Chief Learning Officer - December 2017 by Chief Learning Officer

December 2017 | CLOmedia.com

CLO of the Year Tata Consultancy Services’

Damodar Padhi 2017 Learning In Practice Awards - How to Optimize Top Team Performance Building Relationships That Work - Lincoln Financial’s Screen Test - Sunny Forecast for Learning in 2018

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EDITOR’S LETTER

A Recipe for Success

here is no single recipe for learning and development. For some organizations, a centralized model is on the menu. For others, decentralization is more their flavor. Some like it matrixed, others federated. Mix in emerging technology, add a dash of talent management and it becomes even more complex. Simmer under budget pressure for 12 months and watch as investment evaporates. Add it all together and it can all be a bit overwhelming. At a Chief Learning Officer Breakfast Club meeting in San Francisco recently, one learning leader made the comment that being a CLO is a bit like being an executive chef at a hot new restaurant. You’re in control of the kitchen but the pressure is ratcheting up on all sides. Business executives demand certain dishes be on the menu but they don’t necessarily understand what it takes to make it happen. Employees are your patrons but they have their own ideas of how things should be cooked and are willing to walk out the door if they don’t get what they want.

ing, professional services, retail and higher education. It features well-known brand names like General Motors and GE alongside technology companies like Dell EMC and financial giants like MetLife and Mastercard. The list includes government agencies like U.S. Customs and Border Protection, international groups like the United Nations Development Programme, and nonprofits like the Boy Scouts of America. Winners come from the United States, India, Europe and as far afield as New Zealand. Learning In Practice award winners also represent nearly two dozen learning vendors who dedicated themselves to solving the thorniest of their clients’ talent challenges. Leading the way is 2017 CLO of the Year Damodar Padhi, global head of talent development for Tata Consultancy Services, a multinational technology services firm with 390,000 employees of 134 nationalities operating in 46 different countries. In addition to leading a team of 600 talent development professionals across the globe from the firm’s India headquarters, Padhi is completely rethinking how TCS does learning, moving it into the digital future where learning happens anytime and anywhere. Learning leaders from Boston-based Suffolk Construction walked away with awards in three distinct areas: onboarding, talent management and curriculum design and development. Dell EMC did the same, notching awards for mentoring, new hire training and technology implementation. A small army of staff — from cooks to servers and What unifies this year’s award winners across the table bussers — dash back and forth in a mad rush to many industries and approaches is a passion for innovamake it all happen but they struggle to keep up with tion, a close alignment of their work to the goals of demand when times get busy. their organizations and a focus on results. The job of chief learning officer is no doubt a chalSome were centralized, some decentralized. Some lenging one. It comes with the expectation of high qual- had a clear mandate from the top to make changes ity service delivered far and wide at a reasonable cost. while others started small and built from the bottom But it’s not just about putting a dish on the table. up. Each approached their challenges before them in Just like an executive chef needs to keep one eye on their own way and with their own recipe for success. the kitchen and the other on the future, CLOs need So when it comes to what works in learning and to step back every once in a while to look at what’s development, I’ll paraphrase from the famous diner happening in their business and industry and how to scene in the classic romantic comedy “When Harry add a bit of innovation to the menu. Met Sally.” I’ll have what they’re having. CLO While there’s no single recipe for what that looks like, there are some creative chefs out there doing interesting and innovative things that we can all turn to for inspiration. Look no further than the winners of the 2017 Chief Learning Officer Learning In Practice awards. Mike Prokopeak This year’s list of award winners includes companies Editor in Chief representing dozens of industries such as manufactur- mikep@CLOmedia.com

There are some creative chefs out there doing interesting and innovative things we can all turn to for inspiration.

4 Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

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A PUBLICATION OF

DECEMBER 2017 | VOLUME 16, ISSUE 10 PRESIDENT John R. Taggart jrtag@CLOmedia.com VICE PRESIDENT, CFO, COO Kevin A. Simpson ksimpson@CLOmedia.com VICE PRESIDENT, GROUP PUBLISHER Clifford Capone ccapone@CLOmedia.com VICE PRESIDENT, EDITOR IN CHIEF Mike Prokopeak mikep@CLOmedia.com EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Rick Bell rbell@CLOmedia.com CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Frank Kalman fkalman@CLOmedia.com ASSOCIATE EDITORS Andie Burjek aburjek@CLOmedia.com Ave Rio ario@CLOmedia.com Lauren Dixon ldixon@CLOmedia.com COPY EDITOR Christopher Magnus cmagnus@CLOmedia.com VIDEO AND MULTIMEDIA PRODUCER Andrew Kennedy Lewis alewis@CLOmedia.com EDITORIAL INTERNS Alexis Carpello acarpello@CLOmedia.com Marygrace Schumann mschumann@CLOmedia.com

VICE PRESIDENT, RESEARCH & ADVISORY SERVICES Sarah Kimmel skimmel@CLOmedia.com RESEARCH MANAGER Tim Harnett tharnett@CLOmedia.com DATA SCIENTIST Grey Litaker clitaker@CLOmedia.com RESEARCH CONTENT SPECIALIST Kristen Britt kbritt@CLOmedia.com EDITORIAL ART DIRECTOR Theresa Stoodley tstoodley@CLOmedia.com MEDIA & PRODUCTION MANAGER Ashley Flora aflora@CLOmedia.com PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Nina Howard nhoward@CLOmedia.com VICE PRESIDENT, EVENTS Trey Smith tsmith@CLOmedia.com EVENTS MARKETING MANAGER Anthony Zepeda azepeda@CLOmedia.com WEBCAST MANAGER Alec O’Dell aodell@CLOmedia.com EVENTS GRAPHIC DESIGNER Tonya Harris lharris@CLOmedia.com

BUSINESS MANAGER Vince Czarnowski vince@CLOmedia.com

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

REGIONAL SALES MANAGERS Derek Graham dgraham@CLOmedia.com

Dave DeFilipo

Daniella Weinberg dweinberg@CLOmedia.com

Patti P. Phillips

Josh Bersin Todd Davis Sarah Fister Gale Patrick Mullane Jack J. Phillips Bin Yang

DIRECTOR, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Kevin Fields kfields@CLOmedia.com AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR Cindy Cardinal ccardinal@CLOmedia.com DIGITAL MANAGER Lauren Lynch llynch@CLOmedia.com DIGITAL COORDINATOR Mannat Mahtani mmahtani@CLOmedia.com DIGITAL MEDIA INTERN Emma Wilbur ewilbur@CLOmedia.com LIST MANAGER Mike Rovello hcmlistrentals@infogroup.com BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION MANAGER Melanie Lee mlee@CLOmedia.com

CHIEF LEARNING OFFICER EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Cedric Coco, EVP, Chief People Of ficer, Brookdale Senior Living Inc. Lisa Doyle, Head of Retail Training, Ace Hardware Tamar Elkeles, Chief Talent Executive, Atlantic Bridge Capital Thomas Evans, ( Ret.) Chief Learning Of ficer, PricewaterhouseCoopers Ted Henson, Senior Strategist, Oracle Gerry Hudson-Martin, Director, Corporate Learning Strategies, Business Architects Kimo Kippen, Vice President, Global Workforce Initiatives, Hilton Worldwide Rob Lauber, Vice President, Chief Learning Of ficer, McDonald’s Corp. Maj. Gen. Erwin F. Lessel, ( Ret.) U.S. Air Force, Director, Deloit te Consulting Justin Lombardo, ( Ret.) Chief Learning Of ficer, Baptist Health Adri Maisonet-Morales, Vice President, Enterprise Learning and Development, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina Alan Malinchak, CEO, Éclat Transitions LLC and STRATactical LLC Lee Maxey, CEO, MindMax 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 David Vance, Executive Director, Center for Talent Repor ting Kevin D. Wilde, Executive Leadership Fellow, Carlson School of Management, Universit y of Minnesota Chief Learning Officer (ISSN 1935-8148) is published monthly, except bi-monthly in January/February and November/December by MediaTec Publishing Inc., 111 E. Wacker Dr., Suite 1200, Chicago IL 60601. Periodicals postage paid at Chicago, IL and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Chief Learning Officer, P.O. Box 8712 Lowell, MA 01853. Subscriptions are free to qualified professionals within the US and Canada. Digital free subscriptions are available worldwide. Nonqualified paid subscriptions are available at the subscription price of $199 for 12 issues. All countries outside the US and Canada must be prepaid in US funds with an additional $33 postage surcharge. Single price copy is $29.99 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

F R EE LIVE

ONLINE E VE N TS

CONTENTS D

ecember

2017

Learning In Practice

awards 2017

2017 Learning In Practice Awards

CLO of the Year

Practitioner Awards

Provider Awards

The industry’s best and brightest came out to shine.

TCS’ Damodar Padhi knows that learning never stops.

Leaders who exhibited learning excellence.

Companies that delivered highly impactful learning.

ON THE COVER: PHOTO BY WILL BYINGTON

8 Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

December 2017

CONTENTS

Features

16 20

Experts

How to Optimize Top Team Performance

10 BUSINESS IMPACT

Bin Yang Focus on root cause analysis and an integrated approach to leader development to catch development needs before they become performance problems.

Building Relationships That Work

Michael E. Echols Automation Nation

11 BEST PRACTICES

Todd Davis The most important competency leaders can develop and continue to perfect each day is the ability to influence others.

Josh Bersin Catch the Wave

12 ACCOUNTABILITY

Departments

Jack J. & Patti P. Phillips Objectives are the Objective

14 ON THE FRONT LINE

Case Study Lincoln Financial’s Screen Test

Dave DeFilippo Relationships on the Side of the Highway

62 IN CONCLUSION

Sarah Fister Gale A cost-effective learning program that educates employees and inspires new career paths recently made its video debut.

Patrick Mullane History Need Not Repeat

Resources

Business Intelligence Sunny Forecast for Learning in 2018

4 Editor’s Letter

Mike Prokopeak CLOs are feeling confident in the results of their investments but more work remains.

A Recipe for Success

61 Advertisers’ Index

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Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

BUSINESS IMPACT

Automation Nation

Economic forecasts are often wrong but you should still prepare • BY MICHAEL E. ECHOLS

Michael E. Echols is principal and founder of Human Capital LLC and author of “Your Future Is Calling.” He can be reached at editor@CLOmedia.com.

here is a gathering cloud on the horizon. I hear about this threat often while watching CNBC like many business leaders who tune in every morning for the latest in financial news. What is the threat? It’s the often-repeated prediction that as many as 50 percent of American workers will have no economic contribution to make once artificial intelligence hits the warehouses, highways and offices of the future economy. That may be true. But before we get to the doomsday conclusion and what it means for corporate learning, there are several issues to explore. The first is that when it comes to forecasts about the future proceed with caution. The one truth about long-term economic forecasts is they are most often wrong. Forecasting is a perilous endeavor fraught with the hazards of reality. So when it comes to the forecast that 50 percent of workers will be made economically obsolete by artificial intelligence, here is some historical perspective. In colonial times more than 90 percent of the U.S. population was engaged in manual labor, most of them farmers. Today, farm workers make up 1.5 percent of the labor force. That drop from 90 percent to slightly more than 1 percent is a far more draconian fall than that forecasted by even the grimmest of the artificial intelligence prognosticators. What can we learn from this case study?

intervening innovations between Colonial times and today, a basis for even the wildest of guesses had no foundation in fact. A similar case has taken place over a much shorter period of time. Only a few decades ago, energy experts forecast the exhaustion of hydrocarbons in the United States. It was the end of the era of oil and gas. The forecasts were dead wrong. Today, the United States is awash in oil and gas, precisely the opposite of the forecasted outcome. One last example relates to an infamous recommendation by the director of the U.S. Patent Office at the beginning of the 20th century. That recommendation from this esteemed civic leader? The government should close the U.S. Patent Office because everything of value had already been invented. With the forecast of nothing of possible value to be created in the future, there would be no need for the patent office. Now there is a whopper of a forecast by someone who was supposedly in the know. But enough about the hazards of forecasting. What if the impact of artificial intelligence is in fact the destruction of 50 percent of the jobs people are currently doing? I will put my forecasting neck out there. The jobs will go away just as phone operators and secretarial positions have disappeared. But history will repeat itself. There will be lots of new opportunity created by our culture of innovation. What will those jobs be? I have no idea. What I do know is those jobs will require new skills and capabilities that do not exist today. Just as the skill of walking behind a plow pulled by a mule was replaced by computer skills and many others, the new opportunities of the future with or without artificial intelligence will require learning to develop those new skills. That is exactly what corporate learning organizations do. The need is clear. The only thing currently missing is the level of commitment required to make the necessary human capital investments required by the enterprise. If the forecasters of Colonial times were chalHere is one last forecast worthy of documentalenged to defend the 1.5 percent outcome of today, tion. At the current pace of innovation and change, they would have considered the request itself insane. enterprises that fail to figure out how to deploy a They would have been incapable of even fantasizing human capital investment strategy are at significant about such an outcome. Without knowledge of the risk to their very survival. CLO

The opportunities of the future require learning and development organizations to develop new skills.

10 Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

BEST PRACTICES

Catch the Wave

Give people opportunities to evolve and change to prepare for the future • BY JOSH BERSIN

areers are changing faster than ever. Oxford University predicts that nearly 50 percent of all jobs will be transformed in the next 20 years. I believe it’s happening far faster. Everywhere I go, nearly every CEO and CHRO I meet with tells me they are automating jobs, redesigning their organization and building new digital business models throughout their companies. In every one of these cases jobs are changing, dramatically impacting the whole idea of a career. Let me give you some perspectives on this profound issue. Three colliding factors have come together to make this the No. 1 issue facing learning and development organizations. First, automation is happening faster than ever. Our research for the Deloitte “Human Capital Trends” report this year showed that 41 percent of companies are rapidly adopting artificial intelligence and robotics to change jobs and 66 percent believe the use of gig workers will dramatically increase in the next three to 5 years. I met with a retailer in Europe recently who told me almost a third of their jobs will be impacted. Second, we are getting older (and younger). Perhaps the most important scientific breakthrough in the world is longevity. According to a study conducted by an international consortium of more than 700 researchers led by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, a child born today will live four to six weeks longer than a child born only one year ago. That means workers will work into their 70s and 80s on a regular basis, extending careers to 60 or 70 years or more. And as the birthrate is low in most developed countries and well below replacement rate in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and many other countries, we need these older workers. What will they do? Third, organizations are being redesigned. This year 88 percent of companies told us they were going through a major organizational redesign. That means creating new team structures, different managerial roles and more service and technical jobs. What can you do about all this? Redesign the concept of a career. The jobs of the future are more hybrid and multidisciplinary, more social and service- and empathy-based, and more focused on integration, design

and listening. We need people to train machines and apply machines well — not just use them. While we may think all the new jobs will be engineering, this is not true. Research shows that only 8 to 12 percent of all jobs in the economy are based on building or repairing machines. The rest of us are sales people, team leaders, designers or service professionals. One of the fastest growing careers in the world is health care work. These are jobs with accelerating salaries and great career opportunities and they focus on people and using machines, not building them.

We have to paddle back out to catch the next wave and make time to reinvent ourselves on a regular basis.

Josh Bersin is founder of Bersin, known as Bersin by Deloitte, and a principal with Deloitte Consulting. He can be reached at editor@CLOmedia.com.

We will also have many careers in our life. As a surfing analogy describes it, we have to get ourselves to paddle back out to catch the next wave and make time to reinvent ourselves on a regular basis. Many call this continuous learning. I call it continuous reinvention. You as an L&D leader must give people many opportunities to learn, evolve and change. This means a modernized microlearning environment and a true growth mindset in your company. It helps drive performance, brand and engagement. Leaders have to focus on investments in people. A disturbing study by Korn Ferry found that almost two-thirds of CEOs believe technology is more important than people in the future of work. My research shows that this could not be further from the truth. It’s how you manage, train and support people that matters. Make sure your CEO understands this. Only when people can adapt can your company stay ahead. The 21st century career is here today. Latch onto this topic and talk about it in your company — it may be one of the most important strategies you have ahead. CLO Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

ACCOUNTABILITY

Objectives are the Objective

Learning programs too often lack critical impact objectives • BY JACK J. AND PATTI P. PHILLIPS

Jack J. Phillips is the chairman, and Patti P. Phillips is president and CEO of the ROI Institute. They can be reached at editor@CLOmedia.com.

hen we speak to talent development groups, we sometimes ask what percent of talent development programs have impact objectives. Impact is the fourth level on the classic five levels of outcomes (reaction, learning, application, impact and ROI). In a group of 100 people, probably less than five say they have any impact objectives. This is a mystery that defies logic. Most would agree with the statement usually attributed to management thinker Peter Drucker that “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Most would also agree that without a clear, smart objective to drive something then you won’t be able to measure it. Consider these three impact objectives for example: • Increase call volume by 10 percent in three months. • Decrease transaction errors by 20 percent in four months. • Decrease turnover of critical talent from 18 percent to 7 percent in 12 months. What and when to measure becomes clear. We need more impact objectives like these. Ten years ago we wrote a book, “Beyond Learning Objectives: Develop Measurable Objectives That Link to the Bottom Line.” The publisher, the Association for Talent Development, created the title to remind learning and talent development professionals we must move beyond learning objectives. This is good advice.

developers the guidance to show participants what they should do and the impact it will ultimately achieve. Participants need objectives at Levels 3 and 4 to clearly understand what they should do with what they are learning and the impact it will have in their work. For live programs, facilitators need application and impact objectives so they can teach to the actual use and remind participants what impact it will have in their work with customers, clients or the team. Finally, sponsors who fund programs need these objectives but particularly Level 4. After all, business value is their favorite measurement category. We have never seen an executive get excited about a learning objective but we have seen them excited about an impact objective. So why are objectives not there? It comes down to why a program is being implemented. They are often initiated for the wrong outcome. The success driver has been learning. In other words, did they learn the content? Executives will quickly suggest that success doesn’t occur until participants use what they learn and have an impact in their work. If you don’t start with a business measure, it’s difficult to have business impact. Programs need to start with why — why we are doing this — and that’s often a specific business need. That makes the business connection to the impact objective in the beginning which in turn keeps the participant focused on that objective. When you follow up and track the impact measure, you see the actual improvement. It’s not that difficult. It’s the basics of having good program design. Leadership development is often the area where this is ignored. A good leadership program should start with a business measure such as a key performance indicator that a leader needs to improve and that can be changed with their team using the leadership competencies. When we do that, the participant has his or her So back to the basics. We need objectives at four own impact objective. So the goal of this leadership levels for any important program. Learning objectives program is not to be a great leader but to improve the for Level 2 are usually in place. We know how to do business measure through greater leader competency. that well. Rarely do we have Level 1 reaction objectives When this is achieved, we’re driving the business. although reactions such as relevance, importance and Jenny Dearborn, chief learning officer at SAP, intent to use are almost always measured. Level 3 appli- said during a conference keynote more than two cation objectives that define what participants should years ago that she won’t implement a learning prodo with what they’ve learned are rarely in place. Impact gram at SAP unless there is a clear business need for objectives at Level 4 are almost nonexistent. it and a precise business objective to drive it. It’s We need to set objectives at Levels 3 and 4 more time for all of us to think about this approach at often. Objectives at these levels provide designers and least for major programs. CLO

Business executives don’t get excited about learning objectives but they do about impact objectives.

12 Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

AN INVESTMENT IN KNOWLEDGE PAYS THE BEST INTEREST. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; BENJAMIN FR ANKLIN

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ON THE FRONT LINE

Relationships on the Side of the Highway

Learning to develop relationships is at the heart of continued career growth • BY DAVE DeFILIPPO

Dave DeFilippo is chief learning officer for Suffolk. He can be reached at editor@CLOmedia.com.

y first job after teaching high school was with UPS. My first role was as a truck driver, or a package car driver in UPS jargon. After completing a company orientation and driver training in the heat of July in New England, I was off to learn my delivery route. I quickly learned delivering and then picking up several hundred packages each day was hard work. I lost 10 pounds that first month. A few months later on my birthday, I learned an early lesson about the importance of short- and longterm relationships. I had finished my delivery route and was heading back down the highway toward the UPS facility to finish up for the day when my truck’s engine blew up, spewing oil, smoke and ultimately flames out of the front. I pulled over to the side of the highway to try to figure out what to do. This was the era before cell phones became the norm. A few of my fellow drivers stopped to make sure I was all right and told me they’d send word back to the office so I could be picked up. It was when I was sitting on the highway guardrail waiting that I noticed a well-dressed woman appear from around the back of my truck and walk toward me. She asked if I was OK. Being annoyed with my current plight, I replied with a sarcastic comment. She then told me that she was the UPS business development manager for the area. It was at that moment when the pit in my stomach grew and I thought to myself, “You idiot!” In the short term, my reputation for blowing up the UPS truck made for some good jabs from my fellow drivers and definitely a good amount of jeering from my manager. Despite that incident, I was promoted a few months later to a new role in the sales force. I reported to my new location to meet my new manager. She just happened to be the same business development manager from the side of the highway. As she briefed me on my new role she said with a grin, “Well, I hope you take better care of your car than you did your delivery vehicle.” It was then I started to appreciate how small a world it is and how much first impressions and relationships really matter. Back then, I took that lesson to heart and worked to build strong internal relationships and take on additional job assignments and projects. With the rise of social media since then as a means to connect and

14 Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

expand one’s networks, cultivating and caring for these relationships has taken on more relevance. I would even go so far to describe this skill as a required career management competency for anyone at any stage of their career.

I learned to appreciate how small a world it is and how much first impressions and relationships really matter. As a case in point, nearly five years ago a man reached out to me on LinkedIn to ask to network as he was new to the Boston area. He was a learning and talent practitioner and wanted to meet other kindred spirits. We met, had lunch and found we shared common professional philosophies. Three years later when I was looking to find someone who had a specific skillset and shared a similar passion for our field, guess who I contacted and subsequently hired? Relationships matter and making the gradual deposits to nurture and sustain them pays off with interest as it did for our team. As a learning and talent practitioner I have had the opportunity to get to know others in the field regionally, nationally and globally and those relationships have been instrumental to benchmark, find resources and compare notes on issues. As for my friend from the side of the highway, after a few months of learning the ropes of my new job and a good amount of feedback and coaching, we came to a reconciliation over our initial meeting. Our respective first impressions were both off base but that chance meeting had planted the seeds for a successful working relationship. I learned a considerable amount from her and to this day we share a good story to laugh about even now. CLO

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HOW TO OPTIMIZE

Top Team

PERFORMANCE

16 Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

BY BIN YANG

Top teams require special analysis to ensure they’re performing at their best. Focus on root cause analysis and an integrated approach to leader development to catch development needs before they become performance problems.

rganizations need great leaders who can identify emerging challenges, inspire their team and turn strategy into effective action. Those needs have been intensifying as business changes come at an exponential speed. According to some surveys, a fraction of CEOs believe their companies are building effective global leaders and 1 in 10 believe leadership development initia-

Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

tives have a clear impact on business. The major cause of poor corporate leadership development is its partial approach, an inability to get to the root cause due to a lack of knowledge of the whole human structure of psychometrics, behavior or technology. Subsequently, many people try to solve health, business, law and other nontechnology and non-psychology related problems with technology and psychological behavior tools. Leaders require different tools to meet challenges in various environments at different stages. Daily skills include how to communicate and take feedback. Others might need more specific learning or behavioral interventions. If they do not have the tools or potential to acquire the tools to finish one process, the whole leadership journey will be in jeopardy. Personality and their makeup as a leader are boundaries around their potential and motivation can only take them so far. Some behaviors only emerge after a person is put on the spot or undergoes a 360-degree observation. The inability to identify the precise development needs of a leader also results in wasted time, money and opportunities. There are additional causes that can also cause delays or even failure of corporate leadership development such as questions about how

If leaders do not have the tools or potential to acquire the tools to develop in an integrated way, their whole leadership journey will be in jeopardy. to personalize learning, implement the missing tools and enhance learning practices. In addition to those challenges, administrative and social factors play a role such as lack of support from CEOs and senior leaders and lack of buy in from individuals. Some leaders only want certain solutions while others only respond to a specific language and format. Without knowledge of the underlying structure and related rules, people analytics data is only an observation and cannot be actionable. Thus, we need to get to the root causes and

SIX LEADERSHIP QUOTIENTS Through understanding of the full six-quotient picture, CLO’s can make wise learning investments based on root causes.

Intelligence

Public Influence

Learning

Health

Source: The Prince Synergy

18 Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

Emotional

Adversity

develop corporate leadership accordingly. To focus leadership development effectively on top team performance, consider implementing the following strategies:

Focus on the shifts that matter and the holes that can sink your boat. Missing the big picture is a behavior that can have many underlying causes and can require different solutions based on the specific circumstances. For example, tunnel vision and a poor knowledge base can often be fixed through professional and psychological training. If the root cause is poor energy, sending the leader to the top MBA program in the world will be a waste of precious time and resources. What’s more, focusing on the big picture alone cannot guarantee success in execution if it’s not met with the right leadership styles, conflict management and resilience. To help a leader focus on the big picture, first identify what is holding the person back. Not every issue has a fast solution. The individual’s potential including an analysis of their motivation will determine the wise follow-up solution. Target the issue with the right tools and choose alternatives if there are no quick fixes. In addition, not all development needs are equally significant to every position. The right placement is the key. While top teams can have different development needs depending on their daily roles, new business needs can emerge as the business environment changes. Failure to adjust to changing conditions can cause something insignificant to become significant. For example, imagine an institution opened a new subsidiary and promoted a marketing executive to be CEO due to his years of global marketing experience and dedication to his past roles. However, this person has limited vision due to his knowledge base, lacks the ability to drive innovation and struggled with conflict management. Those leadership development needs could have remained insignificant until he was promoted to CEO. Could self-awareness and a shift in learning mindset be enough to help him? No. First, he needs to have learning needs identified precisely so he can learn as easily and fast as possible. Second, he needs to be motivated to learn and adapt to his new role. That’s why it would be wise to know these new development needs ahead of time.

Catch development needs before a 360-degree assessment and deliver training to address root causes. Each person has six quotients: intelligence, emotional, learning, adversity, public influence and health. Issues at the top level are often complex and involve all six. This complexity and related behaviors can make complex issues seem intractable and many learning officers are so used to slow or poor results that they stop searching for faster and better results. This explains why only 13 percent of companies believe they are building effective global leaders, according to a 2016 Deloitte survey. In addition to daily business skills like how to communicate and take feedback, leaders also need to learn, relax, sleep and defuse political issues. If individuals cannot finish one of these significant processes, the whole project can be in jeopardy. Psychological and behavioral analysis are clever ways to analyze individuals without getting to the underlying root cause. But both can only see the new psychology and behavior after

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Building Relationships That Work

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Help leaders achieve greater results by having them examine their own behavior and then engage in specific practices that influence and change others. BY TODD DAVIS

‌h ink about how difficult it can be to change your own attitudes and behavior, let alone changing the behavior of someone else. And yet we often find ourselves with people we think need to be fixed or at least changed in some fundamental way. And what happens when our attempts to change them don’t work? As leaders, much is required of us and we are measured in many ways. But ultimately we

Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

are measured by the results we deliver. How do you get results? Unless you are a pro golfer or running a company where you are the only employee, you get results with and through other people. So we’re measured by our results. As leaders who need to get results through those we lead, the most important competency we can develop and then continue to perfect each day is our ability to influence others. We do that by starting with ourselves. There are 15 specific practices that are the catalysts to positively influence and in some cases even change others. Each practice is an opportunity to start with ourselves and examine what we can do to change before attempting to change others. When internalized and authentically modeled, these 15 practices can have a profound impact on successful working relationships and transform the results we get. Practice 1: Wear glasses that work. One of the biggest challenges to working with others effectively is being overly invested in your version of the truth. The “glasses” we choose to wear each day are the beliefs through which we see ourselves and everything around us. And what we see informs what we think and feel — which has a direct impact on what we do and what we get. If we’re too invested in our point of view, we may miss seeing the true potential in ourselves or others. Practice 2: Carry your own weather. If you believe that external things like other people or situations are the source of your unhappiness or happiness, life will always happen to you. You’ll feel powerless like a victim — finding reasons to blame others or justify your kneejerk reactions. If you want to have more influence in your life or if your emotions are getting in your way, remember you have the freedom to choose to carry your own weather. Practice 3: Behave your way to credibility. We all have a reputation whether we like it or not. That reputation has been built over the days, weeks months or years you’ve been with your employer, your partner, your children and your friends. What kind of reputation is it? Do people see you as credible? Credibility is having a high degree of character and competence. And it doesn’t just come with a title or because we want it. It comes with a proven track record of behavior over time.

Practice 4: Play your roles well. Do you find that success in one area of your life comes at the expense of another area? Or maybe you’ve neglected a role so long that it’s caused severe relationship damage. Playing your roles well is about identifying your most important roles both professional and personal and then deciding the meaningful contributions you want to make in each. If those impacted by you in each of your roles were to write a review about you today what would they say? What would you hope they would say? Practice 5: See the tree, not just the seedling. Have you ever given up on someone prematurely? Maybe it was a coworker who saw things differently than you or a team member you inherited who didn’t seem to do their fair share. We sometimes expect perfect results without clarifying clear expectations or allowing for a learning curve. We get frustrated with someone’s behavior when they’re not doing the job how we think it should be done. We become so impatient we miss seeing the talent right in front of us. When we take time to consider a person’s potential it allows us to see past the seedling and envision the mighty tree it can become. Practice 6: Avoid the pinball syndrome. Hitting and scoring points in a pinball game is a lot like achieving the urgencies that demand your attention every day: phone calls, texts, emails and meetings. You may not feel like your urgent tasks are a game but you can become attracted to the rapid pace and focus required to get them done. Because urgencies act on you and vie for your immediate attention it creates the Pinball Syndrome and you start to confuse what’s urgent with what’s truly important. When you get a small respite between your urgencies before the score resets and the next ball rolls into place, it’s what you do in that moment between reaching for the plunger in autopilot mode or choosing to step back and reflect on what’s truly important that will make all the difference. Practice 7: Think we, not me. Do you win at the expense of others? In education, business, sports or even family life, we are encouraged and rewarded to compete. As a result, many people adopt a winlose mindset: If you get more, that means I get less so I better get my share first. Thinking “We, Not Me” is based on having an abundant mindset. If you believe there’s a finite amount of rewards, credit, recognition, benefits and even love, you’ll create a fear-

The most important competency leaders can develop and continue to perfect each day is the ability to influence others.

22 Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

ful worldview and it will be difficult to shift the focus off of yourself and take others’ needs into consideration. If you choose an abundance mindset, you will believe there’s enough for everyone and will be able to care as much about others’ wins as you care about your own. Practice 8: Take stock of your emotional bank accounts. You probably pay attention to your financial bank accounts — the deposits and withdrawals, the interest and penalties — but are you at risk of being overdrawn or even bankrupt in any of your emotional bank accounts? When an emotional bank account balance is high so is the resulting level of trust. When the balance is low, trust plummets and relationships suffer. While there are similarities between a traditional bank account and an emotional one, there are also some differences. The most important is you never accumulate a high emotional balance in order to make planned withdrawals later. Practice 9: Examine your real motives. Motives are the underlying reasons for the actions you take and the words you say. No one can tell you what your motives are. They may try but you are the only

Because we get results with and through others, nothing is more important than learning how to be more effective in relationships. one who can know your real reasons for doing what you do. Are your motives healthy, based on wanting the best for yourself and others? Or do you ever have an unhealthy motive driven by fear, anger or an unfulfilled need for acceptance, power or safety? Unless you make a regular practice of examining your real motives and questioning your choices, you might inadvertently go on autopilot and create a divide in the relationships that are most important to you at work and home. Practice 10: Talk less, listen more. When it comes to real-life relationships, our propensity to talk more than we listen works against us. Of course, in the rush to solve problems and get things done there’s a natural tendency for all of us to simply tell. But when we take it upon ourselves to do all the talking we almost always pay a price. One of the most profound gifts you can give to another human being is your sincere understanding. To do so re-

quires clearing away your mental clutter, suspending at least temporarily your agenda and stopping long enough to focus and hear what someone is really saying. Practice 11: Get your volume right. We all have natural strengths. But sometimes they are so ingrained we’re unaware of how we overuse them and the impact that has on others. Let’s say your natural strength is being practical and finding fact-based solutions. If set too high, this “practical volume” may turn into pessimism: You perpetually find reasons for not doing something. Instead of being the leader who inspires and engages forward motion, you become the naysayer who slows everything down. When we inadvertently turn the volume too high on one of our strengths, the negative result can often be a blind spot. Find a trusted friend and get feedback on when you might be dialing up your strengths too much. Practice 12: Extend trust. Are you more inclined to distrust others than to trust them? Or do you give away your trust prematurely and regret it later? Neither extreme is useful when building effective relationships. The majority of relationship snags are rarely caused by people trusting too much. They’re caused by people trusting too little. Consider the character and competence of the person to whom you’re extending trust. Do you trust them to be honest and follow through (character)? Do they have the experience or skillset necessary for the task at hand (competence)? If not, do they have the discipline and drive to grow into it? Remember, you’re always better off to begin with a propensity to trust. Practice 13: Make it safe to tell the truth. When was the last time you asked for feedback? If you can’t remember, you’re in good company. Most of us resist it because we equate it with criticism. It brings to the surface what we don’t want to admit — that each of us is a work in progress. But if we avoid creating opportunities to receive feedback or unknowingly make it unsafe for others to tell us the truth, we’ll miss a huge learning curve and perfect chance to build high-trust relationships. Having the wisdom and courage to systematically seek feedback from others makes all the difference for those who are continually getting better at nearly everything they do. Practice 14: Align inputs with outputs. Do you find yourself unable to consistently get or replicate your desired results, especially when it comes to building relationships? While many inputs (beliefs, actions, words) contribute to relationship effectiveness, identifying the right inputs can make all the difference. The 15 PRACTICES continued on page 60 Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

industryinsights Untapped Potential Developing frontline workers creates a talent pipeline By Tim Harnett

The economy has experienced an upturn recently, with unemployment dropping and companies hiring as many workers as they can.¹ Yet positive job growth means fewer people available for each vacant position, which can make hiring challenging for organizations in industries with traditionally high turnover. Rather than search for talent outside the organization, talent leaders might turn to an untapped workforce population: their frontline workers. “With such a tight labor market, it makes more sense to upskill members of the current talent pool who are already in the workforce,” says Rachael Bourque, director of business development for Pearson. “Frontline workers have the same aspirations as other workers, but may not have the same advantages as office workers. Organizations might not also think of this worker segment as a potential resource. It might take some effort to get them to where you need them to be, but organizations who develop these workers create brand champions who are loyal to your company and will help reduce voluntary turnover.” What does it take to provide frontline workers with learning? Communication is key: frontline workers need to know about their development opportunities. In turn, organizations need to know these workplace segments exist and be able to reach them.

Step 1: Recognize and assess your frontline population Frontline workers can number in the hundreds at large organizations or just a few at small companies. Knowing these workers exist and where they are is the first step to targeting them for development. “Don’t ignore part-time workers, either,” Bourque adds. “They can be an important talent pipeline

for your organization if you can develop them and convert them into full-time workers. Figuring out who and where those individuals are and what their needs are will give you the perspective of how frontline roles are being defined and what you can do to invest in them.” Recognize that frontline workers will have different needs from office workers. “The focus should move away from the one-size-fits-all philosophy of training,” Bourque says. “Many organizations may train to the common denominator, but when you have a large frontline, you can’t necessarily provide to them what you can provide to other members of your workforce.”

Step 2: Start the conversation early

Workplace tenure is on the decline, and frontline workers in many industries don’t stay with one company for very long.² It’s important then to develop your employees early. “We need to have better conversations with frontline workers when they’re coming into the company about their objectives. Being able to capture employees’ educational goals and desires from day one is critical for developing long-term brand loyalty,” says Sean Stowers, director of learning services for Pearson North America. “Bestin-class organizations are moving to this day-one philosophy and not waiting until an employee has been with the company 90 days, six months or longer.” “Withholding educational assistance until a certain tenure in the organization has been reached is more of a penalty philosophy around benefits,” Bourque adds. “Forward-thinking organizations are taking a more proactive approach, investing in their employees right away.” Making workers aware of development opportunities from the beginning shows that the organization is invested in them and encourages worker loyalty and retention.

Pearson AcceleratED partners with organizations who are struggling with retention, recruitment, and cost of engagement by helping to reimagine the use of their education benefit in a strategic way. Our managed education services help provide more frontline employees access to skills development through educational pathways that complement your traditional rewards benefits. Our integrated network of regionally accredited schools and managed education services solutions help employees overcome traditional barriers to degree completion, including cost and access while providing a greater ROI back to our customers. Visit our website www.pearsonaccelerated.com

Communication can be a challenge regarding frontline worker development. “Organizations say, ‘We’re offering this benefit; why aren’t our employees taking advantage of it?’” Bourque says. “Part of the reason may be workers might not know the programs exist. Offered programs aren’t being communicated about effectively. Workers might not know how to take advantage or have needs that are different from what the benefit offers. That can change with early assessment and open, honest dialogue between employers and employees about aspirations and goals.” To remain competitive, organizations will need to look at nontraditional pipelines for talent. Workers won’t use benefits if they don’t know programs exist

1 2

and how they can enroll. “Today’s organizations are shifting to a build versus buy mentality toward talent because the tightening of the labor market means the talent simply isn’t there,” Bourque says. “At the same time, 70 million people in the U.S. are currently in the workforce and either don’t have a high school diploma or have some college but no degree. These people comprise a huge potential talent pipeline if paid attention to and developed. Organizations in many industries are turning to nontraditional pipelines to find the workers in the numbers they need, as their traditional talent pools might no longer be viable.” Learn more about how Pearson can help develop your frontline workers at pearson.com.

Cohen, P. (2017). “Jobless Rate at 10-Year Low as Hiring Grows and Wages Rise.” New York Times. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2016). Employee Tenure in 2016.

industryinsights From Data to Insight How to transform learning analytics into actionable outcomes By Tim Harnett

To assess the success of learning programs and investments, organizations should identify metrics that help make the business case for learning to senior executives. Yet many organizations struggle to identify the right metrics or produce quality insight from the data they collect — if they’re collecting data at all. According to the latest CLO research, less than half of all organizations are satisfied with their current learning measurement efforts, while 34 percent manually generate learning metrics, rather than employ a technological solution.¹ Neha Gupta, CEO of True Office Learning, understands the challenges. “How do you seamlessly gather behavioral insight and analytics into everyone in your organization?” Gupta asks. “And also ensure the data pipes are collecting meaningful, statistically relevant information that can be processed, analyzed and digested?” Carefully designed learning programs with measurable metrics built in can help learning leaders measure progress and analyze what’s working. While learning programs are a powerful answer, metrics can’t help if employees don’t take advantage of learning programs. Making the time for employees to engage with learning is difficult. “Users are maximized in terms of their attention span and the number of events they’re engaged in,” Gupta says. Time is money, and organizations looking to make the most of their learning programs need to embrace adaptivity and analytics. Gupta suggests that to move from collecting data to producing insight, analytics should be measurable, digestible and fully aligned with business goals. Align learning metrics with organizational goals Currently, only 59 percent of organizations believe their measurement and metrics are fully aligned with the learning strategy.² To best make the business case for learning, analytics data should focus on performance and productivity metrics. “Knowledge check or retention data is common with traditional learning approaches, but not

very meaningful,” Gupta says. “Is it important that your employees can give the definition of a rule or policy, or is it more important that they apply their knowledge to make the right decisions when the time comes? What matters most is measuring whether your employees can act on information to navigate an actual situation. “ “Retention knowledge won’t change business outcomes. The right behaviors, critical thinking and effective decision-making will. Thus, learning programs that generate decision-making and behavior pattern analytics are critical to organizational success.” Make learning analytics digestible If data is being collected manually, or is only available in its raw form, it isn’t of much use. “Executives are too busy to also take on the role of data scientists,” Gupta cautions. “Data synthesis is key, as digestible data is easy to process and allows executives the opportunity to use data to make strategic decisions.”

“What matters most is measuring whether your employees can act on information to navigate an actual situation.” “At the same time, organizations need the ability to intuitively collect and slice and dice data to get different lenses and perspectives,” Gupta says. “Dashboards help visualize the data, but there should also be an intuitive benchmarking or segmentation component, so organizations can compare performance internally and with peers or competitors.” For data to be usable, it should be in the hands of those who can use data to make strategic decisions, yet less than a third of organizations report the business impact of learning to executives.³

True Office Learning makes eLearning smarter. Technology has improved nearly everything that we do...except for corporate learning and training. That’s where we come in. We build adaptive learn-by-doing experiences that focus on who you are and what you know. Our diagnostic, training and analytics solutions make employees smarter with adaptive training, leaders more effective with rich behavior analytics, and training creators more efficient by enabling course creation in minutes. Let’s move learning forward...together. www.trueoffice.com

needed more coaching to get to a place of proficiency.” “If I’m looking at a situation I feel is mission critical for our business and I’m looking at the analytics to see the behavior patterns and decision patterns for my employees, I want to dive into which employees really looked at the situation and made poor decisions so that I as an executive can send out some reinforcement or speak to that in our town halls,” Gupta continues. “The ability to get the details of what makes up the trends or who is involved in those trends gives learning leaders the ability to do targeted remediation. From there organizations can incorporate this into communications and year-end training practices to accelerate behavior change.”

Use analytics to the fullest Learning analytics really shine when telling the story of employee performance in a journey to attaining 100% proficiency. “Performance and proficiency data shows executives how effective your employees are at making decisions,” Gupta says. “This is meaningful because the journey gives executives insight into what their people understand right off the bat — why and where they 1, 2, 3

2017 CLO State of the Industry Survey.

As organizations implement better metrics and analytics capabilities, Gupta recommends putting learner needs first. “Learners want to know what’s relevant to them and nothing else. Giving employees the agency to be masters of their own destiny where they’re navigating real-life situations and a tailored journey to their role and performance reduces that fatigue and allows them to be more authentic in how they engage with the solution.” Learn how True Office Learning can help you gather rich data and insight into your learning programs at trueoffice.com.

industryinsights Focus, Metacognition, Engagement: Using Neuroscience to Optimize Training Through Adaptive Technology Explore how adaptive learning uses neuroscience theories to deliver an efficient, effective, engaging experience to every learner

By Zach Posner, senior vice president and managing director, learning science platforms

We can now listen to personalized music on the radio, order taxis directly from whatever location and watch a customized stream of movies based on our preferences. Our entertainment and e-commerce experiences are hyper-optimized: no wonder they are so addictive. Can we apply that optimization to learning? McGraw-Hill Education Learning Science Platforms apply artificial intelligence to learning to optimize every learning moment and unlock human potential. The platforms transform static content into dynamically personalized experiences so content adapts in real time to individual behavior and performance. The result is more efficient, effective and engaging learning.

other factors. The platform takes this data into account, serving up content that not only helps each learner increase accuracy but also improve awareness around accuracy, so that learners walk away knowing what they know. Those who have confidence, who quickly seem to know what to do and how to do it, who can step up, frame a situation and set context for others, are seen as leaders. But what about unlocking everyone’s potential? It starts by demystifying the relationship between confidence and mastery, showing us what we know when we know it, pointing out our weaknesses and highlighting the path to erasing our knowledge gaps.

How does this happen? Several neuroscience theories are embedded in the algorithms that power the personalized learning paths taken on the platforms. Here are a few examples.

Take, for example, a government official evaluating small business owners for grants according to a new policy. A misconception or fuzziness in understanding the policy may result in a lack of compliance or missed opportunities and misallocation of funds, which all affect the economic landscape of the community.

“The pressures of business make learning seem a luxury. ”

Take, as another example, a large legal firm. If the same course is administered to 3,000 professionals and 2,800 answer a significant question correctly, but 80 percent guessed without confidence, do they really understand the concept? What are the ramifications if thousands cannot confidently apply the rule when negotiating complex transactions and are billing hundreds of dollars an hour?

Metacognitive Theory

Learners learn best when they know what they know and don’t know. As learners move through content, the platform captures data concerning accuracy, confidence, time and

Here’s another angle of the confidence problem: take a junior professional at a call center who spends a good portion of his or her working hours feeling self-conscious and uncertain. If that individual scores well on mastery — but not high on awareness level,

McGraw-Hill Education Learning Science Platforms apply artificial intelligence to learning through adaptive technology. The platforms transform otherwise static content into personalized experiences that adapt in real-time to each learner’s behavior and performance. Every moment is optimized, so that the right content is presented at the right time for each learner. Greater learning efficiency, effectiveness, and engagement are the immediate results, improved training ROI and organizational performance the ultimate results. Learners focus on challenging areas, fight memory decay, and move knowledge from short to long-term memory, all while remaining engaged. The technology is based on educational theory and cognitive science that explores memory, metacognition, and the personalized delivery of concepts.

becoming more aware of his orher strengths may make the employee more confident and take initiative on the job, perhaps even mentoring others who are weak in those areas. There are 360-degree benefits in this case for the employee, peers and managers.

challenged. The platform puts this concept into action by keeping each learner in an optimal zone of challenge. If too many questions are answered wrong in a row, for instance, the platform will serve up a question that provides a quick win and builds confidence in the learner.

Bottom line: awareness is an important component of knowledge. The more self-aware the learner is, the better it is for everyone.

This is a meaningful concept for all learners — who doesn’t get overwhelmed when challenges are too much to bear? However, it means something different depending on the employee’s level. Senior executives may feel they should possess complete mastery over a field already, and may underestimate the level of continuous learning and reinforcement required to stay at peak performance. The stress of managing alongside formidable peers only compounds the challenge, especially when profit and loss responsibilities are at stake. The pressures of business make learning seem a luxury. The concept of formative assessment — assessment that occurs while you are learning, rather than as a final summative judgment — lies at the heart of adaptive learning, and works well in this case because it expresses no judgment and encourages flow and present orientation. The executive is free to learn and fail. The environment is safe and conductive to real growth.

Theory of Deliberate Practice

Understanding where we are weakest helps us focus our practice. To address this, the platform continuously adjusts the content to focus on individual weaknesses, ensuring that time is used efficiently and effectively. The applications of this theory are present in every field. Take, for example, a consulting firm in which professionals must reach a certain level of mastery before they can get in the field and bill by the hour. Time wasted impacts the bottom line directly. If professionals use their training time optimally with greater focus and intensity, not mindlessly reviewing their strengths, but aggressively remediating their weaknesses, both the employee and organization benefit.

Theory of Fun for Game Design

Learners are most engaged when challenged but not too

Want to see adaptive learning in action? Write me at Zach.Posner@mheducation.com.

• Learning In Practice Awards •

PRESENTS

Learning In Practice

awards

2017

here’s a time for work and there’s a time to celebrate. At a special reception for the winners of the 2017 Chief Learning Officer Learning In Practice awards, it was a time to celebrate the work. This year marked the 14th anniversary of the Learning In Practice Awards, a recognition program to spotlight learning executives, vendors and organizations that demonstrate excellence in workforce development design and delivery as well as use learning to enact measurable changes in their business, strategy or leadership. More than 200 learning leaders gathered at the Hyatt Regency in Huntington Beach, California, from Oct. 2-3 for the Fall 2017 Chief Learning Officer Symposium Plus featuring the special reception recognizing this year’s group of top learning leaders. Judges chose the nearly 70 winners from the 200 nominations received. Practitioners received awards across eight categories in two divisions: Division 1 for

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companies with more than 10,000 employees and Division 2 for companies with less than 10,000 employees. Categories included Business Impact, Innovation and Strategy along with the industry’s top honor, CLO of the Year. Learning providers and vendor companies were also recognized for their service in seven categories including Content, Technology and E-Learning. This year’s winners included executives from bluechip firms Booz Allen Hamilton, General Motors Co., New York Life, Dell EMC and Mastercard, nonprofits like the Boy Scouts of America and international organizations such as the United Nations Development Programme. The awards were also an international affair. Finalists included learning executives from as far as India and New Zealand. While the time to celebrate this year’s winners has drawn to a close, the work has already begun to recognize next year’s leaders. Nominations for the 2018 awards will open April.

• Learning In Practice Awards •

PROVIDER AWARDS

PRACTITIONER AWARDS

Excellence in Academic Partnerships: Recognizes accredited academic learning institutions that have partnered with an organization in the past year to develop skills, competency or knowledge in a general employee population.

CLO of the Year: For the learning executive who is without peer in developing and executing learning and development strategies, marshaling and managing resources and achieving measurable success. The CLO of the Year award recognizes executives for their body of work over the course of their career.

Excellence in Blended Learning Award: Recognizes vendors that have deployed a variety of tools in support of a client’s learning program that delivers engaging learning combining multiple modalities. Excellence in Content: Recognizes vendors that have created superior customized and/or off-the-shelf learning content. Excellence in E-Learning: Recognizes vendors that have rolled out an innovative and effective e-learning program or suite for a client. Excellence in Executive Education: Recognizes executive education providers that have delivered a targeted executive education program for a client that has delivered measurable results. Excellence in Technology Innovation: Recognizes vendors that have rolled out an innovative learning technology for a client such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, apps, video, social collaboration tools or games and simulations. Excellence in Partnership: Recognizes vendors or consultants who have effectively supported a client’s learning and development function to set strategy or establish or implement a program via consulting or whole or partial outsources services.

Business Impact: For learning executives who have implemented a significant measurement or evaluation program that has demonstrated exceptional business impact from their workforce development programs. Potential results may include measures of employee retention, sales, revenue growth, customer satisfaction or cost reduction, among others. Business Partnership: For learning departments that have partnered in a progressive way with business partners or external organizational divisions and functions such as the sales and marketing department or external customer groups to develop and deliver a targeted employee development program that supports the partner’s goals. Innovation: For learning executives who have marshaled resources and applied innovative practices, processes and/or technologies in a new and groundbreaking way to address a significant business or organizational opportunity. Strategy: For learning executives who have demonstrated exceptional business acumen combined with forward-looking vision to develop and execute a comprehensive learning strategy that clearly aligns employee development with broader organizational strategy. Talent Management: For learning executives who have developed a program that effectively integrates learning into broader talent management initiatives such as employee engagement, onboarding, succession planning, recruiting or performance management. Technology: For learning executives who have delivered new and unique applications of emerging technology to employee learning and development. Trailblazer: For learning executives who have either launched a new enterprise learning function or completely overhauled existing workforce development initiatives in the past year.

Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

• Learning In Practice Awards •

CLO OF THE YEAR

DAMODAR PADHI: A GLOBAL LEADER IN LEARNING Chief Learning Officer’s 14th CLO of the Year is leading Tata Consultancy Services into the future of global learning. BY AVE RIO

amodar Padhi is no stranger to awards. His work as a learning leader has been recognized with more than 30 national and international awards including recognition from the Association for Talent Development, the Brandon Hall Group, the U.K. Learning Awards and Chief Learning Officer’s own benchmarking program, the LearningElite. That’s an impressive track record for someone who is not a learning professional by training. Padhi, an engineer who has worked at Hindustan Aeronautics Limited and General Electric, said the key to his career success has been that engineer’s mindset — building something from scratch or fixing a broken system. His current position as global head of talent development for Tata Consultancy Services is no exception. The former CEO of TCS convinced Padhi to take on the job despite his lack of experience in talent development. He’s been drinking from the fire hose ever since. At TCS, a multinational technology services firm with 390,000 employees of 134 nationalities operating in 46 different countries, he leads a team of more than 600 talent development professionals across the globe from the firm’s India headquarters. Padhi said the increasingly rapid pace of technology innovation has sped up the learning curve and forced TCS

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to re-examine the conventional learning process. The result has been a move to digital delivery as the way to keep an accelerated pace and deliver on a global scale. That move away from a reliance on classrooms allows learning to happen anytime, anywhere and on any device. “Digital learning was the answer to invoke and accelerate the knowledge part of the learning and bring the dispersed learners with diverse backgrounds to a level playing field,” he said. “Our connected classroom infrastructure … sped up the face-to-face connection with the subject matter experts.” Padhi’s learning team built a system with internal content research and development teams at the core and augmented with a global network of subject matter experts, third-party content providers, universities and alliance partners. The result of the system has been to accelerate the speed and scale of TCS talent development, he said. So far, business performance results have borne out the validity of that approach. TCS revenue has exceeded $17.5 billion and the attrition rate has dropped to 10.5 percent in the competitive professional services industry. The melding of technology’s ability to reach and connect people anywhere at any time to a solid core of content and expertise has been key. “The moment we approach digital with an open mind it is seen more as an opportunity than an impediment,” Padhi said. “Digital is virtual interface to physical assets. With technology availability, affordability and adoption, digital speeds

• Learning In Practice Awards •

CLO OF THE YEAR how small, to do a job better. Padhi said the lab encourages new hires to learn by doing and try out their ideas in labs under the supervision of talented employees. The results have been significant. In the past three years, the innovation lab has filed nearly 30 patent applications. But Padhi said that result was a byproduct rather than the goal of the program. The main benefit is the consolidation of learning and accelerated integration with business teams. “It’s where the germination of minds happens,” he said. The innovation teams work on areas of emerging technology like the “internet of things,” virtual reality, gaming, artifi2017 CLO of the Year Damodar Padhi, center, with Mike cial intelligence, robotics, blockchain, image processing, anaProkopeak, left, and John Taggart of Human Capital Media. lytics, neurobusiness, cybersecurity and authentication. up everything, including learning.” Beyond leading the digital transformation of learning, But Padhi said the transition had its fair share of chal- Padhi’s talent development team is making advances in leadlenges. Getting subject matter experts and learners to em- ership development. They trained more than 800 employees brace digital learning was the first challenge. Working to at five locations through Ascent, the company’s flagship prointegrate content partners into the TCS digital learning gram for first-time managers and have plans to scale the proframework was another. gram up to reach 10,000 first-time managers per year. Across “We took the approach of ‘go full and go fast,’ meaning a all leadership development programs Padhi’s team has develpilot program must be large enough to ensure scalability and oped 16,650 leaders so far in 2017 alone. once the pilot is a success it must be implemented across the The firm’s development efforts also extend beyond deorganization with no exception,” Padhi said. veloping TCS talent to broader social and economic isUsing short videos, mobile learning, connected classrooms sues. TCS launched an online platform to connect STEM and virtual labs, Padhi helped TCS transform learning to a professionals to community volunteer opportunities and high-tech ecosystem that resulted in greater efficiency. Today, partnered with academia to bridge the gap between school 90 percent of TCS’ 5.2 million total learning days come from and work through faculty development programs and coldigital learning. That’s comlaborating on custom maspared to 40 percent in 2015 ter’s degree programs. and an industry benchmark Despite their achieveof 41 percent. ments so far, Padhi said his Scores on the firm’s Assotalent development team ciate Satisfaction Index for still has a ways to go to detalent development also went liver a superior learner expeup 220 basis points in two rience. Currently, many years. Padhi attributes suclearning programs are — Damodar Padhi, global head of talent cess to the TCS talent develpushed out to employees development, Tata Consultancy Services opment team. but they are building sys“Apart from inspiring tems to develop a culture of them to think big and holding their hand through the pilot learning that pulls people in rather than waits for them to phase, I don’t do much significant personal contribution,” be invited. When that happens it will be a day to celebrate, Padhi said. “Learning is a continuous process — there is no Padhi said. steady state so I never allow the team to settle down.” Stepping back, Padhi said CLOs should see themselves as That restless spirit also led Padhi to focus on innova- an integral part of their organization’s overall workforce tion in learning. TCS started the Initial Learning Pro- planning and talent management. Learning programs gram’s Innovation Lab in January 2015 to encourage should be developed to fuel career growth. After all, organiyounger workers to explore technical innovation using zations succeed if their employees have the kind of learning digital technologies. that leads to their own individual growth. Padhi said he got the idea when he heard former General “A learning organization is a growing organization,” Electric CEO Jack Welch say that the moment innovation is Padhi said. “It is that simple.” CLO thought of as the job of Einstein or Edison, the entire mindset of innovation dies. The goal should be to engage all em- Ave Rio is associate editor for Chief Learning Officer magazine. ployees in innovation and find every opportunity, no matter She can be reached at editor@CLOmedia.com.

“Learning is a continuous process — there is no steady state so I never allow the team to settle down.”

Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

• Learning In Practice Awards •

BUSINESS IMPACT — DIVISION 1 ANIL KUMAR SANTHAPURI Senior Manager, Talent Management, Western Union For Western Union, the Colorado-based financial service company, the goal is to be a world leader in cross-border, cross-currency money transfer and payments. To achieve that goal, the company’s CEO and senior executives focused on four key areas.

The first was to “grow” by adding shareholders, increasing revenue and requiring talent to learn new skills. Next was to “excel” by advancing the company’s strategies. The third value was “comply,” which would balance the risk necessary to grow business while still enhancing compliance capabilities. Finally to “evolve,” which focused on improving the customer experience. Anil Kumar Santhapuri, senior manager of talent management, along with the company’s global talent management team aligned with these four identified business objectives by adopting the Talent Development Reporting Principles system to provide line of sight to effectiveness and efficiency of the company’s talent development efforts and build credibility with data and insight. The system measured four areas: satisfaction, knowledge gain, impact and business results. Among other data, Western Union collected learner reactions to facilitators, materials, the learning environment as well as measured administrative support and tracked new knowledge and skills learned. The conclusions were significant results in 13 areas including talent retention, innovation, product development and customer satisfaction. In particular, customer focus improved 14 percent, profits increased and employee engagement moved upward. Now in its third year of measuring impact, Western Union plans further refinements to the system, including identifying talent concerns, selecting targeted metrics and sophisticated feedback monitoring and communication strategies. — Marygrace Schumann

JOHN KUSI-MENSAH

KEITH ONDRA

Assistant Vice President, MetLife

Learning Consultant, General Motors Co.

For many years MetLife had learning and development programs to address the company’s urgent needs. But as the New Yorkbased insurance company’s global footprint and distribution channels continued to grow, the need for a better connection between sales training and learning and development departments became clear. To fulfill ambitious growth targets, MetLife would need to improve sales associates’ skills and align with the enterprise strategy.

With those goals in mind, John Kusi-Mensah, assistant vice president for global distribution capability center of expertise, developed MetLife’s Sales Learning Curriculum, a global competency-based program. The program provides a road map for development organized by competencies like sales capability, relationship management and customer-centricity among others. The road map spells out the steps for employees to move into higher positions and how to develop expert skills. The initiative also included a continuous learning experience that included mobile and microlearning as well as one-to-one coaching meetings.

General Motors Co., the Detroit-based automaker, was on a mission to increase the ROI of learning, improve employee engagement and tie individual growth to overall business objectives. Led by Keith Ondra, learning consultant at GM Learning, the team updated its training structure to broaden its scale and focus on core business processes by certifying employees in key areas including finance, IT, Six Sigma and project management.

— Marygrace Schumann

34 Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

• Learning In Practice Awards •

BUSINESS IMPACT — DIVISION 2

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JONO CATHERSIDES Global Product Training Manager, Fisher & Paykel As part of its global expansion plan, Fisher & Paykel, an appliance maker based in New Zealand, opened two new consumer-facing experience centers in Sydney, Australia, and New York to raise the company’s profile as a premium consumer appliance brand and attract new customers. But company leaders worried the centers were not reaching their full potential due to lack of training.

The company wanted to create a training program that would drive engagement with Fisher & Paykel products, which would in turn lead to higher sales. That program would also need to be applicable to all talent across the company in all consumer markets. Kelley Wade (right)

KELLEY WADE Sales Training Manager, HUB International After launching a growth plan aimed at doubling the size of the global insurance brokerage HUB International Limited in five years, CEO Martin Hughes presented company leaders a challenge: Drive growth throughout the company by finding and implementing crucial initiatives. Kelley Wade, sales training manager, and the sales force development team started thinking of ways to meet this challenge head on. The team, which provides logistics support, design and development and sales trainers and coaches, was tasked with increasing sales while lowering attrition rates of sales professionals during their first two years. At that time, only 60 percent of new hires were on track to validate their salary and the turnover rate was 40 percent. With those goals in mind, Wade and the sales force development team created the Path to Validation program to combine learning, coaching and peer support into a unified development program. The programs starts with a three-week boot camp that introduces participants to insurance, sales skills and HUB resources and includes coaching support for up to two years. Since implementation, turnover has dropped from 40 percent to 17 percent and 94 percent of attendees validated their salary in the first two years. — Marygrace Schumann

In answer to that call, Jono Cathersides, global product training manager, developed an interactive development experience called the Global Training Academy. The training program was launched to groups of retail leaders and buyers and included video messages from leaders along with tools for knowledge sharing and applications in regional meetings. The program has driven an uplift in brand preference and sales opportunities across selected markets. — Marygrace Schumann

JOAN MCKINNON Corporate Vice President, New York Life Looking to increase engagement and boost the effectiveness of product consultants, New York Life developed the Agency Presentation Skills program.

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Led by Joan McKinnon, corporate vice president of agency talent, this yearlong cohort-based training program for product consultants at the insurance and investment firm includes five months of standard classroom learning, five months of hands-on practice, real-time feedback, coaching and an action-learning project, all culminating in a two-month competition of presentations judged by senior leaders. This allowed product consultants to move into more productive roles with improved skills and efficiency. Product consultants trained through the program directly contributed to record-breaking sales and a 13 percent year-over-year increase. — Marygrace Schumann

DEVI SWAPNA S Manager, Human Resources, L&T Infrastructure Development Projects Limited Facing a decline in employee engagement and leader readiness, L&T ZE Infrastructure Development Projects Limited, one of India’s largest inN frastructure developers, knew it was time for a learning intervention. RO B Along with Devi Swapna S, business leaders rethought their traditional classroom learning and began using the 4E Model (education, exposure, experience and environment). Ultimately, these changes brought their engagement score up 7 percent from 65 to 73 and allowed more managers to adopt higher leadership roles. — Marygrace Schumann

Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

• Learning In Practice Awards •

BUSINESS PARTNERSHIP — DIVISION 1 DELL EMC EDUCATION SERVICES Even a small increase in efficiency or boost to effectiveness can have a great impact when multiplied by the 140,000 employees at Dell, one of the largest information technology companies in the world. In the client business alone, which includes the company’s laptop, desktop and computer peripherals portfolio of products, the Dell EMC Education Services team trains approximately 1,000 new hires a year. Traditional new hire training lasted nine weeks, making it difficult to prepare sufficient numbers of new hires in time to accommodate the call volumes that Dell’s client consumer business handles in its strategic hubs, located primarily in India.

From left, Supreetha Nagaraja, Sanjeev Sharma, Ben Hastings and Elizabeth Talerico.

Faced with that problem, the client business stakeholders requested that Dell EMC Education Services deliver a training program that would reduce new hire training time while still enabling trainees to meet key performance indicators related to customer experience, technical support resolution rates and overall training effectiveness. To answer the challenge, Dell EMC Education Services designed the Rapidus program to reduce the overall new hire training time for technical support agents, especially during periods when customer call volumes spike such as high volume shopping days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, while maintaining high trainee passage rates and customer experience ratings and reducing repeat calls. The outcomes of the new program ultimately exceeded all three key performance indicator targets and reduced total training time by 33 percent, shaving 15 business days off the curriculum and reducing the amount spent per learner all while speeding up the transition of new hires. — Mike Prokopeak

BOOZ ALLEN HAMILTON

ER The learning and development team at consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton V IL partnered with the firm’s ethics and compliance team to reaffirm and update the

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GENERAL ELECTRIC

Now in its second year of revitalization, the training is enhanced to make it more values-based, relevant and engaging.

With more than 170,000 employees located in more than 140 countries and a shift in business strategy afoot, GE set out to rethink its learning platform. BrilliantYou, a distributed learning platform, was created to improve the scale and reach of learning at GE. Built with the needs of a company becoming more global and increasingly younger, the platform provides an engaging, personal and socially connected learning ecosystem and artificial intelligence integration to further personalize learning to learner and organizational needs.

— Mike Prokopeak

ethics and compliance training program. The firm’s ethics and compliance training program is an important vehicle to promote the firm’s values, protect it against risk, and ensure any problems are reported. While the firm’s legacy training program got the job done, it was content heavy and focused on policies, laws, rules and codes of conduct at the expense of being engaging and interactive. Employees were required to complete up to six hours of training per year but that training wasn’t personalized and lacked a cohesive strategy. Working with L&D, the ethics and compliance team revitalized the compliance training programs to make them more engaging, cost effective and boost retention of important concepts over time. The new training approach covered such topics as information security, time reporting, anticorruption, international trade regulations as well as how to handle ethical concerns and report behavior that is suspicious or presents a risk to the individual or the firm.

36 Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

• Learning In Practice Awards •

BUSINESS PARTNERSHIP — DIVISION 2

ALLY

At Ally, a nationwide automobile finance company, the customer is the dealer. Ally doesn’t directly work with consumers to finance their auto purchases. Rather, automobile and recreational vehicle dealers offer Ally finance products and services to customers looking to buy a car or RV.

That business arrangement comes with its challenges. To reach the 17,000 dealers in all 50 states, Ally deploys a team of 349 account sales executives who visit dealerships every day where they compete for attention with the competitors looking to get dealers’ attention. The primary task for those account executives is to make sure the dealer is informed about and offers Ally products to their customers. One of the services account executives offer to dealers is Ally’s dealer training program designed to increase dealer sales, revenue and customer satisfaction. To enhance this critical service and build deeper relationships with dealers, Ally’s Dealer Learning and Development team launched Ally Academy in January 2017. Ally Academy offers online and instructor-led learning for auto and RV dealership employees on topics including sales, leadership, compliance, management and product training. The design and launch of Ally Academy involved investment from Ally’s learning and development function, IT and marketing and communications in addition to sales.

SIDLEY AUSTIN

ER In large law firms like Chicago-based V IL Sidley Austin, it can be difficult for indi-

vidual staff members to understand the role they play in the positive overall experience of clients. Many staff functions happen behind the scenes in support of the firm’s 1,900 lawyers. This lack of a line of sight to the big picture of what the firm does can result in subpar service. In 2014, Sidley Austin embarked on a firmwide staff initiative called Service Excellence to create a consistent experience of world-class support for clients, lawyers and all staff that mirrors the globally recognized service delivered by the firm’s lawyers. To carry out this task, the learning team gathered data and insights from across the firm and created a three-stage “align, equip, sustain” approach to target business challenges. Each stage included leadership practices to reinforce the service-oriented approach.

The rebranded learning function has resulted in increased recognition of dealer customer training options by the Ally field sales force. That recognition and education has in turn led to an increase in training class registrations by dealers. In some cases, account executives attribute retention of dealers as Ally customers in competitive situations to the enhanced training offerings.

As a result of the initiative, participants are able to identify customers’ expectations and adapt their approach to meet each customers’ unique needs, ensure a positive experience for every customer by applying a reliable process and skills for handling customer interactions, recover from service errors and regain loyalty of upset customers. Results throughout the firm include teams and departments working more collaboratively to deliver high quality service delivery.

— Mike Prokopeak

From left, Erica Powell, Victor Sultana, Liz Kent, P.J. Anderson and Malisa Bryant.

HERMAN MILLER Looking to reinvigorate its sales strategy, the sales readiness team at Michigan-based furniture maker Herman Miller worked in collaboration with their counterparts in sales, marketing and product management to design learning that embraced new selling opportunities. The team designed an in-person learning experience that allows sales teams to practice and apply selling techniques, digest corporate strategy updates and discover new product offerings. By using a practice-and-apply methodology, the program focused on real sales opportunities, resulting in sales teams winning more business. — Mike Prokopeak

Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

• Learning In Practice Awards •

INNOVATION — DIVISION 1

DAMODAR PADHI Vice President and Global Head of Talent Development, Tata Consultancy Services As global IT service leader Tata Consultancy Services continues to grow around the world, its leaders recognized that global scale highlights the importance of moving away from physical learning spaces to digital learning. Allowing for learning to happen anytime, anywhere and on any device makes it easier for everyone to learn. Damodar Padhi, vice president and global head of talent development, led a team of more than 600 talent development professionals in re-examining conventional learning process and creating a digital learning platform. Padhi’s team built a content ecosystem with internal content research and development teams at the core, augmented by their global network of subject matter experts, third party content providers, national and international universities and alliance partners. In the transition, Padhi helped reimagine learning for a high-tech ecosystem, resulting in greater efficiency using videos, mobile learning, connected classrooms and virtual labs. The results of the digital transition prove the value of the approach. Revenues crossed $17.5 billion and employee satisfaction has gone up across the board. Importantly, 90 percent of TCS’ 5.2 million total learning days now comes from scalable, efficient and effective digital learning. — Ave Rio

LYNN WILLIAMS Global Head of Leadership Development Programs, Sanofi Sanofi, a pharmaceutical and life sciences company, was in need of a global leadership development program that could keep pace with the needs of the business and increase departmental reach and agility. Lynn Williams, global head of leadership development programs, led a team in a series of initiatives to provide resources throughout Sanofi to broaden skills, build networks and develop expertise to improve performance and further career development within the company.

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Under the new programs, the team reinforced the One Sanofi strategy which increased talent mobility across the business and regions through unified programs. Among other accomplishments, the team created a consistent leadership language and common understanding around business imperatives through an organizationwide model for leadership, bolstered executive confidence through better aligned programs, decommissioned duplicative programs, eliminated extensive use of external vendors, lowered operating costs through technology and shifted its classroom instruction philosophy to a 70-20-10 model. — Ave Rio

Pierre Noel and Paul Anderton of UNDP accepted.

38 Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

MARIAM KAKKAR Chief Talent Development Unit, United Nations Development Programme Mariam Kakkar, the chief of the talent development unit at United Nations Development Programme, led the organization through the launch of three new leadership development pathways, all within a continuous learning framework. The pathways were based on a new U.N. Leadership model and were implemented across 170 countries worldwide. — Ave Rio

• Learning In Practice Awards •

INNOVATION — DIVISION 2

JOSH GILLIAM Director of Curriculum Design and Development, Suffolk Construction Suffolk Construction, a national construction company headquartered in Boston, first planned for a full year to complete its operational role-based curriculum for training new employees. But as the company doubled in size from 2007 to 2015 and expected revenue to grow to $4 billion by 2022, Suffolk’s leadership team asked to speed up the curriculum timeline to just six months. To meet the new demands, Josh Gilliam, director of curriculum design and development at Suffolk, led a team in designing and developing 45 courses. To do this, Gilliam’s team created a manufacturing model for course design and development. The team took the traditional ADDIE model and added three “lean” principles that were first developed in Toyota’s assembly plants. The three principles were: flow efficiency over resource efficiency, active visualization and continuous improvement.

MINETTE CHAN Director of Learning Solutions, Synaptics

Technology company Synaptics is a major part of the PC, smartphone, tablet and automotive-electronics market. Its touch-enabled products are vital to today’s technological devices. The rapid pace of evolving technology, however, meant that often much of the knowledge at the company wasn’t documented, but rather only in the minds of the company’s experts. This lack of a formal knowledge sharing program meant the company often had to solve the same problem multiple times. Minette Chan, director of learning solutions at Synaptics, set out to establish a program around preserving and sharing institutional knowledge across the company’s diverse professional users. The result, called SynaVision, is a searchable corporate YouTube channel that enables Synaptics to centralize knowledge and share it across departments. This saved time and money around knowledge management for employees over two continents and three business units. Just a few months after the launch, there were more than 600 videos on the SynaVision channel and thousands of hours of material watched by Synaptics employees around the globe. — Ave Rio

CLAY KUBICEK

The result of the new curriculum design led to many benefits for the organization. Suffolk is now able to use cost and time equations as benchmarks to advise internal clients on designing and developing learning content. They can also use the model to visualize the process and create buy-in for clients and stakeholders not familiar with the cycle of learning content creation. The model also quantifies financial savings which leads to faster course development. Overall, the operational process model helps prove how learning and development can leverage business processes and support the company.

Clay Kubicek led the Crossland Academy team in building the Crossland Way Best Practice field training program, an on-the-job training and a competency rating system. The program helped establish consistent methods of construction across the organization and the ratings results allow for measurable goals for improvement.

— Ave Rio

N Education Director, O R Crossland Construction Co. B

Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

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STRATEGY — DIVISION 1

MICHELLE BRADEN

ER Chief Learning Officer, TELUS International V IL

After doubling in size from 13,000 to 26,000 employees, TELUS International found three primary challenges they needed to address: navigating the company’s evolution from a primarily Canadian telecom to a global company, putting customers first and creating a culture of engagement. Michelle Braden led the company to create the Learning@TI Roadmap. The program works at all organizational levels to help Telus grow in those key areas regardless of a person’s role or location within the company. Programs like IExcel and ILead are designed for senior leaders, while IAspire is designed to help employees move into leadership positions. Since implementation, engagement levels have gone up 5 percent, earning the company Best Employer status from Aon Hewitt. — Marygrace Schumann

CHRIS HALL

DANIEL GANDARILLA

Assistant Commissioner, Office of Training and Development, U.S. Customs and Border Protection

Vice President, Chief Learning Officer, Texas Health Resources In 2015, CEO Barclay Berdan challenged each leader at Texas Health Resources to identify ways that they could make their functions more affordable, innovative and reliable. In response, Daniel Gandarilla rose to that challenge and examined how learning could preserve the health care company’s high quality while still reducing costs and revamping the way that learning operates. Knowing that money spent in learning and development impacts customer cost, Gandarilla identified the overall cost for staff L&D to make health care more affordable and optimized the structure. To make it more innovative, they moved to standardize web-based training and developed a 10-year learning road map that identifies new technologies to transform learning and manage academic partners more effectively. Finally, the task of firmer reliability was met through programs to reduce error and standardize processes of care and clinical outcomes.

Led by Chris Hall, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office of Training and DevelopE Z ment reworked their Senior Executive LeaderN ship program. After finding a lack of alignment O between the senior leadership executive core R B competencies, Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey Scores and the current leadership programs, Hall and his team created a leadership program that would address issues like unclear expectations of leaders and skills gaps in senior leadership positions. Since the program began survey scores showed a significant uptick. — Marygrace Schumann

KAVITA KURUP Head, Learning and Organizational Development, Axis Bank

Gandarilla and the team interviewed multiple stakeholders to understand the primary issues and areas for improvements such as a lack of communication, limited resources and a lack of standardization of practice in specific areas like electronic health record training. All of this led to the creation of a corporate university to enable talent at all levels to fulfill the company’s mission and vision, execute on initiatives and fulfill their promise through positive leadership behaviors.

At India-based Axis Bank, Kavita Kurup saw the need for work in several areas, including performance management and people and career development. The resulting ACELerate program inteZE grates performance with capability development N and blends new methods, traditional instrucO R tor-led sessions and “drip-feed” learning so Axis B Bank employees can learn at their own pace. The result is a program to help employees develop skills that align with the company’s competencies but also allows them to grow individually.

— Marygrace Schumann

40 Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

• Learning In Practice Awards •

STRATEGY — DIVISION 2

STEPHEN PARKER

Chief Learning Officer and Head of Talent Management, A.T. Kearney When Stephen Parker became A.T. Kearney’s first ever chief learning officer, his first task was to lead a curriculum overhaul and redesign the learning function. The Chicago-based management consulting firm’s goal was to introduce a fresh vision and become the industry’s most admired firm. Parker started with understanding the company’s values, culture and ambitions in order to create a strategy that put learning at the forefront of business. Though initially focused on growing the skills and performance of consultants, Parker found the bigger picture goal was to transform company culture. He zeroed in on specific learning strategies to meet these goals. First was compelling delivery. Prior to Parker joining the team, learning was taking place in dimly lit conference rooms where more often than not it was led by instructors who had just participated in the program. Parker enlisted senior consultants to share their expertise and moved the program to fresh venues in order to increase engagement. Another strategy was to create a comprehensive learning journey. Training days had been sporadic and disconnected so Parker designed a schedule to connect the company globally and create spaces to celebrate connection and culture. These changes in curriculum have allowed leaders to be more successful and better equipped to deal with clients. The programs have boosted results on the firm’s internal survey with 85 percent of respondents now saying the company is influencing their personal growth and development through learning. — Marygrace Schumann

MELISSA JANIS Vice President, Leadership and Organizational Development, McGraw-Hill Education In 2014, David Levin, the newly appointed CEO of McGraw-Hill Education, charted a new path for the company then best known as a textbook publisher. Levin wanted McGraw-Hill to become a learning science company and provide a platform for digital education services.

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It was a daunting change especially for a 125-year-old company deeply rooted in its history and legacy. The new mission required transformation at all levels starting with the individual perspectives of senior leaders. In response, Melissa Janis developed Catalyst, a leadership development program to transform culture and ultimately carry through the transformation of McGraw-Hill Education’s business strategy. Catalyst included 360-degree leadership assessments with coaching, feedback and mentoring and was instrumental in changing leadership attitudes and behaviors to align to the company’s new mission. — Marygrace Schumann

CHERIE MATTHEWS Vice President, Leadership and Talent Development, Capital Group

Faced with an ever-evolving business environment, Cherie Matthews implemented a new leadership strategy at Capital Group, a Los Angeles-based financial services company. The new program included revamped initiatives for the firm’s top 120 leaders as well as first-level and senior managers. Central to the initiatives was support for continuous learning. The programs ultimately led to higher employee engagement and leadership growth. — Marygrace Schumann

Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

• Learning In Practice Awards •

TALENT MANAGEMENT — DIVISION 1

ELIZABETH TALERICO

Director, Dell EMC Education Services

The Global Services Associate Program designed under the guidance of Elizabeth Talerico aimed to provide a scalable, integrated approach to recruitment, on-boarding, training and mentoring talent globally across Dell EMC. In particular, Talerico and the Dell EMC Education Services team wanted to reduce the cost of onboarding and training employees, accelerate time to productivity and invest in future leaders.

RICHARD WILLIAMS Chief Human Resources Officer, Western Union In 2015, Western Union transferred more than $150 billion for its clients. As the company continued to grow on a global scale, the human resources leadership team led by Richard Williams consulted with Western Union executives and created a global, crossfunctional task force to analyze business challenges and identify ways to improve existing performance management. The task force proposed the company focus on frequency and quality of conversations, future capabilities over past performance, creating a culture of contributions, redefining the role of managers and focusing on people and not the process. In order to accomplish this, the task force replaced Western Union’s legacy performance management system with a new program called GPS — short for Guide, Perform, Succeed. The new approach eliminated HR-driven annual performance reviews and the company’s five-point rating scale and replaced them with business-driven quarterly discussions. Williams and the team rolled out a corporatewide training program to introduce the program and support staff at all levels on the new change.

The program included three stages: pre-boot camp, boot camp and postboot camp that encompassed prework done through small, private online courses, weekly feedback through written evaluations and one-on-one coaching and an ongoing support framework. Biannual performance and compensation reviews revealed that 52 percent of all participants exceeded expectations, 64 percent of presale associates were assigned customer accounts in under six months and 93 percent of participants achieved their certification during boot camp. — Marygrace Schumann

DONNA SALVO Executive Director, University of California

As a result of GPS, Western Union posted a 42-point increase in Net Promoter Score over the traditional review process and reported greater effectiveness in managers, higher engagement and better quality relationships and feedback. One measure of actively disengaged employees dropped 9 percent in one year.

As part of the University of California system’s integrated talent management strategy, Donna Salvo along with learning teams at every University of California lo- Nancy Chen Lane, Donna Salvo and Dwaine Duckett. cation, equipped more than 46,000 managers with resources, tools and information to develop their teams, attract and maintain high-talent individuals and engage employees in every position. Within the first six months, 2,500 people are in the process of completing the People Management Certificate program, an elective course mapped to core manager expectations, and 86 percent of participants said the course improved their work performance.

— Marygrace Schumann

42 Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

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TALENT MANAGEMENT — DIVISION 2 ELIZABETH COLLINS Director, Career Start, Suffolk Construction The Career Start Program at Boston-based construction firm Suffolk Construction came to fruition as the company began a period of growth and needed to expand its leadership ranks. Under Elizabeth Collins’ direction Career Start finds recent college graduates and aids them in preparing for future management positions. The goal is to have a consistent flow of new managers ready to take on a career in any number of areas in the business.

Career Start focuses on creating management consistency and improved skills through job rotations, on-the-job training, team-building activities and mentor programs. The cohort model helped to grow class sizes but also builds teamwork and collaboration. Each cohort begins with a full week at the Boston headquarters and immerses young talent in Suffolk’s vision, mission and training. According to internal company statistics, 94 percent of Career Start participants have graduated to placement in a permanent role and 57 percent of participants have plans to stay with the company long term. Suffolk has also seen a boost in engagement to an average score of 91 percent on the annual national employee engagement survey. — Marygrace Schumann

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PATRICK CHENOT Executive Vice President and Chief Learning Officer, HAVAS Health & You Patrick Chenot established the Developing Leaders Program at HAVAS Health & You, a New York-based creative agency focused on using media to promote healthier lives, to enhance leadership skills, establish a network of supportive relationships, provide a wider range of connections at the executive level and create an environment where leaders pass on what they learn to future talent. The program took place over a nine-month semester and included executive coaching, mentorship, leadership development workshops, coaching circles, peer feedback and emotional intelligence and leadership assessments. In addition to learning and development staff, participants actively engaged with supervisors and senior leaders. According to survey results, 88 percent of participants credit the program with improving their leadership skills. — Marygrace Schumann

DETLEF HOLD People Capabilities Strategy Lead, Vice Director, PDR Organizational Development, Genentech Inc./F. Hoffman La Roche Detlef Hold played a key role is establishing the Community of Managers Initiative at pharmaceutical firm Genentech Inc./F. Hofmann La Roche. The initiative created a knowledge network to shape the company’s culture and approach to managing, developing talent and driving business strategy. Since the program, Hold and the development team have seen a 10 percent increase employees reporting full engagement. — Marygrace Schumann

Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

• Learning In Practice Awards •

TECHNOLOGY — DIVISION 1

SUPREETHA NAGARAJA Senior Adviser at Dell EMC Education Services Video-based learning became popular quickly but with its demand came the challenge of managing how video is stored, duplicated and managed. There was also little set process to determining who consumes the content and how much is consumed. In response to these issues, Supreetha Nagaraja and her team at Dell EMC Education Services created the company’s own learning video management and delivery platform called eduTube so Dell employees could easily share and manage video learning content. The eduTube interface works across desktop and mobile platforms and allows employees to manage content to align with specific topic areas. It consists of four components including user interface, administration tools, an SQL database and delivery architecture that allow for rapid integration of new technologies. Since Nagaraja launched eduTube, Dell has seen it pay off in multiple ways. Video-based content delivery now accounts for more than 9,000 student days per fiscal quarter, a 300 percent increase since eduTube’s launch. The platform also allows data to be collected on how long a video is watched, how many times it’s viewed and who has viewed it. During a fiscal quarter, eduTube videos receive about 250,000 to 300,000 views. The platform also has metrics for the number of distinct users and which specific groups have the highest numbers of views and downloads. Through the centralized program, videos are now embedded in e-learning content, corporate communications, marketing programs, yearly sales kickoff campaigns and many other programs. — Ave Rio

MARINA TYAZHELKOVA Global Head of Management & Organization Development, BNY Mellon

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The investment industry is continuously changing. Regulatory changes and organizational adjustments in response to demographic and investment shifts mean a changing future for the industry. At BNY Mellon, Marina Tyazhelkova focused on powering investment success for clients and driving shareholder value by addressing these changes head-on with a globally scalable learning strategy that focuses on technology to drive innovation and client focus. BNY Mellon developed four flagship leadership programs designed for specific leadership levels, each program lasting 60 days. In addition to the flagship programs, there are open enrollment virtual modules that include competency-based interviewing, workplace excellence, managing low performance, and coaching and change management. The learning strategy includes virtual classrooms, digitalized business simulations, vignettes and social learning platforms. After taking part in the program, nearly 87 percent of participants and managers said they were more focused on driving higher team performance in alignment with strategy and 82 percent of managers recognized an increase in participants’ leadership skills. — Ave Rio

44 Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

JAWANDA STABER

N O R Director of Global Talent B Development, Mastercard

Jawanda Staber and the talent development team at Mastercard developed an easy-to-use, digital onboarding training program. The Getting Started Experience includes a Welcome to Mastercard learning pathway which allows employees to share and track their learning. In the program, new hires can access courses, videos, articles, professional whitepapers and learning pathways and share their thoughts and knowledge with peers. — Ave Rio

• Learning In Practice Awards •

TECHNOLOGY — DIVISION 2

VALERIE DAVISSON Chief People Officer, At Home Decor Stores When Valerie Davisson joined At Home Decor Stores as chief people officer there was no formal employee training program in place. As the company grew to more than 3,200 employees, she knew they needed to create a program that was lean, scalable, simple and seamless.

SALLY GOEKE Technology Training Project Specialist, Sidley Austin LLP When Sidley Austin LLP upgraded its operating system and software suite for the first time since 2009, lawyers and staff had a major learning curve to overcome. Adding to the challenge, the firm had to customize learning to a broad range of employees at all levels from lawyers, legal assistants, secretaries and professional staff across four generations. Sally Goeke led the team in conducting an in-depth needs assessment and found they needed a blended learning experience to connect learners’ past knowledge with business processes in the new platform.

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Mandy Monk and Valerie Davisson

Under Davisson’s direction, the company implemented a companywide e-learning platform as the backbone of the new learning process. After a successful six-month pilot program, At Home planned an official adoption of the program focused on engaging end-users and store managers so they could see the use and benefits of the platform. As employees began to use the program, gamification features like leaderboards and rewards motivated users to engage and re-engage. The new platform breaks content into microsized pieces so associates can do a few minutes of training during every shift. Since adoption, At Home has trained 500 associates with little need for field support. Training that would have previously taken six months now takes just six weeks. — Ave Rio

ANNIE ABRAMS Vice President, Skyline Group International

After implementation of the initiative, surveys indicated an average of 4.7 out of 5 for meeting expectations. In addition, 45 percent of lawyers took advantage of oneon-one coaching or workshops even though it was not mandated. Participants cited the use of short videos aligned to specific issues as a highlight of the program.

After piloting its coaching programs for MSCI, a provider of research, insights and tools for institutional investors, Skyline Group International created the Accelerate Leadership Development Program combining the best of in-person learning with online efficiency through an implementation utilizing 360-degree assessments, executive coaches, competency based online learning, virtual sessions and a capstone 2 1/2-day leadership summit that has increased employee retention, engagement and skill development.

— Ave Rio

Over an eight-month period, they designed and developed a global learning initiative called Launch Plus to help employees with the transition through the new technology platform and speed up utilization. They used adult learning methods like interactive goal-oriented activities, real work examples and the “Show, Try, Apply” method to present new ideas, offer hands-on experience and apply skills in the legal environment.

Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

• Learning In Practice Awards •

TRAILBLAZER — DIVISION 1 DAVID SYLVESTER Director, Booz Allen Hamilton

Booz Allen Hamilton prides itself on the firm’s dedication to diversity. But diversity goes further than hiring women and minorities. It should serve as a means to respect the way people identify themselves and how they approach tasks and challenges. Under the direction of David Sylvester, the firm set out to embed diversity into the firm’s culture and foster a community of respect and opportunity through a new leadership program.

Leadership in Focus, a series of programs, develops skills for leaders at all levels. The first program, “Be Inclusive,” focused on the behaviors leaders need to build and maintain an inclusive work environment. For extra impact, the program was facilitated by 260 leaders at all levels rather than external facilitators. Most diversity programs attempt to control leader behaviors but this often tends to activate unconscious biases rather than minimize them. Instead of focusing on controlling behaviors, Booz Allen reinforced inclusivity by giving leaders the skills to foster a sense of belonging and respect. Leaders were taught to recognize how and when unconscious bias may show up, understand methods to mitigate personal situational bias and develop behaviors and make commitments to create a more inclusive culture.

Tina Claure accepted the award.

The 90-minute workshops centered on topics such as being thoughtful about leveraging different skills, backgrounds and experiences; assembling diverse teams; developing people and making promotions based on merit; modeling and insisting on mutual respect and fairness; creating a sense of support, safety and community; and making conscious actions and decisions. Of the 1,951 participants, 93 percent said they will apply what they learned, 92 percent reported they learned how to recognize unconscious bias and its impact and 91 percent said the program taught them to be a more inclusive leader. — Marygrace Schumann

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PATRICK ANGEL Director of Global Learning Solutions and Development, Valmont Industries New employee onboarding at Valmont Industries was typically done through a one-day class featuring PowerPoint presentations. A lack of standardization from a corporate level led to inconsistencies in application. Patrick Angel led an initiative to make onboarding a continual process rather than a one-day experience.

ADRIANA HOLT Executive Director, Global Leadership Acceleration, Laureate Education Inc.

The new programs include in-person training every morning after which new employees are assigned an online curriculum broken down by day to tell them which training to complete throughout the week. Each course can be translated into multiple languages and is aimed at improving engagement and performance among employees.

To deepen the leadership pool at Laureate International Universities, the learning team under the direction of Annah Seo and Adriana Holt Adriana Holt created the Laureate Leadership Excellence Academy. This global online learning initiative created a common consistent language of leadership and included on-demand and cohort programs which have reached more than 2,000 learners.

— Marygrace Schumann

Along with the training, human resources, safety, operational excellence, manufacturing and information technology teams, Angel and the learning team mapped out what onboarding should look like in an employee’s first week and ensured it was relevant to all divisions and met basic training needs for all employees.

46 Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

• Learning In Practice Awards •

TRAILBLAZER — DIVISION 2

LV SI

TRACY SAUNDERS Senior Director, Learning and Development, Ellucian Software company Ellucian set out to change its approach to talent management in order to increase engagement, fuel innovation and collaboration and encourage constant learning while simultaneously becoming more agile.

Tracy Saunders and team launched I-Venture, a new talent management program that combined performance management, employee development, talent planning and compensation. The program, which included elements for both leaders and individual contributors who worked in parallel through the program included social learning, bite-sized learning, multiple modalities, pre- and post-learning sprint activities, pre- and post surveys, executive and operational sponsorship and gamification.

DAVE DeFILIPPO Chief Learning Officer, Suffolk Construction When Dave DeFilippo was hired in 2015, Boston-based construction firm Suffolk had no CLO. With an eye on the firm’s aggressive growth plan, company leaders tasked DeFilippo with establishing a best-in-class learning and talent function that would support business growth. Over the course of his first 100 days, DeFilippo met with executives and stakeholders and found a high level of dissatisfaction with existing learning and a lack of confidence in the team’s ability to keep pace with business demands. He then crafted a three-year strategic plan focused on six priorities: culture, core business optimization, succession planning, performance management, developing a talent platform and professionalizing the learning and talent function. The plan included a combination of quantitative and qualitative measures to gauge program effectiveness in all six areas identified in Suffolk’s three-year learning and talent plan. Reported reactions, usage, application and effect on retention and promotion rate have all been significant. Within the learning team, the employee engagement survey showed an engagement rate of 96 percent, the highest in the firm. — Marygrace Schumann

— Marygrace Schumann

STEVE YACKEL Team Leader, Boy Scouts of America When leaders of the Boy Scouts of America challenged the organization to lower costs, grow membership and improve standards, Steve Yackel and the learning team set to work to create ScoutingU, a blended and e-learning delivery strategy to improve learning access for volunteers and employees in a mobile-friendly environment.

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Tim Rogers and Steve Yackel

Prior to ScoutingU, employee learning was a one-size-fits-all but now programs are specifically designed for each position, featuring custom defined e-learning modules for key knowledge followed by in-person courses. On the volunteer side, it was difficult to train large numbers of volunteers efficiently. With ScoutingU, volunteers can now be trained remotely with 200 modules and 940 minutes worth of learning. — Marygrace Schumann

PEARL SUMATHI Vice President, Head of Talent Development, Lincoln Financial Group Led by Pearl Sumathi, Lincoln Financial Group designed Lincoln’s Management Development Program, a 12-week virtual program aligned to three core competencies: strategic skills, talent management and execution. Satisfaction with the program was rated an average 4.52 out of 5 and assessments completed by participants and managers before and after the program noted an average increase of 14 to 16 percent in competency-related behaviors. — Marygrace Schumann

Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

• Learning In Practice Awards •

EXCELLENCE IN ACADEMIC PARTNERSHIPS

BABSON EXECUTIVE EDUCATION/ LEADER’S QUEST

When McGraw-Hill Education CEO David Levin was appointed in 2014, he wanted to change the mission of the company from its legacy as an analog textbook publisher to a cutting-edge learning science company with a suite of digital educational platform services. A change of that magnitude would require a shift in the company’s culture. McGraw-Hill Education’s learning and development team worked with Babson Executive Education and Leader’s Quest to design Catalyst, a rebooted learning and leadership development program.

From left, Melissa Janis, Cathleen Shea and Rachel Parikh.

Catalyst features targeted development using handson learning, role-play, seminars and modeling along with coaching and feedback, followed by a 360-degree leadership assessment. Leaders took part in a program that took them into a wide range of environments focused on developing emotional and intellectual knowledge and asked participants to infer how changes would impact their business and then come up with strategic plans for the business. Mentoring focused on action planning, exploring insights and takeaways from the learning experience and internal and external networking.

In the end, all participants reported the program was effective, 94 percent said they applied the skills they learned at their jobs and 92 percent credited the program with improvement at work. — Marygrace Schumann

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FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY As leaders of their school, principals are in the best position to make change and influence positive learning environments. Miami-Dade County Public Schools wanted to make sure their principals were best prepared for this task.

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WESTMINSTER COLLEGE

The Florida International University Center for Leadership created the Principals Leadership Development Program to give principals the tools to manage change in their schools and address issues like employee motivation, leadership, develMayra Beers oping a positive school culture, leading change and autonomy in decision-making. The program ran for seven days and started with a five-day intensive summer institute and then two days of sessions featuring more than 20 learning lessons and 56 hours of instruction. Learning strategies included the use of research-validated assessments, one-on-one executive coaching and the use of a leadership competency builder tool. Participants also created individualized action plans on which they reported progress.

Employees at the Callaway Energy Center were eager for a broader education that would teach them problem-solving skills and help them manage others. However, due to time and the nature of their work, many of them had a hard time finding the right undergraduate programs. Westminster College launched a bachelor’s degree in leadership that employees could complete remotely and includes courses on management, technology, history, strategic leadership and wellness. The cohort model and small class sizes allow students to interact with one another and receive mentoring from professors.

— Marygrace Schumann

48 Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

• Learning In Practice Awards •

EXCELLENCE IN BLENDED LEARNING

Mary Carey and Anna Seguret

INSEAD In 2015, Norwegian telecom company Telenor hired Sigve Brekke as new CEO and president. From the start, his goal was to develop a strategy that would take the company from a traditional telecom provider to a full digital-services provider. To do this, he believed the company needed to start thinking like a startup company, that meant reworking the culture which was pleasant but slow-moving and uninnovative. Telenor’s learning and development team partnered with INSEAD, an international graduate business school based in France, to launch a largescale digital innovation program. INSEAD created a series of pilot initiatives such as a four-day program for senior executives delivered to five groups from May to September and reaching 180 leaders. It also included an online program delivered to two cohorts of senior middle-managers. Both programs included an action learning project based on a real product so participants could apply lessons directly to their work at Telenor.

INTREPID LEARNING When North Carolina-based QuintilesIMS wanted to develop a blended learning approach to solve their sales challenges across the company’s global footprint, they turned to Intrepid Learning to design an eight-week MOOClike program that focused on applied learning using real-world sales, peer reviews and collaboration and manager feedback.

The program began Nicole Bunselmeyer with an overview of the company’s sales process where participants worked to discover client opportunities by understanding how to solve company issues. Further modules focused on practicing interactions to create more impactful client meetings and phone calls and qualifying sales opportunities. Throughout the process, sales managers received feedback coaching. An impact survey showed 64 percent of respondents are now receiving regular feedback from managers, which in turn leads to more highly qualified and productive sales leads. — Marygrace Schumann

After examining the pilot, INSEAD developed four one-week modules on digital disruption, insights into customer problems, creating new business models in response and leading in an uncertain environment. In the end, more than 85 percent of initial participants agreed they would highly recommend the program to others. — Marygrace Schumann

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Ali Dellapenna

CROSSKNOWLEDGE Internal research showed a number of managers at Swiss insurance company Zurich Insurance Group struggled to lead others. The problem wasn’t a lack of management ability but rather engagement and understanding of what a great people manager at the company should act like. CrossKnowledge answered the challenge by creating a blended learning approach using an online learning platform to identify and develop eight things great people managers at Zurich do. — Marygrace Schumann

Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

• Learning In Practice Awards •

EXCELLENCE IN CONTENT

THE REGIS CO.

In order to meet ambitious 2020 goals for market share and revenue, EY Global Advisory knew auditors had to know how to deliver high-quality audits, understand the audit plan and how it fits into EY’s business. Increasingly, they also have to understand technology and IT-related audit issues.

EY worked with The Regis Co. to create a The EY and Regis Co. teams. program called IT Audit Essentials. The initiative is a three-day classroom instructor-led or virtual immersive experience training that recreates the challenges third-year audit professionals deal with in addressing IT-related audit issues. The program uses Mental Models, learning activities that help build confidence and competence, and Balance Points, a simulation that helps leaders decide whether to delegate or complete an assignment themselves. Participants also took part in classroom discussions where participants led discussions of the topics and activities in the simulation and primed activities where they are involved in tasks with audit-agnostic content. Evaluation results showed that many participants found the program useful right from the start. Since its launch, IT Audit Essentials has continued to be one of the most highly rated EY courses. — Marygrace Schumann

Christa Martin and Marcus Nicolls

50 Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

PARTNERS IN LEADERSHIP After going through a series of corporate buyouts, Bristol Farms, a grocery retailer based in Southern California, contracted Partners In Leadership to implement a culture change initiative called Lead Culture. Based on 30 years of research and experience, the program deploys strategies including identifying key results for the year, defining culture beliefs and aligning senior management around those key results and culture beliefs. The ultimate impact of the learning initiative played out in store results but also in how employees communicated and interacted with each other. Peer-to-peer collaboration, top-down communication and bottom-up communication all improved. — Marygrace Schumann

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Ellen Wilsker

MINDGYM Though the firm has always been committed to diversity, leaders at investment fund TIAA believed there was room for improvement. Their belief is that a dedication to inclusion gives companies an advantage and prepares them to thrive in an ever-changing world. With that in mind, TIAA hired MindGym to create content for a three-year program called Journey to Inclusion. The focus of the content was to get more out of all of the individuals within TIAA including those from diverse backgrounds, and how inclusion can help the firm achieve its strategy and vision. Content also would address how TIAA could use its brand to bring in even better talent from all populations including diverse ones. The MindGym program included face-to-face sessions, virtual sessions, self-directed learning and passive inclusion “nudges.” To date, 98 percent of senior leaders who participated said they will use what they learned and recommend the session to others. — Marygrace Schumann

• Learning In Practice Awards •

EXCELLENCE IN E-LEARNING LD

NOVOED

When global design and innoO vation company IDEO formed G IDEO U to deliver a suite of design-oriented courses around innovation, creative problem-solving and leadership, it partnered with NovoEd to build out a learning platform. The first course they created, Insights for Innovation, consisted of five self-paced modules featuring short instructional videos, discussion and projects that can be completed over six weeks. Within each course, learners set individual goals and identify their preferred learning style.

Design firm IDEO partnered with NovoEd to teach its design principles around the world in a customizable, effective way. Learners work on a unique challenge with every assignment, such as how to provide new products and services for 70-year-olds or how to encourage children to read more. Learners work though the five skills they learn in the course: observing, learning from extremes, interviewing, immersive empathy and sharing insights. Participants also have a choice to join a learning circle and collaborate with others who are working on the same challenge. These are peer-led and provide an opportunity to dive deeper into the content. More than 10,000 people have learned by using online materials, discussions and applied projects through NovoEd. According to NovoEd product consultants, the partnership was mutually beneficial as IDEO’s feature requests and workflow enhancements ultimately improved the NovoEd learning platform and benefitted all NovoEd customers. — Ave Rio

NIIT

Convergys Leaders as CoachVE L es, the training program proSI viding foundational leadership skills for first-level managers at IT service company Convergys, consisted of an in-person program spread across two weekends. The problem was the 45-day gap between the two sessions affected learning retention. NIIT stepped in and designed an e-learning module to reinforce what was taught during the instructor-led workshops and provide prac- Sean Kelley tice using real-life scenarios. The majority of Convergys’ team leaders are millennials in their early to mid20s. To appeal to this audience, the course uses a game-based approach, has a comic-book inspired look and feel and is personalized to each learner. The course has received positive feedback from both learners and stakeholders. — Ave Rio

Lindsay White and Kara Bergman

GROVO InterContinental Hotel Group partnered with Grovo to create a microlearning component to their training and onboarding strategy for call center representatives across the globe who support guests and employees with loyalty program questions, issues and overall service recovery. Working with Grovo, IHG cut onboarding time from five weeks to two. — Ave Rio

Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

• Learning In Practice Awards •

EXCELLENCE IN EXECUTIVE EDUCATION

Caroline Avey, Michael Kester and Sowmya Sudhindranath.

THE REGIS CO. The pace of change in the financial services industry is accelerating. Driven by smaller, more nimble and tech-enabled financial institutions, traditional financial institutions like Citi are pushed to change how they operate and who they recruit to join the company. To ensure the expectations of its people reflected the core values of the 200-plus year old firm in the era of disruption, Citi introduced a new mission and values proposition and updated leadership standards in 2015. These six standards — develops our people, drives value for clients, works as a partner, champions progress, lives our values, and delivers results — are now embedded in recruitment, selection, performance management, talent identification, promotion practices and leadership development programming.

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BABSON EXECUTIVE EDUCATION/LEADER’S QUEST

McGraw-Hill Education’s learning and development team worked with Babson Executive Education and Leader’s Quest to design Catalyst, a learning and leadership development program aimed at supporting the company’s strategy to transition to a digital learning company. Catalyst features targeted development using hands-on learning, role-play, seminars and modeling along with coaching and feedback, followed by a 360-degree leadership assessment. Leaders took part in a program that led them into a wide range of environments focused on developing emotional and intellectual knowledge and asked participants to infer how changes would impact their business and then come up with strategic plans for the business. Mentoring then focused on action planning, exploring insights and takeaways from the learning experience and internal and external networking. Beyond direct business results, the Catalyst program modeled the educational programming McGraw-Hill Education is pioneering through its new strategy and immersed leaders into the transformation they were charged with creating and leading. — Mike Prokopeak

To carry out this vision, Citi partnered with The Regis Co. to target new Citi managing directors, an influential group that is at the pinnacle of the firm’s leadership. The Citi New Managing Director Program aligned behaviors with the new leadership standards and identified the mental models that underpin the desired behaviors. Using design thinking methodology, the implementation team focused on the critical personal transformation required of managing directors in order to lead in the new business environment. That led to key performance metrics the target audience should exhibit in the transforming business.

Hector Rosales, Louise Croft and Maria Antuzzi.

LONDON BUSINESS SCHOOL

Based on data collected through the program, new managing directors demonstrated an increase in the needed mental model shift. Decisions made in the simulation also showed alignment with the new leadership standards.

To meet the needs of its salespeople serving the public sector, Microsoft partnered with London Business School to design “Leading the Way in Public Sector,” an innovative corporate MOOC specially designed to help Microsoft public sector sellers who need to better engage with their customers. This first-of-its-kind program succeeded on two levels: It was the first time a business school series course for Microsoft public sector sellers was done online and the first time London Business School developed a completely digital program.

— Mike Prokopeak

The resulting solution included preassessment, simulation activities, out-of-simulation activities and post-assessment that integrated data analytics and advanced learning intelligence to measure behavior change.

52 Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

• Learning In Practice Awards •

EXCELLENCE IN PARTNERSHIP

HARVARD BUSINESS PUBLISHING

One of pharmaceutical company Merck’s strategic initiatives is to accelerate talent development in order to be successful in the competitive marketplace. Looking at its current talent, Merck found Amy Hanlon leaders with strong functional expertise but not the broader skills that would be required to lead the future enterprise and the majority of development programs designed and developed within silos and focused on needs for a single division. Merck’s talent management and learning team set out to transform the company’s approach to talent to establish it as an employer of choice for the increasingly diverse and multigenerational workforce; invest in attracting, developing and retaining critical capabilities; and develop leaders with an integrated, enterprise-focused business mindset that complements their functional expertise and provides opportunities for managers to strengthen their capabilities and accountabilities for leading and developing talent. In particular, Merck wanted to identify and develop key talent leaders from every geography and every function considered to have the highest potential to assume top enterprise leadership positions. To create a new development experience, Merck partnered with Harvard Business Publishing and Harvard Business School Executive Education to design the Enterprise Leadership Program. The program featured cohort-based learning that included leaders from across functions and regions and an innovative design that combined experiential learning, relationship-based development and formal learning. The four-month program was bookended by two in-person residential programs at Harvard and Merck’s headquarters, along with a custom, web-based portal that kept cohorts connected in between the residential programs. Virtual learning sessions facilitated by a Harvard faculty moderator focused on applying key concepts to the Merck business environment. The combined development experience expanded skills and perspectives to the entire global enterprise and yielded sustained change in key behaviors and high-value applications. — Mike Prokopeak

EDCOR DATA SERVICES

ER UPS, the Atlanta-based global package delivery giant, is faced V IL with a double challenge: providing world-class service while continually competing for a shrinking pool of qualified workers.

In order to set itself apart, the company made the decision to require that all employees classified as part-time managers and higher have a degree. In an employee population that skews heavily toward hourly workers, this was a dramatic decision. An analysis showed its tuition assistance program was not used to its fullest potential. The company was spending more money on tuition for employees but students were not graduating at an increased rate. UPS partnered with Edcor to develop a plan featuring academic advising that complements the existing tuition assistance program. After some initial hesitation, the measured results have been positive. Employees report higher level of satisfaction with UPS as an employer and more students are staying on track with their academic plan. — Mike Prokopeak

INNOVATIVE LEARNING GROUP

ER Operational excellence is a must for automotive companies V IL to thrive in the cutthroat global marketplace. Product innova-

tion has sped up and customer needs evolve quickly. In Ford’s product development organization, that meant they needed to move to a collaborative digital engineering environment that allows employees to work fast and more efficiently to bring innovation to market. Ford Motor Co. partnered with Innovative Learning Group to implement a global rollout of the Ford Engineering Design Environment, a global development approach designed to improve collaboration. Training and two learner portals were created and delivered to more than 20,000 employees. The successful adoption and use of new technology has resulted in a reduction in cycle time to engineer products and identification of potential failures earlier in the process, leading to more timely and cost-effective product development. — Mike Prokopeak

FULCRUM LABS

Daniel McCoy and Craig Joiner

Beginning with one aircraft and one route in 1999, Allegiant Travel Co. has grown to over 80 aircraft operating more than 300 routes across the country. Since staff operate out of 120 airports throughout the continental U.S. and Hawaii, training consistency is difficult and turnover is high. Allegiant partnered with Fulcrum Labs to create an adaptive, personalized and competency-based e-learning curriculum. — Mike Prokopeak

Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

• Learning In Practice Awards •

EXCELLENCE IN TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION

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Seena Mortazavi Mary Samples

SWEETRUSH Bridgestone Tires faced a challenge in trying to keep the attention of sales associates at independent tire dealers who had little incentive to complete training. Bridgestone’s Consumer Tire Education team partnered with SweetRush to design a training program to get employees on board by promising the program would make them better salespeople — and therefore provide the potential for more money.

Bridgestone partnered with SweetRush to design a training program that has been successful and popular. Sales associates are mostly male and many are between 20 and 35 years old. To account for this audience, the program uses gamification, badges and ranks and is designed to feel similar to a video game. Overall, the Tire Education learning program has more than 120 e-learning courses, videos, learning games and instructor-led training.

CHRONUS Mentoring has always been important at Daimler Trucks North America. But the manufacturer’s original mentoring program was based on social learning software that didn’t have the right structure or user experience, leaving the mentors and mentees with little guidance. To answer the challenge, the company partnered with Chronus to build a mentoring program that was scalable and could support blended learning, leadership and corporate culture initiatives. Chronus focused on setting goals for mentors and mentees to learn new skills and enhance their current skills. Automation features helped reduce administrative time so Daimler could focus on increasing participation. Over the past year, Daimler has seen a 300 percent participation increase in the mentoring program with more than 1,800 participants today. The company also reported a 90 percent satisfaction rate. — Ave Rio

RUSTICI SOFTWARE LLC

Even though the training is not mandatory, more than 400,000 courses have been completed and more than 17,000 learners have earned badges. While the industry Net Promoter Score benchmark is 19 percent for corporate learning and development, this program received a score of 57 percent. Anecdotal feedback was also positive, with some more-experienced associates reporting it to be the best training they’ve received in decades and new associates reporting higher confidence.

Through Rustici Software LLC, the SANS Institute deployed a content as a service solution called Content Controller to centrally host content and deliver it to customers. With Content Controller, SANS Institute minimized the risk of inaccurate content by automatically updating and managing all content for customers across learning management systems, resulting in a 90 percent reduction in time spent updating existing content.

— Ave Rio

54 Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

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HARDHATS OFF TO YOU. Congratulations to Liz Collins, Josh Gilliam and Steve Pratt on their recent award wins. We are honored and privileged to have such innovative and collaborative individuals as part of our Suffolk team.

suffolk.com

Case Study

Lincoln Financial’s Screen Test BY SARAH FISTER GALE

wo years ago, Lincoln Financial Group faced a training challenge that will be familiar to learning leaders in many big companies: Employees needed additional training on more topics but they had little time to spend in a classroom. And, resources were stretched thin. “We saw a lot of change taking place in our industry, but we had a very limited budget for training and development across the company,” said Jen Warne, senior vice president of talent and human resources. The Fortune 250 insurance and investment management company has more than 9,000 employees in six U.S. locations. Many of them work in siloed business units with little access to leaders in the Radnor, Pennsylvania, headquarters or even with colleagues in other business units, Warne said. Along with providing easy-to-access training on new technologies and industry trends, the learning and development team wanted to topple the barriers and offer employees more insights into the company and their career opportunities within it. It was a tall order, but by harnessing the knowledge of experts and using the existing company technology, the team designed a model for learning that highlights the company, the financial industry, and employees’ own skills development needs. In 2016, the learning and development team rolled out Learning in Action, which features a series of webinars, videos, articles and other online content that employees can access on demand. “It’s all about bringing learning to employees at the right time without a huge financial investment,” Warne said. The program is segmented into three categories with defined goals for each: 1. Leaders in Action. This series connects senior leadership to employees by interviewing executives about their career path, current role and business goals through short “studio-style” video interviews and presentations. 2. Careers in Action. This series educates employees about different areas of the business through interviews with experts, so they understand how their roles fit into a larger picture and the different career paths available to them.

56 Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

SNAPSHOT A cost-effective learning program that educates employees and inspires new career paths recently made its video debut.

3. Experts in Action. This series promotes enterprise business acumen and career mobility for employees through articles, presentations and video interviews with internal and external leaders examining industry challenges and current topics.

Cheap and Authentic The Learning in Action program brings many benefits to the company and its employees, says Pearl Sumathi, vice president and head of talent development. “To begin with, it’s very cost effective,” she said. The content is stored on the company’s existing learning management system and the videos are produced and edited in-house through a collaboration between the learning department and the marketing and communication staff. The live webinars are streamed via the company’s existing intranet to all 9,000 employees, then converted to video and stored on the LMS. As a result, the program required no major capital expenditure on technology, Sumathi said. And because the content is largely based on interviews and presentations, it also takes relatively little time on the part of experts and the production team to create. The interview subjects are briefed on the theme and goals for the interview, but everything they say on camera is from their own experience. “Because it’s not scripted it feels more authentic,” Sumathi said. The biggest challenge the production team faced was making sure the experts felt comfortable sharing their stories in a consistent, digestible way that would translate well to an eight-to-10-minute video, said Jeffrey Giacoponello, assistant vice president and talent partner. “In order to overcome this, we created a framework of questions for leaders to answer, which provides a consistent methodology to share business-related content.”

The result is engaging content that captures employees’ attention to make them feel more connected to the leadership team. “Seeing senior managers acknowledge the struggles they’ve had in their careers and how they overcome them is powerful,” Warne said. Employees also like the access to senior leaders who they otherwise may never encounter. In the live webinars, much of the content is built around a Q&A format, which again requires experts to respond to questions in real time rather than having a formal script. Being able to submit questions during the event causes viewers to be more invested in the presentation and pushes the conversation in a more meaningful direction. “It makes it more engaging,” Warne said.

Unfiltered Access Warne’s hope is that the interactive exchanges and authentic stories will provide employees with new insights into their own career paths and where learning can help them get to the next level. That was the response Robert Fisk had when he viewed his first Careers in Action video featuring the company’s chief accounting officer, Christine Janofsky. While Fisk’s job as director of operational initiatives doesn’t directly involve accounting, he is responsible for his team’s budget and he was intrigued by the opportunity to hear her speak about her position. “Having unfiltered access to a senior leader is very enticing,” he said. Hearing Janofsky talk about the financial side of the business and how the company generates returns and positions itself in the industry helped him think about the company differently. “It gave me a better understanding of how things work, and where my team fits into the bigger picture,” he said. Months later he still draws on what he learned from that video when making corporate financial decisions. He has since watched three more videos from the program, including one on agile project management presented by an expert from the IT group in the shared services division, which has helped him to think about his next career move. Fisk has long been interested in IT and is now considering project management training as a way to move toward an IT role. “These videos are helping me gain acumen in other areas of the company,” he said. “That makes me a stronger employee, and it makes the organization stronger as a whole.”

Splash, Then Drip Fisk isn’t the only one impacted by the program. In the first year, the content had more than 6,000

views thanks to heavy promotion by the marketing department and human resources. “It’s so important to involve marketing in promoting these programs,” Sumathi said. In the week leading up to the launch, the marketing department rolled out a “splash campaign” promoting the program every day via company newsletters, announcements on the intranet, emails and fliers distributed to employees, Giacoponello said. They followed up with “drip cam-

“These videos are helping me gain acumen in other areas of the company. That makes me a stronger employee, and it makes the organization stronger as a whole.” — Robert Fisk, director of operational initiatives, Lincoln Financial Group paigns” sending reminder notes and occasional promotions when there is new content to keep the program top of mind. They also created a calendar of new content so there is always something new to see. “We want to keep it fresh so they keep coming back,” he said. Giacoponello plans content out four months in advance to ensure he can get on leaders’ calendars and still have time for editing and content promotion. To be sure the content is relevant, he meets with business unit leaders and HR to identify the important topics and experts to highlight. “If we want learning to continue to have an impact, we have to stay aligned with the needs of the organization,” Giacoponello said. Talking with business unit leaders and HR ensures the learning team isn’t making decisions in a bubble. Every 60 days they add new videos and supporting content, and they are confident this program will become a long-term component of Lincoln Financial’s core learning strategy. “The real power of this platform is that it is generic but impactful,” Warne said. No matter how the industry changes or what new experts come to the company, they can use Learning in Action to share those stories. “It’s a plug-andplay solution that can be molded for any learning need.” CLO Sarah Fister Gale is a writer based in Chicago. To comment, email editor@CLOmedia.com. Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

Business Intelligence

Sunny Forecast for Learning in 2018 CLOs are feeling confident in the results of their investments but more work remains. BY MIKE PROKOPEAK FIGURE 2: LEARNING OUTLOOK IN NEXT 12 TO 18 MONTHS

Agree

No change

More aligned with company objectives

83%

13% 4%

Adopt new techniques

79%

15%

Better quality of learning offerings

71%

23%

Develop more custom content

68%

21%

11%

Better integrated with talent management

64%

26%

11%

63%

27%

11%

Blend of training modalities will change

Budget is expected to increase

45%

32%

24%

Purchase more off-the-shelf content

28%

FIGURE 1 : LEARNING OUTLOOK FOR NEXT 12 TO 18 MONTHS

Disagree

37%

35%

Acquiring a new LMS or changing providers

26%

34%

41%

Outsourcing more training activities

22%

11%

More optimistic Same Less optimistic

29%

58 Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

59%

34%

44%

ued improvements and positive movement in a number of core talent areas (Figure 2). For example, a vast majority (83 percent) expect the learning function and affiliated programs to be more aligned with company business objectives. When it comes to integration with other talent management functions, a solid majority (64 percent) think learning will be better integrated in the coming year. In terms of the quality of their work, 71 percent believe they will have better quality learning offerings.

Figures’ Source: Chief Learning Officer Business Intelligence Board, N=419. All percentages rounded.

s chief learning officers look to the year ahead, by and large it’s the bright side that they see. According to a survey of the Chief Learning Officer Business Intelligence Board, a majority (59 percent) of CLOs say their outlook for 2018 is more optimistic than 2017, with 29 percent saying their outlook is the same and 11 percent less optimistic (Figure 1). The Chief Learning Officer Business Intelligence Board is a group of 1,500 professionals in the learning and development industry who have agreed to be surveyed by the Human Capital Media Research and Advisory Group, the research and advisory arm of Chief Learning Officer magazine. This survey was conducted from June to July 2017. A closer look at the responses reveals that CLOs are an optimistic bunch, expecting contin-

The work that CLOs do to make the case for learning as a core asset to successful business operation looks set to continue. Driven in part by that confidence, CLOs are also in an experimental mood as they look for new and innovative ways to deliver learning. Nearly 80 percent expect to adopt new training techniques and 63 percent expect their blend of modalities to change. Of course, it’s not simply confidence that is pushing CLOs to change how they deliver learning. New and emerging technologies such as machine learning, artificial intelligence and virtual and augmented reality are finding their way into the marketplace. And the continued shift of workplace demographics to younger, digitally native workers with high expectations for learning and career development has upped the ante for enterprise learning functions. But as always, cost plays a significant role in any plan for the year ahead. If there’s a note of pessimism in CLOs’ outlook, it’s as they figure out what and how to fund their programs. A slight majority (56 percent) either don’t expect their budget to increase or think it will remain the same. Digging in further, a majority of survey respondents don’t expect to increase their use of off-the-shelf content, invest in a new learning management system or expand their learning department’s capability through outsourcing. While they expect investment in learning to increase, CLOs remain realistic about the levels of investment they will be able to make in 2018. A look at how learning departments plan to use external providers provides further perspective on the learning outlook for the coming year (Figure 3). The accelerating pace of change in business and the need for agile, well-rounded leaders is pushing a majority of CLOs (84 percent) to maintain their use of executive education and leadership development services. Informal learning is another area of expected change. According to the survey, 45 percent of learning leaders plan to use more external support and 38 percent plan to keep usage about the same. The ongoing recognition of nontraditional learning modalities is pushing CLOs to continue to look outside for help in making the most of the valuable learning that happens outside of the course or classroom. Unsurprisingly in the era of ubiquitous mobile technology, the area where CLOs plan to cut their use of external vendors the most is in the use of books and printed materials. A solid majority (71 percent) plan to use these services less or keep their usage steady. CLO

FIGURE 3 : EXPECTED USE OF EXTERNAL VENDORS

Same

Less

Executive/leadership development 49% 35%

Informal learning solutions 45% 38%

Business skills training 38% 45% 8%

Custom content design 37% 43%

Certification training 37% 42%

Virtual classroom system 36% 39%

IT training 27%

50%

Simulation design 26%

44%

Assessment and testing 26%

43%

11%

Knowledge management system 25% 48% 7%

Learning consulting services 25% 45% 11%

HRIS system 25% 53%

Learning management systems 22% 54%

Online referenceware 21% 49%

Content authoring systems 20% 49% 11%

Mike Prokopeak is vice president and editor in chief at Chief Learning Officer magazine. He can be reached at editor@CLOmedia.com.

Books/printed materials 18% 26%

47%

Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

15 PRACTICES continued from page 60 common definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over yet expecting a different result. Yet many smart people continue to do just that. Those who successfully break this chain carefully define the output they want, examine current inputs, test new inputs and then analyze the result. The next time you’re struggling to achieve your desired result especially in the area of relationships try applying these steps until you identify inputs that work. Practice 15: Start with humility. Has your lack of humility ever held you back from getting better? Would you even know if it had? The word humility comes from the Latin humilis which literally means low. But it doesn’t mean low self-esteem or low courage. The low it’s referring to means you can get to a place where you realize you are one piece of a much bigger picture. Humble people are strong. They have a secure sense of self because their valiSTATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT & CIRCULATION (Required by 39 U.S.C.3685) dation comes from the 1. Publication title: Chief Learning Officer 2. Publication number: 2398-1000 inside not the outside. 3. Filing date: October 1, 2017 4. Issue frequency: Monthly except for Jan/Feb, July/August In short they are not 5. Number of issues published annually: 10 6. Annual subscription price: $195 controlled by their ego. 7. Complete mailing address of known office of publication: 111 E. Wacker Dr., Suite 1200, Chicago, IL 60601 If you’re serious about Contact: Cindy Cardinal at 847-438-4577 8. Complete mailing address of headquarters or general business office of publisher: Mediatec Publishing, 111 E. Wacker Dr., Suite 1200, Chicago, IL 60601 getting better especially 9. Full names and complete mailing addresses of publisher, editor, and managing editor: at building relationships Cliff Capone, Publisher, 111 E. Wacker Dr., Suite 1200, Chicago, IL 60601; that work, try humility Mike Prokopeak, Editor, 111 E. Wacker Dr., Suite 1200, Chicago, IL 60601; Rick Bell, Managing Editor, 111 E. Wacker Dr., Suite 1200, on for size. The opposite Chicago, IL 60601. 10. Owner: John R. Taggart, 1401 Park Avenue, Ste 502, Emeryville, CA 94608. of weak, humility is the 11. Known bondholders, mortgagees and other security holders owning or holding 1% or more of total amount of bonds, mortgages, or other securities: none greatest strength we can 12. Tax status has not changed. 13. Publication title: Chief Learning Officer develop. 14. Issue date for circulation data below: July/August 2017 15. Extent & nature of circulation Avg. no. copies No. copies These are the 15 each issue of single issue during preceding published nearest 12 months to filing date practices I’ve seen time a. Total no. of copies (net press run) 23,296 23,006 b. Paid/requested distribution: and time again trip us b1. Outside county paid/requested mail subscriptions stated on form PS 3541 up or become real cata(Including advertisers’ proof and exchange copies) 18,893 18,907 lysts for moving relab2. In-county paid/requested mail subscriptions stated on form PS 3541 (Including advertisers’ proof tionships forward in efand exchange copies) 0 0 b3. Sales through dealers and carriers, fective meaningful ways. street vendors, counter sales and other non-USPS paid/requested distribution 554 617 b4. Other mail classes through the USPS 0 0 Because we get our rec. Total paid and/or requested circulation 19,447 19,524 sults with and through d. Nonrequested distribution: d1. Outside county nonrequested others, nothing is more copies stated on form PS 3541 2,608 2,496 d2. In-county nonrequested copies important than learning stated on form PS 3541 0 0 d3. Nonrequested copies distributed through the USPS 0 0 how to be more effective d4. Nonrequested copies distributed outside the mail 0 0 in our relationships. CLO e. Total nonrequested distribution (sum of 15d 1, 2, 3, 4) 2,608 2,496 Total distribution (sum of 15c & 15e) 22,055 22,020 Copies not distributed 1,241 986 Total (sum of 15f & 15g) 23,296 23,006 Percent paid and/or requested circulation (15c ÷ 15f × 100) 88.2% 88.7% 16. Electronic Copy Circulation. 2,202 a. Requested and paid electronic copies 2,205 b. Total requested and paid printed copies (line 15c)+requested/paid electronic copies (Line 16a) 21,652 21,726 c. Total requested copy distribution (line 15f)+requested paid electronic copies line 16a) 24,260 24,222 d. Percent paid and/or requested circulation (both print & electronic copies) (16b divided by 16c X 100) 89.2% 89.7% ✔ I certify that 50% of all my distributed copies (electronic and print) are legitimate requests or paid copies). 17. This Statement of Ownership shall be printed in the December 2017 issue of this publication. 18. I certify that on October 1, 2017, all information furnished on this form is true and complete. Mike Prokopeak, Editor. f. g. h. i.

60 Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

Todd Davis is chief people officer and executive vice president at FranklinCovey and the author of “Get Better: 15 Proven Practices to Build Effective Relationships at Work,” published in November. He can be reached at editor@ CLOmedia.com.

TOP TEAM continued from page 19 the person gets into a new position, which is also what a 360-degree assessment can show. By knowing the whole six-quotient picture, CLOs can catch most development needs before the 360-degree assessment occurs and make wise investments to make learning easy and fast based on root causes. Can we anticipate every development need? No, but it is important to help leaders learn how to be highly effective before the storm hits. There is then no need to babysit a top team unless their challenges or environment changes.

Use the right formula in people analytics. There is no doubt that people analytics enhance top team performance. However, because individuals can have different development needs it is important to recognize the right usage of them and target issues with the right tools. There is no one tool for all including motivation.

By seeing the whole picture, CLOs can catch most development needs before a 360-degree assessment occurs and make wise investments to make learning easy and fast based on root causes. Many leaders from CEOs to CFOs and top senior executives try to motivate their teams when the teams are too tired which does not increase productivity but instead increases the chances of turnover and stress-related health issues. Instead, the leader should let the team take a break. A lack of deep knowledge of talent affects how leaders direct talent, inspire others, manage conflicts and execute strategies. These areas are rooted in traditional training.

Integrate learning with practice and involve senior leaders. Practice at work is valuable but unavailable to everyone and application can be inconsistent. Thus leadership development must integrate learning with practice to rapidly turn that learning into ac-

tion. Usually, the less a person needs to learn the better the person learns. Therefore, it is important to identify needs precisely. Learning requires a whole-system approach where every element such as learning preference and personality type can impact the outcome. Research from McKinsey & Co. found that successful leadership-development programs were five to six times more likely to involve senior leaders acting as project sponsors, mentors and coaches. Why? Because senior leaders know what matters to the company and can be good role models. Top team performance is critical to business success. Corporate leadership development can have a fast and lasting impact through an approach based on a full integration of the six quotients.

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Start by identifying the development needs of a leader before the 360-degree assessment, make wise investments and deliver training that addresses root causes. Then make learning as easy and fast as possible and integrate it with business practice and involve senior leaders. Taking those steps can often save 50 percent of the time and find efficient solutions to 30 to 40 percent of the intractable issues where traditional methods fall short. While change accelerates, so does the impact of poor top team performance. CLO

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IN CONCLUSION

History Need Not Repeat

Lessons from the digital learning space • BY PATRICK MULLANE

A Patrick Mullane is executive director of HBX, a division of Harvard Business School. He can be reached at editor@CLOmedia.com.

round 370 B.C., Plato wrote of a story told by Socrates to Phaedrus. In that story, a god tries to give the gift of writing to the Egyptian King Thamus. The deity bragged that his “invention is a recipe for both memory and wisdom.” You’d think that Thamus would have been grateful for this amazing gift. Instead, he replied that writers will have “the delusion that they have wide knowledge, while they are in fact … incapable of real judgment.” So began millennia of skepticism about technology helping to improve learning. In fairness to Thamus, in the centuries since this story was written the use of new technologies has not been very successful in moving the needle in education. Radio, television and the internet all held great promise. Promises never realized. Those of us who are developing new technologies to extend educational opportunities around the world do our best to learn from these failures. Even so we have made our own mistakes as well. But we’ve also gleaned some important lessons from our time in the digital learning space.

Those of us developing technologies ... do our best to learn from past failures. The first lesson is that pedagogy matters more than technology. How something is taught is more important than how it is delivered. In my work at Harvard Business School we already have a strong guiding principle. The case method of study whereby a professor leads a discussion about a real-world situation to help students reach conclusions inductively has been the linchpin of HBS’ teaching for a hundred years. So when we created digital tools to deliver content to people around the world, we knew that anything we did had to facilitate this way of teaching and learning. This provided focus that ensured the student was kept front and center. 62 Chief Learning Officer • December 2017 • www.CLOmedia.com

The second lesson learned was the importance of something my faculty counterpart Bharat Anand calls “borrow and forget.” Borrow from the physical world the things that can work given a technology’s capability but don’t be afraid to let go of things that won’t work. For example, recreating the case method in an asynchronous platform seems counter-intuitive. For the last 100 years, the case method has been about live interchange between students and faculty. We had to forget the idea that the case method could only be implemented with synchronous interaction, otherwise the model would not be sustainable. Faculty couldn’t interact in real time with large numbers of online participants. Instead we had to replicate elements of the case method that could be copied in the medium, such as automated cold calls that test student knowledge when they don’t expect it and new ways to deliver the case method like having students drive discussions and answer each other’s questions. A third lesson was born of the second. If you weren’t going to have faculty leading live case discussions how do you keep the content engaging? We used a thee-minute rule when making content for an asynchronous platform. Whenever possible, a learner would not do any one thing for more than three minutes. Videos should be short and rich with animations to explain concepts. Text should be chopped up by polls and requests for students to write text responses to share their insights. The diligent use of the three-minute rule has led to high satisfaction. In the end, we learned that a short attention span is not a millennial thing. It’s a human thing. A fourth lesson centers on the importance of creating a sense of community. If a short attention span is a human thing, then a need to feel connected is the human thing. From the start, students should be made to feel they are part of a community. We created a map of the world with pulsating dots denoting others who are there as well and require them to upload a picture and a profile. External social media tools are integrated into the experience. Finally, we built features to help students help each other. There is still much to learn in the brave new world of digitally enabled education. Many still view technology as Thamus regarded writing. I am confident that, like writing, digital education will take hold despite the naysayers and change the way the world learns. CLO

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