Chief Learning Officer — April 2020

April 2020 | ChiefLearningOfficer.com

ManTech’s

Karen Wolf

Transformative Developments in Measurement - Navigating Semantics and Skills Managing Change - Grow Multicultural Leaders With Coaching - McDonald’s Archways to Careers

GAME CHANGERS

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EDITOR’S LETTER

Grabbing the Rebound

P

hysical skills begin to deteriorate more quickly sometime in your 40s. That may not come as a shock to most but you can color me surprised. I’m slow that way and apparently getting even slower.

Deceleration is inevitable as the years pile up. But it’s manageable. That’s a lesson I learned as I stepped back onto a basketball court for the first time in a decade. And it’s a reminder that chief learning officers have a critical role to play as uncertainty and volatility become the reality of business.

Growing up, basketball was my game and the Chicago Bulls of the early ’90s were my team. Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and a cast of supporting players dominated the league with a combination of startling athleticism and stifling defense. I was there at Chicago Stadium on June 14, 1992, when a squad of reserve players brought the team back from a 13-point deficit in the fourth quarter to grab the title. My ears are still ringing.

Take rebounding. The key is boxing out your opponent and reacting quickly when the ball bounces off the rim. In my younger days, it came easy. Now, my brain shouts “Jump!” and my body’s response goes something like: “Umm, did you say something?”

Disbelief and denial, my initial reactions, aren’t the ideal response to change. Agility and adaptability are.

I vowed to hit the gym, work harder and play smarter.

Experience plays a bigger role when skills and athleticism diminish.

It’s not much different when it comes to organizations and change. When times are good, success comes relatively easy. Preparation isn’t as important. The side effect is that inertia takes hold and won’t release its grip.

In physical terms, training is the key to keeping your edge. When it comes to mental skills, it’s much the same.

That’s where CLOs can step in. Small-scale interventions and programs to hack the learning agenda, inject change and put leaders through experiences that force them to adapt can help. But it’s not just about preparing the individual to change. It’s just as much about assessing your team’s readiness for change. Thankfully that’s become a bigger part of the learning agenda.

The disruption caused by the global spread of the coronavirus is a case in point. Many organizations were caught flat-footed and ill-prepared to move to virSo when a friend invited me to play on his team of tual working environments. Managers and teams had 40-somethings, I jumped at the chance. It rekindled that to stretch their muscles in ways they hadn’t practiced. youthful passion and would be a fun way to stay sharp.

The goal for learning organizations is to have the Competitiveness was at play, too. While never the right amount of self awareness and trust built in so best player on the team, I always managed to find a when conditions change it’s not a shock to the system. role grabbing rebounds, playing solid defense and scor- The muscles are primed and ready. They may not react ing a few opportunistic baskets. I was eager to show the same way but the rest of the body can adjust its my middle-aged self I could still knock down the mid- actions to grab the rebound. range jumper.

I’m now almost two years into my new league.

I didn’t do too badly that first game. I scored a half The agility and quickness won’t return to what I dozen points, notched a few assists and played strong remember. But in their place is something more defense. Everything was good until the next day. Achy valuable and durable: experience. Experience shows knees and throbbing muscles were expected but mi- that change is possible and that the team, not the nor problems. It was when I stepped out of bed that individual, is the key. the real scale of the problem hit me with the force of Losing a step is inevitable. Losing the game isn’t. CLO LeBron James driving the lane at full speed. I couldn’t straighten my back.

I recovered to the point where I could play the next week but it became clear I’d lost a step. My feet got caught up when making a quick cut. My jump shot was shaky. But the biggest realization was that the syn- Mike Prokopeak apses connecting my brain to my body simply weren’t Editor in Chief firing the same. mikep@ChiefLearningOfficer.com

Preparing leaders for change is necessary. So is assessing your team’s agility.

4 Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com

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7

CONTENTS A

pril

2020 10 Your Career Mark Boccia of Royal Caribbean Cruises shares his career journey; Stella Cannon of SAC Wireless talks 5G; and people share what they’re reading.

34 Profile The Wolf of Warfare Ashley St. John Karen Wolf, chief learning officer at ManTech International, keeps her workforce on the cutting edge of new technologies and digital transformation.

58 Case Study The Golden Arches Go Digital

Sarah Fister Gale McDonald’s new Archways to Careers app gives employees access to live education advisers to help them plan for the future.

62 Business Intelligence Seeking Measurement Champions

Ashley St. John What you are measuring, and how you are measuring it, will be key to achieving true workforce transformation in the future.

Correction The March profile of Soni Basi should have listed her title as vice president of global talent, Allergan.

ON THE COVER: PHOTO BY BENJAMIN C. TANKERSLEY

8 Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com

A pril 2020

CONTENTS

24 S K I L L I N G LATEST THINKING ON

52 Features

24 40

Change in the Era of Digital Transformation Mark Marone It’s time to stop hiding behind the notion that change is hard.

It won’t help organizations navigate the VUCA world.

Transformative Developments in Measurement

46

46 Experts

16 GROWING DIVERSE TALENT

Rosina L. Racioppi Gender Parity: A Journey, Not an Initiative

18 MAKING THE GRADE

Lee Maxey 5 Predictions for the Evolution of Learning

David Vance Six areas in particular are poised to transform our profession in the coming decade.

20 ACCOUNTABILITY

Reskilling vs. Upskilling

22 ON THE FRONT LINE

Elizabeth Loutfi Lately, it’s become easy — and common — to use reskilling and upskilling interchangeably. But they are, in fact, different.

52 Grow Multicultural Leaders With Coaching

Nadia Nassif An accurate assessment of development needs, especially for foreign-born employees, can help sharpen skills and retention.

Connect with us.

40

Jack J. Phillips & Patti P. Phillips The Power of Objectives

David DeFilippo Organizational Fiduciary: A CLO’s Priority

66 IN CONCLUSION

Jacob Morgan 3 Trends Shaping Future Leaders

Resources 4 Editor’s Letter

Grabbing the Rebound

Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com 9

YOUR CAREER

Career Advice From

Mark Boccia CHIEF LEARNING OFFICER, ROYAL CARIBBEAN CRUISES LTD.

Mark Boccia, chief learning officer for Royal Caribbean Cruises, answers our questions about his career and the time he’s spent in L&D. What attracted you to learning and development?

I always enjoyed school and I wondered if one day I could have a job where I’m a professional student. In L&D you can do just that. I’m always learning new subject matter while supporting different projects across all areas of the business.

I’m constantly staying on top of the latest news and technology in our field to come up with innovative ways to design and deliver creative learning experiences. That’s what I love about our discipline — we’re always learning.

What are some first steps a leader should take when designing and implementing new workforce learning strategies?

The first step is to articulate the test-and-learn approach. Getting buy-in from senior leaders is critical, but it doesn’t have to be from the entire organization at first. I’m a big proponent of smaller pilots in order to test and learn — and fail fast. I look for stakeholders who support ongoing professional development because deep down they believe in learning and they are eager to support pilots. From there, I let the results and the data speak for itself. Marketing the successes (or failures) of pilot tests helps bring the rest of the organization on board. Thus, I advocate for the “scrappy and fast” approach and make small, incremental bets over time to get early results versus trying to align absolutely everyone across the organization at first on one giant bet. The effort to do so, especially in large matrix organizations, can take months. Meanwhile, time marches on and your workforce strategy still remains an idea on paper that has yet to prove itself.

How did you get your start at Royal Caribbean?

How has the use of learning technology evolved?

My hotel career spanned two decades. I was ready to venture into new territory to assume greater responsibility as a CLO and build an L&D function from the ground up. It was a natural transition from hotels to the cruise industry, though there’s still plenty to learn, especially the nuances of the maritime industry.

Marriott International 2005-08: manager, global sales and marketing training

Marriott International 2008-09: director, food and beverage standards, training development 2008

2005

10 Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com

2009

We used to design for desktop with mobile devices as an afterthought. Today, everything is mobile-first. This challenges us with the amount of text we use, graphics and the types of user interaction. Beyond this, we’re competing for screen time among all the other social platforms

Marriott International 2009-15: senior director, global operations — training

Marriott International 2015-17: vice president, learning and development 2015

Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. 2017-present: chief learning officer

2017 2020

that seek the users’ attention. Digital learning for the workforce must be as creative and addictive as scrolling through Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn. We’re even experimenting with digital marketing techniques like clickbait to keep learners engaged.

What advice do you have for other CLOs who are responsible for the learning and development of a global workforce?

You must get out of your office and into the field to see, hear and experience your organization from different parts of the globe. Learning programs must take into consideration both global and local needs, and to do this right requires more than a phone call or email-based survey.

Having “boots on the ground” and relationship-building with executives helps establish feedback loops with each of the locations, which in turn helps inform program design, communications and change management messaging, and the extent of implementation support needed with new programs.

How do you address discomfort about the future of work in your own workforce?

The conversation used to focus on upskilling the workforce with content faster. However, with the pace of change, content becomes exponentially outdated. Instead, we’re focused on building the capacity for individuals to learn in the flow of work. We build up a person’s capacity to learn by helping them ask better and deeper questions, think critically through the inordinate amount of data at their fingertips, and employ creative design thinking practices to help flush out ideas and embody an ever-curious mindset.

What is your favorite piece of career advice?

Always have something to contribute to the conversation when you’re in a meeting. Share your voice, share your informed perspective, and don’t just show up and sit there. The more you contribute, the more you’re noticed, sought out for advice and asked to participate in projects.

What’s in store for Royal Caribbean this year?

A major priority for us in 2020 is to deploy an enterprisewide learning program called Conversations that Connect, which helps leaders make meaningful connections with their employees and provides them with a structure for giving feedback, navigating difficult conversations and having career development conversations. CLO Know someone with an incredible career journey?

We want to hear from you. Send your nomination to Elizabeth Loutfi at eloutfi@ChiefLearningOfficer.com.

SM

S E T I B ALL

stions. fire que id p a r ers our ia answ c c o B k Mar

The most important part of learning is: L&D professionals modeling the learning behaviors we expect in others. If we aren’t learning, attending conferences, taking classes and contributing to our profession, how can we expect others outside of the learning profession to do so?

The most overrated trend in L&D is: Gamification. Yes, learning must engage the learner, and certainly elements of fun and competition through digital means contribute toward the overall participant experience. However, I caution when the majority of the development effort, resources and dollars go toward pure game design. The team can lose sight of the broader learning purpose.

Learning is essential to an organization because: Organizations constantly evolve and there’s a balance needed between developing the present-day workforce and preparing for the future.

The biggest L&D industry misconception is: That everything can be measured and reported in black and white business metrics.

There are plenty of instances in life where we learn but we don’t stop to formally measure and evaluate experiences in a clinical sense. We know deep down that learning, growth and enrichment contribute toward being a better human being.

Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com 11

YOUR CAREER

What Are You Reading?

Everybody Lies

By Seth Stephens-Davidowitz It’s a storytelling look at what big data from social media really tells us about people. Recommended for talent and learning leaders looking to better understand how to gain insights from analytics.

— David Campbell, chief learning officer, Children’s Health

Disrupt Yourself

The Deepest Well

By Whitney Johnson

By Nadine Burke Harris

I’m reading the new edition of “Disrupt Yourself.” I’m fascinated by the way [Johnson’s] work on the S-curve of learning applies to workforce development, career changes and personal growth. When faced with a new task or job, we all start from inexperience, then move into rapid learning and engagement, then level out at the mastery stage where we eventually get bored. Identifying those employees who have been at the mastery stage too long will help an organization harness their experience and keep them engaged by moving them to a different area or changing their tasks. I look forward to implementing this knowledge in my workplace!

It highlights the new field around ACEs (adverse childhood experiences) and the body’s disrupted stress response and a variety of subsequent health problems in people with high ACE scores. This research has huge implications for the workplace, from simply managing stress-related health care costs to understanding how stress impacts employees in the workplace, to building individual resiliency and adaptability, destigmatizing mental health at work, and building diverse and inclusive work environments. And it’s a great read — reminding me of Brené Brown’s style [of] mixing personal stories with research. (The audio version is wonderful.)

— Katrina Reiniers-Jackson, training and development associate, Bunim Murray Productions

The Power of Moments By: Chip and Dan Heath Our workplace book club has been reading “The Power of Moments” by Chip and Dan Heath. It’s about identifying those moments that shape our lives (the peaks, the pits and the transitions) and intentionally creating those defining moments for yourself, your family, your teams and your organization.

— Tammy Gedak, HR consultant, Saskatchewan Legislative Assembly

Chief Learning Officer wants to hear from you: What’s at the top of your reading list?

Send submissions to Elizabeth Loutfi at eloutfi@ChiefLearningOfficer.com.

12 Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com

— Bridgette Morehouse, CEO and founder, LeadHuman, and former L&D head, Ford Motor Co.

YOUR CAREER

Top of Mind The Race to Develop America’s 5G Workforce Stella Cannon Stella Cannon, head of talent and organizational development at SAC Wireless, a Nokia company, shares her insights on the challenges faced by the 5G workforce.

T Stella Cannon SAC Wireless

he skills needed among telecom tower technicians to deploy 5G puts the global race for this transformational technology at risk. 5G promises to create 3 million new jobs and spur $500 billion in economic growth with exponentially faster connections and significantly larger data capacities. However, according to the Department of Labor, the U.S. faces a critical tower worker shortage. It’s estimated that there are approximately 27,000 tower workers today, with projections that 20,000 more are needed.

5G is expected to disrupt nearly every job sector across the world as a new generation of technologies enables more automation. Nearly every industry will be disrupted with a need to shift skill sets. Up to 3 million jobs could be created from 5G, according to a report from Accenture.

SAC develops, builds, integrates and maintains 5G cell sites, helping customers keep the world connected. In a fast-moving global transformation like this, getting and retaining telecom technicians poses the biggest barrier to 5G deployment. Already facing a limited supply of qualified techs, SAC’s focus is on attracting, recruiting, training and retaining the next generation of employees to deploy these new technologies. Barriers to growing this workforce include lack of awareness of career opportunities in telecom and physically demanding work at heights of up to 500 feet while wearing 50 pounds of gear.

It’s important to get creative with where to curate a pipeline of workers who can translate their past experience into what’s needed today. We’ve found that military veterans have skills that are immediately translatable, like strong work ethic, a strict discipline around safety, leadership, teamwork and problem-solving skills, all valuable for our industry. Partnering

According to

Stella

What L&D trend are you most looking forward to this year?

14 Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com

with nonprofits that provide training and job placement to veterans who make the transition has helped us gain momentum.

Once hired, the focus shifts to upskilling candidates to perform the role using a blended approach of e-learning, on-the-job training, mentoring and certifications.

We recently overhauled our 15,000-square-foot national training center with labs on antennas and cabling, rigging, ropes and equipment installation in addition to several 35- to 50-foot indoor and outdoor training towers. Our new curriculum includes two weeks of e-learning to acquire foundational knowledge, one week of practical application in the tower training center climbing towers, rigging, performing emergency rescues and applying first aid and CPR, followed by working on-the-job with a mentor. Technical skills will continue to become more complex, so we also expanded several satellite training centers to conduct just-in-time training and ongoing recertifications in the field.

Although it takes 6-12 months before a tower tech is fully competent, turnover can range 50-60 percent in the first year. Height, particularly when working in harsh weather, and travel are the biggest hurdles of keeping someone in the industry beyond their first year.

Retaining tower technicians by having a strong employee experience, effective leadership and career development are essential. Thoughtfully designed training promoting continual on-the-job learning enables workers to grow critical skills needed today while building their careers.

It’s important for organizations with similar challenges to create clear pathways to upward mobility. On average, 30-40 percent of our military veterans get promoted at SAC. And when they someday want to stop climbing, there are opportunities to lead construction projects on the ground.

Finding people with the talents and passion for this type of work combined with a strong training program and an opportunity to build a real career in a company with an engaging employee experience takes us one step closer to winning the race to 5G. CLO Chief Learning Officer wants to hear from you: What are you thinking about? Send your thoughts to Elizabeth Loutfi at eloutfi@ChiefLearningOfficer.com.

Using augmented/virtual reality to enhance the learning experience, particularly in an environment where workers face safety challenges. Having new hires learn how to make life-ordeath decisions in a simulated environment is a game changer.

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GROWING DIVERSE TALENT

Gender Parity: A Journey, Not an Initiative Achieving gender parity is a slow, arduous process • BY ROSINA L. RACIOPPI

I Rosina L. Racioppi is president and CEO of WOMEN Unlimited Inc.

n my interactions with people across the diversity and inclusion spectrum, I often hear their frustration and discouragement. “I’m tired.” “Not enough results for the effort expended.” “Why haven’t we gotten further along after all this time?” From managers to D&I officers to CLOs to CEOs, there is a desire to see gender parity take hold faster.

In the well-intentioned hope of speeding up results, efforts are frequently focused on initiatives rather than the bigger picture. For example, organizations frequently view success as simply increasing the number of women in visible roles, failing to go deep in creating a vibrant pipeline of talented women. That’s a major part of the problem. Achieving sustainable gender parity is a journey, not a single initiative.

The key impediment to organizationwide diversity and inclusion is systemic and rooted in a century-old, male-focused culture that remains solidly imbedded in most companies, sometimes obviously and sometimes subtly. Changing that deeply ingrained culture will not happen through narrowly targeted initiatives. To achieve the needed shifts in organizational culture, corporations must begin with an honest, corporatewide examination of behaviors and how they can be changed. It’s a journey that calls for patience, perseverance and partnerships.

So, what are the benchmarks of a successful journey to achieving gender parity?

First, benchmark organizations have defined pathways for populating the entire organization with diverse talent. It’s not just about more women CEOs or corporate leaders. It’s about having talented women in place at every level. It’s about hiring, advancing, developing and retaining them.

In these organizations, managers suspend judgment and assess head-on the behaviors, habits and attitudes that create barriers to women advancing. They offer more stretch assignments to women, identify opportunities for women to have profit and loss responsibilities and provide frank, career-advancing feedback, not just in annual reviews, but throughout the year.

Women in benchmark organizations are willing to initiate conversations with managers, mentors and sponsors about organizational structures and attitudes they see impeding their advancement. They become vocal advocates for their own success and speak out about the avenues to career fulfillment they would like to pursue.

Finally, these organizations have metrics in place

16 Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com

across all levels that evaluate and monitor what’s working and what’s not. Then they reevaluate their efforts accordingly. The journey will have its ups and downs, with no one path working for everyone. However, unless results are measured, mistakes will be repeated and opportunities missed.

There is as much to be undone as there is to be done.

Through my work at WOMEN Unlimited, I’ve found that as organizations embrace this journey, changes begin to happen. They are often not the changes you find on a flow chart. They are subtle shifts in attitudes and behaviors that catch on and begin to create a ripple effect of success. In time, patience, perseverance and partnerships start to pay off. We see more women with P&L responsibility early in their careers, more women representing their organizations at industry events, and more women, slowly but consistently, entering the talent pipeline for advancement to middle- and top-level positions.

It’s important to note that sustainable gender parity does not allow for bypassing shifts in organizational culture. Fortunately, there are organizations in place to help corporations identify where the shifts are needed and the best practices for making them happen. WOMEN Unlimited has partnered with three of them: the Women’s Business Collaborative, Paradigm for Parity and Catalyst.

Bringing together individuals committed to gender parity from a cross section of industries, these organizations: • Shine a spotlight on strategies that work.

• Inform and educate managers at all levels about the signs and dangers of unconscious bias.

• Share empirical and anecdotal research findings.

• Advocate for full partnerships of men and women leaders.

• Provide proven approaches to measuring and monitoring progress.

If the journey to gender parity were an easy one, we would be at our destination already. However, it is a slow, arduous process because there is as much to be undone as there is to be done. As shifts in attitude and culture continue to take hold, the frustration of efforts outweighing results will also shift. CLO

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MAKING THE GRADE

5 Predictions for the Evolution of Learning Change is on the horizon • BY LEE MAXEY

A Lee Maxey is CEO of MindMax, a marketing and enrollment management services company.

s winter turns to spring, there are signs that learning’s climate is changing too. These changes portend some long-lasting shifts in the way we deliver and receive corporate and post-​secondary education.

For your consideration, here are five of my predictions for the next five to 10 years.

Rural, private colleges will go bust at a ballooning rate. Schools like Western Illinois University and Alfred University will find it increasingly hard to compete for students who will look for affordable community colleges or public universities in larger cities a few hours away. When a school is small, say less than 2,000 undergraduates, with a limited brand, the faculty layoffs and belt-tightening will only take administrators so far. Schools that survive will change their model to serve older students.

Higher education and corporate universities will merge. In January, Johns Hopkins told the world it was blowing up its MBA curriculum.

MBA applications are down 14 percent at Johns Hopkins, and the university has to find a new way to attract students. Administrators say the school’s new curriculum will include consulting projects with hospitals and drug makers. That move foreshadows more intertwining of business schools and corporate universities. This shift will see corporate universities inviting higher education institutions onto the corporate campus to deliver the latter’s bona fides and, in return, recognize the corporate university’s curriculum with degrees.

Costs and credentials will blow up. Like the 1970s arcade game Asteroids, in which players blew apart rocky space remnants into smaller and smaller pieces, the cost of a monolithic, four- and twoyear education will get chunked up into just the right amount of credentialing at a price learners can finally afford. There will still be traditional master’s degrees costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But the willingness to pay for those has more to do with the opaque way in which a prestigious school markets its degrees and admits students than learners and corporations truly valuing the degree. How is it that Georgia Tech’s online master’s degree in computer science costs about $7,000 while Columbia University’s comparable online degree costs more than $60,000?

18 Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com

U.S. higher education will reclaim its brand overseas. The number of international students studying in the U.S. at all levels declined by 2.7 percent from March 2018 to March 2019, according to quarterly data on student visa holders published by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. For the past few years, our country’s immigration and foreign policies, right or wrong, have tarnished the view other countries have of the U.S. as a place to obtain a degree. In framing how people ultimately decide what to vote on, political strategist James Carville coined the phrase, “The economy, stupid.” As politicians realize the economic benefit of foreign students, who contribute more than $44 billion annually and nearly 500,000 jobs according to the Department of Commerce, government and educators will burnish America’s reputation overseas and step up calls for overseas applicants at U.S. universities.

Schools that survive will change their model to serve older students.

Lifelong learning will go mainstream. According to a 2017 article published in U.S. News & World Report, “Among the 227 online bachelor’s programs that provided student age data to U.S. News, the average was 32 years old.” Rapidly developing technologies for health care, manufacturing and power-generation, to name a few industries, are creating entirely new roles within companies. For example, have you heard of a bug bounty hunter?

That’s a hacker hired by a company to find defects in code to exploit. How about a machine learning engineer? They’re experts who master data mining and artificial intelligence. These jobs, like thousands of other newly evolving ones, will require people to constantly refresh their skills through formal and informal learning.

To be sure, there’s a lot on the horizon. I’m eager to see what the next season holds for learning. CLO

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ACCOUNTABILITY

The Power of Objectives Setting objectives increases performance • BY JACK J. PHILLIPS AND PATTI P. PHILLIPS

A

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

recent project evaluation brought into focus the power of setting objectives for talent development programs. The setting is a major telecom company, and it involves the entire sales team attending a comprehensive sales training program. We evaluated the impact and ROI of this major investment.

In initial discussions with the vice president of sales, we asked for his objectives for this program. After some thought he offered two: “We would like to see something like a 10 percent increase in sales with existing customers, maybe within six months of attending the program. We would also like for participants to pick up a few new accounts, maybe at least one additional account every month.”

These objectives were very specific. Unfortunately, he was the only person who knew about them.

The program had almost 20 learning objectives focused on all the skills that sales associates need to be successful. In the follow-up evaluations, the results were disappointing for the program owner.

There were even comments from some participants stating, “I didn’t realize I was supposed to increase my sales,” and “I didn’t know the company wanted me to obtain new accounts.”

Although increasing sales and obtaining new accounts should be obvious, it’s not always obvious to the participants unless we place the objectives in front of them and discuss them. We need to indicate how and when they should use the skills (application) and the consequences that this should have in their work (impact). This situation brings into focus the power of objectives.

If you have no objectives, you may have some performance, but usually not much. In the case of the telecom program, there were no objectives at the impact level, and there were disappointing results, though sales increased.

You will have slightly better results if you develop vague objectives such as “increase sales with existing customers” or “obtain new accounts.” That creates an expectation, but it’s not very specific. It is much better to have very specific objectives such as “increase sales with existing customers by 10 percent in six months” or “obtain at least one new account per month.” These are the OKRs. Still, there is another issue: Objectives are usually listed as minimum acceptable performance. This is how we frame objectives in learning programs, for example.

Whether it is a reaction objective, learning objective, application objective or impact objective, it’s the minimum acceptable performance. However, as Doerr points out, if we have stretch objectives, we have even greater performance. The ultimate performance occurs when participants stretch themselves.

A word of caution — objectives are tools for progress, not weapons for performance review. We don’t want to remind participants that they didn’t meet the stretch objective at performance review time. If you do, you will kill any enthusiasm for stretch objectives in the future.

In summary, here are the rules for objectives: • They must be measurable and represent minimum acceptable performance.

• Fewer objectives are better than many objectives.

• Involve subject matter experts and key stakeholders.

• Keep objectives relevant to the situation, program and key stakeholders.

• Create stretch objectives, but make sure they are achievable.

• Allow for the flexibility to change as conditions change.

• Failure is OK; process improvement is the key.

There has been much research about objectives • Objectives are tools for progress, not weapons for conducted since the 1960s and documented in many performance review. books, including our own, “Beyond Learning Objec- • Most objectives should be time-bound. tives: Develop Measurable Objectives That Link to the • Objectives provide the focus for design, developBottom Line.” We are impressed with what John Doerr ment, implementation and evaluation. presented in his best-selling book, “Measure What MatThe bottom line: If you want performance, set ters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation an objective. If you want better performance, be Rock the World with OKRs.” In Doerr’s terminology, specific. If you want the best performance, have a OKRs are objectives with key results. stretch objective. CLO

Objectives are tools for progress, not weapons for performance review.

20 Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com

ON THE FRONT LINE

Organizational Fiduciary: A CLO’s Priority Facilitating alignment of organizational goals and people practices • BY DAVID DeFILIPPO

I David DeFilippo is principal of DeFilippo Leadership Inc. and an executive coach at Harvard Business School.

t is often said that an organization’s most important asset is its human capital, the employees who occupy the firm’s various roles. The foundational tenet of investment management is to yield a return which is referred to as “alpha” based on the investment of those resources over time and, in turn, for the benefit of shareholders.

Public, private and nonprofit organizations all manage these financial assets to create value for their internal and external stakeholders. The world has both benefited and suffered from investment practices throughout our contemporary history with bull and bear markets that have revealed when fiduciary oversight has worked well and the converse.

By comparison, chief learning officers and human resources as a whole have a similar responsibility for the people in their organizations. So, should CLOs consider their role comparable to that of the fiduciary of their organization’s most precious asset, its people?

A fiduciary refers to the responsibility that one party has in a relationship with another to act entirely on the other party’s behalf and best interest. It is defined as the person or organization who acts on behalf of another person or persons to manage assets and is considered the highest standard of care. The fiduciary standard has a long history dating back to the 1726 case Keech v. Sandford, whose ruling established that a fiduciary must avoid the possibility of a conflict of interest. The “prudent person rules” followed in 1830, which established that fiduciaries must act first and foremost for the needs of the beneficiary.

So, with this author’s legal history research exhausted, I propose the following takeaways for CLOs and senior learning and talent practitioners.

Portfolio analysis: Whether for the purposes of an initial or ongoing assessment, and analogous to an investment analyst building a client portfolio to meet one’s retirement planning needs, learning practitioners must design a process to ensure alignment with the organization’s goals and to gather the right data to uncover the current and future state capability requirements. For example, what are the firm’s strategic goals over the next three to five years and how does that plan inform the human capital needs? With these facts in hand, CLOs can define the plan to focus on the workforce’s knowledge and skill requirements.

Investment decisions: With this guidance available, building sustainable organizational capability requires

22 Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com

a planful approach where practitioners need to make investment choices. Determining which roles have differential impact and thereby more or less importance to an organization is a critical part of this prioritization process. As described in Mark Huselid and Brian Becker’s 2005 article, “A Players or A Positions,” there is an organizational calculus whereby the roles in the organization are stratified as A, B or C roles to clarify their relative importance, and the individuals who are high-performing and show strong potential are also identified. Much like one’s asset allocation between stocks and bonds, it is the combination of these two analyses that leads to purposeful talent planning and the delivery of the appropriate portfolio of talent programs, processes and tools.

Fiduciaries must act first and foremost for the needs of the beneficiary.

Rebalance over time: As is the case with an investment portfolio, it is prudent to evaluate performance of those assets over time in order to adjust holdings to mitigate risk and maximize performance. In an organizational context for CLOs, this means recognizing and adjusting based on internal and external considerations.

These may include business cycle changes and senior leader transitions, as well as the competitive landscape and disruptive industry innovation. These factors are the impetus to evaluate plans and priorities to ensure that they remain relevant to the organization. In this way, CLOs may need to rebalance their portfolio to adjust to this dynamic environment to ensure the organization and employee interests are aligned.

When we consider the range of human capital practices in which CLOs may be involved, such as the employee life cycle, leadership development and technical competency development to name a few, realizing a return on these processes is a central responsibility and objective. However, the CLO’s most significant function is that of the organizational fiduciary to facilitate the alignment of the institution’s goals and its people practices so that both can flourish simultaneously. CLO

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Managing Change in the Era of

Dig it al T r a n s f o r m a t i o n It’s time to stop hiding behind the notion that change is hard. While true, it won’t help organizations navigate an increasingly VUCA world. Here are some strategies for the new decade.

24 Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com

BY MARK MARONE

T

he new decade promises a whole new approach for the speed of change.

VUCA — or volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous — has gone from military jargon to an overused business acronym. Organizations are recognizing the need to exist in a state of constant readiness to respond to new information about changing customer requirements, stakeholder expectations, regulation and competition. It’s a matter of survival. The life expectancy of public companies has plummeted. It’s estimated that nearly 1 in 10 public companies fail each year, a fourfold increase since 1965, according to the BCG Henderson Institute.

Managing change more effectively has shot to the top of the priority list for many organizations, with 81 percent of respondents to the 2019 Deloitte “Global Human Capital Trends” survey saying the 21st century will require a special focus on “leading through complexity and ambiguity.”

The goals of change management — creating confident, positive and optimistic stakeholders with the skills and commitment to ensure new initiatives succeed — aren’t new.

The need for effective change management isn’t new, either — humans have had to work together to adapt to changing conditions and circumstances for millennia.

Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com 25

What’s New in Change Management?

The simple answer to what’s new in change management is the context in which leaders must lead change.

Once upon a time, “change” was something temporary in the workplace. Organizations toughened themselves to get through it and get back to normal. That time has passed. Today, change is the regular work, and with this shift came the concept of change fatigue.

At the same time, artificial intelligence is coming into its own. Its implementation across nearly every industry is bringing disruption and intense pressure to adapt for organizations and employees alike. The impact is predicted to be on a scale unlike anything seen before. According to research conducted in 2017

by PwC, global GDP could be up to 14 percent higher in 2030 as a result of AI — the equivalent of an additional $15.7 trillion.

A 2019 survey of 5,376 full-time employees across 20 countries conducted

by Dale Carnegie Training found that 72 percent say they are either already being impacted by AI in their roles or expect to be within the next five years.

Complicating the situation further, many in leadership positions are charged with managing teams made up not only of traditional full-time employees, but also contract or “gig” workers with whom leaders may not have long-standing, trusting relationships. In addition, some or all of those employees may also work remotely, making it more challenging to assess and address individual reactions and commitment to change.

And just when people who are innately adaptable are most needed to deal with this accelerated pace of change, the American workforce is getting older. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that by 2024, nearly a quarter of the U.S. workforce will be 55 or older, with about a third of those workers older than 65. That’s bad news given that some research (but not all, it should be noted) suggests older workers can be more resistant to change.

courage, a genuine openness to new information and learning, and a positive attitude toward change.

Yet even leaders in organizations that get traditional project-based change management right are finding it challenging to accept that change can — and should — come from new places (think frontline employees, customers, and through partnerships with vendors and even competitors). Unfortunately, it’s often senior leaders who are an organization’s own worst enemy when it comes to true transformational change.

Take the example of a large Midwestern bearing manufacturer faced with eroding market share for a $40 million business unit, its largest. The vice president in charge launched a project to drive manufacturing efficiencies using an AI-based system to identify and address key process bottlenecks in scheduling and inventory management.

He did everything right when it came to leading the change initiative: He shared the vision for the change outcome and built trust through a process of weekly and monthly communications and meetings.

He involved the employees being impacted by the AI deployment from the beginning. He gave everyone a chance to ask questions and share ideas, and he reduced uncertainty by addressing concerns and being transparent throughout the process, providing training and upskilling in parallel with each step of the deployment and reassuring his people they wouldn’t be “left out in the cold.”

In the end, the project was acclaimed as a tremendous success. It improved overall service levels and ultimately resulted in a 15 percent growth rate while increasing earnings before interest and taxes by 18 percent.

But when asked about it, instead of being elated, the vice president admitted he was actually disappointed.

He and his team were frustrated that despite senior management’s awareness and acknowledgment of the program’s success, none of the learnings and changes were shared with or adopted by other business units, resulting in what they saw as huge missed opportunities for similar AI-driven projects across the wider organization. For the vice president, it was a serious failure from that perspective. Today’s environment rewards leadership teams that are quick to identify and ready to embrace opportunities for transformational change.

His business unit had to change — the status quo (losing money and market share) wasn’t working. And they did change. But for organizations to survive and thrive today, they need forward-thinking leadership

Psychological safety is among the most critical elements of a culture that supports team effectiveness and innovation.

Lessons for Leaders Given all of this, there is no doubt that learning and development professionals should have change management on their radar. As you assess your organization’s current change readiness, it’s essential to recognize that success today goes beyond leaders’ capacity to guide the implementation of formal change initiatives. It’s not about simply managing change anymore. It’s about leading teams to incubate, innovate, implement and propagate change. What is needed is leadership agility, which requires 26 Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com

Digital Natives Will Soon Be 20% of the Workforce Are you ready?

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What Is Digital Transformation, Really?

Digital transformation involves completely rethinking how an organization uses technology and how those technologies interact with processes and people across every area of the business. While the concept may be clear enough, the path forward isn’t a straight shot, and it will be different for every organization.

Approaches vary. The speed of technological advances and resulting influence on customer expectations is outpacing the rate at which many organizations are used to changing. That leaves some leadership teams feeling completely overwhelmed, especially in companies with changeaverse cultures. Others are moving forward with limited, internal-facing projects and experiments to automate manual work in select areas of the business. A few are boldly developing comprehensive strategies and investing tremendous resources to try to jump ahead of the competition and preempt disruptors.

The essential challenge of digital transformation may be this: No one can predict the technological advances of tomorrow and their possible applications. This is a race with no finish line, which is exactly why an organization needs agility from its leaders. Successful digital transformation will require a resilient corporate culture that embraces change and learns from mistakes, listens closely to customers and employees for innovative ideas, collaborates effectively and implements learning quickly across the organization.

Digital transformation isn’t a sprint. It’s more like embarking on a neverending marathon.

— Mark Marone 28 Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com

that will act on opportunities for continuous improvement before they are forced to.

How to Boost Leadership Agility What can CLOs and L&D professionals do to help boost leadership agility in their organizations? Consider these four strategies to strengthen leaders’ mindsets, skills and behaviors when it comes to change.

First, help leadership teams take an honest look at themselves. It’s not easy. People have different innate orientations toward change.

Where are each of your organization’s leaders on the change acceptance continuum? What does that mean for the leadership team as a unit?

Are some leaders behaving in ways that prevent successful change from happening or moving across the organization? When change initiatives fail, as they often do, is your leadership team still playing the blame game?

If there are issues, it’s imperative to understand why. Are they worried about losing influence? Uncomfortable with technology?

Having a hard time handling the stress and worry that comes with change fatigue? There are strategies for dealing with all of these issues, but they require skilled communication to uncover root causes and a commitment of time and resources to mitigate them.

Second, develop leaders’ ability to create an environment of psychological safety that encourages learning and risk-taking. Research is pointing to psychological safety as among the most critical elements of a culture that supports team effectiveness and innovation. And since employees find themselves working on teams more than ever, that importance can’t be overemphasized. Companies are finding a competitive advantage in using new technologies to derive insights from the abundance of data now available — but the value lies in learning from the data and acting quickly in response to it.

Yet many of today’s leaders did not grow up in a business environment that encouraged psychological safety and risk-taking. No more than a few years ago, top-down objective-setting, management by exception and forced-distribution performance ratings were standard practice. They still are in many companies. And just as grown children typically adopt parenting techniques they learned in their own formative years, otherwise good leaders may not know how to create psychological safety without coaching. Learning leaders can help.

A third strategy is to assist leaders in skillfully communicating change and recognizing natural change advocates. It’s important to recognize that while people’s initial reaction to change varies, reaction is different from commitment. No matter what their initial reaction is, an individual’s commitment to change can be developed. It begins with skillful, transparent communication of the vision for the change in a way that connects it to the organization’s purpose, appeals to employees’ motives and makes the change objective clear.

For teams that include remote workers, the lack of face time can make it harder to identify those needing extra help getting through change. With fewer live opportunities to communicate with remote employees, leaders need to be especially skilled and deliberate.

It’s a leader’s responsibility to calm fears, address concerns and help each person see the importance of their role in the change and the personal benefit that will result. It requires the ability to see the change from others’ MANAGING CHANGE continued on page 64

Robots aren’t coming to take your jobs They’re already here Our research shows that many CLOs and HR managers have put off planning for the changes AI & automation are bringing to their industries.

But by planning, recruiting, and upskilling your workforce now, you can use these technological disruptions to change (or protect) where you stand among your competitors.

It’s not too late. Join Southern New Hampshire University and a panel of industry leaders to learn how to begin planning for the competitive and workforce challenges your organization is already facing.

AI & AUTOMATION PANEL DISCUSSION CLO Symposium, Bonita Springs, FL

Your Reality, Our Research, and a Path Forward Day 2 (April 7) | Room: Estero A | 2:45 – 3:45 PM

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SNHU.edu/CLO

YOU’VE GOT TALENT BRING OUT THE BEST IN IT Pete Martinez, Vice President of Talent Management at the Adecco Group.

Pete is a recognized strategic leader for transforming business goals into learning results.

He leads passionate teams to develop creative, engaging training that links daily practice to fantastic outcomes in leadership, sales, and operations.

“A key focus area for our company is keeping learners engaged beyond their first six months of training in the field.

We want learning to become part of each colleague’s day, as natural as checking email. To do that, we needed to create brief and relevant training accessible by all colleagues.

We partnered with DeVry University to build a series of webinars, classroom training and a one-week blitz on topics that colleagues tell us they want to learn about to do their work more effectively. Several topics are delivered virtually or on-site by DeVry, which our learners find instrumental to their continued development.”

We’re proud that our education partnership has helped Pete’s work align with his strong empathy for learners at all levels.

THANK YOU, PETE. YOU TEACH US WAYS TO BUILD PROGRESSIVE PATHS FOR EVERY COLLEAGUE YOU HIRE!

TALENT DEVELOPMENT • SKILLS GAP TRAINING • TALENT ACQUISITION In New York, DeVry University operates as DeVry College of New York. DeVry University is accredited by The Higher Learning Commission (HLC), www.hlcommission.org.

Keller Graduate School of Management is included in this accreditation. DeVry is certified to operate by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. Arlington Campus: 2450 Crystal Dr., Arlington, VA 22202. DeVry University is authorized for operation as a postsecondary educational institution by the Tennessee Higher Education Commission, www.tn.gov/thec.

Nashville Campus: 3343 Perimeter Hill Dr., Nashville, TN 37211. Unresolved complaints may be reported to the Illinois Board of Higher Education through the online complaint system http://complaints.ibhe.org/ or by mail to 1 N. Old State Capitol Plaza, Ste. 333, Springfield, IL 62701-1377. Program, course and extended classroom availability vary by location. In site-based programs, students will be required to take a substantial amount of coursework online to complete their program. ©2020 DeVry Educational Development Corp. All rights reserved. 3/20

Congratulations to our DeVryWORKS 2020 TEACH Award

winners. We can all learn from leaders like these!

T eamwork • E nergy • A ccountability • C ommunity • H EArT Cathy Konnik, Global Director of Learning & Development at Subway.

Cathy leads the way in providing development opportunities to the organization’s field audience, hired and maintained by franchise owners and contracted executives. She focuses her team on modern learning methods that lend themselves to technology-based implementation.

“We provide convenient, easy access to proper training— and we’ve learned that restaurants using our strong training tool demonstrate better performance on KPIs important to the business. Also, on day one, all team members gain access to tuition savings at six accredited online universities, including DeVry. This benefit enables our franchise owners to recruit and retain top talent…starting with those serving our guests every day. DeVry’s presence at our college fairs and events helps deliver the message that the organization cares about human capital and talent development.”

THANK YOU, CATHY. YOU TEACH US MUCH ABOUT THE STRATEGIC VALUE OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT! We’re proud that our education partnership has helped Cathy’s work promote a culture of care that supports team members who pursue a college education as working adults.

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W The business partnership team of

SPONSORED CONTENT

The tech behind LXP de-mystified Most people are familiar with a learning management system (LMS). But the emergence of the learning experience platform (LXP) has brought a variety of new enabling technologies which might be less familiar to the average learning professional.

same time, we typically adjust our expectations downward when it comes to using a search engine on corporate applications and systems.

Broadly speaking, search on many such systems has historically been of a much simpler type, designed to deal with structured data (i.e. information organized in a database) or to pick out particular words and phrases. This might be adequate for an LMS running solely e-learning modules and PDF documents. However, in a more diverse content environment where a fair amount of the data is unstructured, it’s unlikely to return particularly relevant results. This leads to valuable learning resources being at risk to be excluded from the search results.

For most of us, the important thing about any technology is not so much what it is as what you can do with it. If you belong to one of the 50% of companies who research tells us are likely to buy an LXP in the next 24 months,1 it helps to know something about these underpinning technologies. This glossary is intended to speed your learning about the technologies behind LXP.

Glossary Content Management System (CMS)

A CMS supports the organization, modification, and presentation of digital information. At the heart of almost all learning systems is content management technology. However, the classic LMS was designed to handle a very limited range of content types.

As bandwidth and computing power have increased over time, animations, video, games, and other content types moved into mainstream use for learning, and the LMS has struggled to keep up. As such, many people built learning portals (content managed websites) to supplement or front-end their LMS. The content management capabilities of an LXP start from a place of CMS power and sophistication. It assumes both a wide variety of content types and the ability of learners to generate and upload their own content to the system.

Search

The LXP brings onboard search up to the current state of the art, with AI-driven technology using natural language processing (NLP) that returns relevant, actionable results.

User-Generated Content (UGC)

In this context, UGC refers to the content on a system placed there by learners themselves.

UGC can include discussion threads, star ratings, image sharing, user-made videos, and a wide range of learner contributions.

Another important aspect of UGC is the ability to transfer valuable knowledge within the organization. A modern LXP should include the required technology to support UGC. Application Programming Interface (API)

An API allows an application to use the data or functionality of another application without getting into the wiring of how that other application works. We use APIs all the time — often without knowing it.

We’re all familiar with internet searching, and almost take for granted the AI and natural language processing (NLP) that goes into delivering quick, relevant research results. At the 1 McElvaney, P. New research points to a billion-dollar market for LXP. Learning Pool.

In the case of an LXP, APIs might be used to draw in data about courses on a third-party system. Additionally, APIs give learners access to the functionality of a curation app without ever leaving the LXP.

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Experience API (xAPI)

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

A specialized API created specifically for learning systems, xAPI makes it possible to record data about a wide range of learning experiences, both offline and online. It also allows this learning data to be collated with business data from other corporate systems.

In this context, the two main uses of AI within LXPs are providing personalized recommendations and conversational bots (virtual assistants).

Since the LXP is fundamentally about the learner experience, being able to accurately record and track those interactions is necessary in the platform.

Learning Record Store (LRS)

The principal function of an LRS is to store xAPI statements from a variety of platforms within an organization’s ecosystem. An LRS typically sits outside of the LMS or LXP and becomes the central source of truth.

The LRS also allows in-depth learning analytics since xAPI allows the recording of many data points. Coupled with the ability to correlate with the other sources of data within an ecosystem, L&D teams will have more insight into their learners and the effectiveness of their programs.

We are all familiar with AI-driven recommendations in our lives as consumers. In the case of learning, learners can record their preferences for what they want to learn on the LXP. The system can also make inferences based on their platform behavior and recommend relevant follow-on learning, experiences, or resources to complement their current learning.

Bots appear on many websites to help us navigate to what we need via text chat. Bots make use of natural language processing (NLP) to draw inferences and return relevant suggestions about what we’re trying to achieve. Bots help and support learners by answering queries and signposting the resources and experiences they need. The primary aim is to take friction out of the learning process, making it more accessible and attractive to learners.

For more information and to download the white paper Powering the Modern Learner Experience: Next-Generation Learning Tools Come of Age, visit learningpool.com.

Learning Pool is a full-service e-learning provider, offering a range of platform, courses and content creation services to over 750 organizations and 2 million learners in 21 countries. It offers a world-class suite of learning technology solutions to deliver on the “learning ecosystem” concept and provides a highly customized learning experience with effective, engaging content. Learning Pool has recently won several prestigious awards including Brandon Hall and Learning Technologies for Innovation. From its US headquarters in Boston, MA, Learning Pool provides services to Fortune 100 companies such as KPMG, AstraZeneca, AT&T, and many more.

PROFILE

The Wolf of Warfare Karen Wolf, chief learning officer at ManTech International, keeps her workforce on the cutting edge of new technologies and digital transformation.

BY ASHLEY ST. JOHN

T

he path to chief learning officer is often an unconventional one. Karen Wolf’s journey is especially compelling.

“I came to learning and development in a very odd career progression.

I spent 25 years as a special agent in the FBI,” said Wolf, CLO at ManTech International. “My background was in drug-related public corruption investigations — think dirty police officers stealing drugs and selling them on the street.”

In her current role, however, she’s no longer taking down crooked cops. At ManTech, an American defense contracting firm specializing in cybersecurity and IT, Wolf is responsible for the development of more than 9,000 employees who are passionate about protecting national security. The government contractor offers services in the defense, intelligence and federal civilian markets.

“For us, learning and development is not a benefit,” Wolf said. “It’s not something we offer to our employees like dental insurance. We don’t stay in business without our employees being on the cutting edge of new technologies and digital transformation, because that’s the services that we provide to the government — whatever the latest and greatest cutting-edge stuff is.”

Wolf’s position comes with its share of challenges.

She heads an L&D team of only five, responsible for the development of a geographically dispersed workforce with at least 80 percent of employees working offsite.

But her unique background prepared her for the role.

Becoming a Role Model In 1982, after getting her bachelor’s degree in communications and a stint with a public relations firm, Wolf enrolled in the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. She graduated in 1983 and began her career in law enforcement as a firearms instructor for the bureau.

“I had some big cases in the FBI that I was very proud of, that a ton of work went into — multiyearlong undercover investigations,” Wolf said. “I helped put a former 34 Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com

governor in jail for corruption in Louisiana. I worked some star-stalker cases when I was in Los Angeles.”

Wolf was one of the first 100 women hired by the FBI. In her first two field offices, she was the only female agent at times. This made it difficult to find female role models, which in part prompted Wolf’s next move.

“I really wanted to get back to the FBI Academy because when I went through the academy, there were no women on the faculty,” she said. “I think it really does help for women and people of color and minorities to have someone to look up to.”

“There’s nothing that makes a law enforcement officer more uncomfortable than not being in command of a great skill set.”

— Karen Wolf, chief learning officer, ManTech International Wolf ended up back at Quantico teaching in-classroom instruction in specialized areas of FBI investigations. But once she began teaching adults, she realized she didn’t really know what she was doing.

“There’s nothing that makes a law enforcement officer more uncomfortable than not being in command of a great skill set,” she said. “So, going back to school made a ton of sense.”

At the age of 45, Wolf enrolled at the University of Virginia and earned her master’s degree in education, followed by her doctorate in educational leadership.

The FBI paid for her degrees and then pushed her to move up the administrative ranks at the FBI Academy.

“They had somebody who now could wear both hats — being sworn law enforcement and also having gotten those degrees,” Wolf said.

In 2006, Wolf retired from the FBI and went to

PHOTOS BY BENJAMIN C. TANKERSLEY

Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com 35

PROFILE

work in the intelligence community doing instructional design and teaching as a subject matter expert. Then in 2010, a stroke of luck brought her to ManTech.

“I’d worked for Al Malinchak when he was in the FBI — he was my boss at the FBI Academy, and he retired and I took over his job,” she said. Malinchak then became CLO of ManTech. “I called him for a reference, and he said, ‘Heck, I’ve got a job open. Would you work for me again?’ He was a great boss, so that was kind of a no-brainer.”

A Unique Set of Challenges When Malinchak left ManTech in 2011, Wolf once again took over his role, this time as CLO. Working with a small department, it’s a big job. And it comes with a lot of challenges, one being a workforce dispersed across 46 U.S. states and 40 countries.

“At least 80 percent of our employees actually work at a customer site,” Wolf explained. “So, they’re on customer systems all day long, they’re performing the customers’ mission. They’re not necessarily in ManTech email. They’re not necessarily on ManTech systems. It’s not like I’ve got a captive audience that’s easy to reach out and touch.”

Due to the nature of their work, ManTech’s workforce also has a broad skill set, and offering a wide range of training is another challenge for Wolf.

“We have some folks who are in Afghanistan, who are providing support to the warfighter and who do very specific and technical work. They keep pieces of machinery running, they deploy mobile cell phone towers. So their training needs are different from somebody who is a data wrangler on a contract for the Department of Homeland Security,” Wolf said.

Despite these challenges, Wolf said she feels fortunate to have clarity in her mission, thanks to ManTech CEO Kevin Phillips’ 2020 strategic plan. The plan outlines ManTech’s top initiative: to be an employer of choice.

“In our industry, the way you become an employer of choice is to have learning and development opportunities that are far different from our competition and from what you see typically in the industry,” Wolf said.

career enablement through a partnership with Purdue Global University. The alliance stemmed from a problem that was addressed two years ago — the struggle of getting ManTech employees to pass the Certified Information Systems Security Professional training. The certification is often listed as a requirement on government contracts.

It’s a difficult exam requiring people to develop a broad knowledge base across 12 areas, and ManTech’s existing weeklong bootcamp to prepare employees wasn’t cutting it.

At the time, ManTech was in conversation with a new university alliance partner called Kaplan Education, which has since become Purdue Global University.

One of the things they offered was college courses that tracked to the certification. And once you have the certification, you also get credit for the courses.

“We were able to start putting employees through those cohorts to get the certifications [through] a much longer treatment of the material, much more academic, lots more practice,” Wolf said. “And we realized that people were passing the exam at a better rate.”

From that partnership, they then started talking about degrees that would suit the ManTech workforce. Purdue Global offered two degrees that were very popular among employees: a bachelor’s and a master’s in IT, and a bachelor’s and a master’s in cybersecurity. Wolf also identified a need for a degree in cloud computing and solutions, so their subject matter experts teamed with the academic faculty at Purdue Global to jointly develop that degree.

In 2019, they also developed a degree in data analytics.

According to Wolf, employees love the program.

They recently had a graduation and cake ceremony for their first 18 graduates.

“Sixteen of them have master’s degrees, and two actually did their bachelor’s degree in about a year and a half.

One of the reasons they could do a four-year bachelor’s degree in such a short period of time is many of them

Solutions That Stand Out One of the ways ManTech is setting itself apart is by pivoting from a culture of performance appraisal to one of career enablement, moving away from numeric ratings into a system of quarterly check-in conversations between managers and employees.

They are also moving the needle on 36 Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com

Karen Wolf, chief learning officer at defense contractor ManTech International, sees learning and development as essential to the success of the business.

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PROFILE

had those certifications, and with those certifications comes the articulated credit for those classes,” she said.

Currently, almost 5 percent of their workforce is involved in taking college degrees, with the goal of increasing that number to 10 percent in 2020.

Stephanie Flory, ManTech’s workforce development and technical training manager, attests to the program’s success.

“I used to run our career mobility program, and when we built our partnership with Purdue Global, that was a direct linkage to our folks who were seeking new opportunities in the company,” Flory said. “And that just blew up. It got so big and we had so much interest that I started doing more and more with ManTech U and ended up leaving my role to work full time under Karen.”

Another partnership, with Skillsoft, has been very positive. According to Wolf, Skillsoft offers training that appeals to a broad variety of job families and types of work that ManTech does. They also launched a program in 2019 called Aspire Journey, which consists of pre-curated content that is sequenced in beginning, intermediate and expert, with users acquiring badges and doing assessments along the way.

“It’s been wildly popular with our employees because many of those Aspire Journeys mirror the developing skill sets that we need to support digital transformation,” Wolf said. “They have an Aspire Journey on machine learning, on artificial intelligence, on becoming a Pythonista. Those are the types of skill sets that our employees are interested in.”

The partnership also has allowed ManTech to democratize training across the company, Wolf said. In the past, profit or overhead dollars on a contract were used to fund any necessary training. But they didn’t always have that overhead, so it was uneven in terms of who in the company got the training. Now the costs are not allocated back to the contractor — they’re held at the corporate level — so anybody can take anything that they’re interested in, even if it’s not related to their contract.

“It’s changed how people view learning and development,” Wolf said. “It’s put it in the hands of our employees, so they can take ownership of their career.

And our use rate and our adoption rate is through the roof — we’re well into a 60 percent user rate.”

Wolf was initially surprised to learn that use is highest on Saturday mornings.

“It’s people who probably have kids running around at soccer practice, and they’re taking a course on their mobile device,” she said. “They’re doing it on their own time, which tells me that they really value the content.”

Wolf has put learning into the hands of ManTech employees.

Helping People Be Their Best

“She’s very direct, very clear, and there’s no guesswork with her, which is refreshing for me,” Flory said. “She’s one of the most communicative bosses I’ve ever had.”

She also believes heavily in servant leadership, Flory said: “She will take out the trash, … fix a projector in one of the classrooms, and then go sit in a strategy session or go meet with the CEO and make magic happen.”

Jeff Brody, ManTech’s CHRO, is impressed with the way Wolf ties her efforts back to the success of the business: “She is the consummate lightning rod for why development is important, and not just for the sake of developing, but really translating that into business outcomes.”

There are exciting developments on the horizon for Wolf. Her team is currently working on an advanced cybertraining program to develop a specific set of skills for people in cybercommand. And they have partnered with a magnet school in Loudoun County, Virginia, to bring on interns to perform work for customers in the intelligence community through interim clearances, an initiative that Wolf said positions ManTech as an employer of choice for those entering the workforce.

It’s not just her enthusiasm that allows Wolf to be effective in her role.

“She has this incredible background,” Flory said.

“It gives her breadth and depth in the field of learning and development.”

Wolf’s career may have been somewhat unconventional, but it has allowed her to see different sides to people and situations, something she said drives her.

“I spent a career in law enforcement, where a lot of times I saw people at their worst,” Wolf said. “This is different for me and it gets me out of bed because I get to see people doing their best.” CLO

Among her colleagues, Wolf is respected as a strong and direct leader. And she’s got her own unique leadership style.

Ashley St. John is Chief Learning Officer’s managing editor.

38 Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com

LATEST THINKING ON

BY DAVID VANCE

40 Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com

6 areas in particular are poised to transform our profession in the coming decade.

I

t is an exciting time to be a learning professional. The digital landscape is transforming the way we learn and there is renewed focus on the need for continual learning and upskilling. While we don’t hear as much about measurement and reporting, there are exciting and significant developments occurring in these areas as well.

I believe six areas in particular will transform our profession in the coming decade. Here’s how.

Standardization and Reporting There are two very significant developments here, each of which will change the way human capital metrics are reported. First, the International Organization for Standardization published the first-ever “Human Capital Reporting Standards” in December 2018. This standard represents the work of a large, international group of experts who spent three years deciding which human capital metrics (measures) should be collected and reported. They started with hundreds of suggested metrics but in the end narrowed the list to 60, which includes 23 for voluntary public reporting by large organizations and 10 for voluntary public reporting by small/ medium-sized organizations. The rest of the measures are for internal reporting.

Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com 41

The 10 measures recommended for public reporting by all organizations include: percentage of employees who have completed training on compliance and ethics; development and training cost; total workforce cost; human capital ROI and revenue or profit per employee; turnover rate; number of accidents and number killed during work; number of employees and full-time equivalents.

Other measures recommended for disclosure by large organizations include leadership trust, time to fill vacant positions, percentage of positions filled internally and diversity of the leadership team.

Although the ISO recommendations are voluntary, some countries will enact them into law, which will force multinational companies to decide whether to report the same for all countries. Moreover, even where not mandated by law, pressure is likely to build on organizations to publicly disclose. In the future, why would any employee go to work for an organization that refuses to disclose its human capital metrics?

The second significant development in this area is closely related to the first: The United States Securities and Exchange Commission announced on Aug. 8, 2019, that it has proposed new rules governing disclosure for publicly traded companies. Previously, a company that sold stocks, bonds or derivatives had to discuss 12 items in its financial disclosure, like product or service, competitive environment, order backlog, etc. The only item related

Measurement maturity

FIGURE 1: MATURITY MODEL FOR MEASUREMENT

Manage

4

Evaluate and analyze Monitor

Inform

1

3

2 Organizational and leadership effort

Source: Center for Talent Reporting

to human capital was number of employees. The SEC recognizes in this rule that human capital today plays as large a role in company profitability as physical capital and must be more broadly disclosed. Furthermore, the SEC recognizes that prescriptive guidance to disclose 12 items is unlikely to keep up with the pace of change, so it proposes that all material information must be shared.

Assuming this rule is finalized in early 2020 (effective date is unknown but likely to be in fiscal year 2021 or 2022), how will companies decide what human capital metrics to share to avoid the risk of a shareholder lawsuit 42 Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com

for failure to disclose materially important human capital information? Many believe that companies will look to the ISO standards on human capital reporting by large organizations. In this case, even though the ISO standards are not mandated by Congress, companies are likely to adopt something similar. And it won’t stop with publicly traded for-profit companies. Once publicly traded companies begin to report human capital metrics, others will be forced to follow if they wish to attract and retain the best employees.

These two developments have the potential to radically change human capital reporting forever by introducing a level of transparency that is long overdue.

Analytics and the Use of Microdata As organizations gather and store more data at an employee level, analytics can be used to identify relationships among different measures. For example, organizations are testing the data to see what is associated (or correlated) with employee retention and employee engagement. Do employees who take more learning have higher engagement and retention rates? Or does it depend on the type of learning they take? If so, what types of learning lead to higher engagement and retention?

Second, organizations are analyzing the increasing amount of data on content that is available when courses are created in xAPI or other platforms, which allow the capture of user information on measures like time spent on a particular task. This allows learning designers and managers to “look inside” a course and see how long users are spending on components and perhaps how they are performing or reacting. This in turn is invaluable for redesigning the course for greater learning engagement or following up with specific employees about their experience. Plus, the data are available in real time.

Third, programs and computing power are facilitating the use of microdata, which simply means that data are available at the individual level for further analysis or for follow-up with the employee. This is in contrast to macrodata, which has historically been used at an aggregate level to describe an entire group of learners, perhaps in terms of their average score. So, while data have always been collected from individual employees, the data have traditionally been described and used at a higher group level, often as totals or averages for the group, with no drill down to employee.

All three of these trends will continue to grow in importance for our field, enabling the L&D professional to better manage and customize employees’ learning.

Application, Impact and ROI For years, surveys of learning professionals have shown plans to significantly increase higher-level measurement (level 3 application, level 4 impact and level 5 ROI). While the number measuring at these levels may

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have increased slightly, there does not appear to have been a significant increase — but we may be about to see one. L&D professionals have always aspired to measure at a higher level than participant reaction (level 1) and learning (level 2), but it was difficult. Today, survey tools like SurveyMonkey make data collection easier than ever before, so there really is no excuse for not collecting application and impact data. Just add a question on intent to apply and a question on estimate of impact to your post-event survey where the level 1 questions are asked.

Ken Phillips, founder and CEO of Phillips Associates, (not related to the ROI Institute’s Patti or Jack Phillips) is doing some exciting work using microdata to reduce the scrap rate and increase application. He uses answers to select post-event survey questions to predict which participants are most likely to apply the learning and which factors are most important at the individual employee level for application. This in turn allows learning professionals to take targeted corrective action with either the employee or their supervisor to address the issues and realize higher application.

The bottom line is we now have the tools to easily collect and act on level 3 and level 4 data, even at the individual employee level. We should use these tools to drive application rates and impact higher, leading to better ROI.

Optimization Some interesting work is currently being done on the optimization of learning. Kent Barnett, CEO of Performitiv, pulled together a group of 35 thought leaders in April 2019 to form the Talent Development Optimization Council. Inspired by Six Sigma and Lean, Barnett said, “Our primary goal is to develop a continuous improvement measurement process designed specifically for L&D that enables organizations to optimize the impact of their

learning programs.” In other words, don’t just stop with level 4 impact and level 5 ROI. Even if these results are good, what could you do to make them better, perhaps by using microdata? The council hopes to recommend ways to measure and improve results, impact and value, including a cost-benefit financial model.

Optimization is the next logical step for those who are already measuring at levels 4 and 5.

AI and Machine Learning Artificial intelligence is now being used to analyze courses completed by an employee to recommend additional courses for that employee or similarly situated employees. Moreover, when combined with data on the career progression of employees, AI can recommend courses that are correlated with career advancement.

In addition, machine learning is now being applied to the analysis of open-ended questions in the postevent or follow-up surveys to summarize the results.

For example, it can organize similar responses and produce a frequency distribution, just like a person would if they were analyzing the results. This means that we can employ open-ended questions at scale and harness valuable insights that otherwise would have been missed.

The Use of Measures to Manage Most maturity models today have predictive analytics as the highest-level use of measurement, but I would suggest there is actually a higher level, which is management.

In Figure 1 (page 42) we have measurement to inform (answer questions, identify trends) as the foundational reason to measure. This is where practitioners spend most of their measurement effort, producing scorecards or dashboards with just historical data. While this is REPORTING continued on page 65

FIGURE 2: KEY ASPECTS OF THE MEASUREMENT MATURITY MODEL

MEASUREMENT MATURITY

Measurement purpose

Primary use

Level of analysis

Measurement frequency

Key elements

Shared in

Manage

Identify if the program delivered planned results and where the adjustments are needed to meet goals

High

Monthly

Plan, YTD result, and forecast for measures being managed

Management reports

Evaluate and analyze

Analyze program and nonprogram data; explore relationships among measures; predict outcomes

Medium to high

Based on business need

Analytical methods (e.g., regression analysis, predictive modeling)

Custom reports

Determine the efficiency, effectiveness and/or impact of a program

Medium to high

End of program or pilot

Six levels of evaluation (0 to 5)

Program summaries

Monitor

Determine if measure meets threshold or is within acceptable range

Low

Monthly or quarterly

Threshold or breakpoints Static or dynamic for measures dashboards

Inform

Answer questions; identify key trends; share activity

Low

As needed

The specific measures or trends

44 Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com

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46 Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com

Navigating Semantics and Skills: Reskilling vs. Upskilling

BY ELIZ ABETH LOUTFI

G

I N G

etting up and going to work is looking different than it did just a few years ago. Jobs are changing because organizations require new skills that their workforce may not currently possess, and there’s no sign of this trend stopping.

We’ve seen the research before: By 2030, according to a recent McKinsey Global Institute report, as many as 375 million workers may need to switch their occupations in response to “digitization, automation and advances in artificial intelligence” that are disrupting the way we work.

When approaching this challenge, those at the helm of learning functions, leaders in the C-suite and learning and development subject matter experts began using the terms “reskilling” and “upskilling” when referring to various skills-building paths and programs created and employed by organization leaders for their workforces. In the last few years, the use of reskilling and upskilling programs and initiatives has grown, and it’s become easy — and common — to use the terms interchangeably.

But they are, in fact, different.

Simple Definitions Reskilling is about learning new skills for a new position. “[It’s] just about shifting. Let’s say that tomorrow, an algorithm could write better than you or I could write,” said Ben Eubanks, principal analyst for Lighthouse Research and Advisory. If you’re still good at doing research and conducting interviews, he said, perhaps those skills and that time previously spent writing could be leveraged by being taught a new skill.

By the end, that individual is doing a different job. They have been reskilled.

On the other hand, upskilling refers to taking current skills and refining them for the position you currently have. “Upskilling is about: How can we train you to be the best person you can be for your current job?” Eubanks said. “Whatever sort of content, tools, coaching, resources we can throw at you to help you do that.”

An individual who has been upskilled is doing the same job, only better.

Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com 47

Transformations: nothing New Eighty-one percent of learning professionals agreed that the current pace of change, automation and disruption will drive a need for both reskilling and upskilling employees, according to “Disruption Drives Reskilling and Upskilling,” a study published by Lighthouse Research and Advisory in 2019.

It should be noted that workforce transformations are nothing new. AT&T, for example, has already reinvented itself multiple times over the past century in response to technological disruption.

In the early 1900s, AT&T’s workforce was skilled to build and operate telephone networks. The company continued to count on the steady popularity of landline phones and the introduction of cell phones into the mid1990s, but in 1991, AT&T announced the purchase of computer-making company NCR Corp. — a sign that the company was moving beyond telecommunications, according to an article in The New York Times.

The direction of AT&T’s workforce would pivot a few more times in response to business decisions: In 2006, the company began offering its own TV service, Uverse, and Triple Play, which included internet-based calling, according to a 2016 Time magazine article. Later, AT&T would acquire DirecTV and purchase Time Warner.

But today’s speed of change and the rate at which workers must learn new skills is faster, as researchers from McKinsey & Co. noted in an article from 2018, “Retraining and reskilling workers in the age of automation.”

Presented with this notion, learning leaders began tossing out old training and learning delivery methods that were outdated and too slow. They wanted to provide learning that would rank highly in not only speed, but also employee engagement.

Lynda Gratton, professor of management practice at London Business School, said that with the direction work is currently headed, learning leaders and chief learning officers also need to be futuristic.

“The whole process of learning should be future-​ oriented,” Gratton said. “By looking back, they [learning leaders] could misdirect people toward skills that are no longer going to be valuable for the future.”

Reskilling and Upskilling Advice A reskilling or upskilling program needs a number of elements in order to be successful, Gratton said. The first is a sense of urgency. “You need some sort of signaling element [to your workforce] that says ‘This is something that you should be doing,’ ” she said. This has already started happening. Last year, LinkedIn’s “Workplace Learning Report” noted a strong demand for learning opportunities among employees, especially self-directed ones.

Additionally, Gratton said reskilling and upskilling programs need to have a broad portfolio of learning mechanisms, as well as a way to measure and show a 48 Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com

learner’s certification of a new skill, so it can be portable from job to job. This last element is crucial, Gratton said, even though it can be difficult or time consuming to keep track of all the data.

“It gives people a sense of accomplishment, both from the organizational perspective — have our resources made a difference? — but more importantly, from the individual perspective — am I improving or getting better?” Gratton said.

Lately, it’s become easy — and common — to use “reskilling” and “upskilling” interchangeably. But they are, in fact, different.

Tracking and measuring learners’ progress in reskilling and upskilling programs seems a bit obvious, but about 1 in 5 learners that Lighthouse surveyed said they didn’t know if their employers were tracking their skills at all. That surprised him, he said.

Clearly, employers are concerned about the future of their workforce. The research from Lighthouse was driven by requests and concerns from business leaders about future jobs, Eubanks said. “We kept hearing things from them like, ‘Hey, there’s a headline that says X percent of jobs are going to be replaced in the near future. Is that true?” However, employers still need to identify and understand concretely which skills and resources will propel the organization forward.

Learning From Existing Efforts To truly understand the difference between what it means to reskill and to upskill, it’s helpful to look at the intended outcomes of some existing programs.

In July 2019, Amazon announced it would invest $700 million in retraining 100,000 of its nearly 300,000-person workforce. The program, called Upskill 2025, is aimed at “creating pathways to careers in areas that will continue growing in years to come,” according to Amazon’s website.

According to a previous Chief Learning Officer article, the program promises to create three new initiatives: Amazon Technical Academy, which provides skills training for nontechnical employees so they can move into software engineering positions; Associate2Tech, a 90-day IT skills training program for warehouse workers; and Machine Learning University, where technical workers can take six-week programs from Amazon machine learning experts.

Given that the nature of these initiatives is to move

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Amazon workers into new jobs, Upskill 2025 would actually be an example of reskilling, Eubanks said.

For a good example of upskilling, Eubanks points to an initiative from Walmart called Live Better U. In May 2018, Walmart announced a new associate education benefit program in partnership with education benefits platform Guild Education. As part of the program, the cost of higher education for Walmart and Sam’s Club associates in the U.S. is $1 a day, according to a 2018 company news release.

Walmart leadership’s focus was on investing in people because they wanted them “to be a little bit better tomorrow than they are today,” Eubanks said.

Semantics and Skills-Based Training Even before the popularity of reskilling and upskilling, the L&D industry talked about skills building and training for the sake of career development.

“At the end of the day, we’re talking about helping people build the skills they need in order to get a job or build a business,” said Allison Horn, managing director of learning and development at Accenture.

Accenture spends roughly $1 billion on employee development each year. The multinational professional services company is also a technology company, Horn said, and therefore disruption and constant change isn’t just expected, it’s guaranteed.

The concept of reskilling, then, technically doesn’t fit in with Accenture’s continuously changing learning cycle. The workforce isn’t being “retrained”; rather, they are just building on the knowledge they already have, Horn said. In fact, Horn avoids using the term reskilling. It suggests that “there’s something broken with the human being that needs to be fixed,” she said.

“We are undoing something of the past so that we can build a whole new layer of skills, and the reality is that’s just not how we as humans work,” she added. “Everything we do is additive. Everything we do is cumulative and it would be ridiculous to suggest that just because I’m going to switch from career A to career B, that I am going to shut down or leave behind all the wonderful knowledge and skills that I picked up in path A.” Hiring based on skills rather than previous jobs or careers has been increasingly common. According to a 2019 survey from LinkedIn, 69 percent of professionals surveyed believe verified skills are more important than a college degree.

Who’s Ultimately Responsible?

In recent years, both private and public organizations, including institutions of higher education and government agencies, have begun taking skills development seriously. In Singapore, which is facing an aging population in addition to job displacement by automation, a government-backed initiative called SkillsFuture 50 Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com

offers citizens age 25 and older a credit worth $500 to put toward skills training from a preapproved list of courses.

Since its launch in 2016, more than half a million Singaporeans have used their SkillsFuture Credit, according to the Straits Times, an English language daily newspaper in Singapore. In early 2020, Singapore’s deputy prime minister, Heng Swee Keat, announced a new SkillsFuture Mid-Career Support Package, an additional $500 for Singaporeans in their 40s and 50s, which he hopes will double the annual job placement of locals in those age groups to roughly 5,500 by 2025.

According to a 2019 LinkedIn survey, 69 percent of professionals believe verified skills are more important than a college degree.

On July 19, 2018, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to establish both the National Council for the American Worker and the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board to develop a national strategy for “training and retraining the workers needed across high-demand industries.” When Trump signed the order, he called upon employers to sign a pledge committing to expanding programs that “educate, train and reskill American workers from high-school age to near-retirement.”

At the same time, however, the president has called for budget cuts to be made to programs that support workforce development, such as the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. As we begin to face more job disruption, there is a silver lining: According to Chief Learning Officer Business Intelligence Board’s 2019 “Learning State of the Industry” report, budgets are higher than in past years, putting L&D organizations, and the individuals who lead them, in a perfect position to help individual skills development, whether that’s reskilling or upskilling.

“The big picture that I see is there will always be some sort of skills gap,” Eubanks said. “We might get better at keeping that at a smaller margin than where it is today but in general, there will always be something to keep an eye out for, something to watch for. No one wants to get caught flatfooted because they were not paying attention and thought they had arrived.” CLO Elizabeth Loutfi is a Chief Learning Officer associate editor.

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Coaching, lish g n E s s e n i s Not Just Bu

By conducting an accurate assessment of development needs, especially for their foreign-born employees, and ensuring that the right strategies and tools are in place to promote career growth, organizations can tackle the skills and retention challenge head-on.

52 Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com

BY NADIA NASSIF

A

s workforces continue to grow more diverse, human resources and learning and development teams have embraced language training programs, such as Business English and ESL, for multicultural employees. By strengthening communications skills and building a “same language” framework for the workforce, these initiatives not only foster individual development, they enhance collaboration and productivity and contribute to cultural cohesion.

Despite these efforts, however, companies often continue to experience excess attrition in their multicultural workforce as these employees seek better opportunities to enhance their skills, climb the career ladder and take on higher levels of leadership.

Employee turnover and replacement are costly.

According to the Society for Human Resource Management’s 2016 “Human Capital Benchmarking Report,” the average cost-per-hire is $4,129, while the average time it takes to fill a given position is 42 days. Add to that a strong economy and low unemployment rate, and recruitment and retention have become harder than ever. To remain competitive now and into the future, organizations must attract and retain talented multicultural workers.

Consider the numbers: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 1 in 5 workers in the U.S. is foreign-born (17 percent), and this number is growing.

Almost one-third of these workers are in professional/ management positions — highly sought after by recruiters, they provide significant value to their organizations.

But even organizations practicing diversity-based recruiting don’t always succeed in creating an inclusive, welcoming culture that encourages retention.

“Diverse hiring practices don’t always translate into a more diverse workplace or improved employee retention,” wrote Zoe Mackey in her 2019 article, “Here’s How Workplace Diversity Impacts Employee Retention.” “Lack of alignment among goals is disillusioning to diverse employees, who come to regret their career decisions (after such a promising start during hiring) and end up leaving for better opportunities.”

If employees — particularly those from different cultural backgrounds — feel they are not adequately invested in or supported in their skills development, it may be because they aren’t. In a recent survey conducted by Wiley Education Services and Future Workplace,“Closing the Skills Gap 2019,” fewer than half of the 600 surveyed HR leaders reported spending $500 or more to upskill individual employees. And looking ahead, such minimal investment could prove even more troubling as demand for higher-order skills increases. A November 2019 article

in ATD’s TD Magazine, “Future-Ready or Not?” noted, “McKinsey predicts that demand for social and emotional skills will grow by 26 percent by 2030 across all industries in the United States. Some of these skills (such as empathy) are innate, but individuals can hone or learn others (like advanced communication).”

By conducting an accurate assessment of development needs, especially for their diverse and foreign-born population, and ensuring that the right strategies and tools are in place to promote career growth, organizations can tackle the skills and retention challenge head-on. HR and L&D leaders will likely begin by considering what role communications coaching and language learning programs can play in helping to meet the development need.

But first they should be clear — and aligned — on goals, determine what resources are available, assess the pros and cons of each option, and define the desired result.

A Higher Order of Challenges There’s no question that meeting the basic language needs of multicultural employees is critical. Lacking confidence in their ability to communicate in English on par with colleagues — or at a level commensurate with their professional skills — some may become demotivated and start to withdraw. For these individuals who are dealing with needs that are primarily language-driven (accent, idiomatic language, vocabulary and grammar), ongoing, intensive ESL instruction, either in person or online, may make the most sense. Toward that end, group classes or an e-learning solution to develop language skills and literacy should be considered.

By contrast, many multicultural professionals will have had extensive language instruction throughout their education; their communications challenges may be based more in the norms and preferences of their cultural backgrounds.

As they advance in their careers and seek roles requiring leadership and higher-level communications skills, their development needs will likely not be met by ESL or Business English programs. Instead, individual coaching support, geared toward developing leadership-level skills within an all-English speaking or American business context, is the best way to address typical concerns, such as: • The hesitancy of some multicultural employees when it comes to letting their voices be heard.

• The difficulty of integrating across multicultural teams in the face of negative cultural stereotypes.

• The potential for misinterpretation or difficulty in understanding across languages and cultures.

• Uncertainty around professional etiquette norms.

• Conflicting working styles across diverse teams.

Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com 53

Sameer’s Story The following scenario is based on an actual coaching engagement. Sameer, a high-performing consulting professional originally from India, recently transferred to his firm’s Atlanta office and has been asked by his manager to take on a role that would include business development. Sameer is highly educated, with strong technical and analytical skills, and has spent enough time learning American idioms to figure out what “step up to the plate” means. But he is now faced with new assignments that require strong culturally informed communications capabilities, more nuanced and more complicated to master than language skills.

From networking and small talk to relationship-​ building and marketing calls, Sameer will need to gain fluency in business communications in order to succeed with clients. He’ll also have to figure out where his approach to communications may be at odds with that of the dominant culture, whether clients or colleagues, and to master appropriate, politically astute interaction.

A needs assessment of Sameer may include recognizing the influence of his normative values on his communications style; for example, what social psychologist and management professor Geert Hofstede calls the “power distance” factor, in which “the less powerful members of organizations and institutions (like the family) accept and expect that power is distributed unequally.” Sameer feels he has a firm handle on how to interact with senior management, but they find him overly formal and sometimes too deferential, hampering his ability to build partnerships with firm leaders. And in his supervisory role, in which he provides direction to more junior employees (the “less powerful”), he displays a hierarchical mode of behavior that can come across as overly authoritative and even condescending, according to recent performance review feedback.

Addressing these needs will far exceed the scope of most ESL or Business English programs and merits an individualized approach commensurate with the level and demands of Sameer’s role. Careful selection of the right approach doesn’t just ensure alignment of the need and offering — it signals a strategic investment in an emerging leader and in important corporate goals such as succession planning and the future growth of the firm.

culture and how one’s culturally informed preferences and norms may differ in terms of both verbal and nonverbal communications. If these differences are not surfaced and addressed thoughtfully, communication breakdowns can result, eroding relationships with senior management, mentors, colleagues and direct reports. The multicultural employee gets demotivated, the environment feels less inclusive and, as this dynamic builds over time, the employee no longer feels they fit and may move on. As noted in a Hult International Business School blog, “13 Benefits and Challenges of Cultural Diversity in the Workplace,” “Colleagues from different cultures can also bring with them different workplace attitudes, values, behaviors and etiquette. Nonverbal communication is a delicate and nuanced part of cultural interaction that can lead to misunderstandings or even offense between team members from different countries.”

Another barrier is leveling the playing field and becoming competitive in a client-facing or senior role by developing a strong set of relationship-building skills, demonstrated by persuasive writing, influencing, vocal dexterity (especially when communicating remotely) and emotionally intelligent responsiveness, critical in high-stakes situations.

Imagine, for example, a high-performing multicultural manager unsure of whether it’s appropriate to speak up in a client meeting, or of how to interrupt respectfully to make a point. A coaching client recently shared his conundrum: “I don’t know which is worse: Do I try to chime in and interrupt and come off as too aggressive?

Or do I stay quiet, knowing it’s inappropriate at my level not to contribute?” Lacking confidence in his ability to read the room and be seen as credible, he retreats, missing an important opportunity to benefit himself and his company. “The bottom line takes a hit when employees stop participating in group settings,” wrote Tsedal Neeley in “Global Business Speaks English,” published in 2012 in Harvard Business Review. “Once participation ebbs, processes fall apart. Companies miss out on new ideas that might have been generated in meetings.”

Another common hurdle is deepening one’s leadership presence by successfully mentoring and managing in ways that inspire and uplift individuals, teams and, ultimately, the overall workplace.

Nearly 1 in 5 workers in the U.S. is foreignborn, and this number is growing.

Understanding Multicultural Barriers The potential challenges to advancement and professional success facing Sameer confront many up-and-coming multicultural professionals. There are a number of typical barriers.

One common barrier is understanding the corporate 54 Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com

Exploring Solutions In Sameer’s case, the goals are retention, promotion and optimizing the employee experience for a multicultural employee, making coaching the right vehicle. If, however, the training goal is tied primarily to reducing

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inefficiency, improving quality of work product and reducing communication bottlenecks, the right choice would likely be a language-based solution, at least as a “Phase 1,” almost certainly followed down the road by a more in-depth “Phase 2.” And, as is often the case, the most successful coaching outcomes stem from involvement of the coachee’s mentors and managers.

L&D can play a key role in making sure that management is on board and is given the tools to be more culturally aware, including an inclusive vocabulary with which to discuss and evaluate the skills, communications behavior and performance of multicultural employees.

Ensuring the right solution to help multicultural professionals meet advancement challenges starts with an understanding of the desired behavioral changes, an in-depth assessment of need and alignment of the approach with corporate L&D goals. Drawing on Kirkpatrick’s four levels of training evaluation, an L&D manager might explore a differentiated approach combining an ESL/Business English program and tailored one-on-one coaching (as described in “Meeting the Communications Need 1” below), depending on the mix of need and behavior change (Kirkpatrick’s level 3, behavior) identified, as well as the corporate goals and desired outcomes (level 4, results).

provided coaching support for individuals as well as group work. In a 12-month follow-up assessment of impact, the company determined that two weeks of FTE-equivalent hours per manager had been saved, in terms of reduced or eliminated re-work. In addition, several program participants went on to key roles the same year, outcomes that achieved behavior change based in functional skills acquisition and the larger corporate goal.

Meeting the Communications Need 2: Leadership Skills

Careful selection of the right approach signals a strategic investment in an emerging leader.

Meeting the Communications Need 1: Writing Skills When focusing not only on multicultural employee development but on achieving critical D&I goals such as enhanced recruitment, reduced attrition and increased promotions, L&D teams can take a number of learning pathways. Here’s an example that achieved a firm’s dual goals: to better leverage senior staff by reducing their involvement in lower-level delegable work, and to boost advancement and promotion, especially at certain career levels.

A pharmaceutical company’s training team had determined that a high percentage of senior managers’ overtime hours were spent editing and quality-​controlling the written work product of ESL employees. These employees, whose efforts were often eclipsed by those of colleagues proficient in written English, were promoted less frequently and sensed that the skills development key to their advancement was out of reach.

The company introduced a group writing program designed to enhance writing skills and enable participants to gain independence in report writing. The initiative incorporated individual sessions on effective writing methods, addressed grammar and syntax needs, and 56 Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com

In a case example highlighting a different need and approach, the HR and L&D teams of a Big 4 consulting firm determined, based on performance review feedback and exit interview data, that turnover of multicultural employees at managerial levels was largely due to lack of leadership communications skills, including supervisory abilities, client interaction skills and writing proficiency. This input prompted L&D leaders to introduce individualized cultural coaching programs focused on helping emerging managers to mentor and supervise junior employees and to communicate professionally in presentations and business writing. Two to three years into the initiative, turnover rates among multicultural program participants were tracked against same-level multicultural employees who did not receive coaching. All program participants were promoted on or before schedule, while the majority of nonparticipating peers showed no advancement or, even worse, attrition.

In this case, coaches equipped with the requisite skills to support multicultural leaders proved best-suited to ensure attainment of the higher-order skills associated with leadership and senior professional roles that rely on both intellectual capital and emotional IQ. The ROI of coaching speaks for itself: Training contributes directly to employee commitment, productivity and progress — and is therefore an important driver in reducing the high cost of turnover.

Faster, Better Arie de Geus, former CEO of Shell Oil Co., declared decades ago in Harvard Business Review article “Planning as Learning” that “the only competitive advantage the company of the future will have is its managers’ ability to learn faster than their competitors.” I would add that it is not only the ability to learn faster, but the ability to learn better that will truly distinguish successful organizations going forward. CLO Nadia Nassif is founder and CEO of Springboards Consulting.

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CASE STUDY

The Golden Arches Go Digital

BY SARAH FISTER GALE

T

here’s a good chance your first job was at a McDonald’s. The $21 billion restaurant franchise is the second-largest private employer in the world, employing 1.7 million people in more than 37,000 restaurants worldwide, according to various reports from 2018.

That means hiring and retaining workers is a constant challenge. The average turnover rate for fast food restaurants is now 150 percent — the highest it’s been since 1995, according to a report from MIT. It’s not unexpected given the demographic of the average fast food employee, said Rob Lauber, senior vice president and chief learning officer of McDonald’s Corp., which is headquartered in Chicago. “For many, it is their first job or a transitional job while they go to school,” he said.

While McDonald’s recognizes that most employees won’t spend their careers with the company, they would like them to stick around for a few years at least. But in a low-unemployment economy, where even hourly employees have a lot of options, the company has had to get more innovative about how it attracts and retains staff. And they are using education as a way to do it.

Under the Archways Five years ago, McDonald’s launched Archways to Opportunity, a comprehensive education strategy with multiple programs giving employees access to free general education options, as well as up to $3,000 per year in college tuition assistance after 90 days of employment. Employees and their immediate families can use the program to improve their English skills, earn a high school diploma, or help pay for a two- or four-year college degree.

One of the most unique aspects of Archways is that it doesn’t dictate what employees need to study or where they can study, said Marie Cini, president of the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning, a nonprofit adult education organization in Chicago that has partnered with McDonald’s through the Archways program. “They can get whatever degree they want.”

58 Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com

SNAPSHOT McDonald’s new Archways to Careers app gives employees access to live education advisers to help them plan for the future.

While some employees use these training programs to move up in the organization, others use them to launch a career in another field. And that’s OK, Lauber said. Even if they are using the training to move to another job or field, they are more likely to stick around while they complete their education. It’s a powerful tool for attraction and retention. “Archways helps answer the question of ‘Why should I work at McDonald’s,’ and ‘Where will this job take me?’ ” Lauber said. “It gives people a reason to want to work here.”

Archways Goes Digital In January, McDonald’s added a new element to its Archways arsenal. The Archways to Careers app, which anyone can download, offers self-paced content and real-time career advising to help employees map out the next steps in their professional journey.

Lauber sees the app as the entry point for employees to take greater advantage of the entire Archways program. “It creates stickiness and makes the program more accessible,” he said.

The app starts with a personal inventory survey that helps users identify their skills and interests as a way to think about what kind of career they might like. Then it provides information in easyto-digest chunks that will help them think about their next steps. The content answers questions like, “How can I get a high school diploma online?”

“How do I explore my education and career opportunities?” and “How can I get money to pay for college courses?”

“If you’ve never had someone to have these conversations with, they can be tough questions to answer,” Cini said.

The app provides links to colleges that offer discounted tuition on top of McDonald’s tuition

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assistance, as well as advice on how they can translate the training they have already received at McDonald’s into college credit.

Users can also access live advisers via the app to help them dig deeper into what career path they might want to follow and how they can get there with the help of Archways. “We help them consider all of their educational options,” said Kai Drekmeier, president of Inside Track, an educational management firm based in Portland that provides these student coaching services.

The advisers do more than just walk users through the college application process. They help them figure out how to make the most effective use of the program’s resources so they can be “smart consumers of education,” Drekmeier said. That includes thinking through how they will use the degree they are pursuing, and what it will take for them to be successful.

“We want them to know that this is a real-time commitment, and they have to be sure they are going to show up and do the work. Otherwise they won’t get the benefit.”

The advisers also help them plan strategies for success, including how to talk with their managers about building a schedule around classes, how to make time for studying, and how to juggle child care and other responsibilities. Users are encouraged to reach back out to the advisers whenever they encounter a challenge or feel frustrated with the process. “We help them identify the problems they are facing and talk through the solutions so they can solve these problems on their own,” Drekmeier said. “Giving them that confidence makes a big difference to their future success.”

Gateway to the Future Cini believes the combination of self-paced content and live advisers will be especially appealing to younger employees who are accustomed to finding answers on their own before reaching out to a person for help. Whether it’s online banking or ordering a pizza, millennials and Generation Z don’t expect human encounters. “They might be afraid to just call an adviser,” she said. The app may give them the answers they need, or it may give them the confidence to call an adviser to get more information. “It provides a gateway to career coaching.”

The app is still new, but McDonald’s is confident that it will further enhance the value of the Archways educational program and help the company attract and retain hourly workers for longer.

60 Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com

To date, Archways has provided tuition assistance to more than 35,000 employees, awarded $90 million in high school and college tuition assistance and celebrated more than 750 graduates in the Career Online High School Program. Lauber estimates that 60 percent of franchises have employees taking advantage of the program. And when employees achieve education milestones, franchise owners and corporate make a point of celebrating their successes with ceremonies, news articles and even profiles on the app. “We make a big deal out of it,” Lauber said.

“We want people to be able to pursue their passions. That’s our learning culture.”

— Rob Lauber, SVP and chief learning officer, McDonald’s Corp.

That publicity and public acknowledgment reinforce the value these employees bring to the company and help spread the word to other current and future staff that these resources are available to them. “We want people to be able to pursue their passions. That’s our learning culture,” Lauber said.

The company is planning to conduct a study to measure the impact of Archways on attraction and retention, and Lauber is confident that it will prove the investments are paying off. “When people see that they can gain skills that will take them to myriad other industries, it gives them a reason to stay.”

For other organizations considering similar programs, Cini suggested they begin by looking at their existing tuition assistance offerings and how they are deployed and promoted. She noted that many companies treat tuition assistance as just another employee benefit. “Instead, they should view it as a strategic investment in their human capital,” she said. When companies switch their mindset, they will start to think differently about how they can leverage these investments to attract and retain talent.

Then make sure you really understand the needs of the target audience, Lauber added: “You have to meet them where they are and create something that will be impactful for each individual as they think about their future.” CLO Sarah Fister Gale is a writer based in Chicago.

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

Seeking Measurement Champions

BY ASHLEY ST. JOHN

L

earning measurement isn’t the sexiest of topics, but it’s absolutely an important one. Especially when learning leaders are held accountable for tying learning and development efforts back to solid business outcomes — essential to getting executive buy-in and, ideally and critically, executive championship.

Eighty-three percent of surveyed L&D pros said that executive buy-in is not a challenge. That’s according to LinkedIn Learning’s “2020 Workplace Learning Report.” However, as the report accurately states, “It’s one thing to buy into a strategy and quite another to champion it across the organization.” And according to the same report, only 27 percent of L&D leaders said their CEOs are active champions of learning.

This is where measurement can play an important role. But currently, CLOs express dissatisfaction with the extent of learning measurement in their organization.

According to data from the Chief Learning Officer Business Intelligence Board’s “2019 Learning State of the Industry” report, less than half — 42 percent — of surveyed CLOs are satisfied with their current measurement efforts. However, 77 percent said they plan to increase their learning analytics capability over the next two years.

The Chief Learning Officer Business Intelligence Board is a group of 1,500 professionals in the learning and development industry who have agreed to be surveyed by the Human Capital Media Research and Advisory Group, the research and advisory arm of Chief Learning Officer magazine. This survey was conducted in early 2019.

According to the report, 84 percent of respondents measure internal learning customers’ satisfaction, 61 percent measure external customers’ satisfaction, and 59 percent say their measurement and metrics are fully aligned with learning strategy. Only 43 percent

62 Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com

externally benchmark their measurement and metrics practices (Figure 1).

When it comes to what is being measured, it seems that current measurement efforts are focusing more on the short-term and less on the bigger picture.

Seventy-​two percent of CLOs are currently measuring employee response to training and 60 percent are measuring employee engagement, but less are measuring the actual increase in employee knowledge or skills — 58 percent — and even fewer are measuring overall business performance and retention, both at 46 percent. A startlingly low 20 percent are measuring formal ROI for learning (Figure 2).

It’s encouraging that learning buy-in by executives is perceived as quite high among L&D leaders. But to truly take these efforts to the next level and deliver the workforce transformation that we need going into the future, they must be championed by executives across entire organizations. And to gain that championship, focus on the long-term is key.

It should also be noted that only 12 percent of respondents to the survey said their organization is enabled by technology to collect, aggregate and integrate big data (Figure 3). This is poised to be a crucial differentiator as we move into the new decade.

To read more about the six measurement areas that are poised to transform our profession in the coming decade, see page 40. There’s a lot on the horizon for measurement and analytics, especially as technological capabilities continue to grow. And successfully taking advantage of these capabilities could provide the L&D championship every organization needs. CLO Ashley St. John is Chief Learning Officer’s managing editor.

Figures’ source: Chief Learning Officer Business Intelligence Board’s “2019 Learning State of the Industry,” N=537. All percentages rounded.

What you are measuring, and how you are measuring it, will be key to achieving true workforce transformation in the future.

FIGURE 2: INDICATE YOUR PLANS TO MEASURE THE IMPACT LEARNING HAS ON EACH OF THE FOLLOWING

FIGURE 1: EVALUATE THE FOLLOWING STATEMENTS IN RELATION TO YOUR COMPANY Agree

Disagree

Already do it

Plan to within 12 months

Plan to within 12-24 months

Plan to — no time frame

We measure internal learning customers’ satisfaction.

84%

Employee response to training

72%

13%

5% 5% 5%

16%

No plans

Employee engagement

We measure external learning customers’ satisfaction.

61%

60%

21%

8% 6% 6%

Increase in employee knowledge or skills

39% Measurement and metrics are fully aligned with learning strategy.

58%

24%

8% 6% 4%

Overall customer satisfaction

59%

6%

41%

54%

15%

9%

16%

Overall business performance

We externally benchmark our measurement and practices.

9%

43%

13%

46%

18%

14%

Employee retention

57% FIGURE 3: IS YOUR LEARNING FUNCTION ENABLED BY TECHNOLOGY TO COLLECT, AGGREGATE, INTEGRATE AND ANALYZE BIG DATA 46%

10% 11% 13%

46%

21%

Product or service quality

40%

19%

11% 10%

21%

Other organizational KPIs

42%

12% 10%

39%

19% 20%

Employee productivity

Sales

35%

13%

8% 7%

37%

Net promoter score 7%

12%

39%

24%

12% 12% 14%

33%

11% 10%

39%

Formal ROI on learning 20%

20%

11%

27%

23%

Employee chargeability/billability

Yes

To an extent

No

9% 9%

15%

19%

48% Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com 63

MANAGING CHANGE continued from page 28 points of view. It can also be greatly facilitated by peers.

At the same time, having remote teams makes it easy to overlook change advocates — positive “disruptors” who see the big picture and are comfortable challenging the current state — who could be accelerating the change process. Social media has proven the power of networks and smart leaders need to be prepared to use those networks to their advantage in driving change.

Finally, teach leaders to deputize, not just delegate.

Long ago, management theory recognized that simply distributing work efficiently left productivity on the table. Employees could contribute even more when managers delegated effectively. But to support transformational change at the fastest possible pace, even that isn’t enough anymore. The time has come for leaders to work toward deputizing their best people. Like a sheriff in the Wild West of 150 years ago, deputizing confers true power. It means handing over real responsibility and the authority to make decisions.

This kind of empowerment drives engagement and speeds up decision-making, putting it in the hands of the people closest to work involved. It helps build confidence as employees learn by doing and from their own mistakes. Deputizing fast-tracks professional growth, which has become among the most significant factors

in the retention of younger workers. As their confidence, experience and skills grow through meaningful leadership opportunities, it also feeds an organization’s succession planning pipeline.

The New Decade Brings New Requirements If this decade requires something different of companies to survive — and it seems the consensus is that it will — it certainly requires something different of leadership teams. Attitudes toward change can be shaped, skills can be developed and behaviors can be changed, but the race is on. It’s time to stop hiding behind the notion that change is hard because, while it may be true, it won’t help organizations navigate the increasingly VUCA world.

The coming years promise to swiftly separate the winners from the losers — those who see change as an obstacle from those who see it as an opportunity. How well are your organization’s leaders prepared with the right mindset, skills and behaviors to guide transformational change in the new decade? CLO Mark Marone is the director of research and thought leadership for Dale Carnegie & Associates.

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REPORTING continued from page 44 important, we would all agree that the profession needs to move beyond scorecards.

The next level up is to use measures to monitor. Often a measure has been performing in an acceptable range (like a level 1 score of 90 percent favorable or better) and we just want to ensure that it stays in the acceptable range. This is called monitoring and the resulting dashboard is often color-coded, showing in red the measures that are out of compliance. Monitoring requires the setting of thresholds, so it takes more work than simply reporting results.

The third level encompasses traditional program evaluation where the five levels are used to determine if the program was effective.

Another activity at this level of maturity is the higher-level analytics discussed earlier. In this case, statistics like correlation and regression are used to explore the relationships between measures (like amount of learning and employee engagement). When a good statistical relationship is found, that relationship can be used to predict the value of one measure (like engagement or retention) based on the value of another measure (like amount or type of learning). This is predictive analytics and an exciting new area for L&D and HR in general.

Like determining isolated impact for level 4 in a program evaluation, predictive analytics requires a much higher level of analysis than that required for monitoring.

There is, however, a higher-level purpose for measurement that has even greater potential for L&D than predictive analytics. This is the active management of programs and initiatives to deliver planned values. This requires significant analysis to create a plan for the targeted measure and significant analysis during the year (or life of the program) to understand why the measure is not on plan and what steps can be taken to get back on plan before the year ends. This is the hard work of management.

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ADVERTISING SALES

Figure 2 (page 44) lays out the different aspects of each maturity level, including the analysis and reporting used.

The most complex application of measuring to manage can be found in the planning and execution of a program in support of an important organizational goal, like increasing sales or improving quality. In this case, L&D professionals must work closely with the goal owner (like the head of sales) to confirm that learning has a role to play in helping achieve the goal, agree on the program and the planned impact of learning on the organization goal (like 2 percent higher sales due to learning), and agree on the planned values for all the key efficiency and effectiveness measures required to deliver that impact (like number of participants, timing and application rate). Once the year is underway, it is unlikely everything will go according to plan, so both parties will have to actively manage the key measures to come as close to plan as possible.

In my opinion, data-driven management represents the highest level of maturity in an organization and the greatest opportunity for L&D in the measurement and reporting space.

More than any of the other exciting trends discussed so far, this has the potential to deliver the greatest incremental impact for our efforts and to make us the valued, strategic business partners we aspire to become.

Daniella Weinberg Eastern Sales Director 917-627-1125 dweinberg@ChiefLearningOfficer.com

Ana Dirksen Western Sales Director 312-847-5729 adirksen@ChiefLearningOfficer.com

Kevin M. Fields Vice President, Business Development for Events 312-967-3565 kfields@ChiefLearningOfficer.com

Melanie Lee Business Administration Manager mlee@ChiefLearningOfficer.com

What Lies Ahead We are a young profession with a lot of work ahead of us, which means that each of us can play a role in shaping our future. So experiment, question and build on the work of others to advance our thinking and increase the impact we can have on individuals and organizations. CLO David Vance is the executive director for the Center for Talent Reporting.

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Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com 65

IN CONCLUSION

3 Trends Shaping Future Leaders Preparing for leadership in the years ahead • BY JACOB MORGAN

L Jacob Morgan is an author, TED and keynote speaker, futurist and creator of FutureofWorkUniversity.com.

eadership doesn’t happen in a vacuum. What goes on in the outside world has a huge impact on leaders. One of the most important characteristics of future leaders will be their ability to adapt with changing trends.

I believe there are three major trends shaping the future of leadership and the implications for future leaders.

First, there’s artificial intelligence and technology.

As part of the research for my new book, “The Future Leader,” I interviewed more than 140 CEOs around the world and asked what they viewed as the most impactful trends for future leaders. By far, the most common answer I received was AI and technology.

AI is continually evolving and has tremendous power to disrupt and change the business world. We’re already seeing some of its impact, and that will only continue to grow as AI becomes more powerful and mainstream. In fact, more than 60 percent of CEOs I surveyed believe or strongly believe that AI will have a larger impact than the internet.

Technology opens the doors for companies to increase their productivity, become more sustainable and better serve their customers. But it also comes with uncertainty.

Despite some common fears, the vast majority of CEOs I spoke with were incredibly optimistic. The positive benefits far outweigh any potential downfalls. Leaders need to find ways to add technologies that add value to employees instead of replacing them. AI has the power to help leaders make faster decisions and quickly and accurately analyze data. Using AI at work will force future leaders to use more soft skills that are uniquely human.

The next important change I’ll address is the new talent landscape. According to one CEO I interviewed, the competition for talent is often fiercer than the competition for customers. Changing skills and generations mean that the talent landscape is evolving and bringing a shortage of skilled workers. One PwC survey found that the availability of key skills is the third biggest threat facing organizations today. As older generations retire, younger, less experienced employees are put in many positions. Technology is changing so quickly that many employees can’t keep up or don’t have the necessary skills.

Employees are responsible for their own career development, but leaders and organizations also need to pay attention to developing and reskilling their workers and providing growth opportunities. Leaders also must help employees understand how their jobs are changing so they can take control of their own career development.

66 Chief Learning Officer • April 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com

As younger employees enter the workforce, there is also a greater emphasis being placed on diversity and inclusion. Companies need to be welcoming of everyone, regardless of their background. Successful companies celebrate diversity and welcome people with all points of view. Future leaders should strive to develop diverse teams and build an inclusive culture where everyone belongs.

The competition for talent is often fiercer than the competition for customers.

Finally, there’s the importance placed on purpose and meaning. It used to be that in order to attract and retain the best talent, companies simply needed to pay their employees more. That’s no longer the case. Today’s employees, especially millennials and younger generations, want to work for organizations that offer purpose and meaning. Employees given meaningful work are more engaged, stay with the company longer and take fewer sick days. As the line between work life and personal life gets blurrier, it’s important to create an environment that delivers both purpose and meaning to employees.

A sense of purpose is a driving force for an organization. It’s what the company stands for and what it contributes to the world. A sense of meaning tends to be more individual and signifies a personal sense of accomplishment and importance. Employees don’t want to do their jobs just to get a paycheck; they want to feel like they are contributing to something bigger than themselves and making a positive difference.

Before leaders can help their people, they need to fully understand their own purpose and meaning. Future leaders need to get to know employees individually to find out what motivates them. Successful companies will make purpose and meaning a core part of their organizations, especially when attracting new talent, and use storytelling to help employees understand the impact of their work.

Future leaders face a fluctuating work and social landscape. To be prepared, they need to leverage change into positive action for their organizations. CLO

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