Chief Learning Officer - May 2016 by Chief Learning Officer

May 2016 | CLOmedia.com

➤ How Good Are Your Listening Skills? ➤ Collaboration Begins With You ➤ Future-Proof Your E-Learning Investment ➤ Create Mentorships, Not Minions ➤ Employees Are Investors, Not Assets ➤ Adobe Creates a Recruitment Process That Sticks

Southwest Airlines’

ELIZABETH BRYANT

EDITOR’S LETTER

The Big Yawn Q

uick question: If someone yawns, how likely are you to yawn too? Fair warning, be careful how you answer. Say no, and you just might be a psychopath. Just kidding. Well, not really. According to a study by researchers at Baylor University in Texas, yawning when you see others yawn is a significant sign of empathy. The more you feel connected to people, the more likely you are to yawn when you spot someone else doing it. The flip side? The less likely you are to yawn, the less empathetic you are. Congratulations. You aced the psychopath test. Baylor researchers recruited more than 100 college students and gave them a commonly used test of psychopathic traits such as being antisocial, selfish, manipulative and impulsive, and domineering. Then they

comes from better collaboration. Employees who work better together, share results and share lessons learned with one another stand a better chance of succeeding than those who don’t. And organizations that encourage it do too. Collaboration is transforming our models for leadership as well. Generational changes in the workforce and a desire for more open and inclusive leadership are forcing leaders to balance hard-driving, top-down “I lead, you follow” tendencies with more collaborative and open approaches to management. While not everyone is flattening their corporate hierarchies just yet, chief learning officers are emphasizing softer skills in leadership development like emotional intelligence. It’s not just collaboration that should focus your attention. As chief learning officer, your ever-expanding duties include much more than creating and delivering content and information effectively and efficiently. Beyond keeping the trains running, your job is to make connections. It isn’t just to fuel the knowledge that fires your organization’s productivity engine. Your duty is to grease the wheels of collaboration that goes beyond just developing the hard skills or product knowledge your employees need to do their daily work. Your duty is to help people make connections not just to knowledge and to each other, but also to knit showed their recruits a series of short videos of people together the loose seams that pop loose across your oryawning, laughing or showing no facial expression ganization. Increased collaboration and more inclusive whatsoever and recorded participants’ reactions. leadership are core to that mandate. They found that participants who showed more So the next time your team meeting spurs an illempathy were more likely to yawn after watching timed yawn, don’t see it as a sign of disrespect. Next someone else yawn. Those who tested high for psycho- time someone stretches and lets out a big yawn halfpathic traits — and thus were less empathetic — were way through your onboarding, don’t treat it as a sign of less likely to yawn. boredom. Well, maybe treat it like that a little bit. But Now before you start labeling your employees, bear also treat it as an opportunity. in mind the lack of yawnpathy may mean something Take a look around. If someone else yawns too, else. Maybe they’re just remarkably well-rested people. It then maybe you’re on the right track. It might mean may also mean they haven’t had the chance to get to it’s time to take a break. But it might also be a sign that know others yet, researchers said. Once they form rela- your people are getting better connected. And that’s tionships, they’ll be yawning away just like the rest of us. good news for everyone. CLO Therein lies an important visual cue for you, too. Yawning could just an important sign you can use in developing your learning strategy. It’s no big secret we live in an era of collaboration. From large organizations to small, bosses are looking to their employees to produce more and better results Mike Prokopeak faster and cheaper. Editor in Chief That kind of heightened productivity and efficiency mikep@CLOmedia.com

More than a sign of boredom, yawning may just be the clue you need to develop better relationships.

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CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Ken Blanchard Joe Dixon Sarah Fister Gale Bravetta Hassell Laurent M. Jean-Marius Michael Leimbach Elliott Masie John Mattone Lee Maxey Deb McMahon Bob Mosher Eunice Parisi-Carew Jane Ripley Evan Sinar Richard S. Wellins

John R. Taggart

Gwen Connelly

Kevin A. Simpson

PRESIDENT

EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT

CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER

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

CHIEF LEARNING OFFICER EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Cushing Anderson, Program Director, Learning Ser vices, IDC Frank J. Anderson Jr., ( Ret.) President, Defense Acquisition Universit y Cedric Coco, Senior Vice President, Human Resources, Lowe’s Cos. Inc. Lisa Doyle, Vice President, Learning and Development, Lowe’s Cos. Inc. Tamar Elkeles, Chief People Of ficer, Quixey Thomas Evans, ( Ret.) Chief Learning Of ficer, PricewaterhouseCoopers Ted Henson, Senior Strategist, Oracle Gerry Hudson-Martin, Director, Corporate Learning Strategies, Business Architects Kimo Kippen, Chief Learning Of ficer, Hilton Worldwide Rob Lauber, Vice President, Chief Learning Of ficer, McDonald’s Corp. Maj. Gen. Erwin F. Lessel, ( Ret.) U.S. Air Force, Director, Deloit te Consulting Justin Lombardo, Interim Chief Learning Of ficer, Baptist Health Alan Malinchak, Executive Advisor, Talent and Learning Practice, Deltek Universit y Lee Maxey, CEO, MindMax Jeanne C. Meister, Author and Independent Learning Consultant Bob Mosher, Senior Par tner and Chief Learning Evangelist, APPLY Synergies Rebecca Ray, Executive Vice President, The Conference Board Allison Rossett, ( Ret.) Professor of Educational Technology, San Diego State Universit y Diana Thomas, CEO and Founder, Winning Results Annette Thompson, Senior Vice President and Chief Learning Of ficer, Farmers Insurance David Vance, Former President, Caterpillar Universit y Kevin D. Wilde, Executive Leadership Fellow, Carlson School of Management, Universit y of Minnesota

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Chief Learning Officer (ISSN 1935-8148) is published monthly by MediaTec Publishing Inc., 111 E. Wacker Dr., Suite 1200, Chicago IL 60601. Periodicals postage paid at Chicago, IL and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Chief Learning Officer, P.O. Box 8712 Lowell, MA 01853. Subscriptions are free to qualified professionals within the US and Canada. Digital free subscriptions are available worldwide. Nonqualified paid subscriptions are available at the subscription price of $199 for 12 issues. All countries outside the US and Canada must be prepaid in US funds with an additional $33 postage surcharge. Single price copy is $29.95 Chief Learning Officer and CLOmedia.com are the trademarks of MediaTec Publishing Inc. Copyright © 2016, MediaTec Publishing Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Reproduction of material published in Chief Learning Officer is forbidden without permission. Printed by: Quad/Graphics, Sussex, WI

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TABLE OF CONTENTS MAY 2016

Features

18 30 34 38 44

How Good Are Your Listening Skills? Joe Dixon Learning leaders might exercise different management styles, but one thing is certain: They need to listen to their employees to run a successful learning organization.

Create Mentorships, Not Minions Bravetta Hassell Helpful as they are, minions aren’t the type of employees organizations can afford to invest their development dollars in. It’s better to invest in mentorships that produce leaders, not followers.

Collaboration Begins With You Ken Blanchard, Jane Ripley and Eunice Parisi-Carew Collaboration is key to facilitate positive business outcomes. But it’s not all about the team. It starts on an individual level, with each person’s mindset and behaviors.

Employees Are Investors, Not Assets Michael Leimbach Saying employees are assets is well intentioned, but it’s no longer accurate, nor is it a viable talent development strategy if the goal is organizational growth.

Future-Proof Your E-Learning Investment Deb McMahon and Laurent M. Jean-Marius Technology and e-learning go together like hand in glove, but only if the CLO and IT leader work together to make sure an organization’s tech infrastructure can handle new gadgetry.

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CHECK OUT THE NEW CLOMEDIA.COM Notice anything different? You’re right, it’s everything! We’ve completely relaunched our website. Now it should be easier than ever to read the features you follow in the magazine, and don’t forget to check your favorite bloggers under Commentary. ON THE COVER: PHOTO BY STEWART COHEN

TABLE OF CONTENTS MAY 2016

Departments

Experts 10 IMPERATIVES

24 Profile If It Matters to Employees, It Matters to Her Bravetta Hassell Southwest Airlines University Vice President Elizabeth Bryant helps people ‘find the right seat’ so learning following a reorganization can really take off.

48 Case Study Creating a Recruitment Process That Sticks Sarah Fister Gale Adobe Systems Inc. built a scalable, global strategy that produced significant and measurable benefits.

50 Business Intelligence The Hard Science Behind Soft Skills Richard S. Wellins and Evan Sinar When it comes to return on investment, investing in soft skills development for leaders produces hard, bottom-line returns.

Elliott Masie A Legal Learning Firewall Lurks

12 SELLING UP, SELLING DOWN

Bob Mosher Can You Cover This?

14 LEADERSHIP

Ken Blanchard Set Up First-time Managers for Success

16 MAKING THE GRADE

Lee Maxey Tapping Into MOOC Data

54 IN CONCLUSION

John Mattone The Great Culture Transformation

Resources 4 Editor’s Letter

The Big Yawn

53 Advertisers’ Index

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

IMPERATIVES

A Legal Learning Firewall Lurks Providing the option to learn at home may come with a price for employers • BY ELLIOTT MASIE

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

e live in a delightful age of digital knowledge and learning assets that are deliverable to us anytime and anywhere. Yet, there is a legal “learning firewall” lurking. Ask 10 of your learners when they would like to take a digital course or an e-learning program. Many will say they would prefer to access it after or before traditional working hours. Ask where they would ideally want to be when they participate in a digital learning experience. Many would vote not to be at their desks, so they could escape the continuous distractions like phone calls and incoming emails. Also, they would rather not be seen in “learning mode” by their colleagues because, sadly, that is very often considered a less valuable use of time. And many would say they could learn better if they could access learning assets from home. In fact, many of your workers do take time at home — during the night, in the early morning hours or on weekends — to learn more deeply and study.

Give legislators and government regulators an opportunity to create a learning pathway for every employee — regardless of wage status. Personally, I can’t fully concentrate on a digital learning program at my desk, in my office or in my building. So, like your workers, I frequently shift my learning time to home. This would be an acceptable strategy — if it didn’t potentially cause wage and labor law issues for many organizations. In most states, a worker who is paid on an hourly wage must be compensated if they access corporate learning assets outside of work hours. In fact, that person must be compensated on an overtime or other basis, even if they voluntarily choose to access your organization’s learning portal from home. So, many major corporations create a learning firewall, which prevents certain workers from accessing learning assets when they are not at an internal corpo10 Chief Learning Officer • May 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

rate IP address — wired or wireless — or are outside of their normal working hours. Read carefully: I am not advocating taking advantage of workers by insisting that they must learn from home without compensation. In our digital age with more and more mobile workers, it is natural and probable that an employee will choose to use some commuting time, at-home time or sitting-at-a-coffee-shop time to access knowledge and learning assets. The learning industry needs to have an open and honest conversation with leaders from human resources, labor unions, and state and federal departments to fairly and creatively design ways for employees to access learning from home — on a voluntary basis — without an immediate or severe wage implication. Some organizations have offered free tuition to higher education institutions as an employee benefit. This can allow hourly employees to learn on their own time for their own development without wage implications, but the learning must not be directly related to their current job responsibilities. Recently, I had a conversation with an HR leader who asked if the organization is responsible for injury costs if an employee is walking outside while using a mobile device to access a learning program — and they trip on a curb. At first I laughed, but then I realized my colleague was totally serious. We are even seeing this issue when it comes to the process of onboarding employees. Often, new hires want to prep for their new jobs by accessing learning from the corporate website. They might want to share that with their family to give them a sense of their upcoming work. But, once again, there might be a learning firewall preventing access from afar. Further, this issue surfaces just as we are gaining support for upskilling efforts to provide ladders for frontline workers to rise in their roles and compensation through deeper access to new learning and certification. Chief learning officers and learning leaders, let’s come together with labor and employee groups to craft solutions for learning in this digital and mobile age. Then, give legislators and government regulators an opportunity to create a pathway for every employee — regardless of wage status — to voluntarily and fairly access digital knowledge and development. CLO

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SELLING UP, SELLING DOWN

Can You Cover This? We serve an audience, but they don’t get to tell us how • BY BOB MOSHER

Bob Mosher is a senior partner and chief learning evangelist for APPLY Synergies, a strategic consulting firm. To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

ave you ever heard these requests from the lines of business you support: • “I’d like you to create a five-day class on leadership.” • “I need a three-day workshop on our new sales process.” • “My department would like you to build e-learning covering the features of the latest upgrade to our CRM.” I’ve been through this scenario many times in my 30-plus-year career, and frankly this exchange has always bothered me. These requests are the equivalent of me walking into my doctor’s office and demanding, “I would like five Advil because my arm is killing me!” I’m not a doctor; I’m usually the patient. I have symptoms. I am not qualified to prescribe the treatment. I don’t mean to sound like I’m belittling those whom we serve, but frankly, they are not qualified to do the same with the services we provide. They are the patient; we are the doctor. We should prescribe the correct learning strategy to effectively solve the business problem. We should not be told the deliverable before we have been allowed to do the analysis. Why do we find ourselves in this situation? It comes from two scenarios. The first is of our own doing. Those whom we serve only know enough to ask for what we’ve always given them. If we’re known as the training department, we will always be asked for training deliverables. If the solutions outlined in the aforementioned questions worked, or at least seemed to work, why would they come to us for anything different? The second reason for this behavior is based on their own life context. We support a deliverable that our buyer has been intimately a part of. We teach people. We put them in classrooms. Yes, we’ve migrated to e-learning and virtual instruction, but these modalities aren’t all that different from the classroom. It’s still instruction, just online. When they see an e-learning module start with “In this lesson you will learn … ,” they’ve been there before. Neither of these scenarios bode well for us doing our jobs the way we should. To correct this, we have to start by not feeding into it. We define how to best “cover” a learning need, even if clients feel certain time parameters and learning modalities are the best way to meet that

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need. For too long, “covering” content in class or online has equaled skill and the ability to perform. That is simply not the case. If we want to prescribe another option, we need to help our organizations understand why.

We should not be told the deliverable before we have been allowed to do the correct analysis. For far too long, “covering it” meant a trainer said it, a student practiced it in class, or it was taught independently online. In the end, we must show or track that the learner has mastered the content, and many of us struggle to equate learning with skill and performance. We have many new and powerful learning options at our disposal: adaptive learning, electronic performance support, simulations, collaborative technologies and mobile learning, to name a few. If we want to be allowed to prescribe other deliverables, we need to understand how each covers material and the degree to which each solution helps a learner move beyond content mastery and enables performance. We know people learn best through trial and error in the workflow, yet that workflow is often as far away from the classroom as it can get. Yes, we try experiential learning and other kinds of immersing activities in our classrooms, but these will never be as powerful and long lasting a teacher as the workflow itself. To be allowed to switch the focus of our portfolio and introduce new tools, we need to prove how each covers content in a more meaningful way. The classroom and e-learning will still have their place, but they are not the tip of the sword when it comes to supporting workflow performance. We need to be able to blend the correct learning solution, let classroom work begin the journey, and then use other options to enable our learners to transfer and sustain performance on the job. CLO

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LEADERSHIP

Set Up First-time Managers for Success They’ve entered boss territory, but that doesn’t mean they don’t need guidance • BY KEN BLANCHARD

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

he transition to first-time manager from individual contributor is often fraught with false starts and frustrations. The chief learning officer plays a key role in helping first-time managers successfully negotiate one of the most important rites of passage in business. The first thing beginning managers need is moral support. Because their former peers now report to them, these new managers are still getting used to no longer being part of the gang. No matter how much camaraderie they might have shared with their former teammates, their new direct reports see them differently. As someone who likely has experienced that shift, your support will be important. Your first-time managers will also need direction. Sure, they are bright and motivated — that’s why they were promoted. And yes, they’ve earned some autonomy. That doesn’t mean you can disappear on them. Your first-time managers are going to need your help developing skills for their new roles. Encourage your first-time managers to schedule regular one-on-one meetings with you. During these meetings, you can assess whether they’re still enthusiastic about their new position or if they’ve hit what Situational Leadership II calls the disillusioned learner stage. In a recent letter to The Ken Blanchard Cos. “Ask Madeleine” blog, a first-time manager articulated the disillusioned learner stage beautifully:

First-time managers need direction. Sure, they are bright and motivated — that’s why they were promoted. That doesn’t mean you can disappear on them. “I have realized I really don’t like being a manager. I go from wiping runny noses and managing minor crises at home (I have two young children and a spouse who travels) to talking people off the ledge and putting out brush fires at work. I really miss the old days of settling in to do focused work that really made an impact. I find myself feeling jealous of my direct reports because they get to do fun 14 Chief Learning Officer • May 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

work while I am stuck with endless drudgery.” Here’s where you can model for your first-time managers how to avoid the drudgery and empower their direct reports. Show them, by your own example, how to use the three skills of the New One Minute Manager: 1. Goal setting: Like any other direct reports, new managers need your guidance and partnership in setting goals. As first-time managers, their new goals — such as increasing revenue, reducing turnover or developing new programs — are more nebulous than the task-oriented goals they were accustomed to as individual contributors. Be sure they know what a good job will look like. Help them set a manageable number of SMART — specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound — goals. Remember, you’ll be talking to them about their leadership of others. What are their plans for leading their team to achieve the goals? 2. Praising: Especially now that your first-time managers are responsible for inspiring others, they need encouragement. Again, because managing others is not as measurable as, for example, answering customer calls, it’s important to praise progress toward long-term goals. By encouraging your first-time managers with praise, you not only motivate but also model how to motivate their direct reports. Once again, discuss their leadership of their team members. Are they taking the time to catch their team members doing things right? 3. Redirecting: When a first-time manager’s goals are not being met — for example, the department’s revenue is still down — the manager needs to be redirected. Go back to the goal, and make sure the firsttime manager is clear about what the two of you previously agreed upon. Together, review the facts around the situation, and discuss how the manager plans to get back on track and redirect the unproductive efforts. Finally, set up your first-time managers for longterm success by helping them look beyond their current roles. Find out what they are excited about and the kind of long-term career aspirations they have. Sadly, an employment recruiter often knows more about ambitious new managers than their own managers do. Nurturing first-time managers can be one of the most rewarding aspects of your job. There’s nothing better than getting a letter from a leader you once managed telling you about the positive effect you had on their life and career. CLO

MAKING THE GRADE

Tapping Into MOOC Data Schools collect a wealth of online learner-related information — just ask for it • BY LEE MAXEY

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

or corporate learning departments, any course that’s not a “page-turner” means wasted effort. If chief learning officers could tap into research showing how people are learning most effectively online, however, it could greatly improve learning content. By talking to universities about their approach to, and results from, online learning, CLOs could change the way their learning and development teams design courses and think about learning. For instance, a plethora of schools publish massive open online courses, or MOOCs. Organizations like edX, launched by Harvard University and MIT, have added dozens of leading schools to present free courses online. Coursera and Udacity have, too. Each of these organizations, and the schools that supply courses, extract heaps of data about what people are clicking on to learn, which in turn demonstrates retention rates. If learning leaders want to understand this data, they can start by contacting the person running the MOOCs for, say, HarvardX or the Harvard Business School. Boston’s Berkelee College of Music supplies MOOCs via something akin to a startup, which is run from within the school itself. “Not all universities are created equal in terms of research or their approach to effective online learning,” said Kevin Wilde, the recently retired CLO of General Mills and current Executive Leadership Fellow at the University of Minnesota. “I would start by asking other CLOs which universities are getting their attention.” Local universities’ schools of education are another data source. For example, Boston University’s School of Education and Lesley University’s Graduate School of Education both gather data on how best to push classroom learning online. Opening a window to this research could be as simple as calling a university and setting up a lunch to understand what they’re trying to address. Start the conversation by learning about their research agenda and how they’re measuring the ways education can work better. Or, sit down with one of the deans for continuing education or with a university extension school. These professionals often track how people are learning in a business-to-consumer environment. The goals for adult learning are threefold: 1. Generate and deliver content in a way that increases its relevancy for a person at a given time and place in their career.

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2. Increase delivery efficiency with respect to quantity and modality. 3. Deliver learning just in time. This thinking isn’t new; but the data we can extract to vet the efficacy of our methods is. For example, you can ask a school, “With your MOOCs, what is the optimum amount of time someone can focus before they abort and go on to the next topic in a course?” Or, “what are the user experiences that help learners exceed the average times? Are you, from an instructional design point of view, embedding a game or video that keeps the learner engaged for up to, say, 10 minutes?” In the past, experts like Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget guided our thinking on the theory and practice of education such as spontaneous learning vs. ready-made knowledge. Now we can add a massively large data set capturing people’s actual learning behavior. This information offers some guardrails and benchmarks for future instructional design.

A passion for learning, a desire to improve methods and attract new students motivate educators to share data. Why would a dean in charge of building MOOCs want to meet with a CLO to discuss and share this information? Well, educators often see learning as a vocation. They are also keenly aware that corporate learning and its associated technologies have done a lot more for learning delivery than higher education has been able to achieve on its own. And educators, especially those in charge of continuing education and MOOCs, know that learning leaders often represent a potentially large pool of future students. Passion for the subject, a desire to improve their methods and attracting new students motivate educators. “Most of the best universities are constantly looking to be more relevant to the business world as a way to help their students succeed,” Wilde said. “A CLO-university connection can benefit both parties.” CLO

How Good Are Your Listening Skills? Learning leaders might exercise different management styles, but one thing is certain: They need to listen to their employees to run a successful learning organization. BY JOE DIXON

hen Warren Buffett released his annual letter to shareholders in February 2015, it was filled with praise for his employees and managers. The Berkshire Hathaway CEO highlighted key executives, citing their integral contributions to his company and its success over the past year. Buffett professes a hands-off managerial approach, trusting his executives to understand his expectations and perform well. In contrast, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is often characterized as a control freak. The New York Times published an article in August 2015 saying that Bezos had “an instinct for bluntness” and “an eagerness to tell others how to behave.” In 2015, Amazon.com Inc. dethroned WalMart Stores Inc. as the United States’ most valuable retailer, showing there’s no one way to lead to success. Whether a company’s chief learning leader is more Buffett or Bezos, it is important they have one skill: the ability to listen. Control vs. influence — it’s a constant tug-of-war for learning leaders to decide when and how to exert their authority. Because

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

chief learning officers cannot be responsible for every problem or scrutinize each employee, it is important for them to know when direct intervention is necessary and when to trust the learning systems in place to motivate individual learning. Instead of looking at these approaches as opposing choices, leaders can use them in tandem to manage effectively, said Cory Bouck, former director of organizational development and learning at Johnsonville Sausage. “There are times for direct control once you’ve made the influence,” Bouck said, who is now the company’s regional business director for Asia-Pacific. “Part of the influencing process is painting that picture of the future and saying this is the new way.”

Set the Example This method of thinking is part of the Situational Leadership Model, developed by professor Paul Hersey in the 1960s. This model divides leadership into four quadrants based on their degree of supportive or directive management. On one end of the bell curve, there is delegation, which largely relies on a hands-off approach where executives divvy up tasks among their subordinates. The other extreme is directing, where an executive controls all of the decisions themselves. Most effective managers fall somewhere in the middle, Bouck said.

To earn the leeway to try new things, it’s important for organizational development and learning teams to know where they can afford to experiment. As a senior executive, individuals are expected to fill different roles that will require different management styles. During his 11-year tenure as chief learning officer for PricewaterhouseCoopers, Tom Evans commanded the respect of his colleagues by including them in the decision-making process. “It’s about how you are present within the structure of the organization to enable you to be an authentic leader,” he said. “It’s not about indirect influence or direct control.” For Evans, who retired in 2015, authenticity comes from passion for the work and trust among his team. 20 Chief Learning Officer • May 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

When leading a project, he said his goal is to get each employee invested in the end result by asking for their input and listening to suggestions. Throughout his five-decade career, he said getting team input was always a priority, even when organizing events such as a leadership retreat for PwC senior executives. The experience was expensive and new for the company, so Evans said it was critical he put aside preconceived ideas on how the event would go. Instead, he was open to all ideas, which he said contributed to the event’s success. It’s about “giving recognition and celebrating someone’s idea on an individual or group level,” he said. “The idea of recognition and celebration is critical if you’re going to mobilize your organization.” Bouck reinforces the importance of trust among senior executives and employees. “If people believe that you’re earnest, that you’re smart and working hard, they can forgive things as you experiment.” To nurture that relationship even further, Johnsonville’s learning leaders directly communicate with its operational team on the ground. During his time in organizational development and learning, Bouck sat in on monthly and quarterly meetings with the operations team to gather information about their most pressing learning needs. He said this “belly to belly” relationship improved his ability to implement policies with the greatest positive effect for the company.

Build a Learning Culture It may seem strange to equate company culture with animal behavior, but Johnsonville’s corporate philosophy aims for the company to be like a flock geese, not a herd of buffalo. The mindset comes from former Johnsonville CEO Ralph Stayer’s book, “Flight of the Buffalo.” “If the head buffalo goes off the cliff, the whole herd goes off,” Bouck said. “When a flock of geese flies in a v-formation, everyone takes a turn at leadership.” At Johnsonville, leaders are called coaches and employees are called members. The purpose of this is to foster an environment where people aren’t afraid to speak up, Bouck said. But for employees to contribute their ideas and for this hands-off approach to succeed, learning leaders must create an environment where self-learning is not only encouraged but also expected. Experimentation and collaboration are two ingredients in Johnsonville’s recipe for success. If an employee comes up with a fresh idea, leaders often praise their insight and give them a budget to go explore it. This creates an atmosphere where every employee feels capable of grinding out fresh ideas, Bouck said. To earn the leeway to try new things, it’s important for organizational development and learning teams to know where they can afford to experiment, said Bob Mosher, Apply Synergies’ chief learning evangelist and

Chief Learning Officer columnist. A critical skills analysis is one way to determine the areas where a more laid-back approach can work or where strict control is necessary. Learning leaders have to let go of things that are not critical, he explained. They can still provide help systems, but teach employees how to use them and let them go on their own. One type of critical skills analysis ranks employee performance tasks on a scale from one to seven. Lower numbers indicate tasks that, if not performed well, will not have dire consequences for the company. The higher numbers indicate “life or death” tasks that are hugely important to company success and security, Mosher said. Using a metric like this can help learning leaders determine which tasks to fuss over and what not to stress about. E-learning is another medium that bolsters employees’ capability to learn on their own. Johnsonville employees go through online training seminars that focus on soft skills such as communication, problem-solving, accountability and how to deal with behavioral issues that might arise. Although technology is more prevalent in the workplace, it is important to know how to use it. Otherwise, those resources will go to waste. “It starts with us being able to understand the environment and performance needs and performance gaps that exist within the organization,” Mosher said. Incorporating self-learning tools such as e-learning into the workday is important for them to be effective, Mosher said. Workers may believe these tools take them away from their work, which makes them unwilling to use them. “So many of the learning assets we build are perceived as extras,” he said. “If we build support assets that are seen as intrinsic to the workflow, the learner consumes it readily.”

Put the ‘I’ in Team From top to bottom, Johnsonville employees and executives are required to complete monthly “personal development commitments,” which outline areas each employee would like to improve. Every month, employees need to report on the steps they took to fulfill those goals. Every personal development commitment is available on the company’s intranet, so everyone is held to the same standard of accountability, Bouck said. Similarly, at PwC, Evans stressed “honest, open and frequent feedback” between him and his team to cultivate a culture of accountability. While a team-based approach might be ideal for organizational learning, it isn’t always practical. There are a few key signs that executive action is necessary. For instance, deadline-oriented or high-risk tasks are not the time to solicit opinions, Evans said. It is also 22 Chief Learning Officer • May 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

4 Traits of a Good Listener

ood listening skills can be a powerful weapon used to get employees working effectively. But for leaders with a tendency to dominate the conversation or be too passive, poor listening skills can cause unrest, inefficiency and tension among the team that gets in the way of achieving business objectives. Patti Wood, a body language expert, offers four tips bosses can use to make sure employees know they are being heard.

1. Give facial feedback. Good listeners know how to share their thoughts and feelings without saying a word. As employees share their ideas and opinions, leaders should let their thoughts play across their faces. Even if they disagree with what an employee is saying, visible disagreement is better than having employees try to read their boss’ mind, Wood said. Staying stone-faced can lead to confusion and miscommunication. 2. Have an open posture. Keep arms at sides and legs uncrossed. Folded limbs and hunched posture gives the impression that the listener isn’t interested, Wood said. To convey genuine interest, leaders should sit up straight and lean forward from time to time, which shows interest in what is being said. 3. Make eye contact. If a leader looks out the window while an employee is speaking, it may appear as if they don’t care. It is OK to look somewhere else every so often, Wood said, but leaders should make a conscious effort to look employees in the eye while they are speaking to foster genuine communication. 4. Put away technology. Checking emails can wait until the conversation is over. Technology can be one of the biggest distractors to effective communication, Wood said. If an employee walks in, turn away from the computer screen, take hands off the keys or politely tell them it is not a good time to talk. Giving phones or computers priority can make employees feel like they are being hurried out of the office and unvalued.

—Joe Dixon

important for learning leaders to exert control whenever a company is trying to adjust its business strategy or is instituting a paradigm shift. It is critical for the learning function to remain in tune with changing business objectives, and having self-assured learning leaders is important to make this a smooth transition. “You want to ground your team in your vision and what you want to achieve, but encourage them to participate in the ideation and problem-solving that will be necessary to get there,” Evans said. LISTENING continued on page 53

Empowering Communication

Online Language Training for a Global Workforce _ E-learning, coaching, virtual classroom and phone _ Personal coaching for every student _ Engaging e-learning tools _ Certified trainers and virtual classroom sessions _ 24/7 coaching and support _ Integration and project management included

Chief Learning Officer â&#x20AC;˘ May 2016 â&#x20AC;˘ www.CLOmedia.com

PROFILE Elizabeth Bryant

If It Matters to Employees, It Matters to Her BY BRAVETTA HASSELL

Southwest Airlines University Vice President Elizabeth Bryant helps people ‘find the right seat’ so that learning following a reorganization can really take off.

outhwest Airlines’ Elizabeth Bryant cares. She enjoys solving problems and helping others. While she doesn’t like to talk about what she does for her peers, they do. For instance, Jeff Lamb, executive vice president of corporate services at Southwest, recalled how Bryant jumped into action following news that a fellow employee’s husband had died. Bryant volunteered to go to her home with a few colleagues to clean and help out over the course of several days. This was one of many times that he saw Bryant respond personally to employee needs, he explained, and it’s not a talent strategy. It’s simply who she is. Her compassion and earnest interest in Southwest employees’ concerns has won a “fierce” loyalty from her team, Lamb said. Bryant, vice president of Southwest University since 2012, describes herself in more straight-forward terms. For example, as a child, her report cards said she talked too much. And if ever there is a problem, she said family and friends will confirm that she is often somewhere in the middle of solving it. This same problem-solving attitude is top of mind when she talks about leadership and her team: “If I come to the table and don’t participate in solving a problem, then why am I there?” A unique perspective is often necessary to move the conversation along and get things done, she said.

Changing Course When Bryant arrived at Southwest in 1997 fresh out of graduate school at Indiana University-Bloomington, she came in as an instructor, teaching new hire and leadership classes. She intended to gain some experience and return to the Bay Area, where she is from. But then she began to move up. She served as director of leadership development, as senior director of talent 24 Chief Learning Officer • May 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

and development, and as managing director of training during Southwest’s learning overhaul. In 2011, Bryant found herself in the middle of a learning dilemma that Southwest had been managing for decades. The company’s acquisition of AirTran Airways that year had magnified challenges associated with its decentralized training model. Every operational group across the company had its own training func-

‘I have an expectation that every employee in his department acts like a CLO of the company and makes decisions accordingly.’ —Elizabeth Bryant, vice president, Southwest Airlines University tion, but there was little consistency, resources weren’t used efficiently, metrics were limited, and there was little room to support company growth, she said. The company could have stayed the course as it brought 8,000 new employees on board from AirTran, but Bryant said it chose to rethink how Southwest Airlines learns: to improve training quality and continuity, decrease costs, improve efficiency and deliver learning to employees faster. The move to centralized learning was a significant shift in SWA’s history and is a point of pride for Bryant. The challenge was great, considering more than

PHOTOS BY STEWART COHEN

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

PROFILE Elizabeth Bryant

400 training professionals across the organization were training differently, using different methodologies, platforms and skills, while managing different learning management systems. To help assess the work that lies ahead, she said one of the first things she did was improve employee onboarding so she would know who was coming into the learning organization and what they were doing. “I believe strongly that when you get the right people in the right seat, then you can accomplish anything.” Bryant sat down with each training department and met with each employee one on one. There were a lot of pointed questions such as: How did you get here? Why learning and development? She said she was trying to find out whether instruc—Elizabeth Bryant, vice president, tors were in their roles on purpose or Southwest Airlines University by accident. “Because if you don’t want to be here, I want to help you align with where you want to be,” Bryant said. Anyone in this department has to feel passion for helping other people be successful. That’s what this department is all about.” In retrospect, Bryant said these were likely surprising conversations for some of the staff, but the meetings were important so she could get to know the learning team, they could get to know her, and she could immediately establish an environment that was open, transparent, honest and geared toward problem-solving. This yearlong preliminary work helped Bryant highlight values she wanted to imbue into the Southwest University culture, and identify key support needed for instructors who’d been so consumed with teaching they’d neglected their own development. The Southwest learning team created an internal certification to improve instructors’ skills and built a community to bring them together. To further understand the company before its learning function underwent any major change, Bryant moved out of the HR office into the airline’s inner-workings to learn all about its operational training, interacting regularly with every department — ground operations, tech ops, flight crews, customer support and services — as a team member. These experiences allowed her to examine the function in detail: what was working, what wasn’t and what were the disparate, best practices from 10 departments that could be brought

‘If I come to the table and don’t participate in solving a problem, then why am I there?’

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

under one roof to benefit the broader workforce. Things ran as usual during this period. Bryant said she wanted to take time and make this front-end investment so the learning team could get this consolidation to a centralized university governance structure at least 80 percent right pre-launch. They could tweak as needed, but there would be no do-overs. By 2012, all training groups had been onboarded into Southwest Airlines University, or SWA U. Learning changed, as well. Some program titles changed, and in 2014, the team moved into SWA U’s 492,000 square-foot, $120 million Training and Operational Support, or TOPS, building in Dallas. The state-of-the-art training facility includes “The Airport Experience,” which provides a realistic ticket counter, gate, baggage service office, jet bridge and emergency evacuation trainer; classrooms designed to increase engagement and information retention; and a multimedia area to support creation of high-quality video products. The facility also houses the company’s Network Operations Control facility, which serves as the airline’s 24/7 operation center.

An Inspired New Journey In 2015, the 300-employee SWA U team trained more than 47,000 employees, as well as 10,000 global contractors using methods such as classroom-based learning, e-learning, video, blended solutions and performance-based training depending on the work

Elizabeth Bryant said when she was given the opportunity to teach public speaking to undergraduate students, she was “immediately hooked.”

group and location. “The sense of pride is evident throughout the department,” Bryant said. She said during one team meeting, she interviewed an employee she’d never met before who was looking for another job. They discussed all the ideas he had to improve the business, ideas that were constantly met with resistance — there were “operational objectives” that had to take priority and no time to consider anything else — and he wasn’t being heard. The employee shared his idea to use tablets in classrooms. Considering tablet computers weren’t a technology the company had been using, there was a lot of risk but the idea was worth looking at. “I said, ‘You know, I actually think mobile learning and that type of thinking is the future of learning,’ ” Bryant said. The two eventually worked on a business case together, and the employee became the champion of SWA U’s iPads-in-the-classroom initiative. Where once the department would print off a customer service training manual that was easily 100 pages long — out of date the moment it landed in employee hands and pitched in the recycling bin soon after class — now materials can be emailed and accessed digitally. The tablet initiative was so successful it was eventually embedded into how business is done at SWA U. In the past three years, welcoming new ideas has become part of the culture. The aforementioned employee, having put aside his job search, is now one of the most engaged employees she knows, Bryant said. “I have an expectation that every employee in this department acts like a CLO of the company and makes decisions accordingly,” she said. “And I’ve found that a highly engaged workforce is one that believes they are able to participate in the process; it yields happier employees.” And happier employees provide better service. Southwest’s voluntary turnover rate is less than 2 percent companywide. Bryant said within her department, that rate is even lower, and it’s likely because of her transparent, uber supportive leadership style. This kind of approach not only drives performance, but also affects employee retention, wrote leadership expert Monique Valcour in a January 2014 Harvard Business Review article. “No one wants to work for a boss who doesn’t take an interest in their development, doesn’t help them deepen their skills and learn new ones, and doesn’t validate their contributions,” Valcour wrote about strategies similar to Bryant’s. And just as her team has built a community and strategy for learning leaders’ continuous development, Bryant, who is an avid reader, continues to build her own development and share what she’s

learned. Last year, she delivered a SWA U talk on engaging millennial workers to roughly 1,000 leaders. These talks are similar to TED Talks, designed to be short and informative. Bryant is no stranger to standing before a group and talking about the business, but this opportunity was different. She couldn’t use her usual videos or visual aids to solicit engagement, so to mitigate her discomfort, Bryant began preparing learned that many of the employees were so focused on five months in advance. Bryant training everybody else they weren’t getting development themselves. She tapped her col- “It’s kind of akin to putting your own oxygen mask on before you put leagues for guidance, the oxygen mask on others,” Bryant said. and when it was time for a run through, she brought in all of the learning leaders to provide feedback. It took an army, she said, but she welcomed it. “When you create an environment of debate, dialogue and trust, you get it back,” she said, laughing. “I had more suggestions for improvement than I care to list.” However, all of the feedback created a much better product. She said the SWA U talk was probably one of the biggest learning opportunities she had recently, and “I’m OK if I never do that again —although, you never know,’ she said. “I’m always up for the challenge.” She said her life outside of work rarely sees a dull moment. A mother of three extremely active children — Connor, Regan and Audrey — Bryant’s weekends are filled with tennis, soccer and cheerleading practice. She’s involved as much as possible in her kids’ schools and volunteers where she is needed. At Southwest, things are just as busy. Bryant said she’s had opportunities to learn and grow throughout her career, and she considers herself extremely lucky because the company’s mission aligns with her passion for learning, development and people. She said she hopes that every employee she interacts with comes away knowing she cares about them as individuals and cares about their career success. Everyone brings gifts, she said. “Part of my job is to help highlight what those are — to listen, learn and highlight those.” CLO Bravetta Hassell is a Chief Learning Officer associate editor. To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com. Chief Learning Officer • May 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

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

BEST PRACTICES IN NEGOTIATIONS & PERSUASION

Mastering Organizational Politics: How to Avoid the Three Biggest Mistakes BY LAUREN STARKEY, WHARTON EXECUTIVE EDUCATION

In this presidential election year in the United States, politics are everywhere. The only way to get a break, one might think, is to stop watching the news and go back to work. But there is no escape: politics are as much a part of organizational life as they are a part of national life. They can’t be avoided, so the only question is whether you can deal with them skillfully and ethically — or hide in your office and pretend they are not there.

Shell, a renowned expert on negotiation and persuasion, says at the heart of organizational politics is relationship-based persuasion. It’s what he and co-author Mario Moussa call “The Art of Woo” (winning others over). In their Wharton Executive Education course called Strategic Persuasion Workshop: The Art and Science of Selling Ideas, they draw on lessons from their book to help participants strengthen their political skills.

“The idea-selling process rewards patience. It is one day, one mind, one ally at a time.”

“Our program helps people think about the process of getting buy-in. It’s about finding allies, crafting a compelling message, and then adjusting it for different audiences, building coalitions, and gaining consensus. Mastering organizational politics means understanding how the group process works,” Shell explains.

“Many people find politics objectionable and unseemly,” says Wharton professor of legal studies and management G. Richard Shell. “They see it as inauthentic, about playing games when you should be telling the truth. But no matter what you think about it, you can’t opt out. It’s not a question of whether it’s there, but how good you are at it.”

When asked about the biggest mistakes executives make, he doesn’t pause. As academic director of the program for many years, he has hundreds of examples to draw from. “There are three common errors, and the program addresses each of them. First, they blurt out their idea before they frame it strategically. Second, they impinge on someone else’s turf or disrespect another person’s function. If they go directly to their boss, jumping over someone in the process, they create an enemy even if that person might be sympathetic to their idea. Third,

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

BEST PRACTICES IN NEGOTIATIONS & PERSUASION

language that your firm respects. Use your firm’s culture as a following wind instead of running contrary to it. Frame the idea to appeal to that culture, in a language that everyone will understand.”

Talking to the wrong people in the wrong order.

Being too impatient.

Tip: “Who is the person you know the best, who you think will be sympathetic to the idea? Start there. Even if they don’t have a role in the decision, they can help coach you for the next person as you practice verbalizing the pitch. Instead of jumping straight into the fire, start with your friends.”

G. Richard Shell, Thomas Gerrity Professor, Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics and Management; Chairperson, Legal Studies and Business Ethics Department, The Wharton School

they’re too impatient. The idea-selling process rewards patience. It is one day, one mind, one ally at a time.” All of these errors, says Shell, have something in common — they’re the result of not having mastered internal politics. Here, he shares his tips for avoiding them:

Speaking before you think about how to frame your idea.

Tip: “Think first about the special culture and

Tip: “Take a deep breath and try to get it done thoughtfully and correctly. Instead of focusing on the final victory, think of advances as victories. An advance is getting one more person to meet with you, or to introduce you to someone. You get to champion the idea to someone else; someone agrees to hold a meeting that will allow you some time to talk. Celebrate these advances and let the end take care of itself.” Ultimately, Shell notes, “preparation is the antidote for almost every ill, and it’s especially true for strategic persuasion. Think and plan before you make a move. That’s how to win others over.”

COMPANY PROFILE Wharton’s Strategic Persuasion Workshop: The Art and Science of Selling Ideas runs June 6–9, 2016 and October 24–27, 2016 in Philadelphia, PA. For more information, contact +1.215.898.1776 (worldwide) or execed@wharton.upenn.edu.Visit: execed.wharton.upenn.edu

CREATE MENTORSHIPS,

NOT MINIONS

BY BRAVETTA HASSELL

Helpful as they are, minions aren’t the type of employees organizations can afford to invest their development dollars in. It’s better to invest in mentorships that produce leaders, not followers.

musing as it is to watch the whimsical exchanges between evil mastermind Gru and his minions in the “Despicable Me” movie franchise, in the end, the cult-like relationship doesn’t turn a single one of the little yellow followers into a leader. In the real world — where operating in a fast-paced, increasingly ambiguous and complex environment is just a part of doing business — minions are far from welcome. Learning leaders have to continuously develop a dynamic pipeline of future leaders. Fortunately, a new generation of high potentials is streaming into the workforce in record numbers, and they’re hungry for personal and professional development. By strategically facilitating strong mentorships, learning leaders can both help satisfy employee needs and advance the organization’s business goals. To meet employee and business goals, organizations shouldn’t plan on mentorships looking like they have in the past, particularly if they want to develop diverse leaders. Today, the traditional paradigm in which a charismatic executive leads an adoring, less-senior employee where power is often misaligned won’t do, explained executive coaching expert Wendy Mantel of Mantel Coaching Inc.

Millennials want close, meaningful relationships with mentors. They also want to feel empowered to be authentic, to create and embody their own career brands. “Engagement, learning, growth, visibility, relevance and opportunity are watchwords for this generation,” Mantel said in an email. These needs are also important guiding words for learning organizations developing new, or rethinking, established, mentoring approaches. At IBM, mentorships are thought of less as a structured professional development tactic and more as a strategy for employees to exchange knowledge. The company’s more than 380,000 global employees are accessible to one another via the tech company’s social network, Connections, and they are empowered to choose and connect with their mentors through this channel. Technology can be helpful for mentoring, a process often thought of solely in a face-to-face context, said Wagner DeNuzzo, director of leadership and management development programs at IBM. The way people work has changed dramatically, and technology-enabled speed is a key ingredient to how IBM employees get things done. “When we are facing clients — we might need information on an industry — we reach

Identifying an organizations’ objectives for mentorship is an important task for learning leaders improving a program.

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

for each other very quickly,” DeNuzzo said. Connections features communities and individual profiles where employees tag themselves and search for others based on expertise. Employees can find support systems, information and the help they need to navigate the external environment, their careers and their collaborations. The employees drive the conversations, using each other’s expertise based on their roles and career and skill needs; they’re empowered to connect with as many resources as it takes. IBM’s diverse clients require diverse experience, DeNuzzo said, and in delivering that, employees have to keep in mind the distinct brand, which won’t be served well by just one role model or source of information. “We’re not asking them to be mentored by one individual and emulate their behaviors,” he said. “We know the behaviors we need to show up in front of the client, but we ask that people not be a passive learner. We ask mentors and mentees to continuously exchange knowledge using all the data they have through colleagues and everybody else.”

Mentoring online allows IBM to assess social sentiment and gauge the effect, whether positive or negative, DeNuzzo said. He also credits IBM’s strong feedback culture, which creeps into mentorship relationships, as another facet helping to make them an effective development tool. A mentor stands to benefit greatly when the mentee has the courage to give feedback, he said. “That’s how we grow and become better IBMers.”

Mentorship Is a Two-Way Street According to “Five More Deadly Mentoring Mistakes,” an article from the Center for Mentoring Excellence, good conversation is the heart and soul of successful mentoring relationships. Without this integral part of the relationship, learning is compromised. The relationship also has to go both ways, and there has to be a meeting of the minds, which is why mentorships at General Motors — now powered by newly piloted software — centers around professional chemistry established through the platform’s matching technology. It works like a dating website, explained Mimi Brent, GM’s global career development strategy leader.

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

Based on an employee-generated profile, the system kicks back a list of recommended mentors whom they can learn more about and ultimately connect with using the portal. This mentoring initiative, the latest leg of GM’s recast career development strategy, places employees firmly in the driver’s seat. “Mentoring is most successful when people can pick their own mentors,” Brent said.

‘We ask mentors and mentees to continuously exchange knowledge using all the data they have.’ —Wagner DeNuzzo, director of leadership and management development programs, IBM The matching happens via a series of questions, as well as an internally developed personality assessment to gauge a mentor’s area of interest and expertise in mentoring. Mentors are asked what skills they feel comfortable guiding a mentee on, in which units of business they have expertise, and how many years of professional experience they have. Conversely, mentees are asked what skills they would like help in and how many years of professional experience they’d like their mentor to have. While many mentees want to be matched with someone with decades of experience, they’re also encouraged to seek out peer mentors. These colleagues might not have 20 years in the business, but they do have valuable knowledge to share. Following the assessment, mentees are matched with mentors who have similar personality types and skills selected, and mentees are given a list of up to 10 potential mentors. The list includes a match percentage for each prospective mentor. Before mentors and mentees get started, they are encouraged to do some pre-work. The mentoring area of the company’s career development website has a growing library of resources for both mentors and mentees to access, such as how to make the most of a mentorship relationship and how to be a mentor. GM’s career development team also created a one-hour webinar for employees considering becoming mentors for the first time, or who want to improve. Judy Corner, director of mentoring at talent development software-maker Insala, said this type of preparation and education on the front end is an imperative step to create mentorships that develop diverse leaders. 32 Chief Learning Officer • May 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

4 Ways Mentorships Fail the Company

host of things can contribute to a company’s mentorship program going south, frustrating participating employees as well as wasting resources and precious time.

Chief learning officers should prioritize certain steps before implementing any formal mentorship program. For instance, learning leaders should set an objective, identify success measures as well as identify what qualifies mentors to help meet stated objectives. Here are four ways mentorships can undermine talent development goals and the business.

Have a one-mentor-only policy. An employee could benefit from coaching in different areas of expressed need. Across an organization are talented leaders who have unique knowledge and skills to share. Having more than one mentor also encourages the development of leaders who have their own unique brand of leading and managing.

Put mentor choice squarely into somebody else’s hands. Who better to identify a mentor to help an employee reach key development goals than the employees themselves? A mismatch between mentor and mentee is quite often the source of mentorship failure, said Mimi Brent, global career development strategy leader at General Motors. The mentorship portal the company is piloting asks both mentees and mentors to respond to a survey about professional experiences, development needs and comfort mentoring in expressed areas of expertise.

Do zero check-ins. If there’s a problem in the mentor partnership, then it needs to be addressed as quickly as possible, said Judy Corner, director of mentoring at Insala. However, a souring relationship can’t be dealt with without some strategic follow-up from the program administrator. Check-ins with mentors and mentees on a fairly regular basis is a good idea.

The outcome is not about development. There are a lot misperceptions about mentorships, Corner said. The intended outcome of an effective mentorship is development, she explained. If, through a mentorship, an employee develops skills needed to later earn a promotion, that’s great, but that shouldn’t can’t be an assumption going into the relationship. Misunderstandings like these make pre-mentorship education helpful. At the outset, both the mentor and mentee should have a clear understanding of their roles within the partnership.

—Bravetta Hassell

Not Everyone Can Be a Mentor Identifying the organizations’ objectives for mentorship — what skills or expertise mentees need to learn and what qualifies mentors based on those needs — is an important task for learning leaders who are creating or improving a program. Identifying objectives can uncover misperceptions about mentoring that can yield unproductive experiences for all parties involved, including the organization. Then, these can be corrected before they cause problems. Here are three misperceptions: 1. Somebody is really good at something, so they’ll be a good mentor. That’s not true, Corner said. “It takes very different skills to be good at doing something than it does to be able to impart, share and help an individual learn that knowledge in what they do.” 2. A person is a senior leader, which automatically qualifies them to be a mentor. Not necessarily. Often, a person got to a senior-level position because they are good at what they do. That doesn’t mean they have the good communication, interpersonal, listening and relationship skills needed to be mentors. “A mentor has knowledge or experience in a given area of expertise and is willing and able to share that knowledge with another,” Corner said. “The willing means they are going to commit to the development of that individual, and the able means they actually have the skills to be a mentor.” 3. It’s all about what the mentor has to offer. Also not true. Mentoring is a partnership where both people learn from one another. Mentees need to identify what they want to learn and what success looks like to them once they’ve learned it. “One of the worst things that can happen in a mentoring partnership is the mentor and mentee meet, and the mentor asks ‘What is it you want to learn?’ and the mentee says, ‘I don’t know.’ What do you think I should be learning?’ ” Corner said. That can be an incredible waste of time. Learning leaders and others managing their company’s mentorships also can ensure their success by following up. Whether that happens via technology or in-person, no longer than eight weeks into the new partnership, Corner said, teams should be asked how the relationship is going. She said if a mentorship runs about a year, the partnership often starts going downhill somewhere around the seven-month mark. That means the program starts to go downhill. “The program administrator needs to make sure they breathe new life into the partnership,” Corner said. Do whatever you need to do to make sure the mentorship stays exciting, active.” For organizations to build mentorships that develop real leaders — not minions — they need to set objectives, identify measurements, plan to follow up, and make sure everyone is clear on their roles. CLO

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

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Collaboration Begins With

YOU

Collaboration is key to facilitate positive business outcomes. But it’s not all about the team. It starts on an individual level, with each person’s mindset and behaviors. by Ken Blanchard, Jane Ripley and Eunice Parisi-Carew

34 Chief Learning Officer • May 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

veryone knows collaboration creates high performing teams and organizations. A 2014 Deloitte study, “The Collaborative Economy,” shows that 52 percent of the companies that made collaboration an important strategy not only outgrew their market, but also were twice as likely to outgrow their competitors and be more profitable. Yet collaboration often doesn’t happen because people typically believe the problem is outside of their control. It’s about the other team member, the other department, the other company. If a collaborative culture is to succeed, collaboration must be seen as an individual responsibility. People at all levels — from new associates to top executives — must accept responsibility for promoting and preserving a culture of collaboration. At a senior level, this includes creating supporting systems, structures and policies that align with organizational strategy, then being explicit about corporate vision and values and how they interrelate with goals and goal accomplishment. At an individual level, people need to have the right attitude and skills to be able to make collaboration work. It begins with

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

each person having the right mindset and behaviors. Chris Cramer, CEO and co-founder of Karl Strauss Brewery, said collaboration is an integral part of the company’s cultural DNA and has become a strategic differentiator that drives business results. “As we embark on a new phase of accelerated growth for our business, strategy execution requires that our team of highly competent individuals pool their knowledge and strengths to build something together,” he said. “While we recognize and celebrate team member individualism, we also understand the exponential power achieved through collaboration.”

Competitive vs. Collaborative According to a 2013 Cornerstone OnDemand study, “The State of Workplace Productivity Report,”

ON THE WEB “Taking a Head, Hands and Heart Approach to Recognition” on CLOmedia.com.

38 percent of employees said there was not enough collaboration in their workplaces. Collaboration seems to be a natural behavior. Unfortunately, competitive behaviors learned over time often edge it out. For example, if a group of nursery-age children is asked to build something fantastic, they race to collect boxes and building materials. One will prepare the site, clearing everything out of the way; another will organize who does what; and others will sit on the sidelines and cheer the team on, offering the odd brick or box that might fit better. They naturally take on the task together. Of course, there will be some conflict over various aspects, but those who manage the conflict will go on to build something they can be proud of. Later on, the same group of children enters the education system and resources become scarce. They learn that only the best join the sports team, attend a top university, etc. To succeed, they have to compete with each other and with people they don’t know. This pattern continues when, as adults in the workplace, they must compete for jobs, the right to be selected for special projects and promotions. There is nothing wrong with healthy competition — the most

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

able people should be the ones who lead. The result is that competitiveness, rather than collaboration, becomes the behavior of choice. This behavior can show up as people hoard information and don’t share knowledge or expertise for fear any advantage they have will be given to a rival. Both behaviors are needed, but individuals must relearn collaborative skills and understand that collaboration is often the superior way to accomplish workplace goals. One way to bust silos and bring people together is through an inside-out process that involves the heart, character and intentions; the head, beliefs and attitudes; and the hands, actions and behaviors. Here are some questions leaders can use to determine where they stand as a collaborator and where there are opportunities for improvement: 1. Heart, or character and intentions toward collaboration: Do people see the value in considering other points of view? Do they understand the importance of a safe and trusting work environment? 2. Head, or attitude and beliefs about collaboration: Do people have a positive attitude about collaborating? Do they believe working together is the best way to achieve the goal? 3. Hands, or actions and behavior during collaboration: Do people freely share resources and information? Do they demonstrate other collaborative competencies? Even when an organization’s leadership team selects collaboration as a strategy for growth, it may fail to realize the dividends the team expects. By its nature, collaboration can be complex and messy. Asking these questions can bring insight into how individuals will embrace a collaboration strategy. The answers will provide valuable information regarding not only areas of strength within teams, but also whether more work is needed to help everyone feel safe in a collaborative environment.

Creating the Collaborative Mindset The UNITE model — utilize differences, nurture safety and trust, involve others, talk openly, and empower yourself and others — also can help to promote collaboration. This model helps bridge the gap between an individual mindset and what the group can do to operate together more effectively. Consider the following scenario. A midsize company is struggling to turn around a $1 million loss. Leaders and experts came together from several departments including finance, distribution, marketing and sales to find a solution. Their agreed-upon purpose is to improve revenue, gain market share and drive increased customer satisfac-

tion. The goal is to grow revenue by $1 million and profitability by 50 percent. The opportunity costs are fairly minimal, covering six one-hour meetings and each team member spending roughly one week to implement the change in their department’s workflow. The collaboration costs are nil because all parties have the collaborative skills required. The team is a high-performing team by its second meeting.

Collaboration seems to be a natural behavior. Unfortunately, competitive behaviors learned over time often edge it out. It only takes about six weeks for the collaborative team to create a new service and get it to market. The value proposition is solid, and the new service is well marketed and well received by clients. As a result, revenue soars to $1.2 million and profitability reaches 55 percent in just over a year. By taking a closer look at this successful example using the UNITE model, one can see how a collaborative approach can deliver an expected or better return on collaboration. • Utilize differences: The plan here was good. A mix of personalities, each one ready and willing to collaborate, brought unique skill sets, product knowledge and expertise to the table. • Nurture safety and trust: Psychological safety is the perception of being respected and accepted. Trust is built when people see one another as competent, credible and dependable. At the first meeting, it was determined that all parties were committed to the goal and willing to share resources and ideas. Everyone’s level of respect and acceptance was high. • Involve others in creating a clear purpose, values and goals: The project team acknowledged and upheld organizational values. All team members worked together on the stated purpose, and the agreed-upon project goal was SMART — specific, motivating, attainable, relevant and trackable. • Talk openly: All team members were active contributors who felt secure sharing information and knowledge with full transparency. COLLABORATION continued on page 52 Chief Learning Officer • May 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

Employees Are Investors, Not Assets Saying employees are assets is well intentioned, but it’s no longer accurate, nor is it a viable talent development strategy if the goal is organizational growth. ESSAY BY MICHAEL LEIMBACH

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

t is difficult to go any length of time and not hear a company president or CEO use this well-worn expression: “People are our greatest assets.” Baruch Lev, director of the Intangibles Research Project at New York University Stern School of Business, has stated that “people are the most important asset of most companies.” The idea of employees as assets is so embedded in workplace culture that we have not stopped to ask the question: Are people assets? Are we limiting our approaches to talent development because we view talent as an asset? American Heritage Dictionary defines an asset as “a valuable item that is owned.” According to generally accepted accounting principles, an asset is “a resource controlled by the company from which future economic benefits will flow.” The most rapidly growing assets are classified as intangibles — brands, patents and trademarks. Lev has shown that, as recently as the 1980s, the value of most multinational companies was fully accounted for by their tangible assets. Today, he estimates 80 percent of an average company’s value is related to intangible assets. Confusion arises when people define employees as intangible assets. Unfortunately, many chief learning officers tend to use the term casually. This failure to speak the language of business may result in other executives discounting the learning leader’s understanding of business strategy. This tendency to see people as intangible assets is somewhat understandable. Prior to the 20th century, workers were largely regarded as disposable commodities. They were little more than the other materials that went into making the final product. If one quit — or, more likely, died — they were easily replaced. But with complex machines and highly coordinated assembly lines, organizations recognized the need for uniquely trained workers. One was not so easily exchanged for another. Treating employees as assets and maintaining or increasing their value with learning and development made sense in the 20th century. The employee as asset model worked because, like machines, people did not leave organizations. Employees often stayed with a single company most of their work career. This assumption fueled a great deal of learning investment, making it difficult for learning professionals to abandon the concept. Learning still has value, but while the early 20th-century employee might have been viewed as an asset, the same cannot be said for today’s knowledge workers. Therefore, one is hard-pressed to find

similarities in how talent and assets act. Consider the following: • Ignore the “owned” part of the dictionary definition. Outside of professional sports, companies cannot buy, sell or trade people and therefore in no way “own” talent assets. • Talent can leave a company for a better opportunity, but other intangible assets cannot decide to move to another company. • Assets gain and lose value gradually, but losing a key employee can change a company’s prospects in an instant. It was said that when Larry Ellison left Ampex to form Oracle, Ampex lost half its value over night. • Companies rarely try to steal their competitors’ buildings or equipment, but they have no qualms about stealing talent. A 2014 Talent Trends LinkedIn survey revealed that globally, 45 percent of professional employees were contacted by a recruiter in the previous year, and a full 75 percent said they were open to talking to recruiters.

The Changing World of Work Moving from the era of industrialization to the era of globalization and technology has led to significant changes in the nature of career and employee development. Today, neither employees nor organizations recognize an implied lifelong employment contract. Stability, job security and loyalty have been replaced with shorter tenure and contract or cyclical work. This view of employees as assets belongs to a fictional employer-employee paradigm incompatible with, and inadequate for, the challenges in today’s business world. Fu r t h e r, viewing people as assets limits thinking. Chief Learning Officer • May 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

Of course, saying talent is not an asset does not mean it has no value; talent has tremendous value. But if it’s not an asset, then what is it? To answer that question, consider this definition of leadership Wilson Learning created in collaboration with leadership expert Steve Buchholz: “The purpose of leadership is to engage others in investing their full energy to the creation of value and success” (Editor’s note: The author works for Wilson Learning). This definition came out of work with thousands of leaders in hundreds of organizations globally. Consider some of the key words: • Full energy: Each day, employees make a decision to do the minimum necessary to accomplish their work objectives or give their full potential. • Engage others: Use of full energy does not result because a leader demands it, but rather because they inspire and motivate people to pursue excellence. • Invest: People only use their full energy when they see the potential to invest in themselves via new experiences, skills and, yes, more money. Considering these elements, employees look more like shareholders than assets. Shareholders choose to buy a company’s stock; employees choose to invest their energy and talents. Shareholders can sell their stock at any moment; employees can take their talents to another company. Shareholders provide the financial energy to grow a company; employees provide the talent energy to grow a company. Employees are the source of human capital just as shareholders are a source of financial capital. To clarify, employees are not human capital in the sense of asset ownership; they are the source of human capital as it relates to the stakeholder investment.

The CLO’s New Dynamic Viewing talented employees as investors has a number of implications for talent management and development. In many ways, it could fundamentally change how the CLO role is viewed today. First, leaders need to better understand what employees are investing. Much like financial investors invest their discretionary income, employees invest their energy. This effort is at their discretion — they choose whether to invest it in an organization. An employee can’t be made to invest their energy any more than someone can be made to invest financially in a company. Employees also invest their skills and talents. Employees spend time, effort and money developing their skills and specialized talents, and they are looking for a return on their investment. In fact, one key difference between financial investors and talent investors is the uniqueness of each talent investor’s in40 Chief Learning Officer • May 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

Reader Reaction True or false: Do companies really believe that people are their greatest asset?

Peter Palme: I guess there is belief and there is behavior. It is about putting your belief into action. I have seen big believers, but when it came to put it into action not too much was left at the end.

Steve Schumacher: In general, companies believe that people are their greatest asset. Of course, when you say companies it implies leaders of companies. Individual leaders value their people tremendously. As Peter said, turning those beliefs into behaviors that show those beliefs is another story. [There are] lots of reasons for that gap. One of the root causes is the lack of solid measurement tools to quantify the human element in companies. Leaders tend to gravitate, and pay most attention, to those elements that can easily be measured and monitored. The other cause of this gap is the reality that most leaders seem to get promoted and advanced based on their technical ability vs. their impactful leadership behaviors.

Trevor E. S. Smith: The “really” is the trick in the question. Intellectually organizations accept the importance of their people. However, that is often not manifested in practice. For example, an organization might invest time and resources in identifying a new technology solution. That exercise might go on longer than expected, and in order to meet the implementation deadlines HR/recruitment is asked to rush the selection of the people to deploy the solution. The time and resources should have been invested in identifying the “greatest assets,” and have them drive the process of selecting and deploying the technology solution. Short answer: False.

Dawn Solem Hanley: My experience is that individual leaders either value employees or see them as widgets to be easily replaced. When top leaders see employees as dispensable, the company culture shifts, and employees who value themselves find other places to work.

Rahul Varma: People are our only asset. We grow our people to grow our business. Our vision is to improve the way the world works and lives. We do that by improving the way our people work and live. What do you think? Join the discussion at tinyurl.com/ ArePeopleAssets, follow us on Twitter @CLOmedia or join our Chief Learning Officer LinkedIn group.

There’s a Lot to Learn(ing) Tell Us How You Do It Information, insights and great ideas need to be shared. If you’ve developed a new program, come up with an innovative approach, or devised a creative solution to a workforce development challenge, it’s definitely worth learning about. Share your success with Chief Learning Officer. Simply submit your best L&D achievement online. We’ll follow up with an interview, potentially share your story in the Chief Learning Officer blog and possibly invite you to speak at an upcoming CLO event.

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

vestment. A financial investor’s money is fungible, but each talent investor is different. Employees will choose to invest their unique talents and discretionary energy if they feel they are receiving an appropriate return on talent investment.

gressively in training if your employees defect after two or three years and apply their superior productivity to your competitor’s bottom line.” Thus, from a talent-as-asset perspective, it is counterproductive to put significant resources into learning and development. From an investor perspective, learning and development can be critical, as long as learning leaders provide the right kinds of learning. When it comes to new skills, it is just as important to ask “what do our talent investors want?” as it is to ask “what does our organization need?” Learning and development is part of the talent investor’s return on investment, as long as they see personal value in it, and as long as they can see a meaningful return. Companies that work to retain their financial investors in the long term have stronger performance. The same is true for talent investors. Development is often a worthwhile retention tool. Learning leaders must put greater effort into understanding why talent stays with a company and what they can offer employees to sustain their engagement and performance. It is not all about salary, bonuses and benefits. At the same time, organizations need to know what kinds of talent they need to retain to accomplish their growth objectives, and then identify what kind of development support that talent needs. In an era when so many professional-level employees are open to being recruited, companies that invest in learning and use development to reduce turnover and retain the right talent create greater long-term value for all investors, financial and talent. It is no longer effective to view employees as assets. Gallup, Willis Towers Watson, and other talent consultancies continue to document that employee engagement is low and has been for some time. Deloitte’s “Global Human Capital Trends 2015” report revealed that at any one time, 12 percent of employees are actively searching for jobs outside their company. Clearly these conditions would not exist if employees felt and acted like “their company’s greatest assets.” Effective leadership is about engaging employees to willingly invest their full energy and talents to create organizational success. To make that happen, leaders have to stop saying, “people are our greatest assets,” and start acting like, “people are our greatest investors.” CLO

Assets gain and lose value gradually, but losing a key employee can change a company’s prospects in an instant. Successful companies understand what kind of financial investor they need, and attract those investors. Investor relations departments spend considerable money positioning an organization’s value for financial investors. They maintain regular contact with them, communicating the organization’s goals and actions. They listen to financial investors and make sure the company’s goals are aligned with the investors’ goals. The growth of socially responsible and “green” objectives is one result — some investors are driven by more than financial gain. Successful companies pay attention. Similarly, organizations need to put more effort into attracting the right talent investors. Successful companies actively court talent, and sell the prospective employee on the company’s value. These companies also recognize that, like financial investors, talent investors are interested in more than just money. Understanding what motivates the right kinds of talent and aligning the organization’s goals to the talent’s goals will help create growth and success.

Talent Equals Growth Once companies have a financial investor’s capital, they must use that money wisely to grow and communicate that to the investor. Financial investors use such information to determine if the organization is making effective use of their investment, putting money in the right places, solving the right problems, and creating the right kinds of value. Organizations also must provide talent investors with information. Are the right people working on the right problems? Are barriers to effective talent utilization quickly eliminated? Is leadership creating a culture of engagement and challenge? Frederick F. Reichheld, author of “The Ultimate Question 2.0,” wrote, “It’s silly to invest ag42 Chief Learning Officer • May 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

Michael Leimbach is vice president of global research and development for Wilson Learning Worldwide. To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

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FYouruture -P roof E-Learning Investment Technology and e-learning go together like hand in glove, but only if the CLO and IT leader work together to make sure an organization’s tech infrastructure can handle new gadgetry. BY DEB MCMAHON AND LAURENT M. JEAN-MARIUS

44 Chief Learning Officer • May 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

ith the rapid growth of e-learning comes an exponential rise in the number of tools, technologies and flavor-of-the-month market trends that appeal to chief learning officers looking for ways to weave new tools into their development strategies. Consequently, the information technology department is on the receiving end of requests for a variety of new online learning apps, gamification software, social, microlearning or adaptive learning. So, how does a CLO get all of the features they want from new e-learning technologies without completely disrupting — or, worse yet, replacing — the current infrastructure? There are definitive steps a learning leader can take to help their IT peers prepare a learning ecosystem for transformation, while minimizing business risk and cost.

The goal is to create a flexible e-learning environment that enables an IT leader to support current and future e-learning trends in ways that allow the technology infrastructure to flex but not crack. For example, organizations 10 years ago did not put much focus on how people accessed their content because most learning was conducted on a desktop computer. Now, CLOs must manage employees who consume learning on desktops, tablets and mobile phones. If an organization was still using the same 10-year-old platform without upgrades, many learners won’t be able to access content in the way they prefer to consume it. Businesses must consider how to future-proof their technology so they don’t paint themselves into a corner. If IT departments don’t mindfully set up their core technology platforms — like learning management systems — it will be more difficult to migrate to a new

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

system or add new e-learning applications and tools. John Meiners, chief of mission aligned businesses at the American Heart Association, said his organization strives to keep its educational programs not just up to date but also ahead of the curve. “We have several technologies and tools in place to support our educational activities,” he said. “It’s been critical for us to develop a positive user experience for our learners, one that allows for access to the various programs quickly and easily. We have carefully connected our learning ecosystem by implementing a single sign-on solution. This enables a seamless learner experience while meeting our business objectives.” To achieve that kind of success, CLOs must be aware of their IT departments’ top challenges.

including open-source platforms, to find the most viable solution. Prioritization is also important and can be accomplished by carefully examining the company’s business needs and goals. The CLO must take a hard look at all of the possible technologies and think carefully about which ones are most imperative. By identifying learners’ biggest education gap, it will be easier to work with IT to identify the most beneficial solution. Close communication and coordination between the CLO and the IT director is crucial here. IT must take a close look at existing applications and platforms to verify the desired outcome isn’t already available. Further, the CLO must work with IT to do a general assessment of the company’s current technologies to ensure they are compatible with the desired innovation. For example, the IT department must verify that key legacy platforms expose modern APIs, facilitating the addition of new systems, and reducing integration time and cost. This reinforces the need to conduct regular IT maturity-level assessments to gauge the real capability of the system to integrate new technology. One may not think it is necessary for a CLO to be involved at this level of technological detail. But for a learning leader to successfully implement the new technologies they want, they must ensure those tools are compatible with the existing technology platform.

The real measure of a future-proof e-learning investment is not just about technical details, it’s also about the user experience.

Align Technology Solutions With Business Needs When a CLO wants to implement innovative learning tools and applications, they first must ensure the intent aligns with an organization’s strategic business needs. Using the overall business objectives as a framework, a learning leader should have a three-year e-learning technology plan formulated in conjunction with IT. By reviewing this plan annually, they can create a system of checks and balances to ensure e-learning technology investments stay on point with the overall vision. The annual review also lets the IT team take proactive steps to ensure the e-learning ecosystem can accommodate future growth. For example, if an IT director knows the CLO will require an e-commerce capability in the coming year, they can prepare the environment and create the conditions for a successful implementation via system and application program interface, or API, upgrades. Further, learning leaders should ask themselves several key questions before requesting an IT change: What will this new tool accomplish? How will it benefit the company’s learners and enable them to better achieve the company’s overall business objectives? Have the learners asked for this tool, and are they likely to use it? By analyzing data from the learning management system, such as learner usage and post-course survey information, a CLO can conduct an education gap analysis that is key to organizing needs in a request for proposal. Then, IT can vet options, 46 Chief Learning Officer • May 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

Be Mindful of Time and Cost Obviously, it is important for a CLO to consider the cost of a new e-learning tool and to weigh the benefit of that investment against other items competing for budgetary attention. From an IT perspective, it’s also necessary to evaluate the cost in terms of implementation time, data migration requirements, personnel resources, and training for learners and LMS administrators. The IT department can help the CLO keep costs down by conducting the aforementioned maturity assessment. By knowing what is already in place, the IT director will be able to advise the CLO about realistic cost and implementation time based on the degree of required integration. For instance, does the LMS need to be completely replaced to accommodate the new technology? Can the same thing be accomplished by upgrading the legacy system to a new version, which would be less costly and time-consuming? Can the

E-Learning at TD Ameritrade by Joe Dixon

our years ago, brokerage firm TD Ameritrade partnered with software company Learning Objects to redesign its e-learning infrastructure, which now allows employees to assess their knowledge gaps, hone their skills and improve their performance more quickly.

Before the upgrade, the firm used a one-size-fits-all learning approach where workers learned the skills deemed most helpful to the organization. But this approach ignored the employees’ individual needs, said Jon Mott, chief learning officer at Learning Objects. With Mott’s help, TD Ameritrade updated its learning strategy to a personalized, employee-centric approach that tackled the learning process in three steps: identify employee-specific weaknesses, deliver a customized curriculum, and improve employee performance. Instead of forcing employees to undergo training, the updated learning structure allowed learning leaders to pinpoint individual weaknesses through online assessments and construct targeted lesson plans broken up into the different skills employees needed to have. To devise an efficient strategy, it’s important to keep a company’s business objectives in mind, Mott said. Two questions should govern the creation of a business’ e-learning infrastructure: “What do you want your employees to do?” and “How can they do that?” With those questions in mind, designing a successful e-learning modality does not necessarily mean completely replacing the current learning structure. The strategy needs to co-exist within the broader structure already in place. Consider, e-learning is playing an increasingly larger role in employee learning but sometimes online learning alone isn’t practical. Therefore, a sustainable e-learning model will combine face-to-face, online and a blend of the two approaches to train workers. Sufficiently future proofing e-learning investments also can help the ease the transition for employees coming from higher education into the corporate world. Often, there is a rift between what new employees learn in school, and the hard skills required for them to perform daily tasks on the job. A 2015 ManpowerGroup survey found 38 percent of employers said they had difficulty filling jobs because of a skills gap and talent shortage in the market. A solid e-learning infrastructure could empower employees to improve their weak areas and minimize the learning curve.

Joe Dixon is a former Chief Learning Officer editorial intern. To comment, email editor@ CLOmedia.com.

current team accomplish this, or do additional personnel resources need to be added? At this point, the IT department also must assess which key platform houses critical user data. If the majority of the learners are plugged into the LMS, for instance, this becomes a key platform in the e-learning ecosystem. Trying to completely replace a key platform full of critical data is a difficult and risky endeavor, especially because of data migration. Avoiding data migration — particularly if the data set is large — is extremely important. Data migration projects require a data migration specialist and often end up over budget, seldom finish on schedule and require a long stabilization period. A better approach would be to ensure the IT ecosystem is flexible enough to plug in new applications. To accomplish this, IT must maintain a large set of APIs supporting modern standards and protocols. For instance, it is preferable to use lightweight representational state transfer APIs over the more heavyweight simple object access protocol, or SOAP, versions. Also, IT should make sure the learning systems are compliant with xAPI, or Tin Can, standards so all the learning data can be shared across different platforms and devices. Finally, if IT has kept up with system updates, this will enable the e-learning ecosystem to evolve more easily. It’s less disruptive, time consuming and costly to integrate into existing platforms than to start from scratch or completely replace them.

Take Steps to Ensure a Positive User Experience When a new e-learning technology has been selected, utilizing all of the aforementioned criteria, the CLO and IT department should be united in their efforts to protect the user experience during and after implementation. After all, no matter how valuable a tool is for learners, if it is difficult to use or limits their ability to access the company’s education system, learners are likely to reject it. When IT tackles the integration, it will need to estimate how long the system will be affected. Two hours? One day? Three days? There’s a big difference from a user standpoint. It is important to realistically identify the effect so it can be communicated to learners. IT also must decide what to do with existing learners during the transition. Will users be locked out of the system completely, or can they access key components of the LMS during the integration? Further, IT must integrate the new tool in such a way that enables learners to seamlessly E-LEARNING continued on page 52 Chief Learning Officer • May 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

CASE STUDY

Creating a Recruitment Process That Sticks BY SARAH FISTER GALE

dobe Systems Inc. is one of those rare Silicon Valley tech companies that has managed to stay relevant for more than 30 years. Millions of computer users enjoy Adobe products like Acrobat, Dreamweaver, Photoshop and Reader, helping the company grow to 14,000 employees and roughly $5 billion in revenue. And the company is still evolving. As of 2013, all new versions of Adobe software have transitioned to the Creative Cloud, the company’s cloud-based subscription model, which freed its software engineers to implement more aggressive upgrade cycles and release new versions of products as soon as they become available. Since then, the company has been growing rapidly, hiring roughly 1,000 new employees every quarter, said Jeff Vijungco, vice president of global talent. This rapid fire hiring has kept Vijungco on his toes, first as a head of talent acquisition, and now as the person in charge of making sure all new hires have what they need to thrive. “When you hire 4,000 people a year, ensuring their onboarding tees them up for success isn’t easy,” he said.

‘Stickiness of Hire’ Vijungco joined Adobe in 2008 as a recruiter and fully admits that his talent development credentials were pretty slim when he was offered the talent leadership role in 2013. “I led talent acquisition, not talent development,” he said. “Putting me in this role was a stretch.” Adobe leadership disagreed. For years, Vijungco had established himself as a thorn in hiring managers’ sides because he was never willing to just start recruiting every time a manager requested a new hire. First, they had to sit down with him and explain why they wanted to hire someone from the outside, whether there was a clear need, and why they couldn’t coach someone on their own team to fill the gap. “A lot of times, we found that it was a performance or coaching issue; if we hired someone new we would just be adding to the problem,” he said. If they insisted, Vijungco then challenged them on their hiring criteria. Vijungco’s talent acquisition strategy is what made him attractive for the development role. When he took 48 Chief Learning Officer • May 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

SNAPSHOT By integrating talent acquisition and development, Adobe Systems Inc. was able to build a scalable, global strategy that produced significant, measurable benefits for the business.

the position, one of his first goals was to integrate talent acquisition with talent development to create a seamless onboarding experience that set employees on a career development path from day one. He started by changing the way recruiters engage with new hires. Recruiters are sales-oriented, and measure their success by things like time-to-fill a role, but once the job is filled they quickly move on to the next one, Vijungco said. That created a gap between hiring and onboarding. To close it, Vijungco added a new performance metric for recruiters around “stickiness of hire.” To ensure new hires stick around, recruiters are expected to stay with them through the first several months of employment to create a more seamless transition from candidate to productive employee. Recruiters now work directly with the human resources and talent development teams, involving them in weekly meetings to discuss short lists of candidates for key roles, what each person brings to the table, and where they may need development or coaching to fill gaps. “It gives them more context for the person once they are hired,” said Trisha Colton, senior director of executive talent search. As soon as a candidate is selected, their recruiter works with HR and their hiring manager to create a career development plan that includes short- and longterm performance goals, development needs and a meeting plan to connect them with people they need to know to succeed in their jobs. The recruiter also shares their perspective on what the new hire will need to succeed based on the weeks they spent recruiting them. Recruiters continue to follow up with their new hires, touching base in the first few days and then every few weeks to be sure they have what they need to

do their jobs. “Our goal is to set them up for success in their first 90 days,” Colton said. “That’s the time frame when most new hires are still making up their mind about whether this is the right fit.” The decision to make development part of the recruiters job helped to reinforce the learning culture at Adobe, and it lets new hires know they will have opportunities to grow from the start, said Liz Quinn, director of global talent development. “By day two, we are talking about their career plans and how we are going to help them succeed,” she said.

modules on a variety of topics from lynda.com and Harvard ManageMentor, and business book summaries from getAbstract.

Usage Data Soars Once the digital content was in place, the learning and development team worked with the information technology department to develop a reporting tool to track content usage rates and create dashboards to highlight results. They report usage rates to leadership, identify trends in content usage that might suggest

‘It is just one more way the talent development role at Adobe has shifted. Now we act more like consultants.’ —Liz Quinn, director of global talent development, Adobe Systems Inc. Further, Colton said it doesn’t require a lot of extra time from recruiters. It’s more about involving managers and HR in conversations that were once only held by the recruiting team.

Learning in the Cloud Along with integrating recruiters into the talent development process, Vijungco also revamped the company’s approach to learning. Following Adobe’s strategic move to the cloud, he pulled much of the company’s leadership development content out of classrooms and put it online. Facilitators were on the road 120 days a year, teaching the company’s signature Leading@Adobe course to 20-30 managers at a time — if they all showed up. “We were hitting about 5 percent of our population. That was a problem,” Vijungco said. Instead of implementing a lot of self-paced learning, the team used Adobe Connect — the company’s mobile Web conferencing software — to create a series of virtual labs and online classroom courses that employees could take from their offices. The content and the trainers were the same, but the reach and impact was much greater. At first, the facilitators thought teaching in a virtual environment wouldn’t be that different from teaching a course online. Not true, said Justin Mass, director of digital learning. Facilitators had to learn how to adjust lighting, queue videos and manage chat rooms all while they are on the air. It required a significant behavior change. To ease them into the new learning environment, Mass created a digital facilitator boot camp to ramp up their skills. The development team also provided employees with access to a library of online training

skill gaps, and help managers understand what learning their people are accessing and who their biggest users are. “Moving to digital forced us to develop a real data strategy,” Mass said. That data tracking strategy enabled Mass’ team to compile statistics that demonstrate impressive uptake in the new virtual content. In 2015, more than 8,000 employees completed the digital Leading@Adobe course — up from just 500 managers in 2013. More than 2,800 new hires attended the digital new hire orientation via Adobe Connect. The company has seen “stickiness” of new hires rise to almost 100 percent, up nearly 10 points from five years ago, Vijungco said. The development team is now working with IT to link content usage data with other HR data so they can further parse results by geography, title, manager and other demographics. “It is just one more way the talent development role at Adobe has shifted,” Quinn said. “Now we act more like consultants to the business.” For companies interested in following in Adobe’s path, Quinn said to “deconstruct so you can reconstruct. The opportunity to learn and grow is a promise we make to all our employees.” Integrating recruiting with development and moving learning is helping the company fulfill that promise on a much grander scale. CLO Sarah Fister Gale is a writer based in Chicago. To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com. To read more about how Adobe tees its recuits up for success, visit CLOMEDIA.COM.

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

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

The Hard Science Behind Soft Skills BY RICHARD S. WELLINS AND EVAN SINAR

When it comes to return on investment, investing in soft skills development for leaders produces hard, bottom-line results.

orporations spend billions of dollars each year to develop capable leaders. A great majority is spent developing soft skills such as influencing, coaching, listening, feedback and delegating. Despite the large size of this investment, little attention is paid to the effect soft skills development actually has on producing better leaders. Talent analytics are slowly creeping into the human resources community, enabling chief learning officers to answer key questions, determine what works and improve talent practices. Applying talent analytics to the bigger picture of leadership development, Development Dimensions International has conducted research that reveals larger trends and implications for organizations and their leaders (Editor’s note: The authors work at DDI). What follows are four findings from an array of DDI studies published between 2014 and 2016.

1. Leaders need to focus on conversations. In her new book, “Reclaiming Conversations, The Power of Talk in a Digital Age,” MIT professor and FIGURE 1: LEADERSHIP INTERACTION SKILLS Conversations are a key piece of effective leadership. Leaders have to know how to communicate with peers and direct reports.

DEVELOP

CLARIFY

Esteem Empathy Involvement Share Support

OPEN Source: Development Dimensions International Inc., 2015

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

AGREE

sociologist Sherry Turkle describes an ironic truth. In today’s hyperconnected digital world, the ability to communicate has risen dramatically. But the number of real, face-to-face conversations at work has dropped dramatically. People are avoiding real conversation and opting for communicating through digital platforms. The implications for leadership are obvious. There are thousands of leadership definitions, but essentially it is a series of successful conversations. Leaders interact every day with peers, bosses, team members, customers and others. Without the skills and motivation for these conversations, leadership doesn’t happen. When viewed through the lens of how they are applied, soft skills are really interaction skills. The “Global Leadership Forecast 2014 | 2015” study, conducted by DDI and The Conference Board, revealed that leaders yearn to have more time for interactions. Of the 13,000 respondents, 41 percent reported spending most of their time managing, while 25 percent said they spend more time interacting. The remaining 34 percent of leaders reported an equal balance between the two. When asked how they would prefer to spend their time, however, the percentages flipped. Forty percent of leaders would prefer to spend the majority of their time interacting; 22 percent would prefer to spend more time managing. Further data analysis revealed the companies that fell into the top 20 percent on a number of financial metrics, were two times more likely to place high value on interacting than those in the bottom 20 percent. That is, having deeper and more extensive interactions with employees is not just a common leader preference but also a core value for more successful companies.

2. Leaders need soft skills training. A compelling reason organizations should invest in developing soft skills is that leaders tend not to be very strong in them (Figure 1). The outside of the diagram represents the practical or process skills that help keep conversations efficient and on course, and they are often used in sequence. In

the center of the circle are the fundamental leadership interpersonal skills required for a conversation. They are effective in affecting a conversation’s mood. Unlike the skills shown on the outside of the diagram, these skills aren’t applied sequentially but rather by a leader at proper times throughout a conversation. In the DDI study “High Resolution Leadership,” front-line leaders participated in structured simulations (Figure 2). With the exception of opening a discussion and providing support, no more than roughly half the sample consistently displayed effective behavior at any of the interaction skills. The biggest challenges seem to be maintaining self-esteem, clarifying what others are saying, empathy and developing others’ ideas. As a leader moves up the ladder, one might expect them to get better at these skills. After all, an experienced leader presumably will have had years of practice. But only 11 percent of senior leaders are effective at displaying empathy and maintaining other’s esteem.

3. Empathy is the linchpin soft skill. Of all the leadership soft skills, empathy is arguably the most critical. In his book “Empathy: A Handbook for Revolution” author Roman Krznaric said empathy “is not just about seeing things from another perspective. It’s the cornerstone of smart leadership. The real competitive advantage of the human worker will be their capacity to create relationships which means empathy will count more than experience.” After using the DDI database on new front-line leaders, and correlating the effect of each interaction skill on overall assessment performance and four leadership tasks, empathy was the most foundational soft skill, with the largest positive relationship across the board, followed by encouraging the involvement of others.

4. Closing the soft skills gap. With reasonable effort, organizations can significantly close the soft skills gap and help their leaders be more effective in their interactions using the following recommendations: Select/promote soft skills. Both simulation and test-based assessments provide highly accurate gauges of soft skill proficiency for entry-level hiring and promotion decisions. DDI research shows a high relationship between various forms of assessment solutions and multiple business outcome measures. A word of caution about how to effectively measure soft skills: Do not substitute personality and style inventories for valid, science-based assessment. While they may provide interesting insights, typically they are neither job related nor backed by extensive research. Develop soft skills. Building soft skills should be viewed like a sport. It takes a combination of positive

FIGURE 2: MANY LEADERS DON’T HAVE SOFT SKILLS Data from simulations taken by front-line leaders reveals a need for soft skills development. Opens the discussion Supports without removing responsibility

71%

Agrees on actions to take 54%

Encourages involvement Develops others’ ideas Clarifies the details

77%

50% 49%

47% Listens and responds with empathy 40% Maintains or enhances esteem 33% Source: Development Dimensions International Inc., 2015

modeling, guided and repeated skill practice, and on-thejob application. DDI completed a meta-analysis on leadership development initiatives in January. It looked at organizations using a behavior-based approach to development, including positive modeling, repeated skill practices and post-training applications. Leaders who went through these development experiences reported a 49 percent increase in soft skills post training. Further, observers saw an overall 49 percent increase. Reinforce a conversation culture. Conversations provide the bedrock upon which soft skills are learned. Organizations need to encourage face-to-face interactions and dialogue that are device free, more often. If learning leaders focus more effort and resources on building the leadership soft skills, the payoff can be significant. In the aforementioned meta-analysis, organizations demonstrated an average return on investment of $4,000 for every $1,100 spent developing soft skills. Numbers like this are exciting, but perhaps even more exciting is how analytics are arming us with more intelligence that can take us in unexpected directions. When it comes to leadership development, we are learning that there are compelling reasons to develop soft skills so that our leaders can be their best. CLO Richard S. Wellins is a senior vice president and head of research for Development Dimensions International. Evan Sinar is chief scientist for Development Dimensions International and director of the Center for Analytics and Behavioral Research. To comment, email editor@ CLOmedia.com. To read more of “The Hard Science Behind Soft Skills,” visit CLOMEDIA.COM.

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

COLLABORATION continued from page 37

E-LEARNING continued from page 47

• Empower yourself and others: Each person was empowered and encouraged by fellow team members to take action toward the goal by utilizing their unique expertise. This example illustrates how a group of individuals with a collaborative mindset can succeed with a well-planned and resourced collaborative strategy. It also shows how the UNITE collaboration model, when used proactively, can promote a collaborative strategy in a positive way. Organizations that pursue a similar strategy can reap comparable results. “A collaborative mindset accelerates learning and often carries projects far beyond intended thresholds and metrics,” said Laura Asiala, vice president of public relations at PYXERA Global. “In the most successful organizations, collaboration is key. It’s an approach to engaging with others and a philosophy that is fundamental to PYXERA Global. We live this approach inside our organization, in relationships with our corporate clients, and with nonprofits, governmental organizations, and social enterprises in countries throughout the world.” Karl Strauss Brewery’s Cramer agreed that collaboration makes good business. He said in both craft brewing and operating brewpubs, recipes are the foundation of success. While each ingredient has unique value, a world-class beer of culinary genius is only achieved when great ingredients come together seamlessly in a recipe to create something truly special and greater than the sum of its parts. “Such is the case with collaboration,” he said. “Team members working together create extraordinary beers and dining experiences that could not be achieved by any one individual.” A culture of collaboration exists in an organization when leaders and individual contributors understand that they are a key part of every collaborative effort, when they believe working together is better than working in separate silos, and when they are willing to share information, resources and recognition for a job well done. Taking a look at how individuals can examine their mindset using a heart, head and hands approach can help organizations begin to address collaboration at an individual level. By studying how people work together using the UNITE model, senior leaders can ensure that future teams will generate the type of return on collaboration the best companies enjoy. CLO

re-engage with the system after implementation. A positive user experience requires seamless transitions between the legacy systems and the new application. The integration of the new application within a single sign-on, or SSO, mechanism based on standards such as security assertion markup language or an open standard for authorization will avoid multiple authentications and ensure a smooth experience. Finally, the CLO and IT department must work in tandem to pinpoint the specific changes users will notice when logging into the system post-installation. Then they can develop a communication and training plan to help learners navigate the new tool. Depending on how robust the change is, the communication could vary from a tutorial explaining the new features to a simple pop-up message informing learners of the enhancements. “With the launch of our online board review course, we wanted to ensure our members derived maximum benefit from the program without disrupting their member login and overall experience,” said Jeff Williamson, vice president of education and academic affairs at the American Medical Informatics Association. “It was important for us to integrate our association management system [AMS] into our e-learning platform so this value could be realized, and we could ensure a smooth member experience. By linking up these two technologies, we are able to serve and bring greater value to our members.” How can a CLO determine if their company is designing a future-proof e-learning ecosystem? First, they must check to make sure the LMS and other applications and tools have updated APIs and at least standard SSO capabilities. The e-learning platform also should be able to share data with third-party applications. Finally, after developing a strategic e-learning plan, the CLO should review this plan with the IT director annually to ensure it’s being followed, and identify if any updates are necessary. However, the real measure of a future-proof e-learning investment is not just about technical details, it’s also about the user experience. At the end of the day, CLOs must ask themselves: Can learners navigate among various educational activities efficiently? And, is the training making a d–ifference in both professional development and company growth? If the investment isn’t furthering an organization’s long-term strategic business objectives, it may be more risk than reward. CLO

Ken Blanchard is chief spiritual officer for The Ken Blanchard Cos. Jane Ripley is a cofounder of Wired Leaders. Eunice Parisi-Carew is a cofounder of The Ken Blanchard Companies, where she is a senior consultant. To comment email editor@CLOmedia.com. 52 Chief Learning Officer • May 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

Deb McMahon is president and CEO, and Laurent M. Jean-Marius is director of IT and product development at Scitent Inc. To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com.

LISTENING continued from page 22 Onboarding is one area where learning leaders should exercise tighter control because of its effect on company culture and workplace efficiency, Mosher said. He said acclimating new employees to company expectations needs to go beyond PowerPoint presentations and executive lectures to emphasize a new employee’s professional development path, their role within the organization and how that role will help the business achieve its goals. “So much happens and starts there for the success of the organization,” he said. Even seasoned learning leaders will run into problems or employees who don’t agree with their management style, so it’s crucial to know how to deal with workplace issues. To solve most problems, it all comes back to listening. It’s difficult to mitigate every work-

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place issue with a single leadership style, so learning to adapt is essential for senior-level leaders, Evans said. “Trust is a big factor,” he said. “You have to always be able to demonstrate the importance of empathy, demonstrate the ability to listen and be interested in what’s going on.” Regardless of the approach a leader decides to take, gaining an understanding of the learning tools at a leader’s disposal is essential to determine how to manage most effectively, Mosher said. “With all of the technology that has emerged, the toolkit is richer than it has ever been,” he said. “But I think it’s one we don’t understand well enough.” CLO

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IN CONCLUSION

The Great Culture Transformation CLOs are important when it comes to creating a new organizational culture • BY JOHN MATTONE

John Mattone is an executive coach and the author of eight books including “Cultural Transformations,” “Talent Leadership,” and “Intelligent Leadership.” To comment email editor@CLOmedia.com.

dapting to the changing marketplace is an important part of the chief learning officer’s job. In fact, CLOs are often directly involved in large-scale change management because change involves learning new attitudes and ways to do things. Corporate culture exists whether or not it is explicitly described, and cultural tendencies tend to become deeply entrenched and inhibit change. A CLO who has outstanding leadership skills is an indispensable asset and can set the tone for positive cultural transformation. When transformation is on the horizon, the answer isn’t to throw away everything that makes up the current culture and start over. A CLO with great leadership qualities will know how to draw on the positive things about the existing culture and make good use of them during the transformation process. Take a client of mine, Virtusa, a fast-growing business consulting and information technology outsourc-

CLOs guide the process of cultural transformation by facilitating the pace at which learning occurs. ing company. The company’s transformation challenge involves integrating its high-execution, collaborative culture with that of India-based Polaris Consulting, which it is in the process of acquiring. Senior Vice President of HR Sundararajan Narayanan and Chief Learning Officer Murali Padmanabhan are leading an effort to objectively measure and calibrate the strengths in both cultures as a first step to create a plan that will use those strengths for the benefit of the combined entity. Creating a mutually reinforcing culture-leadership combination requires hard work and a clear-cut strategy. The specifics will vary, but a few underlying strategies create a foundation for positive corporate culture transformation: Understand which existing cultural values are important to preserve. This can give the whole team something upon which to gain traction and minimize disorientation during transformation. Values will drive attitudes, behavior and ultimately culture. Russ Klein, 54 Chief Learning Officer • May 2016 • www.CLOmedia.com

CEO of the American Marketing Association, has created what he calls a “Be-Do” culture. The “do” always comes from the essence of an individual’s inner core — values, character, thinking patterns, etc. So, the AMA’s leadership development and succession planning programs focus on measuring and developing the “be” as a foundation to develop the “do.” Make sure everyone understands why cultural transformation is necessary. The CLO plays a key role in helping to educate employees so they can easily connect the dots between the desired culture and the organization’s goals and objectives. Don’t try to change everything at once. Cultural transformation is difficult, and in many ways it is a “crawl before you can walk” scenario. Learning leaders guide the process by facilitating the pace at which the company’s learning occurs. At first, focus on ingrained behaviors. Then determine what new behaviors fit with the desired culture. Include both formal and informal changes. Implementing new incentives and metrics is important, but so is making changes like adjusting workplace networking patterns. Often, these more informal processes need to develop more organically. Commit to monitor change at every stage. If you’re replacing your IT infrastructure, every step should be monitored closely. Make a similar commitment to monitor cultural transformation progress, and correct course as necessary. Leadership is the key to positive change that sticks. Cultural transformation requires the CLO to demonstrate excellent leadership and simultaneously avoid giving the impression that change is being imposed by absolute sanction. It’s a narrow road to tread, but changing corporate culture for the better requires it. Along the way, the CLO must also identify new learning objectives and oversee any new development or coaching initiatives to get everyone up to speed. The importance of learning during transformation cannot be overestimated. At the same time, learning should be inspired by change rather than dictated by it. It’s not easy for a CLO to walk the fine line between inspiring and directing when it comes to training and coaching during a cultural transformation. But when they are capable of that, the results can exceed expectations for everyone involved, and that’s what positive cultural transformation is all about. CLO