Has the recession forced organizations to more closely align learning objectives to business goals? A new study by CLO Magazine surveying over 1,500 senior learning and development executives found:
“90 percent of CLOs believe their learning will be more aligned with organizational business objectives this year. That’s music to some executives’ ears.”
Jim Gillece, AlliedBarton’s senior vice president and chief people officer, talks in the article about the importance of well-defined leadership competencies, at every level of the organization, as key to bridging the gap. I think this is a good and necessary step, but it doesn’t go far enough. All learning can eventually be reduced to individual learning. Thus, each individual must understand how the new skills and behaviors obtained through training or on-the-job learning link to the personal business goals of the learner. We call this “line of sight” for the learner and it is a critical piece that is missing from much of the training I see today in the corporate world.
“Line of Sight” for a learner is really the alignment of individual learning goals with business goals. The tool we recommend for establishing Line of Sight is a Success Map. The Success Map clearly defines the learning goals for a training event or activity, then links those goals to on-the-job applications, and finally links the application to measurable business outcomes. If you can achieve this with every learner in your training, you will be well on your way to establishing true Alignment in your learning organization.
“Get a feedback loop and listen to it. … When people give you feedback, cherish it and use it.”
- Randy Pausch (1960 – 2008) was a Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University and a best-selling author, who achieved worldwide fame for his speech The Last Lecture, after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and having only a few months to live.
Most people, by now, know the story of Randy Pausch and his Last Lecture. The book was a best-seller and the video of the lecture itself has been viewed by over 11 million people on YouTube. The entire lecture is a powerful and moving presentation on achieving your dreams and living a fullfilling life.
Being that I’m in the busines of helping organizations develop leaders, I found the lecture fascinating on another level – namely the insight it provides us into one man’s struggle to achieve his goals, to continually grow and develop as a person and to live a happy life. The popularity of the book and the lecture lead me to believe that the insights shared by Randy do not apply to him only, and are really fundamental to the human condition. We can learn from these insights and apply them to leadership development programs at our organizations.
One thing that Randy discusses is the importance of feedback. During his childhood and into his college days, Randy had little use for feedback. Like many of us, he didn’t initially see the value in feedback. But at some point in our lives and careers we hit what Randy calls a “brick wall.” This is a barrier that temporarily prevents us from achieving our goals. Randy has a great attitude about these barries; ” Brick walls are there for a reason. They give us a chance to show how badly we want something.” Well, in order to break through these brick walls, we often need feedback from others to tell us what’s missing or what we need to do differently. During graduate school, a professor did just that for Randy, helping him to see how his attitude was holding him back.
Through the course of his life, Randy came to appreciate feedback so much so that he would seek out what he called “feedback loops.” These are processes that give us the feedback and information we need to continually improve and develop as leaders.
Contrast Randy’s attitude and feelings about feedback with what we sometimes encounter with leaders who are receiving 360-feedback. Through our leadership development practice at RealTime Performance, we deliver thousands of 360-feedback reports every year to companies like Emerson, Nordstrom, FedEx, Chubb and Johnson & Johnson. Although many leaders do view 360 as a positive excercise, there is always that group of managers who perceive it to be a negative experience right from the start.
These employees mistakenly consider receiving feedback an unpleasant exercise to be avoided if possible and minimized if absolutely necessary. Successful leaders like Randy understand that feedback is a special gift because it is something we can’t give ourselves. We can go out and buy ourselves a watch or new clothes, but we can’t give ourselves the knowledge of how we are perceived by others unless we ask.
Furthermore, the people who invest their time to provide us with feedback are often taking on a risk. When someone delivers feedback, they risk damaging the relationship, especially if the feedback is critical or hits on a touchy subject. Feedback comes at a price to the feedback-giver as well. That’s why, feedback truly is a gift.
The current global economy is forcing people and organizations to find ways to do business more efficiently and more effectively. Companies are revisiting strategy, markets, R&D, size of workforce, and their entire cost structure. There is an intense focus on business results with an added emphasis on trimming anything that doesn’t directly contribute to the success of the organization. These same forces are affecting training and development departments at corporations across the globe.
It is within this environment, where training departments are being asked to cut back on resources while increasing their value, that my colleague Dr. Stephen Gill and I set out to use our research and experience to help organizations make their learning interventions more effective. Specifically, we want to provide training professionals and frontline managers with a simple framework and strategy to get more from their investment in learning. Our new e-book, “Getting More from Your Investment in Training: The 5As Framework,” is for training professionals and business managers who are grappling with this new environment and the heightened expectations for results.
This book is not about how to be a stand-up trainer, or how to design e-learning, or even how to get more buns on seats. It is about what your organization needs to do to ensure that people learn and use that learning to achieve business goals. We identify the organizational factors that have the greatest overall impact on how learning contributes to business success. And then we offer tools and strategies for increasing the impact of learning at each step in the learning process. We call these organizational factors the 5As, and they are;
1.Alignment – Align learning with strategic goals by helping learners understand how the skills and knowledge they acquire through training can be applied to deliver business results.
2. Anticipation – Research clearly shows that if learners anticipate success before training they are much more likely to experience success. Help your learners anticipate success. 3. Alliance – Create a learning alliance between learner and boss. Learners need feedback and coaching, especially as they attempt to apply new skills and behaviors on the job. 4. Application – Apply learning immediately after training, not six months later or even never, as so often happens. Create opportunities for learners to apply new skills on the job, and receive relevant and timely feedback. 5. Accountability – Hold learner and organization accountable for business results from training. Establish the expectation from the beginning that training is critical for organizational success and all participants will be held accountable to apply what they’ve learned to meet business goals.
This is the time, more than ever, to re-examine your training function and make all of your learning interventions (classes, simulations, e-learning, coaching, internships, etc.) more efficient and effective. By applying the 5As framework to your organization, you can immediately identify areas for improvement that will help you achieve your business goals. Download the first two chapters free.
A much discussed article by Tony Bingham, the President of ASTD, appeared in the August 2009 T+D Magazine under the title “Learning Gets Social.” In the piece, Tony delivers a shot across the bow for many learning and development departments, saying basically, if we all don’t get on board and start leveraging and supporting Web 2.0 technologies for learning, we’re simply going to be deemed irrelevant by the businesses we support. The article quotes Karie Willeyard, CLO of Sun Microsystems, saying:
If the learning organization doesn’t get into that 70 percent and use social media, they’re going to get left behind. They’re going to become irrelevant because people are going to be able to post and share knowledge with one another without the learning function.
The fact is, most employees are already embracing web 2.0 collaboration and sharing tools without the learning function, and the numbers are growing every day. Two major trends t are fueling this shift to informal learning:
The Millennial Generation – those born between 1977 and 1997, essentially grew up with the Internet and are familiar with learning and sharing information online. As the Baby Boom generation retires, this is the generation that is currently moving into the workforce and changing the landscape. By 2014, it is estimated that the Millennial generation will comprise 47% of the workforce.
Technology – continues to make it easier to share, collaborate and learn online. Today, if someone wants advice on how to become a better leader, they use Google, Wikipedia , Twitter, LinkedIn or other Web 2.0 technologies to address their unique learning need immediately. They don’t sign up for the management training course offered next quarter.
The collective force of these two trends is transforming how employees learn, shifting the model from a didactic model to a collaborative model. Tony Bingham makes the case for how Millenials are changing learning landscape:
In education, they are forcing a change in the model, from a teacher-focused approach based on instruction, to a student-focused model based on collaboration.
I refer to this as a shift from the “Sage on the stage” model to the “guide on the side.” Web 2.0 technologies facilitate the sharing of information and make it easier to collaborate with colleagues. The widespread acceptance of these new technologies is rapidly increasing the shift to delivering learning at the point-of-need, giving employees the information they need when they need it.
Although the Bingham article is a great wake-up call to the learning profession, it fails to address the critical question of what can or should be done to address informal learning. Bingham ends the article by saying:
“The pieces are there, and now is the time to connect those pieces to create a learning masterpiece that meaningfully demonstrates the critical importance of each and every one of your roles.”
Huh? This sounds to me like he is encouraging the learning profession to continue with its command and control attitude of dictating learning. What’s needed, in my opinion, is for the learning profession to focus on supporting and fostering the technologies and experiences that will allow and empower employees to collaborate, share and learn on their own accord. The “learning masterpiece” Bingham refers to will evolve on its own if we give employees the tools to share and collaborate, and then trust them to do the right thing.
A much discussed article by Tony Bingham, the President of ASTD, appeared in the August 2009 T+D Magazine under the title 
