+ CLOs and providing guidelines and a practical tool to demonstrate the added value of L&D. An important reason named for this struggle, is the lack of credible metrics. Limited efforts in planning & identifying smart L&D objectives upfront make credible reporting difficult. Furthermore, CLO’s experience limitations in data collection and analysis, both during and after learning initiatives. Lastly, respondents highlight the lack of structured reporting and professional communication as a cause for the struggle to prove the added value of L&D. There’s a general desire amongst CLOs to explore new ways of convincing the business of the competitive advantage of learning with credible metrics. In relation to the question how L&D generates added value for the organization, two main streams can be identified. Firstly: which L&D activities does L&D deliver and secondly: what is the performance-impact of these L&D activities? Depending on the maturity of the organization, L&D should compile a strong overview of credible metrics that fits the organization.

The Annual Learning Report framework Based on the interviews with 50+ CLO’s and HR experts the Crossknowledge Learning Institute has developed a framework for CLOs to create an Annual Learning Report , including 5 different clusters with credible metrics – see image below.

Based on the needs of your organization, you can select relevant different metrics from these clusters: Which L&D activities does L&D deliver?

• L&D Basics. An overview KPIs related to basic L&D activities ‘delivered’ in your company. Which fundamental L&D activities are reported on?

• L&D Efficiency. Besides basic L&D contributions, these KPIs shows how efficiently L&D has performed. Has input been optimally used, to generate maximum output?

• Digital learning. Specific KPIs for organizations who’ve launched digital learning, an indication on the progression of digital learning. How well advanced is digital learning inside the company and is it paying off?

• L&D operations & achievements. An overview with

quantitative KPIs and qualitative descriptions. How does the L&D department run her business?

What is the performance-impact of L&D activities?

• General L&D Effectiveness. Indicators on the impact of L&D initiatives. To what extend have L&D initiatives impacted employee performance and business goals? This can include L&D indicators on the impact for specific strategic pillars for the organization. To what extend have L&D initiatives impacted the performance of new employees, talent or

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

BEST PRACTICES IN HR TECHNOLOGY

leadership inside the organization.

How to develop your own Annual Learning Report?

The next challenge for corporate learning leaders is to move from individual KPIs to an integrated Annual Learning Report to boost credibility and visibility. The Annual Learning Report framework can support you in that journey, taking into account that delivering an ALR is strongly dependent on accurate goal-setting, L&D data collection and L&D data analysis capabilities. It is important to stress that the design of your Annual Learning Report should be related to your organization’s maturity and needs of business & HR stakeholders. This implies that there is no one-sizefits-all annual learning reporting possible across corporate organizations, which requires CLOs to be close to key stakeholders and validate their needs deliver a fit-for-purpose L&D dashboard.

Now that you’ve seen which different credible metrics are available as ingredients for your integrated Annual Learning Report, what are your next steps? How do you end up with an Annual Learning Report that boosts the credibility and visibility of your L&D? How to boost your credibility and visibility?

Assuming that CLOs can further boost their credibility and visibility we recommend that they review the Annual Learning Report clusters and KPIs and initiate the following actions in parallel tuned to their specific capabilities and environment: • Analyse your organizational L&D reporting needs • Review your L&D data collection capabilities (actionable, collectable) • Select Annual Learning Report KPIs that fit your needs • Draft a “1st edition” ALR and validate this with L&D and HR stakeholders • Based on feedback draft a “2nd edition” ALR and validate this with business sponsors • Based on feedback develop an organization tuned Learning Report framework

in a vacuum. The sole purpose of the learning function is not simply to deliver learning. Instead, its purpose is to equip and empower the employees and teams to achieve the goals of the business. The Annual Learning Report provides a strong basis to demonstrate L&D’s alignment with business strategy and contribution to business outcomes. We also strongly believe that it can contribute to L&D being perceived as credible and respected business partner – illustrating a track record of continuous performance and success and providing the opportunity to focus where to further invest in developing the organization.

A learning strategy is essentially useless if it doesn’t align properly with organizational outcomes. L&D does not operate

Find out more: http://learningwire.crossknowledge.com/ boost-ld-visibility-credibility /

Jan Rijken is director of the Crossknowledge Learning Institute and was previously a CLO at KPMG, ABN Amro and Mercedes-Benz

COMPANY PROFILE CrossKnowledge is one of the world’s leading distance learning providers. Our solutions are full SaaS, cloud-based and built on exclusive learning technologies. We create our content with renowned, global experts, and provide a range of accompanying services. CrossKnowledge’s solutions guarantee a unique learning experience for the individual and a real return on investment for the organization. CrossKnowledge operates worldwide and serves companies from all size, spanning more than 7 million users. In 2014, CrossKnowledge was acquired by Wiley. For more information, please visit: www.crossknowledge.com

How to Extend Learning BEYOND Training ESSAY BY RICHARD RUHE

It’s important to make the transition from learning to doing.

But there are some tried-and-true tactics that can help to make learning stick and be used on the job.

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T

here is a big gap between what people learn from books, seminars and training courses, and what they actually do with this knowledge. Actually, it’s not a gap — it’s a chasm.

What people learn doesn’t automatically translate into behavior — that comes through immersion and rehearsal. It isn’t impossible to make the transition in a classroom or at a computer, but it requires focused determination.

The learning must extend beyond the session itself and, unfortunately, that doesn’t happen as much as it should in the workplace. The opportunities and challenges of real life — and real work — might be worlds away from the typical learning experience.

It’s tough to help people transition from learning to doing. Especially in light of common workplace obstacles like information overload and time compression. The solution goes beyond exploring the criticality of a situation and emphasizes the behavioral implica-

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tions within traditional learning approaches.

Somewhere in the world right now, there is a group of 20 attendees finishing up a training class, and they still haven’t identified what they’re going to do differently in the future. They’ve taken notes, they’ve talked it over with learning partners, they’ve made lists of adjectives on flip charts, and they’ve shared ideas. With any luck, they will leave the class with job aids or tools.

But do they have a firm grasp on how to apply their learning when they get back to work? No, probably not. What they do know is their inboxes are full, and they’ve lost ground over the past couple of days because they were training.

To help others change their behavior, people of influence — trainers, developers, coaches and operational leaders — have to compel others to do something they’re not already doing. This involves developing talent and, more importantly, helping people adopt new attitudes. It requires everyone involved to make a decision about changing not only what they know but also what they do.

Imagine a man wants to learn how to play the piano.

He enrolls in a 16-hour series of lessons designed to introduce him to the instrument. After completing the program, he probably doesn’t expect to start playing well immediately. He will sit down, position himself, place his fingers on the keys and begin. He might be competent enough to play scales, or some parts of a simple musical piece. But practically speaking, it could take him weeks — more likely months — to make music that people will really appreciate.

Action is the focal point: new behaviors, real experience and risk-taking. Who is ultimately responsible for all this? Operational leadership. These are not the people associated with knowing; they are the people associated with doing.

Fortunately, the basic principles of learning are tried and true. These should be fine-tuned to help expedite the move to new behaviors rather than new knowledge. Examples of these principles are: Repetition: Individual contributors, supervisors, managers and executives don’t learn complex behaviors in a single session. People learn from drill and practice.

Skill is improved with each repetition, as the most repeated behaviors become the most used. Positive feedback or redirection from a manager also leads to improvement. Granted, there are a few skills that can not only be learned relatively quickly but also retained for

a lifetime. For example, most people who learn to ride a bicycle never forget how to do it.

Effect: Action learning is more successful when it is accompanied by an optimistic mindset. When learners expect a pleasant result from practicing the new behavior, they are more inclined to continue the behavior after they leave the learning environment. So everyone involved should recognize and reward success. This positive reinforcement leads to motivation, which leads to action.

Negative consequences — even well-intended ones — are not a good choice when someone is in the early stages of implementing a new behavior.

Primacy: Things learned first need to take root. It’s harder to erase old habits or behaviors than to create new ones. So it’s important to teach a lesson well the first time. The early lesson will set the learner up for success in later ones.

Recency: Generally speaking, an individual’s most recent learnings can be retrieved from memory faster.

If a person tries to remember someone’s email address they learned a couple of seconds ago, that’s relatively easy. But it’s not as easy to remember an email address they learned last week. Therefore, it is worthwhile to review key learnings at the end of a session. This allows for objective, rational sequencing during the allotted time and facilitates behavioral practice right after cognitive learning.

Intensity: Knowledge is better retained when the lesson is powerful. An exciting learning experience is stickier than a boring one. For example, a learner will remember more from watching a dramatic video than they will from reading a script. The stronger the lesson, the better the understanding. Having learners participate in demonstrations, role-playing and skits is a great way to increase their comprehension. Having them listen to a lecture or fill in blank lines in a workbook is not.

When focusing on solutions, it’s important to start by admitting it’s not easy to make the transition from learning to doing.

“We’ve observed that one of the largest contributors to skill development is learning through job experience,” said Chris Keller, senior vice president of talent and leadership development at consultancy FCC Services. “A powerful leadership cocktail is for individuals to combine this with welcoming and accepting the manager’s feedback, and vice versa.”

Managers must sell risk-taking to learners, and then protect them when they are back in the workplace trying out their new skills.

38 Chief Learning Officer • February 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

Reader Reaction People often don’t take what they learn and use it effectively on the job. How do you facilitate that transition in behavior?

Seema Bassi: It’s critical we link learning to practice or on-job performance. In my experience as a learning leader, in order to bring-in the “learning effectiveness” I have been taking the pre- and post-training competency assessment from the managers of the incumbent. The objective is to know the expected performance from the employee — changes in their knowledge, skills and attitudes — the desired state and how will they be measured.

We discuss it with incumbent and his/her manager pre-training and take a sign-off sheet. Once they are committed and the outcomes are linked to their performance measures, the results kick in.

We do a handholding and feedback session ’til the goal is achieved for both employee and the manager. This is how we effectively bridge the gap between training and on-job performance.

Jon Hillegeist: When I deliver crucial conversations, a two-day workshop on conflict management, I maximize the transfer rate by: 1) Having senior management’s agreement to reinforce the skills back on the job, 2) Teaching intact teams and learning from the team’s immediate manager what business metrics they are struggling with, 3) Using an engaging instructional design, including instruction, stories, videos, case studies, application exercises, discussion and custom role-plays that address the issues around those metrics, 4) Running role plays in the workshop until the participants are able to use the skills on their own, 5) Having the participants document their use of the skills 10 times back on the job with an easy to use template, 6) Providing posters and online job aids, and 7) Circling back with the manager to get feedback and encourage follow up.

Sheryl T. Smikle: Jon, I like your strategies, and I employ 99 percent of them. I would add creating an internal social media group for attendees that keeps the course dialogue going and provides a resource that supports transfer learning. Additionally, I ask managers to not only provide an immediate assignment upon the return but to document how they have achieved a meaningful ROI from the training. Lastly, I measure retention of a random sample of attendees at 60, 90 and 180 days depending on the course.

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

Here are some tips to keep in mind: 1. People often don’t know why they’re going through a learning experience. Perhaps they’re taking a workshop because they’ve been told to; or they believe this is what everybody does at this stage of their career; or they’ve heard people say it was good. If participants have the luxury of self-enrollment, they might have signed up based on the course’s title. Or, they might wind up attending simply because their schedule allows it, which could limit the amount of time available for the trainer to send out pre-work emails. Managers must do a better job of telling people why. It’s not only about getting the learning session on the calendar, but also it’s about selling the importance of attending. Managers must set a context of urgency.

Attendees must recognize that learning is at the core of what their organization does.

2. Most learning experiences use conceptual frameworks and models. Both are simplifications of the world — not the whole, real world. They’re supposed to help people do something complex. But the training course is probably squeezed into a day or two, which is really only enough time to make people aware of the class’ value.

“What we’ve learned about productivity is that it’s a good start to invest in our associates’ growth and development,” said Jonathan Godown, senior vice president of Talent and Culture Working Group at Fairfax Financial in Toronto. “But the return on that investment doesn’t come until we actually experience the behavior and action. Having a dedicated Talent and Culture Working Group at Fairfax has made a big difference for us. After all, the classic definition of culture is ‘what we do.’ ” Classroom activities such as discussion and group experiences might move employee learning from awareness to an understanding and appreciation for the outcome. But the real value proposition involves getting them to do, or at least explain, the targeted actions. This doesn’t have to be overly risky; however, it is a big leap for a learner to move from knowing a concept to actually engaging in the desired behavior. Inviting operational leaders, subject-matter experts, or other guests to show up at training, even briefly, can encourage learners to do so. Maybe the best thing these visitors can contribute is challenging attendees to take the risk of using the new behaviors. Further, managers must model valuing the targeted actions to help attendees feel OK about actually using them.

3. In this era, everyone is doing more in less time. It’s a case of, “We’ve got them doing change management that day, so let’s throw 15 minutes of conflict resolution and generational leadership at LEARNING TACTICS continued on page 49 Chief Learning Officer • February 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

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HR

Will Seat You Now ESSAY BY DAVID J. DEFILIPPO

With continually raised questions about human resources’ value, now is the time to focus on the department’s strategy, structure and talent. Let HR leaders set the table, and questions about the department’s relevance will subside.

I

n the current fast-paced, results-oriented business environment, outcomes and impact are the priority. All facets of the human resources function have a critical role to play. As the function evolves, CEOs, academics and industry experts are debating its relevance, efficacy and future role. This leads to issues and opportunities in which HR can reinvent itself to create greater short- and long-term organizational value.

Research and articles dating from Fast Company’s 2005 “Why We Hate HR” to more recent 2015 Harvard Business Review articles “Why We Love to Hate HR” and “People Before Strategy: The New Role for the CHRO,” questions are being raised about the effectiveness of the modern day HR function. Deloitte University Press’ “Global Human Capital Trends 2015” cites three central elements to “reinventing HR”: structure, talent analytics and data. Further, in their 2010 book “One Page Talent Management,” authors Marc Effron and Miriam Ort underscore HR’s ineffectiveness because of

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the overcomplicated processes and underutilization of academic research and behavioral science to underpin and form HR practices.

Concern over these issues is still valid given the typical cost of a firm’s human capital and the workforce requirements for the knowledge-worker generation.

“In today’s business environment, workforce performance is more important than ever, which makes the effectiveness of HR practices a top priority,” said Annie McKee, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. “The risk associated with not optimizing an organizations people practices too high.”

or virtue of reinvention. Then there are the employees who are interested in meaningful work, career progression and being appreciated, among other things.

Finally, there is the HR team whose role and desire is to support and add value to these three constituencies.

This misalignment of concerns combined with a combination of the ups and downs of the labor market in the face of shorter business cycles and growing demands leads to the following three issues.

1. Strategy: Business goals and HR priorities are misaligned. This seems obvious, but how often do we find out that what solution the business wanted from

Make HR a coveted career path, assignment or rotation that leads to upward trajectory for high potential employees.

By taking a step back and refocusing on the truth that HR exists to improve an organization’s performance and potential, these issues can be addressed through strategy, structure and talent alignment.

The HR field can trace its historical evolution back to the post-World War II era when talent shortages were a reality, and practices such as on-the-job development, assignment rotations and succession were born.

According to “Why We Love to Hate HR,” this focus led to 90 percent of internal positions being filled internally because of the focus on workforce planning requirements coupled with the dedication to preparation and development for the next role. Starting in the 1970s with the first instance of a slowing economy, companies began to invest less in these systematic HR practices created to develop employees and leaders.

This pattern continued through the 1980s with some relief during the 1990s dot-com boom, only to be damaged once again when the dot-com bubble burst, and even more so during the financial crisis that began in 2008. With this backdrop and the reality that most current business leaders progressed to their roles during this declining period of HR as a lead function, it is not surprising there is something amiss yet little clarity how to address it.

Strategy, Structure and Talent The situation becomes more confounding when HR and learning leaders attempt to balance seemingly separate and competing interests. First, consider the board of directors whose fiduciary responsibility it is to watch over current needs and prepare the organization for its next generation. Next, there are the CEO and business leaders focused on organizational growth and optimization whether by organic means, acquisitions, 42 Chief Learning Officer • February 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

HR is not what we thought we were delivering? This issue stems from the level of involvement the HR team has in the strategy development and refinement process. For example, to meet revenue and growth goals, a firm decides to redesign its client acquisition and business development process. These strategies are central to the business’ revenue goals, analyst expectations and board of director commitments, so it is definitely an important plan to get right. Is this plan delivered to the HR leader and team once it is formulated, or is it conceived as an equal partnership with that team? This question gives rise to translation risk, meaning the strategy development process is done in isolation and handed off to HR, so it is no wonder there is a probability of mismatch.

To address this danger, let’s change this all too common paradigm and have HR leaders and teams run the strategy development process in partnership with an initiative sponsor and the executive team. Who better to facilitate an integrated strategic planning process than the leader who touches a firm’s human capital processes and the associated dimensions around planning, acquiring, developing, rewarding and engaging talent?

Because it is HR’s practice to manage these interrelated elements, it is not a stretch to expand those connections to broader business issues such as client satisfaction scores, sales territory design and the business development pipeline. In this way, instead of the oft-cited line from HR practitioners asking for “a seat at the table,” HR is setting the table so the team can dine together.

2. Structure: HR teams are not structured to perform. With strategic alignment addressed, the next issue to tackle is how HR implements the strategic plan. Organizations go through cycles of centralizing, decentralizing or running a hybrid or federated model.

These dramatic shifts are merely panaceas for the central problem that HR needs to be structured as an integrated part of the business, aligned to the aforementioned strategic plan and plugged into day-to-day operations so it can nimbly address issues.

As explained in Harvard Business Review’s “People Before Strategy,” Ram Charan, Dominic Barton and Dennis Carey’s G3 Model, which creates a triad between the CEO, CFO and CHRO, provides a good first version of the opportunity for alignment among the strategic, financial and human capital agendas. If leaders build on that approach, they advance the opportunity for structural alignment; version 2.0 of that approach includes the senior most operations, client and marketing executives to mitigate a three-sided solution when a five- or six-dimensional one is most appropriate. Practically, the integration of these disciplines and diverse perspectives can be accomplished via a consistent governance process in combination with rotating facilitation by one of these executives.

This is one approach to address the alignment of HR and leadership.

Building further, there is the HR team itself. Charan’s suggested outline and approach of dividing HR into HR Leadership and Organization, or HR-LO, and HR Administration, or HR-A, makes great sense with respect to the stratification of HR’s work and talent. Aligning the longer-term tasks such as succession planning and leadership development to one part of the HR team, and segmenting the day-to-day operations composed of benefits administration and employee relations to another area provides the differentiation that creates conflict for senior executives and HR practitioners alike.

Simply put, by acknowledging and structuring around the short- vs. long-term focus, HR can use each area’s strength. One group remains focused on day-to-day operations and execution, while another is focused on the organization’s future requirements.

One refinement to Charan’s HR-LO and HR-A model is to not divide HR-A and HR-LO among the CEO and CFO but to keep them integrated, with the CHRO reporting to the CEO to foster HR functional alignment.

3. Talent: Ensure that HR has the right skill sets and experiences. With the strategy aligned with structure, the last piece to arrange is talent. Matthew Breitfelder and Daisy Waderman Dowling discussed this in their 2008 Harvard Business Review article titled “Why Did We Ever Get into HR?” Both graduated from Harvard Business School and pursued HR careers because of the impact they could make, which was contrary to the norm among their classmates. This raises the question about the perception that our best and brightest talent have not traditionally entered the HR

field, but instead ended up there through various career twists and turns. Further underscored by HR.com videos like “When I Grow Up (I Want to Be in HR)” that lightheartedly poke fun at the choice to become an HR practitioner, with this messaging, it is not surprising that people question HR’s perceived value.

There are several ways to address the talent situation. First, make HR a coveted career path, assignment or rotation that leads to upward trajectory for high-potential employees. Organizations signaling that being in an HR role is selective and leads to upward movement will create positive momentum.

Next, ensure or plan for HR practitioners to rotate through a line-management role. Regardless of the industry, an early stage HR practitioner will learn a tremendous amount about leadership and management by having operational responsibility for a business function and team. The ancillary benefit of this line-management experience for HR staff is the increase in street credibility among operational peers.

Lastly, master the discipline of HR. As Effron and Ort discuss throughout “One Page Talent Management,” the science of behavioral, industrial and organiza-

Create a triad between the CEO, CFO and CHRO to align the strategic, financial and human-capital agendas. tional psychology all inform HR practices. It is paramount that HR professionals are fluent in those subjects.

“Given the pace and complexity of business today, we need HR talent that can predict the firm’s workforce needs and build simple processes for ensuring the organization always has a human capital advantage,” said Steve Arneson, leadership expert and author.

“That takes people who truly understand the marketplace/talent dynamic, have the analytic horsepower to make a business case, and the courage and confidence to influence senior leaders.”

Given the questions being raised about HR’s currency and value, the time is now to focus on HR’s strategy, structure and talent in ways that are organizationally aligned, hands-on and contextually meaningful to one’s organization. As HR leaders set the table, arrange the courses and then share the various dishes with their business partners, the dinner conversation and questions about HR’s relevance will subside. CLO David J. DeFilippo is the chief learning officer for Suffolk Construction. To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

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CASE STUDY

Training in the Fast Lane

BY SARAH FISTER GALE

AAMCO Transmissions Inc. is one of those iconic franchises that has become as familiar as the fast-food chains and coffeehouses that line city streets across America. The first AAMCO franchise opened in the early 1960s, and today the company has more 700 locations across the country that have serviced more than 45 million vehicles, fixing transmissions and doing other auto repair work.

Like all franchises, every shop is owned and operated by an individual owner, but the corporate entity is responsible for creating a consistent brand experience.

Making sure everyone takes part in the necessary training can be difficult to execute in a franchise environment. Most AAMCO owners are independent entrepreneurs who don’t expect to be told what to do, said Brian O’Donnell, senior vice president of franchise development. To get them on board, he said he has to make sure they understand why training is a good idea, and how investing their time in coming to an extended off-site training event will benefit them.

Teaching franchise owners is also a challenge for AAMCO learning leaders, who often face classrooms full of people who come to the business with a variety of backgrounds and experiences. This put AAMCO trainers in a difficult position, said Jason Herman, director of training and dean of AAMCO University.

This diversity of experience, coupled with the com-

The AAMCO training center features a mini AAMCO shop with two lifts and all the equipment in an AAMCO center.

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SNAPSHOT AAMCO’s new state-of-the-art training facility and business-focused curriculum is helping franchise owners grow revenues, increase traffic, and ensure every customer experience is worthy of a four-star review.

pany’s desire to create a more cohesive training program for franchise owners, led AAMCO leaders to fundamentally change their learning approach. “We wanted to create an industry-leading training program to ensure our people have the skills they need to solve complex problems for customers and to make sure AAMCO remains a leader in the industry,” said Brett Ponton, CEO of American Driveline, AAMCO’s parent company. That sparked the genesis of AAMCO University.

Driving Change In 2013, the company acquired a plant in Atlanta that remanufacturers transmissions, and it had a 20,000-square-foot unused office space attached. “It was the perfect place to build a new training center,” O’Donnell said. They remodeled the space, creating a theater-style auditorium for classroom learning, a mini working AAMCO shop with two lifts and all the equipment in an AAMCO center, and an AAMCO waiting area. The idea was to give learners the full AAMCO experience so they could learn the basics in the classroom, and then test them out in the center.

Having a great learning space was only the first step. AAMCO also needed the curriculum to make it worth the franchisees’ time and money to attend offsite classes and to send their staff for training. Herman was brought on in 2014 to overhaul the curriculum.

In the past, training focused on the nuts and bolts of car repair and transmissions. But he said franchise owners needed a lot more than auto training to run their shops. His goal was to provide general business as well as car care education. When building the new courses, Herman said he focused every piece of content on two key goals: how to increase potential profits and how to decrease potential liability. “I tell all of my

PHOTOS COURTESY OF AAMCO

The remodeled 20,000-square-foot space features an AAMCO waiting room, left, and a theater-style auditorium for classroom learning.

students: If I teach you something that doesn’t tie to these goals, we will eliminate it.”

The biggest piece of the new curriculum is a fourweek Franchisee 101 development program that teaches new franchise owners everything they need to know about running an AAMCO. The course features 41 learning modules cover various topics, such as how to deliver excellent customer service, developing effective marketing plans, managing profit and loss statements, and establishing key performance indicators for staff.

In week three, participants leave the facility to work in the field with seasoned AAMCO owners so they can have a firsthand experience running the business.

skeptical at first to commit to four weeks of off-site training. Denton is a former construction company owner who gave up his dream of retiring on a beach in Belize after three weeks, and was looking for a new business opportunity. After exploring several franchise options, he determined that AAMCO had the best potential.

He was on the verge of purchasing an existing shop near his hometown in Prescott Valley, Arizona, when the company told him he couldn’t close the deal until he attended training. He agreed and attended the fourweek course last June with eight other new owners.

Right away he said he was impressed by the facil-

‘They have made a big commitment to us, and we want to show them that we are just as committed to their success.’

—Brett Ponton, CEO, American Driveline In week four, they return to the center to review their experiences and create a business plan for their shop, which they present to the class.

It’s a significant amount of time to invest in learning, but considering how much money the franchisees’ invest in buying or starting an AAMCO, it’s a modest commitment, Ponton said, “and we make sure they get a clear return on investment.” It also shows owners that AAMCO is heavily invested in its franchisees, which is a key component of Ponton’s long-term business strategy for the brand. “They have made a big commitment to us, and we want to show them that we are just as committed to their success.”

Business School in a Month

ity and Herman’s business-focused approach to learning. “It was like completing a full-on business school,” he said.

Despite the fact that Denton had run his own company for years, he had no automotive or retail sales experience and was nervous about the prospect of running a customer-facing business. He said the training put him at ease. He got to role-play his new skills in the training facility’s customer lobby, then tried them out in the real world during his week three field work.

His mentor put him to work answering phones, estimating jobs and dealing with customers. After three days, Denton said he was so excited about working in the field that he asked to work with other AAMCO owners for the rest of the week to see how their approaches var-

Gary Denton was one of the first franchise owners to go through the program, and he said he was

CASE STUDY continued on page 48 Chief Learning Officer • February 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

45

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

A Look Ahead: Learning in 2016

BY CUSHING ANDERSON

The forecast for learning in 2016 suggests that leadership development, informal learning and technology will remain essential pieces of the learning leader’s toolkit.

Chief learning officers are constantly adjusting the tactics they use so learning has the most impact on their organizations.

With a broad set of tools, topics and techniques, they must mix and match content and delivery options to address their unique organizational challenges. But CLOs continue to wonder: Are alternatives or nontraditional approaches addressing their needs? Are other CLOs approaching issues differently? Do they see greater opportunity for emerging tools?

Every other month, IDC surveys Chief Learning Officer magazine’s Business Intelligence Board on a variety of topics important to senior training executives. Research indicates that training budgets are recovering. In many cases, CLOs reported their training budgets for 2015 were more than 8 percent above their 2014 budgets. CLOs have been increasing their focus on technology, training strategy and performance consulting. But do CLOs believe this growth and broader development mandate will continue in 2016?

Optimism Increasing Training executives remain optimistic about employee development outlook. For the fourth year in a row, more than half of CLOs are more optimistic about the coming year, for several reasons (Figure 1). In the U.S., CLOs see improvement in the FIGURE 1: DON’T WORRY, BE OPTIMISTIC Learning leaders are optimistic about their projected impact in the coming months. % 17% 39

%

44 %

16 % 28 %

56 %

7% 32%

5

31

%

9%

Less optimistic

29

The same

%

More optimisitic 61%

65 %

Focus Carefully For Impact 62% Note: Percentages have been rounded

2012

2013

2014

2015

macro-economy that reflects in their stakeholders: • Decreasing unemployment • Raising stock market • Rapidly evolving business environment — globalization, customer requirements, regulations, etc.

Several executives said the optimism comes from a track record of success, and that leads to even greater expectations. Some learning leaders report their business leaders are more aware of the effect learning and development can have on business productivity.

One CLO said training and development helped her overcome a severe talent gap: “We’ve decided to develop our employees and provide them with competencies critical to business success [ensures] skills are available, on-demand.”

Generally CLOs said 2016 growth will lead to increased relevance and opportunity for the learning function.

This year’s optimism continues a trend from 2013 when more than half of CLOs were more optimistic about the coming year.

As recovery continues to take hold, training and development organizations are returning to the levels of importance they held early in the past decade. This bears out in CLO budget expectations as well. As we reported last November, more than half of CLOs saw a budget increase in 2015, and more than 60 percent expect a budget increase in 2016 (Figure 2).

In addition to spending more, companies are expecting positive contributions from the learning organization: • Eighty-one percent of CLOs expect training to be more aligned with company business objectives.

• Seventy percent of CLOs said the perception of training within their company will increase compared to last year.

• A majority of CLOs said training offerings will be better integrated with other talent management functions.

2016

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

Source: Human Capital Media Advisory Group, 2015

CLOs continue to see leadership as an important topic, because “leadership training drives everything else.” Some learning leaders see leadership as a necessary, and possibly neglected, competency. One reported: “This is an area that has been lacking for a number of years. [But] the company has made a significant invest-

ment in the area of leadership training recently.”

Others see leadership development as an opportunity to address future pipeline requirements. Said one CLO: “Leadership development [builds] a prepared pipeline for workforce planning.”

Others are trying to engender broader employee success through conscious leadership training; “Continued support of middle managers is key to performance, accountability, positive morale and engagement.” For these reasons and others, leadership development remains a vital part of the CLO toolkit.

Competencies continue to be perceived as a significant opportunity. A strong competency program has overarching benefits, and, like leadership, appears to be a foundational element of high performance and helps organizations focus. One CLO said, “Competencies are the key to operational excellence.” But it can be complicated. As one CLO described it, “Currently we don’t have effective ways to evaluate skill/knowledge/application levels by role and/or function so we don’t have a progressive development plan to … measure these learners against the competencies.”

To maximize the effect of training and development activities, CLOs must adopt techniques that can be scaled and leveraged throughout the enterprise. Informal learning is expected to have a very positive effect on enterprises in 2016. Learning leaders are increasingly anticipating the value of self-directed and even incidental learning. They’re also making resources available to support self-directed, on-demand learning experiences. This approach can magnify the effect of a small learning organization (Figure 3).

Other key activities with significant impact are: Instructor-led training, mentoring and executive coaching: All of these basic capabilities for CLOs have powerful potential.

The expected impact of instructor-led training, mentoring and coaching reflect the power of the learners and experts working together to pass along knowledge. In some cases, focus on ILT is a result of disappointment with e-learning; it also can be more effective: “Hands-on, group interaction learning is the most effective for us,” one CLO said. CLOs see mentoring as essential to support learning transfer and the employee as well as to build a connection with the mentee. While this requires a formalization of relationships and activities, learning leaders said it is a great way to get consistent performance without impacting the bottom line. Similarly, executive coaching can provide candid, confidential support to senior management.

Informal learning: Some CLOs focus on informal experiences because of efficiency. “Informal learning allows our organization the biggest bang for the buck and allows for many areas to be touched on” and “informal learning is the only sustainable way to pick up knowledge, information and skills that are directly relevant for work.”

In 2016, CLOs said the learning industry should focus more on some of the core learning and development capabilities: informal learning, measurement, knowledge management and getting knowledge into learners’ hands — mobile. Learning leaders also would like the industry to spend less time talking about wikis/blogs, social networking and even mobile learning technologies (Figure 4).

LEARNING OUTLOOK continued on page 48

FIGURE 2: GREAT BUDGET EXPECTATIONS CLO optimism is justified in lieu of steadily rising budgets over the past four years.

42% 23 %

31%

56 % 48 % 50 %

53 % 59 % 61%

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 Source: Human Capital Media Advisory Group, 2015

FIGURE 3: MAKE A SPLASH Here are the top 10 activities expected to have a big impact in 2016.

Ranking

Ranking Compared with Last Year

Activities

1

Leadership training

Up 1

2

Competencies

Up 1

3

Instructor-led training

Up 1

4

Informal learning

Down 3

5

Mentoring

Up 3

6

Learning management systems

Up 4

7

Executive coaching

Up 2

8

Succession planning

New to list

9

Measurement

Down 3

Compliance training

New to list

10

Source: Human Capital Media Advisory Group, 2015

FIGURE 4: CAN I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE? The learning industry should focus and prioritize carefully on strategies and delivery mechanisms that create the most bang for the buck.

Pay more attention to

Pay less attention to

Informal learning

Wikis/blogs

Learning analytics

Social networking

Mobile learning technologies

Mobile learning technologies

Knowledge management

Corporate university

Leadership training

Diversity training

Source: Human Capital Media Advisory Group, 2015

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

47

LEARNING OUTLOOK continued from page 47

CASE STUDY continued from page 45

Wikis and blogs have been waning for several years, likely because of the high volume participation required to keep them engaging and relevant. Social networking or social learning also seems to set off CLO’s hype alarm.

Mobile learning is a conundrum. It deserves both more and less attention, likely because it’s not so much about the device as it is the experience. As one CLO said, “Mobile is a way to deliver the training, just like the web. The tools to develop have gotten so much better that there doesn’t need to be a distinction.” But some said it’s only effective for some employees, such as people in field sales or technicians. Some organizations don’t have the infrastructure or the inclination.

ied. Then he took all of those experiences back to the last week of training and presented his business plan. “That was the most important part of the training,” he said. “It was a way to show everyone — and myself — that I had thought of everything and was ready to get started.”

Herman said every class he teaches has a few experts like Denton who understand business but not the automotive side as well as many who have no experience with either. He said he starts each course with no assumptions. Before the session begins, he screens each group of students to get a sense of their background.

As he gets to know them in class, he asks them to share their work experience and uses those stories to draw relevant analogies. For example, in one class he had a senior engineer from the semiconductor manufacturing industry, so he used his experiences putting together a production team to help him understand what skills he would need on his new staff.

To Technology and Beyond Much about 2016 remains uncertain. Some think learning and development investments will grow, others are cautious.

CLOs offered predictions on the economy, hiring rates, new technologies, and the evolution of development, among other topics. Their challenges and opportunities include millennial ascension, the value of college degrees, technology evolution and tight-fisted department heads.

Generally, learning leaders feel optimistic that the tools they need are available to make learning strategic: “More companies will began to tie competencies and development directly to strategic goals within their strategic plan.” Therefore, the “industry will be viewed more favorably by leaders.”

While technology will be important, the role of relationships is increasing: One CLO said the industry will move “back to relationship focused training and coaching”; another predicted that “informal learning will become strategic.”

Those relationships also might extend to the relationship between learner and content. One CLO said, “In 2016, training will become more about context than ever before.” But, training has to be specific: “Training departments will have to focus on context — how does this tool, or this information apply to you to make your job easier or better.” And, “Training will be more customized, and business focused with content and sessions evaluated more critically against return to the business.”

Overall, CLOs said leadership development and increased use of informal learning will have a profound effect on organizational development. There is debate over the efficacy of mobile and social learning, but CLOs said technology use will increase. CLO Cushing Anderson is program director for learning services at market intelligence firm IDC. To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

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

Accelerating Revenue Growth The facility also offers a six-day customer service course for new AAMCO managers, a two-day advanced course for senior managers, and live webcast training and self-paced e-learning content for technicians who can take training in the office or at home.

“All of the courses have been very popular,” O’Donnell said, noting that overall satisfaction rating average of 9 out of 10. More importantly, they are delivering measurable business results, he said.

While the effect of the new franchise training program hasn’t yet been measured, quarterly comparisons show franchisees whose managers attended the Advanced CSM Training program in June experienced a 9 percent lift in “transmission revenue” and “total car care” compared with the previous year — two key measures of AAMCO business success.

Similarly, the centers using the online training content saw a 5-point jump in revenue compared with those that didn’t. “It proves that franchises with trained staff perform at a higher level and have better sales,” O’Donnell said.

He’s now putting those numbers out to AAMCO owners across the country in a 23-market tour to communicate the value of training. “It’s powerful data to show the impact of AAMCO University,” he said.

These numbers also have been valuable to the AAMCO leadership team, who made a significant investment in the facility and programming to make the university a reality. “It gives further credibility to the management team, that this was the right decision,” Ponton said. “There is no better testimonial than the success of our franchisees.” CLO Sarah Fister Gale is a writer based in Chicago. To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

LEARNING TACTICS continued from page 39 them, so they can integrate it with the new competency statements we just announced.”

This multitasking trend in the classroom reduces the time available to get clarity on critical learnings. It also limits the opportunity to practice. Managers must stop expanding the critical mass of what they try to do, and emphasize actionable outcomes.

4. Energetic experimenting with a process is more effective than discussing it or having a trainer do a presentation. It is tempting for facilitators to avoid doing a high-priority activity, which can be risky, and instead do a tried and true, story-heavy lecturette that has lower risk for both facilitator and participant. Because of this, doing a training presentation — no matter how flawless — is probably not a good choice. Learners who actively apply their new skills immediately understand that the solution is within the limits of their own talent. That doesn’t happen with passive involvement or a 15-minute philosophical walk in the park. It’s about applying skills to help cope with corporate culture. It’s of-

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ten been said that culture trumps everything. Managers must sell risk taking to learners, and then protect them when they are back in the workplace trying out their new skills.

To maximize the return on investment from learning, managers must be aware that a timer starts counting down at the end of any learning and development experience.

Every tick of that timer represents the continuing erosion taking place in that learner’s memory. If nothing else, managers must remember how critical it is to help learners make the transition from learning to doing as early and as effectively as possible.

When someone asks their manager to tell them something they don’t know, the manager should instead help them acquire behaviors they don’t do. That is the best insurance. CLO

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49

IN CONCLUSION

Liking Ain’t Learning Social networks might make us smarter, but they might make us stupid, too • BY ROBIN HOYLE

H

Robin Hoyle is senior partner at Learnworks and author of “Informal Learning in Organizations: How to Create a Continuous Learning Culture.” To comment, email editor@ CLOmedia.com.

ave you visited a learning exhibition lately? If so, chances are you have been encouraged to include social in your learning mix. This seems eminently sensible. We know people can and do learn from each other — if we can harness the connectivity of our systems to integrate this with our training, so much the better.

Ultimately if some vendors are to be believed, we can create collaboration spaces using our intranet, and these social networks will become self-sustaining knowledge hubs where the tiresome business of actually training people will be a thing of the past. A like button, star rating system and a discussion forum is all we need. This is where the canyonlike gap appears between the hype of the technology vendors’ pitch and the reality of learning in organizations.

On the surface, social networks appear to work.

When Iyad Rahwan conducted research at the University of Oregon in 2013, he found that not only did research subjects in social networks perform better in cognitive reasoning tests but also that the ones

Internal collaboration can be fraught with difficulty unless it is actively and carefully managed. who were most connected — i.e., part of larger social networks than their peers — performed best of all. Simply, he gave 100 students a series of analytical reasoning tests. He checked their answers alone and their answers after they discussed the problem in a specially created network. A group of benchmark subjects were tested alone.

After discussing with others, those in networks were more likely to get the answers correct. However, those working alone got slightly better at completing the tests as they gained more experience. Those in social networks got slightly worse. While they were more likely to arrive at the right answer, they became less capable of solving the problem alone.

I re-ran this experiment at a conference in London and found the same results — although my small group could hardly be seen as a robust experiment.

However, I was able to check what happened when I 50 Chief Learning Officer • February 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

first asked a question. Those in the networks tried to work out the correct response for a very short time before turning to the more knowledgeable or capable member of the group to copy their answer.

As Rahwan noted in his research paper, “increased connectivity may eventually make us stupid by making us smarter first.”

The so-called unreflective copying bias is not my only concern with social networks as a route to increased enlightenment. Our online presence has become a kind of extended résumé. By muddling sharing and collaboration with online marketing, we find ourselves helping out primarily to impress. This is an entirely natural bias, yet rarely mentioned. The ideal presented of a collaborative learning space depends on the selfless, purely philanthropic motives of those involved.

When a global company asked me to help establish an online community of practice, I asked why. Those involved wanted to learn from others’ mistakes and to share knowledge from those who had tried and failed so they didn’t try the same things with the same, disappointing results. I then asked how those who might use this platform were remunerated. The client looked puzzled. Eventually, she told me about the performance appraisal system and the bonuses paid to those who had exceeded their annual key performance indicators.

The project was shelved. No amount of philanthropic desire to share learning will succeed when people receive a significant component of their annual pay in performance-related bonuses. How often will they be publicly willing to outline failures and mistakes when their mortgages depend on expressing consistent hypercapability?

This is not the only reason I urge caution about the quality of the information contributed online. Some is robust, a lot isn’t. We need skilled information seekers to differentiate whether they’re collaborating with colleagues or Googling answers. But internal collaboration might be fraught with difficulty unless it is actively and carefully managed, and the company’s culture supports authentic, evidence-based collaboration.

Learning through social networks is possible and desirable. But those looking for a quick fix will learn that a learning management system with a like button and a platform for the career oriented to polish their profile is not the route to social learning success. CLO

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