The Modern Learning Mindset | November/December 2018

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018

BECOMING A HYPER-LEARNING ENTITY | 16 The Only Real Sustainable Advantage

KEY TRENDS FOR 2019 REPORT | 24 Six Trends Shaping the Training Industry

THE EVOLUTION OF THE CLO ROLE | 38 Perspectives from the First CLO

BUSINESS

PERSPECTIVES

ON

MANAGING

WORLD-CLASS

TRAINING

PERSPECTIVES KEN TAYLOR

THE MODERN LEARNING MINDSET

This issue of Training Industry Magazine focuses on the modern learning mindset.

Our marketplace is telling us that the needs of the learner must be top of mind when developing new programs and strategies for skill development. This is driving the emergence of new learnerfocused experience platforms that enable both a more applied set of learning opportunities as well as a holistic look at how the learner wants to consume performance improvement content, regardless of its nature, form or structure.

Our company’s annual trends report is also included in this issue, where we reflect on the ideas that have impacted our industry over the past 12 months, and we look ahead to the trends that will shape our business moving forward. With so much change occurring in the market today, we are seeing a growing need to adapt the training function to the complexity of the business environment. We need to prioritize the training needs of learning professionals, so they can successfully guide our organizations through change.

The way companies are defining L&D is moving more toward the idea of a path or a journey to improved, applicable skills, rather than an event or course to be consumed. This change is beginning to put pressure on training organizations to think well beyond their formal training or recent experiences. It’s pushing the concept of a systems approach to learning and perhaps changing the pathway forward for the function forever.

So, entering 2019, we need to start thinking about the following questions.

Do we have the skills we need to make the next steps? Do we need to look to adjacent functions for this new set of skills? Who is going to lead the change on our teams?

How can we help them prepare for success? I have always believed that the training function has been underserved in terms of its own development, could this be the year that starts to change?

In this edition of the magazine, you will find articles that focus on the upside opportunity of rethinking how L&D teams support learning, why becoming a hyper-learning organization is the only sustainable advantage, and how to move beyond simple curation and focus on building a multidisciplinary team.

As always, we would love to hear your thoughts about the perspectives shared in the magazine, and please feel free to send any suggestions for future editions of Training Industry Magazine.

THE TRAINING FUNCTION HAS LONG BEEN UNDERSERVED IN TERMS OF ITS OWN DEVELOPMENT, COULD THIS BE THE YEAR THAT STARTS TO CHANGE?

Ken Taylor is president and editor in chief of Training Industry, Inc. Email Ken.

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CO N T E N TS

TA B L E O F VOLUME 12

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ISSUE 1

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NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2018

FEATURES

16 SUSTAINABILITY AND LEARNING

16

24 TRENDS 2019

38 EVOLUTION OF THE CLO

THE SIX FACTORS REQUIRED TO TRANSFORM AN ORGANIZATION INTO A HYPER-LEARNING ENTITY

By Heide Abelli

Offering continuous learning opportunities is an investment in future organizational success.

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LIFE IN THE FAST LANE: ACCELERATED CONTINUOUS DEVELOPMENT FOR FAST-PACED ORGANIZATIONS

By Jennifer Habig and Chris Watz

Fast-paced companies are different, and so are the challenges they face as they develop leaders.

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TRENDS 2019: ADAPTING THE TRAINING FUNCTION TO THE COMPLEXITY OF TODAY’S BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT

By Doug Harward, Ken Taylor and Michelle Eggleston Schwartz

The trends for 2019 reflect the challenge of embracing change and adapting training practices.

TAKING A BITE OUT OF BITE-SIZED LEARNING: TEMPLATES AND BEST PRACTICES

By Michele A. Graham, Diana Benyaminy, Stephanie Haueis, Jeremy Manjorin and Al Oliveira

Developing bite-sized learning assets is not easy, but can produce big results when done well.

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LEARNING CURATION: MOVING BEYOND SIMPLE CURATION WITH MULTIDISCIPLINARY LEARNING CURATION TEAMS

By Robert H. Schneider

A multidisciplinary team means opportunities to adapt and apply unique insights and perspectives.

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THE CREATION AND EVOLUTION OF THE CHIEF LEARNING OFFICER ROLE: PERSPECTIVES FROM THE FIRST CLO

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THE UPSIDE OPPORTUNITY OF ORGANIZATIONAL TRANSFORMATION FOR L&D

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IS YOUR ORGANIZATION READY FOR THE FUTURE OF VIRTUAL TRAINING?

By Jasmine Martirossian

Transformations carry risk to the organization, and L&D can take actions to reduce that risk.

By Brian Blecke and Kelly Smith

Transformations carry risk to the organization, and L&D can take actions to reduce that risk.

By Cindy Huggett

Virtual training is not really about the technology, it’s about a timely response to your learners.

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I N THIS I S S U E

THOUGHT LEADERS

3 9 11 13

PERSPECTIVES

By Ken Taylor

The training function must have the skills to effectively lead the change.

GUEST EDITOR

By Lisa Hutcherson

Learn the secret sauce of getting a seat at the decision-making table.

SCIENCE OF LEARNING

By Srini Pillay, M.D.

We need to design differently in this era of radical collaboration.

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BUILDING LEADERS

By Sam Shriver and Marshall Goldsmith

The implications of disruptive change on effective leadership are profound.

WHAT’S NEXT IN TECH

By Stella Lee, Ph.D.

Thrive in the face of digital disruption by cultivating an agile mindset.

LEARNER MINDSET

By Michelle Eggleston Schwartz

L&D is becoming more integral as the speed of business increases.

PERFORMANCE MATTERS

By Julie Winkle Giulioni

When it comes to learning, the need to think will never go out of style.

INFO EXCHANGE

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CASEBOOK Transforming in-classroom games to a digital setting is helping Nielsen engage its learners.

GLOBAL OUTLOOK Reductions in training budgets have increased global skills gaps in information technology.

CONNECT WITH US

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CLOSING DEALS

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COMPANY NEWS

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LTG acquisition demonstrates the importance of compliance and diversity training.

Keep up with the latest in the training industry by reading news from the last quarter.

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TrainingIndustry.com

A B O U T OUR TEAM

STAFF CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER Doug Harward

ASSOCIATE EDITOR Stephani Mager-Lightfoot

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EDITOR IN CHIEF & PRESIDENT Ken Taylor

SENIOR DESIGNER & ART DIRECTOR Scot Williamson

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Michelle Eggleston Schwartz

DESIGNER Mary Lewis

MANAGING EDITOR, DIGITAL Taryn Oesch

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EDITORIAL BOARD

MISSION Training Industry Magazine connects learning and development professionals with the resources and solutions needed to more effectively manage the business of learning.

SUBSCRIPTIONS ELECTRONIC:

JUDI BADER Senior Director of Learning Arby’s Restaurant Group

SCOTT NUTTER General Manager, Research, AQP & Development Delta Air Lines

MICHAEL CANNON, M.ED. Senior Director, Head of Learning & Development Red Hat

MATTHEW S. PRAGER Executive Training Manager U.S. Government

MEGAN CASADOS Director of Training DISH

MARC RAMOS Vice President, Chief Learning Officer Sitecore

LORNA HAGAN Chief People Officer OnDeck

KELLY RIDER Vice President, L&D Content Strategy & Experience SAP Learning & Development

BARBARA JORDAN Group Vice President, Global Learning & Development Sims Metal Management

DR. SYDNEY SAVION General Manager, Learning Air New Zealand

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ARTICLE REPRINTS To order reprints of articles, please contact Training Industry at

editor@trainingindustry.

CATHERINE KELLY, MA, BSN, RN, CPTM Director of Learning Programs Brookdale Senior Living

KERRY TROESTER Director, North America Sales Training Lenovo

PUBLISHER

SHIREEN LACKEY Talent Management Officer, Office of Business Process Integration Veterans Benefits Administration

NATASHA MILLER WILLIAMS Vice President, Talent Engagement & Development Nielsen

Training Industry Magazine is published bi-monthly by:

LAURA MORAROS Global Head of Sales Learning Facebook

KEE MENG YEO Vice President, Enterprise Talent Development

Training Industry, Inc. 6601 Six Forks Rd Ste 120 Raleigh, NC 27615

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TAILORED LEARNING SOLUTIONS

UNDERSTANDING FIRST A strategic, consultative approach to learning is one that understands your key challenges—and delivers outcomes to support your critical objectives. This is what targeted, data-driven learning solutions are all about. This is how Raytheon Professional Services will impact the performance of your people and your business.

rps.com @RaytheonRPS Raytheon Professional Services

© 2018 Raytheon Company. All rights reserved.

GUEST EDITOR LISA HUTCHERSON, CPTM

A SEAT AT THE TABLE We all long to be part of something larger than ourselves. Whether we want to be the creator and driver of an organization’s vision or we want to be behind-the-scenes - everyone wants a seat at the table.

I have fond memories of Thanksgivings at the kiddie table, longing for the day I had a seat at the family table. When the time came and I earned a seat, I made sure I modeled the right behaviors to keep it.

Looking back, I now realize I was part of something bigger. I was continuing in my family’s traditions and upholding our family principles. My family’s principles created a strong culture that is cared for and respected as if it were a living, breathing entity.

Recently I was visiting with a colleague who was struggling with getting a seat at the table. Reflecting on my Thanksgiving experience, I was able to share some tips on how she could get a seat at her organization’s table.

IT STARTS WITH PRINCIPLES Business principles are fundamental to any organization’s success. Adherence to these principles takes daily discipline, passion and mindfulness from everyone within an organization. These principles support the organization’s vision and mission statements, which typically includes being the best at something. Inclusively, the principles serve as a constant reminder of the responsibility everyone has to hold themselves accountable and acknowledge that they have the ability to influence the success of the organization.

The learning and development (L&D) professional supports business principles in a holistic manner. It is a unique position that partners with executives, managers and employees throughout the organization to gain global insights into

departmental inter-workings, personalities, strategies and initiatives, as well as professional competency strengths and developmental opportunities.

Correlating employee competency and performance back to business principles allows for training initiatives to be developed in an unassuming partnership with the manager. This collaborative relationship helps to lay the foundation for L&D to be part of the daily organizational conversation.

WE ALL LONG TO BE PART OF SOMETHING LARGER THAN OURSELVES. BEING PART OF SOMETHING BIGGER When you’re creating or enhancing the L&D strategic plan, you should consider how the organization’s business principles can be incorporated in the plan. It’s important to highlight how L&D influences the organization’s internal decision-making process and how it supports the organization’s goals, values and competitiveness.

Collaborating at this level lays the foundation to a partnership that celebrates success, shows genuine vested interest in departmental performance, allows for respectful openness, and supports the value proposition of what’s in it for me.

A strong strategic plan eliminates the order-taker mentality and makes way for a proactive long-term action plan.

LOOKING IN THE MIRROR L&D by definition is an organizational activity that improves performance.

Ask yourself: do you have on-going conversations in each department correlating how L&D can help them achieve their goals or enhance their team’s professional development?

Here are some thoughts to help you further define how L&D impacts the bottom line, employee performance and departmental success. Is L&D: • included in your organization’s business principles, vision and mission statement and do they include a training accountability measure tied to performance; • included in organizational projects and strategic planning conversations from the beginning; and • regarded as a global resource that can help identify trouble spots, offer solutions and alternative approaches?

SECRET SAUCE Mom made an amazing sauce that turned a turkey into a celebration of flavor that folks constantly raved about. Mom will never reveal what is in her secret sauce, except that it’s made with constant tending to and lots of love. L&D professionals are like my mom, they are passionate about tending to activities that impact global strategies and results. They live, breathe and own the responsibility to bring together inter-departmental collaboration, communication and performance. They care for the organization’s principles and employees like mom cares for her secret sauce. A seat at the table is waiting for you … welcome to the table.

With over 20 years of financial services experience, Lisa Hutcherson oversees training initiatives for 900+ employees across the country. Email Lisa.

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BE AN EXPERT Training Industry research analysts seek insights that benefit you—the training leader.

From understanding the unique process capabilities that differentiate Great Training Organizations™ to exploring the components of the Modern Learning System, gain greater understanding of the training industry through our vast research library.

This research explores questions and insights about the popular 70-20-10 model and how it relates to today’s corporate realities.

This report investigates learners’ preferences for various training delivery methods in order to understand what learners want and need.

This research investigates what executives think about how L&D supports business goals and meets the needs of the company.

We do the work, you gain the expertise. www.TrainingIndustry.com/research

SCIENCE OF LEARNING SRINI PILLAY, M.D.

5 BIOLOGICALLY-BASED TRUTHS TO IMPACT LEARNING DESIGN There are many radical changes occurring in how we think and act.

In an era of unpreceded change, volatility and uncertainty, we need to revisit several truths to more deeply impact how we design programs for executive development. Below are some biologically-based truths that should impact learning design.

1. ANATOMY We are made up of equal numbers of bacterial and human cells. More than 60 percent of us is water. And every living cell except for red blood cells is powered by mitochondria, which are thought to be inherited bacteria. In essence, we are mostly bags of water and bacteria with a few human cells thrown in for good measure.

On the surface, these facts may seem to be as far removed from L&D as any facts could be. Yet, when we take a closer look, we may recognize an important fact: If gut bacteria can influence our moods by increasing depression and anxiety, should we not pay attention to the moods of executives?

Action: All new leadership programs should have a nutritional component that focuses on mood-changing gutbrain interactions. Include “nutrition” in leadership development programs.

2. SELVES DO NOT EXIST AS WE THINK THEY DO The human brain has “self” circuits, but it also has the capacity to store information about others around us and our environments as well. Every minute of every day involves the self interacting with internal representations in our brains.

Action: When you are designing individual programs, include others and the environment too. Neurocoaches could help executives bridge the gap between the people in their brains and the identical people outside of them.

Neurocoaches could ask questions like, “Who would you like to be in the brains of your team members?” This helps leaders realize that they are leading from within others.

3. DESIGNING FOR THE UNCONSCIOUS More than 90 percent of brain function is unconscious, and only 10 percent is conscious. Yet, organizations spend close to 100 percent of their learning budgets on 10 percent of brain function.

Action: Design programs that stimulate the unconscious. For example, in the book “Tinker Dabble Doodle Try: Unlock the Power of the Unfocused Mind,” there are many techniques that can be taught to leaders in order to develop the unconscious. Positive constructive daydreaming, doodling and psychological halloweenism can all increase creativity and improve performance on creative teams by stimulating the unconscious.

4. DESIGNING TO TRANSCEND TIME The past, present and future are all stored in our brains. The past exists as memories. The present exists as attention. The future exists as imagination and possibility.

Action: Ask leaders to re-examine their memory banks and practice mindfulness. Also design programs to stimulate imagination and build a sense of possibility. We use “The Possibility Index” as a screening tool to help organizations

identify what is blocking their sense of possibility and then design programs to build on this.

WE NEED TO DESIGN DIFFERENTLY IN THIS ERA OF RADICAL COLLABORATION. 5. DESIGN TO ADDRESS SUBLIMITY Engagement is at an all-time low at 13 percent worldwide. To increase engagement, people need to activate their motivation. Motivation does not come from grit, practice, changing habits or taking small steps. On the contrary, recent research has shown that grit and deliberate practice contribute very little to motivation, and habit change is difficult, while “small steps” only work when one is really motivated.

Action: Build programs for engagement and motivation. Address the paradoxes above so that experts in motivation can help you sift through the real learning that exists outside of purely rational discourse.

As counterintuitive as this sounds, I am suggesting that internal and external providers of L&D need to design differently in this era of radical collaboration. Call on artists, neurocoaches, psychoanalysts, nutritionists and other fields to design meaningful programs that will truly move the people and business forward.

Dr. Srini Pillay is the CEO of NeuroBusiness Group. He is also assistant professor (parttime) at Harvard Medical School and teaches in the executive education programs at Harvard Business School and Duke CE. Email Srini.

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TOP 20 COMPANIES

PERFORMANCE MATTERS JULIE WINKLE GIULIONI

THINK ABOUT IT! How we deliver content continues to change. The strategies, tools, context, and cadence of learning efforts are in the midst of significant disruption – much of it aimed at helping individuals, the organization and the L&D function operate at the speed of business. And yet, are we accelerating the process at the expense of its purpose? Are we getting better and quicker at deploying information only to have it lost on those who need it most? Too many people, learning professionals and learners alike, think so.

on and prioritize the kinetic elements of learning – the workshop activities, online interactions, or hands-on application. But we can no longer leave the more ‘passive’ elements of reflection to chance. We must invest just as much attention to engineering opportunities for the instruction and information to sink and settle in.

At its core, the learning most needed by today’s organizations boils down to embedded, relevant knowledge and skills that can be accessed and applied appropriately. It begins with appropriately selected learning vehicles that can be implemented in various ways. But the information exchange and even practice of new skills, while important, is just the first step in the process.

There’s nothing that prompts reflection better than a juicy, well-chosen question.

So, put as much time into your questions as you put into the rich content that you craft. Challenge yourself and others to go well beyond basic knowledge recall. Ask provocative questions that help learners connect the dots and figure out what the information or skill might mean to them and how they can use it within the context of their work.

If you strive for learning that people internalize, rationalize, assimilate, and incorporate into their behavior, this requires more. It requires reflection. And the inconvenient truth is that reflection, deep, performance-changing thought and consideration, requires some time.

RAMP UP REFLECTION In our current environment of instantaneous gratification, immediate response times, and results that were due yesterday, patience is in short supply. But learning doesn’t operate at the speed of light. Those who endeavor to accelerate the learning process must be prepared to encounter a bottleneck – and it’s above the neck. As a result, enabling thinking (and the time required for it) must be an L&D priority.

Given the bias for action that many L&D professionals share, it’s natural to focus

So, help people commit to and engage in the thinking required to drive real learning results with these strategies.

PURPOSEFUL PROBES

CONTEMPLATION CARVE-OUTS Thinking is becoming a lost art. As humans, we are falling out of the practice of quiet reflection. So, L&D professionals must force the issue. We must carve out time for contemplation. But amorphous thinking time might freak both management and participants out. Instead, offer a framework that focuses attention and trains the fast-traveling brain. Dedicating even 10 minutes to visualization, journaling, or a silent walk around the parking lot creates the time, structure or space for thinking to happen.

ongoing reflection in today’s ‘no-timeto-think’ workplace requires discipline, commitment and planning, which must begin before learners return to their job.

This means proactively including in the training an opportunity for people to identify when they will stop to allow for reflection. It could be a specific time of the day or week. Or an environmental cue (like making the commitment to set aside time to reflect after each difficult conversation) that triggers a pause to consider what’s been learned, how it’s working, and what individuals might do differently.

THINKING IS BECOMING A LOST ART. Technology can also help. Chatbots can effortlessly reach out to learners with targeted questions at just the right intervals. Apps can be developed to ping participants with timely reminders to stop, drop and think. And lastly, integrated performance support can incorporate questions that inspire contextualized, inthe-moment reflection.

So, feel free to accelerate and streamline everything else around learning. Make delivery and knowledge acquisition as efficient as possible. Take out the extraneous and condense content down to its most essential core. But just remember that when it comes to learning, the need to think will never shrink.

PRESCRIBED PAUSES While you might be able to engineer more thinking into the actual learning experience you control, what about after participants depart the sacred learning space? Ensuring

Julie Winkle Giulioni has 25 years of experience working with organizations worldwide to improve performance through learning. Email Julie.

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CONGRATULATIONS

CPTM GRADUATES!

Compliments to all of those who have earned the Certified Professional in Training Management (CPTM™) credential in the past year. We would like to recognize over 80 graduates from diverse industries and roles around the world. Your accomplishment places you amongst an elite group of learning and development professionals. We cannot wait to see how you will lead the change!

Elmira Abdullina Qatar Aviation Services

Anelia Dimitrova NYHTC

Tiffany Kelly Raffa, PC

Erin Rauch NationBuilder

Heather Acar Bridgetown Natural Foods

Sheri Dimmerman Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation

Asama Khan Miaca Life Sciences

Jason Redmond Hillyard, Inc

Jerry Knight Mahle

Adina Ringler Viacom

Sawsan Al Aqroq Phaeton Automotive Group Marissol Alves Microsoft Stephen Arena Southwest Florida Water Management District

Micheal Dittenber MERS of Michigan Kisha Dixon The Training Associates Kristy Dudley Blue Cross of NC

Kenneth Baucum Sagenet

Shellie-Ann Durrant-Kerr JN Bank Limited

Mark Bechtel MEA Energy Association

Karen Fries Shentel

Paul Begins Kenaitze Indian Tribe

Heidi Gavlak Community Health Centers

Bonnie Bivens

Julie Gosky Bluegrass.org

Chelsea Bjerkan Judge Learning Solutions Kerri Bracken Daikin America Donna Bradshaw Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation Dustin Bussard Eastman Chemical Company - SAFLEX Division

Lauren Harris University of Colorado Boulder Russ Hauch Albemarle Corporation Charlene Hayward McKesson Canada Barbara Hendricks

Megan Kurtzman CadmiumCD Tinique Lenderman Quick Base Nicholas LeRose Country Financial Megan Lippincott Vino Volo Luis Lopez Lincoln Military Housing Katie MacDonald Everything But The House Melissa Madden Ellie Mae, Inc. Omar Marrero IRI Dan Martinez Mama Fu’s Asian House Colby McDaniel BOS Solutions Monica Mena Underwriters Laboratories

Brandi Campbell Training Industry, Inc.

Stacie Henson CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield

Bill Casey Ulex

Annie Holt Citic Pacific Mining

Kate Mendenhall Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation

Kurt Huffman LogicMonitor

Larry Metter Neopost USA

Darla Crabtree Bluegrass.org

Lisa Hutcherson First Federal Bank of Florida

Kimberly Miller State Accounting Office

Jennifer Creamer Booz Allen Hamilton, Inc.

Kristen Hysell Montana Legislative Audit Division

Riedolia Moore-Ellis NYC Criminal Justice Agency

Stefanie Clark Corbion

Maciej Czarniawski PwC Kristin Davis Wake County Human Services Lauren DeNoia SoftPro

Amy Johnson The Kessler Collection Darrell Johnson U.S. Government Rachael Kaufman MBTA Transit

Shawn Muller JX Enterprises Joseph Nasti Petrolink Amber Ramirez Conference of State Bank Supervisors

Visit cptm.trainingindustry.com to learn more about how you can earn the CPTM credential and join over 300 CPTM graduates.

Stacy Roberts BrickStreet Insurance Scott Rutherford Training Industry, Inc. Megan Schroeder Mahindra USA Andy Schuster GrowMark Heather Scichilone Townsend Michael Simon Ellie Mae, Inc. Giselle Solomon SKNA National Bank Limited Valetta Taylor Waste Corporate of America Heather Tickel L Brands Saleah Tinsley FirstNet Twyla Tustin GP Startegies Corporation Moriah Ujano WebPT Amanda Van Der Heiden Sammy Villanueva Forest Lawn Briana Washington MGM Resorts Deadra Welcome Concerning Learning, LLC Justine Wiant Exal Marc Wilner Ellie Mae, Inc.

BUILDING LEADERS SAM SHRIVER & MARSHALL GOLDSMITH

LEADING OTHER LEADERS

When you consider the primary factors that will continue to shape the development of leaders moving forward, start with change. The disruptive kind.

The kind that shines a spotlight on whatever experience and skills you and your team have developed over time and renders them partially transferable (at best) or even obsolete.

IF IT WEREN’T FOR CHANGE, PEOPLE WOULD PROBABLY CARE A WHOLE LOT LESS ABOUT LEADERSHIP.

a plan. That plan was grounded in some sort of informed insight. That plan would guide the manner in which we would adapt, adjust, retool and deliver results, regardless of the obstacles change put in our paths. Leaders told us what we had to do to navigate our way around, or directly through, that disruption.

However, the dynamics of change are becoming so much more complicated.

Leaders struggle to leverage informed insight to point us in the right direction, because quite often they don’t have any. Leaders haven’t “thought things through,” because the things they are challenged by require real-time thinking with limited points of valid reference.

There has been more disruptive change in the last three years than in the previous 300. That reality hasn’t been lost on anybody. And there is no reason to believe that pattern isn’t going to continue to repeat itself (perhaps even more aggressively) moving forward.

With ever-increasing regularity, leaders no longer have the answers. In many cases, leaders no longer even know the right questions. Leaders stand with the rest of us, facing unique challenges that few of us could have imagined just a short time ago. So, how will the leaders of the future add value?

The implications of those disruptive patterns on effective leadership are profound. As a matter of fact, when you think about it, if it weren’t for change, people would probably care a whole lot less about leadership. In effect, leadership is the language of change.

Leaders have long been the people that helped the rest of us recognize and respond to change. In the midst of all the chaos and uncertainty, those leaders had

They will start with relevant data, and they will openly share it with all of us, transparently and across the board. We will know what they know. We will be able to see, with intimidating clarity, where we are and where we need to go.

Leaders will spend less time explaining the nuances of the numbers and more time putting the numbers in front of our faces and asking us to interpret their meaning.

After we analyze the information that most accurately pinpoints our position, we will need to formulate a plan. This is where things will really get weird.

The leaders of the future will place responsibility for the formulation of that plan squarely in our hands. It’s not that they won’t have an opinion or a perspective on what we should do. It’s simply that they will recognize that if they share their opinion, there will be a strong probability the members of our team will adopt it (in whole or in part). At that point, it becomes the leader’s plan, and not ours.

Once a plan is in place, the leader will focus on providing feedback, which will drive escalating levels of transparent accountability. Each member of the team will be inescapably aware of their role, their responsibilities to the team and the quality of their contribution relative to the expectations that have been established. In essence, the leaders of the future will be facilitators of the leaders on their teams as they embrace and adapt to whatever change may bring.

Marshall Goldsmith is the world authority in helping successful leaders get even better.

Sam Shriver is the senior vice president of commercial operations and product development at The Center for Leadership Studies. Email Marshall and Sam.

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THE SIX FACTORS

Required to Transform an Organization into a Hyper-Learning Entity

By Heide Abelli

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We live in volatile, complex, ambiguous times. The work environment for most employees is in constant flux and is less predictable than ever. About 40 percent of work today is non-routine, and the percentage of non-routine work is expected to grow to 65 percent of the average job by 2028. Nonroutine work requires higher-order cognitive skills such as complex critical thinking, extensive data literacy, algorithmic thinking, problem-solving, creativity and real-time collaborative skills. Organizations need to provide ongoing support for employees to develop and grow their cognitive skills for non-routine work.

Work today is also becoming more technical in nature. An example of the “technologizing” of jobs is the data science component of jobs today. Increasingly, organizations will need to build workforces of “citizen data scientists” and “citizen developers.” And yet, few employees possess even basic data analysis skills and even fewer know how to code in any language. The increased technologizing of jobs now requires organizations to continuously develop “hard skills” across the entire workforce. This takes a level of commitment to and investment in continuous learning that, until now, most organizations have been unwilling to make.

WHY OFFERING CONTINUOUS SUPPORT FOR LEARNING AND RESKILLING IS MORE CRITICAL TODAY THAN EVER BEFORE.

With the above commentary as the backdrop, companies without a commitment to becoming hyperlearning entities risk falling behind.

However, adopting a six-factor approach to becoming a hyperlearning entity can ensure that an organization not only stays relevant but also gets a jump on the competition.

1. VIEW INVESTMENT IN HUMAN CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT AS AN ASSET, NOT A COST. Many organizations underinvest in human capital development because they consider such spending to be a cost rather than an investment. That kind of thinking needs to change. Organizations must consider the development of human capital as an asset, not an operating expense. We need to treat continuous learning as an investment in future organizational success, not a cost to be minimized.

Just as change is a permanent condition in organizations today, so must be the enablement of continuous learning through aggressive investment in learning and development for all employees.

2. CRACK THE NUT ON SUCCESSFULLY DELIVERING CONTINUOUS LEARNING TO EVERY EMPLOYEE. As a top management thinker, Chris Argyris admonished that

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“there is no organizational learning without individual learning.” Creating and sustaining competitive advantage in the future will be directly linked to a differentiated ability to rapidly deploy continuous and personalized skill development across a vast workforce. Organizations need to enable workers to learn, unlearn and relearn competencies and skills constantly.

Those organizations that crack the nut on delivering continuous learning to the workforce — better and faster, with the least amount of friction for the learner — will be the winners in their markets.

The process of finding learning content must be frictionless and targeted.

The combination of a state-of-the-art learning discovery and delivery platform and microlearning content is critical to achieving that objective. Another requirement is a changed approach to the learning content delivery model.

Modern digital solutions are replacing outdated delivery models associated with tethering learning to sporadic classroom experiences. As lifelong learners, employees need access to allin-one learning platforms focused on new and emerging areas of technology THE SIX FACTORS TO BECOMING A HYPER-LEARNING ENTITY

1 | View investment in human capital development as an asset, not a cost.

2 | Crack the nut on successfully delivering continuous learning to every employee.

3 | Deploy content specifically designed for efficiency and effectiveness to facilitate rapid skill acquisition 4 | Adopt a learning culture that foster learning agility.

5 | Develop an operational effectiveness plan for continuous improvement in training outcomes.

6 | Hold every employee and manager accountable for ongoing learning and development.

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and business. Much of the content on these learning platforms is enabled by just-in-time, microlearning assets such as three- to five-minute videos, shortform text explanations and targeted online self-paced courses.

Today’s worker also spends a significant amount of time working within productivity and collaboration software applications and is always just a click away from accessing the web. As a result, training content must meet the learner where he or she is, instead of the other way around. If a learning platform is not directly embedded in the native environment in which a worker spends the day, the learner’s personal “applicationweb ecosystem,” it’s often a bridge too far for most employees to take the time to log into a separate learning management system or platform when they have to solve a problem quickly. Enabling learning in the flow of work means supporting learning in the context of realistic, openended and ill-defined problems and weaving the process of learning into selfdirected activity.

3. DEPLOY CONTENT SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED FOR EFFICIENCY AND EFFECTIVENESS TO FACILITATE RAPID SKILL ACQUISITION. Modern learning content enables organizations to overcome the challenges imposed by limited time and busy schedules. It also makes the learning experience efficient and highly effective as well as enjoyable for the learner. Training providers must evolve their content development approaches and instructional design strategies to ensure they are optimizing learning outcomes.

Instructional strategies and content design must capitalize on evidence-based approaches informed by adult learning science and be aligned to three specific requirements: • More just-in-time and less just-in -case learning.

• Visual, short and relevant content to engage the modern learner.

• Content crafted for self-directed, personalized and specialized learning.

Organizations must ensure that learning technologies will be ready to support personalized experiences, microlearning and just-in-time learning. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning techniques will increasingly deliver this capability at scale. One example is automated recommendations that identify targeted development and learning opportunities based on what a learner knows and does today.

Visual, short and engaging content drives engagement and retention. For a soft skills training module, for example, the content

WORK TODAY IS BECOMING MORE TECHNICAL IN NATURE. might involve exposing the learner to a realistic scenario which can demonstrate desired behaviors firsthand.

Finally, learning content will continue to have a short shelf life which will increase the importance of constant curation of highly relevant content onto learning platforms. As the rate of change in new technologies accelerates, learners will need to be certain they are consuming the most current content available and that opportunities for learning are frequently refreshed.

4. ADOPT A LEARNING CULTURE THAT FOSTERS LEARNING AGILITY. Organizations must adopt a learning culture that stresses the importance of learning agility. Learning agility is the ability to analyze and understand complex situations, spot patterns that impact the business, assimilate new information, think flexibly, acknowledge mistakes (and learn from them) and take smart risks. Learning agility is arguably the most important trait for employees today. It helps people thrive, especially when the business context is complex, uncertain and ambiguous.

Learning agility is about openness to new information and experiences and about being willing to explore complex situations and take on challenges.

Leaders, in particular, need to coach for learning agility, helping teams to adapt to change and capitalize on new opportunities. Organizations need to develop two traits across their entire employee base to support a culture of learning agility. One is a growth mindset.

The second is cognitive flexibility.

It’s critical for leaders of organizations to build cultures which encourage a growth mindset. A growth mindset is a belief that, with practice and effort, abilities can grow, and it is a prerequisite for learning agility. Growth mindset needs to be proactively woven into hiring, onboarding, job descriptions, performance reviews and workforce development activities.

Cognitive flexibility is key to learning agility because agile learners refrain from sticking rigidly to a narrow view of a situation. Instead, learners evaluate and embrace new information as they make sense of a situation, allowing them to adapt and grow. Managers are key to cultivating a learning agility culture.

They can foster learning agility by making sure that people who disagree with prevailing opinions are heard during meetings, encourage diversity of thought and perspectives, give team members opportunities to work on cross-functional projects where they can pick up insights and perspectives from others in the organization, celebrate learning, not just results, and manage workflow so employees have time between deadlines to pause, engage in creative thought and exchange ideas.

Finally, organizations with a learning agility culture make it psychologically safe for individuals to make mistakes during the learning process when they are trying out new ideas and skills. Organizational aversion to risk can inadvertently send the message that mistakes are unacceptable and that learning on the job and trying out new ideas can be career limiting. Fear inhibits learning.

5. DEVELOP AN OPERATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS PLAN FOR CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT IN TRAINING OUTCOMES. There will be a significant reward for any organization that can push out the

training productivity frontier through training operational effectiveness, or TOE. The potential for pushing out the training productivity frontier through TOE will be facilitated by new technologies such as AI, data analytics, augmented reality and machine learning.

For decades managers have been laserfocused on improving operational effectiveness and that same focus needs to be applied to training. Total quality management (TQM), lean, benchmarking and other management practices need to be applied more aggressively in the training context to improve learner

WE NEED TO TREAT CONTINUOUS LEARNING AS AN INVESTMENT IN FUTURE ORGANIZATIONAL SUCCESS.

satisfaction, eliminate inefficiencies, increase quality and lower cost. This will require organizations to adopt learning performance scoreboards with detailed metrics and KPIs that can be managed over time.

These metrics should go beyond standard metrics, which surface training participation rates and usage metrics and instead include more training productivity metrics and business impact metrics.

An example of a training productivity metric is the learning cycle time for a skill – average training time required for an employee to achieve mastery for a critical skill. Business impact metrics should focus on the impact of training and development which spurs innovation and increases productivity.

Companies that eliminate wasted effort in learning, employ more advanced technology to improve their learning processes continuously, motivate employees better or have greater insight into managing particular learning activities will have a significant competitive advantage.

6. HOLD EVERY EMPLOYEE AND MANAGER ACCOUNTABLE FOR ONGOING LEARNING and DEVELOPMENT. Companies today need employees who demonstrate a naturally curious and questioning mindset and who have the raw potential for continuous learning.

An assessment of this should be baked into every hiring interview. Once onboard, employees must have personal learning plans reviewed quarterly with managers. The learning plan should include both short-term and long-term learning goals with associated KPIs and a detailed road map for achieving those goals. The employee should then be held accountable for executing on the plan.

When possible, compensation should be tied to achievement against learning goals and KPIs and outperformance should be acknowledged and rewarded.

Organizations should publicly highlight when employees successfully complete valuable certification and accreditation programs or earn badges or nanodegrees in important competency domains.

These successes can be touted in HR newsletters, intranet sites, senior management presentations and other venues to demonstrate the importance of continuous learning and to build momentum for continuous learning and skill development. Finally, organizational leaders should be measured on how successfully they guide the workforce from more specialized, functional mindsets and capabilities to more expansive digital mindsets and technical capabilities that are required of today’s businesses.

Conclusion The ability for human capital to continue to develop, grow, learn and contribute in new and different ways may be the only real sustainable competitive advantage for today’s organization. If companies adopt the six factors required to become hyperlearning entities, they will be on the path toward sustainable advantage.

Heide Abelli is the senior vice president of Skillsoft Content Management.

Email Heide.

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LIFE IN THE FAST LANE Accelerated Continuous Development for Fast-Paced Organizations

By Jennifer Habig & Chris Watz

Are the leadership development challenges of fast-paced technology organizations really all that different?

After a year-long study involving many of the largest and best-respected companies in Silicon Valley, leadership experts say the answer is definitely “yes.”

Fast-paced tech companies really are different, and so are the challenges they face as they develop their leaders. Here are a few examples.

Velocity of Change: Tech companies typically grow more rapidly than their mainstream counterparts, and the threat of disruption is a constant companion.

New players are always emerging, so standing still isn’t an option. Instead companies must outpace their competitors – even if they don’t know who they will be.

Skills Gaps: Many tech leaders move up based on the strength of their tech skills and not because they are great leaders.

They often lack basic management capabilities, as well as the emotional intelligence and self-awareness to realize their impact on others.

Stress: The work may be exhilarating, but techies often feel massive levels of stress. Many have taken on huge roles at a very young age, and they worry whether they are up to the challenge.

Some feel as though they are walking a tightrope without a net.

Disdain for “Typical” Training: Tech companies tend to be proud of the culture they’ve built and use it as a differentiator and recruitment tool.

Workers immersed in that culture expect the same uniqueness to infuse development initiatives. They don’t like off-the-shelf content, and they won’t sit still for solutions that can’t be backed by data. Surprisingly, they also aren’t fans of purely digital learning. They prefer face-to-face development opportunities where they can ask questions, debate and challenge.

Leading the Unfamiliar: The tech industry not only rides waves of disruptive technology but also disruptive levels of turnover. Leaders have to be agile at adapting to the unfamiliar and at managing stress on the brain, body and interpersonal interactions.

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Does this sound a lot like your organization? If so, what should your training team do to support life in the fast lane and development for timestressed leaders? Here are nine tips that can help you respond to this new world order and get the most out of your training investment.

1. Bring on the heat.

Tech leaders need to develop faster than those in other industries because they reach senior roles at younger ages.

They need accelerated continuous development that can meet them where they are today and quickly catch them up to where they need to be. Learning needs to be rapid and continuous – not a one-time event. To set a steady, accelerated pace for development and jumpstart learning, you’ll need to balance three important factors.

• “Heat” experiences that place leaders in uncomfortable, unfamiliar and complex situations where results matter. These experiences can be internal or external to your organization, including stretch assignments, experiential learning, expeditions, and simulations that balance risk with potential rewards.

Some heat experiences provide a safe place to learn from mistakes (e.g., an expedition) while others can be career-altering (e.g., a new product launch that fails). Keep in mind that leaders already experiencing high

heat from industry disruption, rapid team turnover and other workplace challenges may learn more when stretching their wings in a safe environment.

get too much heat, moderate exposure to new perspectives, and not enough time for reflection. Strive to get the balance right and make the most of heat experiences without causing burnout.

2. Become source agnostic.

Leaders learn from people who get them to reflect in ways that advance their thinking.

• Colliding perspectives that expose leaders to new points of view very different from their own. Leaders learn from people who are different from themselves, who challenge their assumptions, and who get them to reflect in meaningful ways that advance their thinking.

• Reflection time and support that allow new experiences and perspectives to be integrated. Reflection is a skill that isn’t often an area of focus, and it doesn’t come naturally in fastpaced environments. Yet it’s critical to learning – advancing each individual’s world view and changing how they lead.

One caution: The most effective learning happens when heat experiences, colliding perspectives and reflection get equal attention. Most tech leaders

Expand your thinking beyond competency-based classroom learning and create multiple channels for development. Remember, it’s not about where leaders learn. Instead, it’s about what information is consumed and how it’s being applied. Leaders might learn by watching a TED Talk on their smartphone, reading best practices posted in a Slack group, or listening to a podcast on leadership by a well-respected guru. Connecting leaders to sources of information they might not know about can lead to spontaneous learning.

3. Offer short bursts of development.

Tech leaders are time poor, but they tend to be fast learners. Since many of today’s management fundamentals have known, skills-based solutions, you can quickly transfer basic how-to information in bite-sized portions. You can address how to give feedback, how to conduct a performance review, or how to tackle other actions important to the success of your team. This approach has become so popular that many advanced training practitioners now

ACCELERATED CONTINUOUS DEVELOPMENT Tech leaders often reach senior roles rapidly and at younger ages than leaders in other industries. As a result, they need “accelerated continuous development” and intense “heat” experiences that jumpstart learning.

ACCELERATED

CONTINUOUS

DEVELOPMENT

Heat experiences accelerate learning by placing leaders in uncomfortable and complex situations. Leaders make bigger leaps faster by changing how they think and behave.

Development happens through a continuous ecosystem of complex challenges and colliding perspectives. Mentors, coaches and other experts help leaders quickly integrate and apply lessons learned.

Rather than focusing horizontally on new knowledge and skills, heat experiences impact vertical development by furthering a more sophisticated and agile mindset.

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see themselves as “curators” of content that’s a good match for rapid learning.

They scan the industry for the best tools and solutions and then package them in videos, podcasts, infographics, and other easy-to-absorb formats.

4. Balance short bursts with deeper dives.

While time-stressed leaders may prefer shorter forms of development, the workplace is complex – and so is leadership. Not all organizational dilemmas can be solved by quick bursts of information. Leaders also need deeper development to teach them how to think and lead through complexity, especially as they move up the leadership ladder. Use disruptive experiences, expeditions, study tours, simulations, mentoring, coaching, and other deepdive, immersive opportunities to help leaders identify problems, learn systems thinking, and develop a strategic focus.

THE VALUE OF EXPERIENTIAL PROGRAMS Some Silicon Valley companies are taking an extreme approach to development that matches the uniqueness of their workforce and culture. Learning experiences are breaking out of the classroom and taking place in unexpected settings.

Participants learn about leadership in unfamiliar, high-stakes situations that require collaborating in new and different ways.

Imagine navigating across a mountain range, driving a race car, or interacting with wild animals. Done well, this type of “heat” learning helps leaders make big leaps in their skill set and mindset. They can move from expertise-based leadership to more collaborative and inclusive styles of leading that help them navigate complex and unfamiliar problems.

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5. Use advanced analytics.

Leadership solutions work best when they reinforce what’s unique about your company. Advanced analytics can help you connect disparate data (e.g., HRIS, engagement, customer satisfaction, performance) and identify those specific leadership behaviors that will have the biggest impact on business outcomes.

Use the information to guide program

the most of feedback, assessments and other tools that promote self-awareness and help leaders recognize roles and assignments that simply aren’t a great fit. Self-aware leaders know when to call on the strengths of other team members rather than going it alone. When leaders do have to work against their strengths, help them focus on resilience to avoid burnout and costly mistakes.

8. Promote peer-to-peer learning.

Self-aware leaders know when to call on the strengths of others rather than going it alone. development and to teach your leaders how to succeed in your company’s own unique environment.

6. Focus on resilience.

Many young tech stars are promoted into high-pressure roles before they’ve learned how to deal with the stress. Work becomes all-consuming, and regular exercise, healthy eating, and a good night’s sleep get sacrificed. Protect your people investment by helping your team build healthy habits and the physical, emotional, and mental resilience they need to cope with workplace demands.

One high-pressure organization in Silicon Valley approached the issue by delivering a workshop on resilience to a core group of 120 managers. Those early adopters then cascaded the techniques they learned to their teams. Within a single month the company taught 1,200 employees how to reduce stress and build resilience.

7. Leverage strengths.

When people tackle tasks that match their natural strengths, they exhibit more confidence and less anxiety during times of high uncertainty. Make

Tech leaders love learning from their peers, so why not use that to your advantage? Consider bringing together first-time managers or other small cohorts of leaders who are going through the same transition at the same time. Give them opportunities to share experiences and to collaborate on better ways to lead. Or engage your team the way Google did with its “Googler to Googler” program. Offer employees the opportunity to teach leadership topics they are passionate about to other employees. They might upload content to a portal and deliver it themselves or engage the help of a training facilitator.

These types of initiatives can leverage resources that would otherwise lie latent.

9. Connect the rest of the system.

Even the best training and development program will fail if you neglect those factors that ensure learning takes hold and is transferred into the workplace.

Great organizations decide on the leadership behaviors they want and then connect all the backend initiatives needed to support them – including training, incentives, evaluations, feedback, hiring, firing, and promotions.

This end-to-end alignment can help you accelerate learning, continuously develop your team, and successfully compete in today’s fast-paced, global marketplace.

Jennifer Habig is the managing director and Chris Watz is a leadership solutions partner for the Center for Creative Leadership at its campus in San Diego, California. Email Jennifer and Chris.

Apply the right learning strategy today to drive employees tomorrow Organizations today need to anticipate future training needs and react faster than ever before. We work with global organizations to understand their key challenges and apply the right learning strategies to create optimum employee engagement and enhance their performance.

To explore how we can assist your organization, visit www.tesseractlearning.com

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TRENDS

2019

Adapting the Training Function to the Complexity of Today’s Business Environment

By Doug Harward, Ken Taylor and Michelle Eggleston Schwartz

Share your thoughts and expertise.

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The organizations that will thrive in today’s rapidly changing business environment will be those that embrace change, adapt their business processes and practices, and prepare their employees to navigate the complexities of the market.

The training function must be at the center of this evolution, with skilled learning professionals leading the way.

Typically, the training function is charged with improving the skills and performance of others through the development of training programs. All too often, the skills of learning professionals take a back seat to serving the greater organization. Training and development professionals must take a hard look at their own skill set to gauge whether they are adequately prepared to support the business as it evolves.

It’s time to focus on the knowledge, tools and skills that learning professionals need to effectively lead organizations through change. As the market evolves, so must the skill set of learning professionals. The key trends for 2019 reflect the challenge and opportunity to adapt the training function to the complexity of today’s business environment.

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Adapting Classic Learning Frameworks to Modern Learning Systems The business environment in which organizations operate today is vastly different than a few decades ago. Learning is no longer viewed in the context of an isolated, one-time training event. Learning is now viewed as a continuous process throughout the employee lifecycle, without a definitive expiration date.

As a function, we need to continue to move from an event-focused mindset toward system thinking, where we create the systems and environments for continuous on-the-job learning. We must challenge ourselves to look beyond the training event and view L&D as more of an ecosystem with experiences that we control. These

experiences will be adopted by future generations of employees.

What makes this type of program development unique and challenging is that the training function often doesn’t control many of the content elements included in these learning experiences. Also, the triggers for employee development often reside in systems and data repositories beyond the learning management system (LMS). This reality will demand that the learning professional become more aware of the systems across the organization that can contribute to the employees’ learning experience.

Learner Confidence Leads to Increased Competence There is a growing focus on the role that confidence plays in skills development.

Low confidence is a barrier to proficiency.

The implications of the confidence level of an employee on skills development has roots in education and is now crossing over into corporate training and development.

Assessing confidence level to determine competency should be part of the evaluation of an employee’s performance and development. So, what should L&D do when an employee is exhibiting high competence but low confidence?

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Repetition and practice of learned skills has been shown to increase both knowledge retention and the likelihood the skills will become engrained behaviors. Creating experiences that allow employees to practice new skills in the context of their daily workflow will help build confidence and enhance performance. To assess learning, L&D must move beyond simply testing the transfer of knowledge. We should be focusing on whether the learner has the confidence to use that knowledge, too.

Blending Experiences as Opposed to Blended Learning Blended learning is traditionally the marrying of e-learning and instructor-led training to create a learning experience.

As technology evolves and there are more options available to deliver training, a multimodal approach to learning starts to take precedent. The need for optimal balance among formal learning, social learning and experiential learning is more pressing than ever with countless tools at our disposal.

We need to shift our focus away from merely a classic view of blended learning to instead focus on blending experiences for

effective learning. We need to determine the optimal learning experience for an employee to build knowledge and apply the necessary skills to the job.

Each job role will require a personalized combination of experiences to ensure success. This blend could include coaching, job shadowing, role-play, game-based learning, classroom training or e-learning, to name a few. Learning professionals must leverage the tools and resources available to build a robust experience for each employee.

Market Opportunity for Pre-Boarding Jobs are going unfilled because of the lack of skilled talent. Whose responsibility is it to ready potential job applicants and new hires with the skills they need to succeed in the workplace? Is it the university? The organization? The individual?

We are seeing an opportunity in the market to take on pre-boarding for companies.

Think of it as a “train-to-hire” approach to recruiting in which applicants are placed in a job once they are fully trained. Technical, health and safety industries are already doing pre-boarding. The LTG acquisition

of PeopleFluent to expand its offerings to include talent management is an example of the market’s tightening relationship between L&D and talent management.

For pre-boarding to be successful, organizations would first identify the competencies and skills needed for every job role. They would then partner with a vendor that supplies the specific training they need to upskill potential employees.

This training will enable new hires to hit the ground running and increase their time to proficiency once on the job.

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Training to Prevent Crisis Time and again, we are seeing the training function under increasing pressure and scrutiny to mitigate company risk. Business risk comes in many forms – a data breach, theft of intellectual property, employee injuries or allegations that could impact the public perception of the company brand, etc.

This year, Starbucks made headlines following the arrest of two black men who were waiting at a café for a friend.

Facing pressure to quickly right a wrong, Starbucks closed nearly 8,000 stores early

one afternoon to conduct an anti-bias training with employees.

If this scandal taught L&D anything, it’s that the training function needs to be proactive and strategic instead of reactive. Starbucks’ knee-jerk reaction to quickly develop and deploy training at this late hour illustrates a Band-Aid approach to a crisis. If we’re in crisis prevention mode, it’s too late. We need to be ahead of the scandal. If we fail to plan, we are only further damaging the perception of the training function.

Upskilling the Training Function When you think about it, the training team is essentially on an island tasked with performance support and employee development for the entire company.

But what about the learning needs of instructional designers? Training program developers? Training managers? The employees inside the training function need career development opportunities to grow their skills and lead the change at their respective organizations.

We need transformation inside the training function. L&D must build investment and time into its budget to upskill the training team that’s leading the evolution. This investment may require L&D to look outside of its own available resources to find the support that it will need. We must prioritize the learning needs of training professionals to prepare them to navigate the challenges of today’s business environment to deliver world-class training.

Doug Harward is CEO of Training Industry, Inc. Ken Taylor is the president and editor in chief of Training Industry, Inc. Michelle Eggleston Schwartz is the editorial director for Training Industry, Inc. Email the authors.

Share your thoughts and expertise.

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Taking a Bite Out of

Bite-Sized Learning: Templates and Best Practices

By Michele A. Graham, M.S.; Diana Benyaminy, CPA, M.S.; Stephanie Haueis, CPA, B.S.; Jeremy Manjorin, M.S.; and Al Oliveira, B.F.A.

D

igital learning has been a hot topic for years; however, many organizations large and small still struggle with where to start. The secret may be to think small.

Bite-sized learning is the process of learning through short, easily accessible and digestible assets. These can come from a variety of formats: videos, games, infographics, audio podcasts, iPDFs, and short web-based training demos to name a few. They provide just-intime information a learner needs while performing their job. Simply put, it establishes autonomy, enables the learner to leverage technology they’re comfortable with (as a majority of bitesized learning assets are video-based), and gives them more time to spend on work-related activities.

The challenge is that everyone thinks bite-sized learning is easy to accomplish in this age of technology. Take out a phone/device, hit record, and post. Well, it is not that easy. Here are five tips for improving bite-sized learning.

1 | Plan For It To support continuous learning, several components should be included in a digital learning strategy that incorporates bite-sized assets. Organizations should consider the following topics: • Planning: Identify the business problem, tie to formal training, timing for pushing content versus learners pulling it, learner experiences, how assets will be used, leadership support, and implementation workstreams.

Thinking small can produce big results.

• Design and development: Determine the guiding principles to development of assets, leadership engagement in the development, learner-generated content, length of assets to meet learner needs, work-based learning to help boost retention, tie to natural work day, and development and design resources.

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• Delivery: Identify technology available to house assets, ease of learner access, social sharing opportunities, mobileready/accessibility, and learning management system (LMS) tie.

• Maintenance: Consider governance of the assets (development, quality assurance, distribution, etc.), quality reviews, and knowledge management (strategy, metadata, naming conventions, and tagging).

• Measurement: Determine key performance indicators (KPIs), measurement resources, technology, and reporting processes.

Once the above considerations are documented and a formal strategy is in place, then it’s time to get started!

Governance – What works and what you want to avoid Having decided on the overall strategy and where all the bite-sized assets are housed is just one component of the governance process. Do not just focus on the maintenance side of governance – consider the full life-cycle. Determine who will control what professionals see and when they see it.

Additionally, have all assets reviewed by subject matter experts or learning professionals to determine accuracy of content, quality and consistency in products produced, especially if learnergenerated. Credibility will be lost in a fraction of the time it took to create one single asset otherwise. Always allow time for oversight – the value is priceless.

Tracking Bite-sized learning can be part of formal training or standalone. Learners can be required to take bite-sized learnings from an available list, or it can be dictated as a pre-requisite. In this case, it is best to have all these assets in an LMS or similar system to be able to pull data on important aspects of measurement that support the goals. Consider tracking the number of times an asset is accessed, duration of view, and when a specific asset was watched.

All of this informs learner behaviors and consumption preferences, helping with what to provide, how to provide it and when it is most needed.

This is similarly true if the bitesized learning is offered on demand, independent of a formal learning program. What if an organization does not have an LMS? Assets can be put in an online database or a video channel as well (like a private YouTube-type channel for example), where organizations can still track data to meet KPIs. To this point, naming assets, lessons, and modules becomes extremely critical as well. One approach to leverage is the university numbering system/schema to inform the learner about the type and level of content. For example, using a naming system like 101 for basic, 201 for intermediate, and 301 for advanced content can easily help a learner decipher the complexity of the content. There is no one right answer, just be consistent.

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

– Peter Drucker

2 | Design And Develop It When considering the design and the type of templates to create, it is still critical to first consider the learning objectives and how granular the content needs to be. Bite-sized learning assets, in any format, may not be the right answer for the business problem and/or the learner’s needs. Start with this, then determine the correct approach.

Templates Using templates to develop and design bite-sized learning will make the process easier. This is a great way to leverage the talents within the organization and engage the entire team to come up with standard templates (see Figure 1).

When starting down this road, consider the following: • Create a variety of templates: podcasts, key takeaways, games, quizzes, crossword puzzles, iPDFs, video-based, etc.

• Consider learner preferences and learning styles: Templates should reflect the type of learner.

For example, a lesson may contain several bite-sized assets in the form of a

Figure 1 | Sample Planning Template Learning Objectives:

Format:

Audience:

Duration:

Scene

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Timing

Script

On-Screen Text

Screen Treatment

Screenshots/ Visual Ideas

Video/Audio

QA/Reviewer Comments

video, a pdf, and an audio component to enhance the learning effectiveness.

• Determine source of content when creating a template like whether it’s new content or coming from a large course divided into separate bitesized assets.

3 | Deliver It Knowing a shift in strategy is needed is one thing, being able to implement the plan is another. When an organization’s goal is to foster independent, continuous learning, different approaches to implementation may be needed. One approach is to curate and coordinate courses and resources that help professionals connect with the learning they need, in the format they want, at the moment it is most useful.

This philosophy can reduce required learning hours, make resources available to learners at the time of need, provide content relevant to each learner, and increase engagement and retention of that content.

Formalizing informal learning There will be times when there is a need to leverage bite-sized on-demand assets to support formal training. Software applications can be attached to an LMS enabling learners to quickly search for relevant bite-sized content and filter by duration, modality, topics and more. This is especially important, as just building the content is not enough to ensure it will be consumed. Consider using bite-sized assets as pre-work or postwork. They provide quick pieces of vital information prior to a course and serve as excellent post-learning reminders, helping solidify the concepts and content learned when back on-the-job.

4 | Measure It Measuring the success of the overall strategy as well as the bite-sized assets themselves is critical. The approach to measurement must tie to the overall strategy and what business goals and KPIs have been identified. Some approaches may include:

Quantitative approaches: • Pull data on number of times an asset is accessed, duration of view, when it was viewed, unique views, and repeat views. This can be accomplished through the software used and/or adding some type of analytic software to the site where the assets live. Know what data is available at the start.

• Add short pop-up surveys or thumbs up/stars to assets to assess whether assets have met participants needs and/or if they need something else.

• Send a survey to all possible learners to determine if they have accessed (if not known) and to ask pertinent questions to gather feedback.

Qualitative approaches: • Hold virtual or in-person focus groups with those who have completed and not completed assets.

• Add a quick poll or one open-ended question to the page where the bitesized assets live to give learners a chance to provide feedback and help determine what worked and/or what was missing.

• Talk to supervisors of the target audience to see if job performance has improved and identify needs.

5 | Maintain It Work on bite-size assets doesn’t end with their deployment. Their maintenance is critical. Determine how often the assets will need to be reviewed for relevance and accuracy and who will review those assets. Create a timeline for ongoing

Work on bite-size assets doesn’t end with their deployment.

Lessons Learned Time Moving toward a bite-sized approach to learning requires time. Design and development teams need time to convert existing content or to familiarize themselves with any new templates or development standards.

Curation and Technology Content curation and bite-sized learning go hand-in-hand. Determine how much to make versus buy/leverage from existing content, then put it in one place. If a good medium for distribution to learners is missing, all the assets in the world wouldn’t help in the moment of need. Consider looking at vendors that provide “YouTube-like functionality” if the LMS cannot/doesn’t exist.

Integrity Stakeholder reviews, naming conventions, leveraging across multiple courses, reusability all create challenges. Creating a naming convention and unique id system is essential. Tracking and recognizing slight changes to the content and keeping track of that cannot be forgotten. Create a database and unique id system to help address these items.

technology and site maintenance.

Review naming conventions regularly and monitor for redundancy. It is also critical to regularly meet with stakeholders to modify and adjust strategy, and continually assess learners’ needs and align assets to them.

Considering all aspects of bite-sized learning — from planning to measurement and maintenance — can enhance any organization’s learning strategy. Thinking small can produce big results.

Michele A. Graham, Diana Benyaminy, and Jeremy Manjorin are directors at KPMG Business School. Stephanie Haueis is an associate director and Al Oliveira is a manager at KPMG Business School.

Email the authors.

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LEARNING CURATION: MOVING BEYOND SIMPLE CURATION WITH

MULTIDISCIPLINARY LEARNING CURATION TEAMS

BY ROBERT H. SCHNEIDER, M.S., LPC, CPTM

A LEARNING CURATOR FACILITATES THE ORGANIC INTERACTION BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE, KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS, AND KNOWLEDGE CONSUMERS IN A PROACTIVE AND INTERACTIVE MANNER.

Two years ago, Priya was on top of her game – she graduated from a top-rated IT program with honors and knew the latest industry trends. She could converse at length about the nuances of the industry, the trends in IT, and best practices relevant for her role. Today, with the demands of her job, she rarely has the time to stay abreast with the industry and feels disconnected and “out of touch” from the field she loves.

Bill, a seasoned HR vet, experiences a sudden shift in strategy. He needs to find a standardized way for SMEs, analysts, and business partners of different backgrounds to rapidly plan and implement targeted research. Does Bill stop his work to try and identify a best practice resource or does the learning and development (L&D) department identify the correct solution?

Enter the learning curator. A learning curator is simultaneously a generalist and specialist, leveraging a broad base of knowledge and skills along with their specialty in synthesizing, researching,

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and problem-solving to provide targeted solutions, recommendations and enhancements to an L&D department.

Leveraging their abilities along with curation software, curators target industry practices, trends and articles affecting Priya’s business unit. A regular newsletter distilling the massive flow of information is drawn down to the most relevant information, and with feedback from Priya and her business team, it becomes targeted to their specific interests. Priya again feels connected to the field she loves with a minimal time investment. Additionally, Bill sends his

request to the learning curation team who researches and identifies a set of best solutions, providing Bill with a menu of recommendations. Bill and his team select the best fit for their needs without any breaks in workflow.

WHAT IS A LEARNING CURATOR? There are many definitions of curation with a great deal of overlap, which only increases confusion. To understand the relevance of multidisciplinary teams it is important to understand what differentiates a learning curator.

A learning curator facilitates the organic interaction between knowledge, knowledge systems, and knowledge consumers in a proactive and interactive manner. The goal of learning curation is to locate and synthesize knowledge; bringing it together with users in a timely and efficient manner to enhance learning. Learning curation leverages the abilities of the team to build direct active relationships, investigate, research, create and vet content based on understandings of specific strategic and business needs.

A simple way to compare the differences between learning, content, and marketing curation is by examining them through intent, as intent often defines function.

Learning Curation:

The learning curator focuses on training their audience by providing immediate knowledge.

They fill the gaps created between development time for formal training and the vast amount of content becoming available on a daily/weekly basis. In addition, they serve as a centralized resource for research, communication of updated knowledge, and support gaps in training needs through proactive and planned strategies.

Content Curation: In content curation, the

goal is to organize, update and maintain information for access and consumption.

In contrast, learning curation is less focused on the maintenance and

curation of content such as within content management systems, although they might play a role depending on their organization.

Marketing Curation:

Marketing curation identifies content, annotates and writes-up, and shares it to help build a customer base, increase branding and drive sales. Learning curators market to learners more often internally with the direct goal of enhancing learning.

A MULTIDISCIPLINARY LEARNING CURATION TEAM Learning curation requires flexibility and responsiveness, so it is important the team reflects this in its skillsets.

A multidisciplinary team means opportunities to adapt and apply unique insights and perspectives.

Multidisciplinary learning curation teams allow for mutual support and provide a portfolio of skills on one team. Without a multidisciplinary approach, learning curation is likely to be in name only – lacking the key synthesis and interaction.

Let’s consider the following example.

Aleta, a learning curator, receives a request for a newsletter to help the learning department stay up-to-date.

Aleta’s background includes software development. She engages her peer James, who knows human factors and quality assurance. Together they produce a newsletter that highlights industry trends and information regarding measurement/assessment (quality assurance), web design (human factors), and trends in software (software design) relevant to L&D. Many skills have relevance to learning curation and deserve consideration. Do not expect that all skills will be covered on a team and remain open to new possibilities depending on needs. In all cases, seek computer literate curators with good research and communication skills.

While often stated, “Anyone can do an internet search,” the truth is research is a difficult task. The average internet search will find results based on

frequency of keywords, sponsored pages, and optimized web pages – none of which guarantee the value of the information. A learning curator knows how to use advanced search features, understands search engines, and assesses search results.

A MULTIDISCIPLINARY TEAM MEANS OPPORTUNITIES TO ADAPT AND APPLY UNIQUE INSIGHTS AND PERSPECTIVES.

Training skills are valuable in a curator’s skillset. Instructional design, classroom training, and web-based training can all benefit. Learning is a mental endeavor and psychology is a beneficial addition. Advanced understanding of brain function offers opportunities for enhancing learning, identifying learning blockers, facilitating engagement at the mind/brain level, improving vetting, and enhancing assessment. Skills in media, social media, copywriting, scriptwriting, journalism, and writing all strengthen creation and output.

Adaptability, flexibility and creativity in the application of skills leads to better outcomes. Remaining neutral in interpreting research and having personal fortitude maintains the reliability of research. The ethical role of a learning curator and their service to their company is reflected in always presenting neutral, honest results regardless of personal feelings.

FUNCTIONS OF LEARNING CURATION Within learning curation there are four key functional areas that function together toward the goals of learning curation: alignment with business partners, active research, marketing/branding, and packaging.

Understanding and coordinating these four areas assures learning curation teams will successfully meet their goals.

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The fifth area, information architecture, is a specialization outside the scope of learning curation; however, learning curators need to stay in alignment and can play a role in related initiatives.

Alignment with Business Partners:

Identify and strategically align business groups in the organization around key business and learning goals. This allows proactive and targeted learning curation. The curator acts as a living representative of both internal and external knowledge available for the business unit, and their relationships internally drive their work. Curators know intimate details of business operations and strategies that are not available to outside agencies.

Alignment to the business units allows for curators to predict coming needs.

Given time to interact with multiple business units in a company helps to de-silo information and increases the value of knowledge available across business units as the learning curator begins to identify gaps and pre-existing resources across units. Just as they entered multidisciplinary, as a learning curator grows they also become internally multidisciplinary within their organization.

Active Research:

Information is the heart of learning curation. Learning curators are always interacting with information, increasing their knowledge and developing greater insights as they work.

To be viable, information must be up-todate and often up-to-day. Cutting-edge companies do not run on month-old information. Curators handle the influx of information remaining up-to-day and getting information to those who need it. Software supports these efforts and targeted materials are created and distributed. It is this active research that becomes the crux, allowing the learning curator to successfully complete their other duties.

Marketing/Branding:

Learning curation produces many types of materials. Each of these are used to enhance brand recognition for your L&D department.

When Priya receives her report explaining

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ADAPTABILITY, FLEXIBILITY AND CREATIVITY IN THE APPLICATION OF SKILLS LEADS TO BETTER OUTCOMES.

options for her training solutions, the feeling of relief and appreciation is projected onto the L&D brand. The appreciation generated by learning curation efforts means that L&D departments have goodwill ambassadors to the rest of the organization. Products such as branded newsletters help to elevate the profile of the L&D department, while including links to relevant trainings can drive throughput to trainings in the current portfolio.

Marketing and branding learning curation materials take advantage of this goodwill to enhance the visibility and perception of the L&D department.

This can be both formal and informal.

For instance, Sarah is attending a health fair and finds the learning curation team presenting on health trainings available in the LMS. Sarah discusses stress management training and talks about a certification in project management and not knowing where to start. The curators realize this is stressful for Sarah and a curator walks Sarah through the online certification track. Sarah is thankful and tells her coworkers about her positive experience with the L&D department.

Packaging: Materials must be shipped to

be useful, and this is where packaging comes into play. Learning curators create requested products from the content they have uncovered, and at other times they choose the best method of delivery.

They consider strategic alignment, business alignment, user consideration, and the content to be delivered to create the right package. Newsletters, podcasts, articles, microlearning, brief videos and reports all play roles in transmitting information. Multidisciplinary learning

curation teams leverage the diverse strengths of each team member to create a wider packaging portfolio.

Information Architecture:

All curation encompasses some amount of content management, and learning curators need to remain in alignment with content management and IA strategies.

Information architecture (IA) is a specialized and complex discipline, and it is unlikely that a learning curation team will tackle a full information architecture drive without engaging a separate IA specialist; however, learning curators can play a supporting role.

Their role gives them knowledge of their businesses systems and terminology allowing them to greatly contribute to metadata strategies, support with content management, and to help in research and coordination of content management efforts.

SO, WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION? Leverage your learning curation team in a multidisciplinary fashion. Encourage curators to cross-train and develop complimentary skills. When assembling a new team, look for key traits and diverse skillsets. Finally, make use of the team’s broad perspective to drive innovation and solve for corporate pain points in knowledge systems.

Robert H. Schneider, M.S., LPC, CPTM, is a learning curator in the telecomm industry with a background in history, training, psychology, and research. Special thanks to learning curators Jill Little Bear and Colin Ridge. Email Robert.

The Creation and Evolution of the Chief Learning Officer Role: Perspectives from the First CLO

By Jasmine Martirossian, Ph.D.

The concept of CLO has long roots in finance, with CLO standing for “collateralized loan obligation.” However, CLO standing for “chief learning officer” and as a member of the C-suite is a relatively new concept and role. GE was the first company that pioneered this role and created the title in 1994 when Steve Kerr stepped into that position.

Wanting to know exactly how this role originated, I thought what better way to do that than to speak with Steve Kerr himself, who is now a frequent keynote speaker and an international management consultant.

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The Creation of the CLO Role In 1989, GE had launched its famous “Work-Outs,” and that’s when Steve Kerr met Jack Welch, the legendary CEO of GE. At the time, Kerr was the dean of faculty at the University of Southern California business school.

This partnership led to transformational initiatives whereby they ripped out the old-fashioned passive suggestion system at GE, replacing it with a call to ongoing improvements with a slogan of “Finding a Better Way Every Day.” This undertaking started as a drive to change the GE culture in 1989. It took five years before it led to the creation of the CLO role.

Serving as a long-term consultant for GE, and to Jack Welch, Welch offered Kerr a full-time position running the leadership development function.

Even before title discussions emerged, Kerr started exploring how to craft this role to maximize its relevance to the organization (note that while GE did have a leadership development function previously, it did not have a CLO role at the time).

Kerr started asking himself and other leadership team members what he should start doing, stop doing and keep doing. As the discussions progressed, his colleagues suggested that Kerr should have a title that reflected the nature of what he was doing, so “chief education

officer” made sense. In our acronymheavy corporate world, this would make Steve Kerr the CEO.

key considerations in how the CLO title came to life, with emphasis on “learning” as an active undertaking.

When Kerr shared the chief education officer title with Jack Welch, the latter promptly responded that “One is the right number for CEO at GE.” Furthermore, Welch observed that “education” was a noun, and by its nature it made it a passive statement. And Welch wanted to drive change.

When Steve Kerr became the first CLO in the world, there was no proper job description, and no precedent. It was both exciting yet scary at the same time.

It was also history-making.

They discussed the position in the context of the CIO (chief information officer) and the relationship the two roles would have. So, enticing action, driving change, and ensuring GE became an evolving and learning organization were

As Steve Kerr discussed the corporate landscape where this new role was created, it became obvious that this was not an accident, but rather the alignment of key business factors and leadership insights that led to the

Moving Information Across the Business

creation of the CLO role. Kerr said that Jack Welch emphasized the importance to GE of being known as an integrated company. Welch noted that the average conglomerate or holding company was typically valued at 15 to 19 times earnings, while GE was valued at 28 times earnings. Welch remarked that “nobody could believe you could be that big and be truly integrated.” Being that big and integrated translated into billions of dollars of additional market capitalization for GE. An integrated company moves money and people, as well as ideas and information across boundaries. Kerr recalls that Jack Welch told him, “Your job should be to move information from

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outside in, from one business to another, and from one region to another. Make sure information is applicable, make sure it is portable, and make sure it is useful.”

Welch, in his own words, did not want to have “thugs and idiots” around at GE. “Thugs are selfish people who won’t share information and idiots can’t share information, but we don’t have many thugs and idiots at GE,” said Welch. “So why is it that our people don’t share information? Is it politics, is it the organizational structure?” This is how Welch arrived at the following mandate for Kerr, GE’s new CLO: “Identify why people don’t share information and fix that, that is your job.”

Steve Kerr is candid when he explains that at the outset he “did not have a particular plan, and took advantage of the tailwinds that were underway.” Kerr’s openness to evaluating the GE cultural landscape without a constricting plan may have facilitated his success.

With his academic background, Steve Kerr knew the fundamental psychology principle that Ability x Motivation = Performance, and realized that he needed to enhance both ability and motivation for people to start moving information across GE.

Removing Barriers to Motivation To motivate people, Kerr’s team identified some of the barriers to motivation.

Key to this was how information was viewed. If you think of information as valuable currency, then how you deal with that currency presents an entirely new perspective. If hoarding currency by not sharing it with others is viewed as stealing from the organization, then it’s a game changer. This is precisely what Jack Welch engineered to remove the barriers to motivation.

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The approach became “You get rewarded for sharing information and you get punished for stealing information,” says Kerr. “If you have valuable information that can be beneficial to others and you don’t tell others about it, then you can be fired.”

If you think of information as valuable currency, then how you deal with that currency presents an entirely new perspective.

Jack Welch became an ardent advocate and supporter of information sharing across GE. On his visits to the far-flung divisions of GE, when a local GE business leader bragged to Welch about how they were particularly successful in using a certain approach, Welch would ask, “Who else is using this?” And if it turned out that a best practice had not been shared, people were at risk of being fired. This drove behavioral change and reinforced the importance of sharing information and best practices across GE boundaries.

The CLO office at GE also instituted a 911 system to promote people seeking either to locate the best information to help solve their business challenges or to share their own best practices with others in the company. Kerr says, “You may have a great way to do something, but how do you know it’s the best way of doing it in GE? So that people knew if it was the best way, we set up a system called 911. If you think you have a great idea, you call 911 and share, and if you think you need a good idea, you call 911 for help.”

The new CLO’s office took a multipronged approach to driving organizational change at GE. Specifically, they enticed people to seek out the best information, and to facilitate finding it and efficiently sharing what they have. This 911 system enabled GE to match up the need with the opportunity.

People started sharing that they had a new exciting management training program, or that they had an effective order remittance system, or that they had a new breakthrough while developing a new product and introduced a new process.

Driving Behavioral Change It wasn’t just the 911 system that helped drive this cultural change. Kerr worked on driving behavioral change at different levels, and numerous Work-Outs were held for this purpose.

Kerr held many training sessions, and to emphasize the importance of learning, he held the training sessions off-site.

First, they would go for day-long sessions in hotels, then the teams would be taken off-site for half-day sessions. Over time, once the behavior had become more culturally ingrained, those workouts migrated back to the office, attaching themselves to regularly scheduled meetings or lunchtime pizza parties. This happened when information sharing had become part of the fabric of GE culture.

Kerr and the CLO office created a new framework, which ensured that people would continue sharing their best practices. Steve and his team further cemented the information sharing culture by turning best practice sharing into an honorable undertaking.

It became a badge of honor for those whose shared information benefited the organization and got face time with the senior GE leaders,

It is essential to every CLO’s success to have a fundamental belief that knowledge is portable.

Steve Kerr

which was a powerful incentive to keep sharing the information.

This new information and best practice sharing culture at GE helped drive innovation. For example, GE Medical was making pacemakers, so they built quality control systems to test them remotely.

They adapted this technology to apply to jet engines. They then applied this idea of remote testing to power packs that GE manufactures for nuclear submarines. That’s quite a journey for a single idea to find application from tiny individual pacemakers to jet engines to nuclear submarines, showing the power of information sharing.

Kerr looked to drive his own team’s continuous learning as well. They looked to the Japanese whose economy was booming at the time and were inspired to implement the Japanese approach to building learning organizations (notably, the concept had been developed by Americans, but it was the Japanese companies like Toyota Corporation that implemented it broadly first).

GE’s historically high value on the power of training its employees played a key role in pioneering the CLO role and title.

“Jack had us convinced that knowledge is portable,” says Kerr. And developing

While the duties may have changed, the challenges facing modern CLOs remain the same.

the CLO role. “Many people have kept the title but seem to have very different duties and responsibilities than I did,” says Kerr.

While the duties may have changed, the challenges facing modern CLOs remain the same. “I don’t think that the basic challenges and opportunities have changed much,” says Steve. In his view, “The cyberthreats are key these days.

I would have the CLO and CIO work very closely these days. I would look at crowdsourcing as a CLO tool. And it is essential to every CLO’s success to have a fundamental belief that knowledge is portable.”

the role of CLO proved the veracity of that conviction. Unequivocally, Kerr drove major cultural change at GE over his seven-year tenure as CLO, leaving in 2001 when Jack Welch retired.

As a CLO or learning professional, do you believe that your position’s key objective is to ensure the portability of ideas? If you do, then you are walking in Steve Kerr’s footsteps.

The CLO Role Evolution

Jasmine Martirossian, PhD, is the vice president of marketing at TTA, where she is responsible for all areas and aspects of marketing from strategy to implementation.

Email Jasmine.

In the pre-internet era everybody was copying things that GE did. Naturally, this helped spread the popularity of

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The Upside Opportunity of Organizational Transformation for L&D

By Brian Blecke and Kelly Smith

To

grow, remain relevant, improve a dire situation, or for any number of other competitive reasons, organizational leaders often decide the best course of action is to transform their organization. Some transformations are sweeping, impacting most facets of the enterprise, while some are narrowly focused, affecting only a small portion of the organization. Transformations carry risk to the organization, and L&D can take actions to reduce that risk.

What is a transformation?

When applied to organizations, the definition of transformation varies, leaving room for differences to emerge.

One way to define a transformation is by a category or type. For example, digital transformation can be defined as the “use of new digital technologies (social media, mobile, analytics or embedded devices) to enable major business improvements (such as enhancing customer experience, streamlining operations or creating new business models).” Other types of transformations include changes driven by total quality management, re-engineering, lean operations, customer experience, bimodal IT, and others, with the ultimate aim of improving the business.

According to Scott D. Anthony, the word transformation can confuse three different categories of effort. One level being operational (or doing what you are doing better, faster, or cheaper) which may be less invasive, carrying a lower organizational impact, than changes to the operational model (doing what you are doing in a fundamentally different way), which is less risky than strategic, which may change the very essence of the enterprise.

Transformations will continue to create a complex, fast-evolving and turbulent world for L&D teams – and there are no signs of that stopping.

Deloitte offers a more strategic and expansive option in their report, “Thinking Big with Business Transformation: Six Keys to Unlocking Breakthrough Value,” in which they define transformation as an “opportunity to define a bold ambition that goes beyond

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incremental change – the opportunity to rethink the business and operating models to deliver breakthrough value.”

However, this is an opportunity to evaluate and refresh relationships and understand the organization in a new light.

In our experience, transformation can be, and often is, a mixed bag of ideas, goals, methods, and tactics. A common theme we see is that transformations are meant to change or improve the organization in some valuable way.

Transformation can also change the mix of stakeholders, whose ideas and influence challenge the status quo, refocuses the organization on new goals, accelerates the velocity of change,

Transformations are not a new phenomenon Organizations have served their competitive instincts and made strategic decisions to pivot and transform for as long as there have been businesses.

New drivers that push organizations to transform may emerge (e.g., digital transformation is the rage today, much like total quality management was in the past), but evidence and observations suggest the primary competitive, financial, and market motivations to transform remain roughly constant.

Transformations are common KPMG’s 2016 Global Transformation Study says 96 percent of organizations studied were in some phase of transformation, and nearly half had completed at least one transformation in the preceding 24 months.

According to the research by Hausberg, digital transformations are occurring in finance, marketing, manufacturing, supply chain, and other arenas. In short, these major changes can be found worldwide and within all industries.

Transformations will continue to create a complex, fast-evolving and turbulent world for L&D teams – and there are no signs of that stopping. Here are several ideas to help L&D find the upside.

Align to new stakeholders, business goals and expectations Even in a steady-state organization, aligning to business goals can be a challenge. Transformation can up the ante.

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L&D can help the organization predict and define where the change to work, knowledge and skill requirements and simultaneously the benefit to the transformation will be greatest.

introduces new processes, reconfigures functions, redefines how work is done, and may make a host of other changes – and along the way, compel L&D to reset its understanding of priorities, tradeoffs, decision making and the political landscape. In response, L&D may need to assert itself in different or new ways.

As a transformation unfolds, L&D needs to engage leadership, re-evaluate relationships with existing stakeholders to determine their relevance or influence, and sort out whether their goals have changed. Concentrate attention on those who remain relevant – deepen your understanding of their goals and motivations. See the transformation through their eyes.

Take time to identify and meet each new stakeholder, discuss their goals and how they view the transformation, understand their influence and role in decision making, and then develop an approach to work with each stakeholder.

Not all stakeholders will have the same point of view (or goals), so track the

relationships, develop an influence map with a game plan for working with each stakeholder – adapt tools your sales team uses to map and manage clientside stakeholders, buyers and decision makers. It’s not exactly the same thing, but it’s close enough.

Transformation creates a state of motion, and based on research findings and experience, organizations are likely to remain in a state of motion. Recognize that alignment – and stakeholder engagement – is likely to improve when L&D’s approach is adaptable and ongoing rather than rigid and infrequent.

Identify how the new state affects impacted roles Because transformations aren’t uniform in purpose, size or complexity, they often unevenly impact parts of the organization. Talk about the scale, scope, and complexity with the stakeholders. They often have a good sense of where the impacts will be felt.

From there, L&D has an opportunity to help the organization zero in on the highest impact areas and roles.

Introducing a performance consulting capability to the transformation can help the organization predict and define where the change to work, knowledge and skill requirements and simultaneously the benefit to the transformation will be greatest.

This sort of role-targeted, performancefocused approach is often what stakeholders want to see – in part because they recognize the direct connection between the approach, the outcome, and the value to their cause.

Determine the performance gap(s) – in business language Backed by a solid understanding of the stakeholder goals, and knowledge of the roles or areas that need the most attention, L&D has the opportunity to demonstrate its ability to understand and respond to gaps between current and future role requirements. Again, engage a performance consulting

Even under the best of circumstances, transformations often temporarily lower overall employee productivity.

By focusing on employee performance, L&D can help minimize the duration and severity of the dip in productivity.

capability to describe the gap in business terms. Developing a business-friendly definition encourages stakeholders and subject matter experts to engage more freely, in their own language, using their expressions. Working with top performers and subject matter experts who can envision the future state and compare it to the current state will aid in defining the gap.

L&D can help the business see that because transformations often introduce new performance, knowledge and skill requirements. Employees may find the value of their existing patterns of practice, short-cuts, etc. diminished, with an outsized effect on top performers, pushing them backward toward conscious incompetence.

Even under the best of circumstances, transformations often temporarily lower overall employee productivity.

By focusing on employee performance, L&D can help minimize the duration and severity of the dip in productivity.

Determine how training (and non-training) interventions can be used Not everything in a transformation requires a training response. Training can be an expensive option – and because people are prone to slip backward toward old habits – it can often fall

short of expectations without proper attention to all aspects of performance.

We encourage a few guiding principles: • Keep it simple. When a job-aid is sufficient, use a job aid.

• Address the system of performance, management support and coaching, feedback, alignment of expectations and consequences, etc.

• Let the performance requirements guide training decisions about modality, how content is organized and sequenced, duration of modules, etc.

• Lean heavily on research-based instructional methods that have a track record of proven outcomes.

Give only sparing consideration to unproven, experimental approaches.

• When a non-training issue arises, partner with other functions to put the issue in the proper organizational location.

Facts matter: Understand how the business will measure success An important part of the conversation with each stakeholder and the group of stakeholders involves data and how success will be measured. It’ll take some effort but work with the stakeholders to unpack the transformation-level measures to reveal those at the L&D level – said another way, where the impact of L&D’s efforts will be measurable. To lock it all together, create a bright-line connection between the future state work, knowledge and skill requirements and the business measures.

This represents an opportunity for L&D to shift its thinking and approach and offer the business a different or new perspective. L&D can help the organization align and integrate the data L&D can provide with the metrics business stakeholders care about. This kind of integration can be a challenge, and the challenge can be compounded when a transformation simultaneously

introduces new data and measurement requirements, pushing both the business and L&D outside existing data and environments.

In addition to using sound methods to measure knowledge acquisition and application, L&D can work with the business to find different or new ways to measure impact or ROI; an outcome that will resonate well with business stakeholders. It goes without saying that budget constraints will often limit data collection and analysis efforts.

By developing an internal capability for data analytics or partnering with internal IT resources, L&D puts itself in a position to step forward and guide the process with the stakeholders.

Emerging and new technologies enable more sophisticated data collection and data analyses. However, just because some things can be measured, doesn’t mean that they ought to be, or that the measurements themselves are valuable. Work with the stakeholders to make the best use of existing data, or when that isn’t a viable option, work with them to determine what data will meet their needs and help them answer relevant questions.

Conclusion Business transformation has been a useful tool for leaders, and it is likely that transformations will continue and perhaps even accelerate. By creating methods for ongoing alignment, developing deep understanding of changes in work, knowledge and skill requirements, choosing highly effective training solutions and developing data to answer measurement questions, L&D will be indispensable to the transformation process.

Brian Blecke and Kelly Smith are founding partners and performance consultants at Actio Learning. With 25 years’ experience, they are passionate about helping organizations design and deliver innovative learning and performance improvement solutions to address workforce challenges.

Email Brian and Kelly.

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Is Your Organization Ready for the Future of Virtual Training?

By Cindy Huggett, CPLP

Was your organization an early adopter of virtual training, using it in the late 90s or early 2000s? Or have you just recently discovered it, and are just getting started? Wherever you are on the continuum of moving to the virtual classroom, you are likely asking the same questions: What’s new in virtual training? Where is it going next? What do we need to do to prepare?

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While virtual training has been around for 20 years, it’s still new to many organizations and it’s still growing in popularity as a viable delivery method. The recently released Global Synchronous E-learning Market Report 2018 estimates the current global virtual training market at $382 million with anticipated growth to $490 million over the next 5 years. This rapid growth projection parallels the expected continued drop in formal classroom programs. Over the past 10 years, research indicates that traditional classroom offerings have decreased from 70 percent to 49 percent, while virtual classes have increased to approximately 10 percent of all formal training programs.

A skilled virtual facilitator will foster a highly social learning experience for all attendees.

There are three main trends influencing this shift to the virtual classroom, and three takeaways that every organization should make when looking to the future.

Let’s consider each one in turn.

1

Trend: Remote Workforce Takeaway: Create Collaboration Opportunities

A dispersed workforce is increasingly more common. “Have Wi-Fi, can connect” is the sentiment of many organizations and employees alike. A 2017 Gallup report discovered that 43 percent of U.S. employees work remotely. And research company IDC forecasts that by

2020, virtual workers will account for 72 percent of the U.S. workforce. In addition, Switzerland-based organization IWG reports that more than two-thirds of people around the world telecommute (another way of saying remote working) at least one day per week, with over half working remotely two or more days.

These remote employees need training, too. Fortunately, virtual training provides organizations with a way to reach a geographically dispersed audience. In fact, research on virtual classrooms suggests that “expanding the reach of training programs” is the top reason organizations implement virtual training.

When done well, virtual classes create collaboration opportunities among dispersed participants. A skilled facilitator will foster a highly social learning experience for all attendees.

They will use the virtual classroom features, including chat, whiteboarding and breakouts for both learning and to build relationships. For example, skilled virtual facilitators allow participants to use collaboration tools for conversation and discussion. The more a virtual facilitator can build relationships during an online class, the more participants will connect to one another and to the learning content.

2

Trend: Mobile Devices Takeaway: Create a Device Strategy

Mobile devices seem to be everywhere, and research supports this fact. Google recently reported that mobile users outnumber desktop users nearly 2:1.

Pew Internet research says that over 95 percent of Americans have a cell phone, with 77 percent of them being smartphones. People use devices for everything: work, communication, shopping, and entertainment. They

DEFINING VIRTUAL TRAINING Just because it’s online, doesn’t mean its virtual training. Live online events span from virtual meetings to presentationstyle webcasts. To be clear, virtual training is a facilitator-led, live online learning event. Participants are geographically dispersed and individually connected.

They each have their own computer or another device, and rarely would they be in the same room as any other participant. Furthermore, virtual training is synchronous, meaning that participants are connected at the same time as the facilitator. It has defined learning objectives, with the goal of achieving results and behavior change back on the job. Finally, virtual training events use a robust online classroom platform with tools and features that allow for highly-interactive live online learning. also use them in virtual training classes.

However, the increased usage of mobile devices has a far-reaching impact on virtual training, in more ways than one.

Not surprisingly, participants are becoming more likely to use their mobile devices to connect to virtual training events. In most cases, this means they will download and connect using the virtual classroom platform’s app. Yet, unfortunately, many mobile apps simply do not support the robust features available on the corresponding desktop version. So, a mobile device participant is often unable to fully participate in the virtual class. This might not matter if it’s a lecture-based presentation, but it makes a huge difference in an interactive online learning event.

Therefore, organizations need to create a working strategy for how to handle participants who connect to virtual classes by mobile devices. If the platform’s mobile app supports all features as found in its desktop version,

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Figure 1. Curriculum Sample

Part 1: Program Kickoff (30-minute online event)

Part 2: Assignment to Read Workbook and Watch Video

Part 3: Live Event with Facilitator (45 minutes skill building and practice)

(30 minutes self-directed)

then no action is needed. However, if the mobile app functionality differs, then one of three strategies should be implemented: • Option 1: Ban mobile devices as the participant’s connection to the virtual classroom. To do this, educate participants that for this virtual class, they must use a laptop or desktop computer. Be sure to let them know why it’s important.

SUCCESSFUL VIRTUAL TRAINING The most successful virtual training programs have three components: • Interactive design • Engaging facilitators • Prepared participants Ignoring any of these three factors will lead to less-than-desirable results.

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• Option 2: Allow participants to choose how they connect: using a mobile app or a desktop version. To do this, educate facilitators on the virtual classroom tools in both versions, so that they can confidently provide instruction in a mixed environment.

• Option 3: Allow (and encourage) participants to connect via a mobile device. To do this, educate managers and other key stakeholders on the nuts and bolts of your virtual training initiative. For example, design the program so that it only uses platform tools that are available in both the mobile and desktop app. Ensure participants know that they are attending a virtual class and their environment should be conducive to concentration and learning. Let managers know to expect employees looking at their devices while working, so that they can participate in the class.

There’s not one “best” strategy, because that will depend upon factors such as the available technology, the content,

the participants, and the feasibility of each option in your organization. What’s important is that your organization gives this trend some thought and consideration.

3

Trend: Microbursts Takeaway: Create Small Learning Chunks

The trend toward shorter training programs began years ago. Most trainers will agree when asked if they have been asked to deliver training in more concise formats. This same trend is occurring with virtual classes. Last year, my virtual training research study of 330 global training professionals revealed that the most common virtual class length is only 60 minutes, which is shorter than the 90 minutes reported in the eLearning Guild’s 2012 study.

The idea of shorter virtual training programs is actually a good thing. They help participants avoid the cognitive overload that can happen in many long classes. They also lead to better on-the-

Part 4: Practice in Workplace

Part 5: Live Event with Facilitator

(45-minute activity)

(45 minutes skill building and practice)

job results because participants can get to practicing new skills faster. My own term for this virtual learning trend is a “microburst,” which simply means small content chunks. In other words, when a traditional class moves online, it translates to a blended curriculum comprised of small microbursts of learning.

design. Care should be taken when moving traditional classes to the online classroom so that they still achieve the desired learning outcomes. Moving your classroom programs online changes the delivery methods, but it doesn’t change the desired results. It’s still important for participants to learn and apply the new skills. Figure 1 shows what a virtual program with several smaller microbursts might look like.

The move to virtual training is not really about the technologyit’s a timely response to your learners.

What does this trend mean for organizations moving to the virtual classroom?

It emphasizes the importance of thoughtful program

Think of this design like toy building blocks that can be pulled apart and put together in different ways. You can chunk the curriculum into topics and then design it in ways that make the most sense to your participants and their learning needs. For example, the sample curriculum could take place over the course of one day, with breaks inbetween each item. Or, the live events could take place once per day for three days, or even once per week over three weeks. It’s flexible by design.

In addition, virtual classes that last longer than 60 minutes typically include breaks, just like a traditional in-

person class. Be sure your facilitators are aware of this best practice and are able to follow it.

Summary As your organization looks to the future, the key to remember is that underneath all of these trends, the move to virtual training is not really about the technology. On the surface it might seem that way – a technology initiative – but instead it should be a timely response to what your participants want and need for learning. Yes, there is a need to upskill instructional designers and virtual facilitators on the platform. Yes, there will be technology investments.

But the most successful organizations are the ones that encourage discussion, conversation, and engagement in the virtual classroom, so that participants can learn.

Cindy Huggett, CPLP, helps organizations and training professionals move to the virtual classroom. Email Cindy.

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CASEBOOK

TRANSFORMING A MULTIPLAYER CLASSROOM GAME FOR THE DIGITAL WORLD

BY LAURA AGOSTINO AND JENNIFER HALL

At Nielsen, a global measurement and data analytics company with operations in over 100 countries, offering learning opportunities both in-classroom and virtual is key for our career development and client service improvement objectives.

Being true believers that training needs to be fresh and innovative, we wanted to test out gamification, a tool to design behaviors, develop skills and enable innovation, for one module in our key management courses. Gamification allowed us to mirror the complexities of organizational structure and siloed working practices to develop the skills managers need to work in a matrixed organization. However, to bring this experiential and rewarding gamified learning to life for our remote managers, we needed to find a way to deploy it beyond the classroom to our entire global audience.

We reached out to FutureFactory, who had designed the in-classroom game, to ask about the possibility of creating a virtual version. While the vendor specialized only in classroom gaming products without near-term plans for

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a virtual version, they were intrigued with the concept of transforming the classroom game into a digital setting.

And so, we decided to team up to recreate

GAMIFICATION ALLOWED US TO MIRROR THE COMPLEXITIES OF ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE AND SILOED WORKING PRACTICES TO DEVELOP THE SKILLS MANAGERS NEED TO WORK IN A MATRIXED ORGANIZATION.

the experience. But could we use what we currently know about developing a course for remote associates to create a gamified experience for remote associates?

While we are currently in our testing phase, we have been able to create a

real-time virtual game that will teach managers the leadership and strategy skills to work in a matrixed organization.

Throughout this process, we’ve identified a few pointers that will help other companies bring the gamification idea to life, some of which we did well, and others that allowed us to learn and improve the experience.

SIX CONSIDERATIONS FOR TRANSFORMING INCLASSROOM GAMES TO A DIGITAL SETTING Three things we did well 1. Partner up: Working with vendors provides the benefits of rapid completion rates and cost-effectiveness.

Instead of abandoning good ideas or adjusting expectations to what vendors can offer, take a leap by proposing a partnership. Sometimes you just need to take a chance.

2. Measure, measure, measure: Gamification expert Karl Kapp recommends not only defining the desired goals but also ensuring “You

are legitimately moving the needle on business needs and not just using gamification as a crutch to support content that is meaningless to the organization or individual.” In order to ensure our online game drove our business priorities and performance improvement, we outlined key performance indicators to be observed by the facilitator during the game.

After the game is played, the facilitator provides a debrief to capture game play strategy, whether a leader emerged and how the team managed time and communication levels with all players with the goal of on-the-job application.

3. Keep it simple: When we initially set out to locate a classroom game that drove the goals of a matrixed environment, simplicity and learning outcomes were key. Naturally, we needed to keep these components top of mind for our virtual game. Complexity can find its way in through animations, graphics and technology, so we purposely set out to develop a game that would eliminate needless game play for show. We kept both the design and technology simple and put more energy into ensuring that player actions were clearly linked to an outcome.

Three things we learned along the way: 4. Map out the story: After diving into development, we realized the importance of fleshing out player actions. We learned that you need to create a process map that will visually outline all steps and decisions essential for successful game development.

1

2

Create a Partnership

The process map should include the possible choices a player can make and all resulting consequences. It should capture some expected dependencies and allow room to capture the impact of unexpected issues. Developing the process map provides a very clear vision of the tasks and steps required, which can then be properly documented in the project timeline and wireframes.

5. You can’t do it all: While some obstacles were based on task dependencies, others were based on our lack of digital expertise. Technology offers a number of ways to do anything and everything. With the number of

SOMETIMES YOU JUST NEED TO TAKE A CHANCE.

roadblocks we hit, we realized that we required the help of a seasoned game developer. Thankfully, we were able to locate two subject matter experts, who provided clear direction for our technology needs. Unfortunately, we did lose substantial development time due to the many pauses taken with each roadblock.

6. Test, test, test: Throughout our project we followed an agile approach by developing and testing one functionality at a time. By dividing the

3

Measure, measure, measure

Keep it simple

4

project into small incremental builds, we were able to perform daily tests and immediately address any issues. We assembled a group to test the game after each milestone we reached. Our testing process was working well, but recreating some issues found during testing proved to be a challenge. This ad-hoc testing approach served well to find the bugs, but without a formal testing process, we struggled to recreate the scenarios. Next time, we will build a test case, a set of step-by-step instructions to verify that each element behaves as it should, and implement it before the ad-hoc test. This would have allowed us to capture many of the bugs that originally came up from our ad-hoc testing.

THE OUTCOME Our test teams have demonstrated high game-play engagement, equal learning outcomes as that of the live game and positive feedback. The result has been a rewarding experience for all members involved in transforming a multiplayer classroom game for the digital world.

Laura Agostino is the learning lead at Nielsen, where she is responsible for the design and execution for global programs offered to more than 45,000 employees around the world. Jennifer Hall is a manager of talent engagement and development at Nielsen. She has spent over 20 years creating learning experiences for associates. Email the authors.

5

Map Out the Story

6

You Can’t Do It All

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Test, Test, Test

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G L O B A L O U T LO O K

BUSINESS NOT GROWING? BLAME SKILLS GAPS. THEN BLAME YOUR ORGANIZATION.

BY ZANE SCHWEER

Disruption. Did you wince with frustration or did you grin with confidence at the word “disruption”? It likely depends on how you’ve responded to the latest disruption—the digital revolution.

Companies that realize businesschanging technology has been democratized are continuing to invest in technology like never before, disrupting their own organization from within, and ferociously pursuing and developing intellectual property. As a result, they’re reaping the benefits of tremendous growth. Meanwhile, companies that have become too comfortable or too slow to change are seeing their growth shrivel, and some have closed their doors all together.

Economic growth does not come out of thin air. People have to “do something.”

But too many organizations are waffling on what “something” is because they don’t have the skills and knowledge to attack challenges head on. And that’s led us to where we are now—a global skills gaps epidemic in the area that provides the greatest opportunities and risks to an organization’s success—information technology.

IT SKILLS GAPS ARE SELF-INFLICTED WOUNDS In one of the largest global surveys of IT professionals focused on skills, certifications and professional development, the 2018 IT Skills and Salary Report revealed that 70 percent of IT decision-makers said their teams presently face a shortage of necessary skills. Of the 30 percent who are not

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currently facing a skills gap, 25 percent expect one to form in the next 12 to 24 months.

31 percent to 70 percent around the world (and rising to 75 percent in North America).

IT analyst Cushing Anderson, of research firm IDC, said that he estimated that as of 2018, “more than 70 percent of all organizations have adjusted project plans, delayed product or service releases or lost revenue from lack of IT skills, resulting in more than $200 billion of lost revenue annually worldwide, and both the percentage and the lost revenue will increase through 2020.”

THE TOP FIVE IMPACTS OF SKILLS GAPS ON ORGANIZATIONS

REDUCTIONS IN TRAINING BUDGETS HAVE INCREASED SKILLS GAPS, DECREASED ECONOMIC GROWTH AND IS KILLING BOTTOM LINES AROUND THE WORLD.

UNDERFUNDED TRAINING BUDGETS AND THE RISE OF SKILLS GAPS HAVE SHOWN THE VALUE OF TRAINING IN IT For the past four years, the number one explanation for IT skills gaps has been “we have not invested enough in training to develop the skills we need.” Simultaneously, we’ve seen the largest jump in skills gaps, going from

1. Increased stress on existing employees 2. Difficulty meeting quality objectives 3. Delays in developing new products or services 4. Delayed deployments of new hardware and/or software 5. Declining customer satisfaction All of these impact the top and bottom lines of an organization, and lack longterm sustainability. Behind each of these are people—that’s why they are the heart of your organization. If you don’t care for your heart, it will not take care of you.

GROWTH STALLS WHEN CHANGE OCCURS AND SKILLS DEVELOPMENT DOES NOT Training budgets need to be viewed as a strategic advantage for organizations, which requires investment. Research has found that training expenditures between 2016 and 2017 skyrocketed from $70.6 billion to $90.6 billion—a 32.5% increase. Organizations are catching on. According to an IDC report, IT training spending is growing at a rate slower than the overall IT market.

Today’s operating environments are more complicated than ever, so

even one change can be felt across the organization. At the same time, businesses need to be able to react, adopt and embrace change.

Nimble organizations have more flexibility to pursue technology changes and can push the success across the organization or “fail fast.” But for larger organizations, it’s more complicated.

Pursuing marginal gains are a less risky and more stable approach as they try to turn the ship. However, marginal gains are not an excuse for moving slowly when seeking growth.

In a Harvard Business Review article, author Michael Mankins discusses the strategic differences between productivity and efficiency, and how it affects businesses “starved for growth.”

Mankins believes leaders should be focusing on increasing outputs by “removing obstacles to productivity, deploying talent strategically, and inspiring a larger percentage of their workforce.” Training accomplishes that.

Skills development through training provides the knowledge, skills and abilities to eliminate obstacles hindering productivity and finding innovative ways to overcome challenges. The global IT Skills and Salary Report also found that training increases job satisfaction; employees who trained in the past year were 30 percent more satisfied in their roles compared to those who didn’t train.

Also, nearly 70 percent of unsatisfied employees look for another job within 12 months. Losing employees not only affects morale and productivity, but you lose tribal knowledge only learned from working at a company.

TRAIN EMPLOYEES FOR A SPECIFIC PURPOSE AND OUTCOME The HAYS Global Skills Index highlights that with new technology comes new questions, one of them being who will do the work? The disruptive digital economy takes no prisoners with organizations that do not pursue the right people with the right skills. So how do you find the right people with the right skills while keeping an eye on the bottom line?

YOUR BOTTOM LINE AND FINDING THE RIGHT PEOPLE WITH THE RIGHT SKILLS When top-line growth falters, the bottom line receives an eagle-eyed focus, which can make it difficult to infuse new skills into the organization. Fortunately, the best way to introduce new skills is also the most holistically bottom-line friendly and what IT decision-makers prefer.

There are three ways to infuse skills into an organization: build, buy or rent.

THE DISRUPTIVE DIGITAL ECONOMY TAKES NO PRISONERS WITH ORGANIZATIONS THAT DO NOT PURSUE THE RIGHT PEOPLE WITH THE RIGHT SKILLS.

IT decision-makers prefer to build.

According to the report, 62 percent prefer to train existing staff, 16 percent prefer to hire staff with the appropriate skills, and 16 percent prefer to rent the skills (aka hire a contractor). Yet, when the training budget is miniscule, you’re in a tough situation.

The cost of training is a fraction of the cost compared to hiring or replacing employees. Hiring is also plagued with issues—65 percent of IT decision-makers reported that hiring qualified talent is a significant issue. It is the third-largest reason behind skills gaps; businesses can’t afford to pay what candidates demand. So, hiring isn’t a quick, easy or budget-friendly solution. It’s much cheaper to train than it is to replace.

GROWING A BUSINESS MEANS CLOSING SKILLS GAPS, INVESTING IN AND DISRUPTING YOURSELF, AND HARD WORK There is not a silver bullet to closing skills gaps—you’ve got to roll up your sleeves

and get your hands dirty. You have to focus on investing in your organization and maintain an unwavering and relentless drive to develop your people.

People find new ways to seize marketing opportunities. People create intellectual property which in turn enables the creation of products and services that no one else has, and enables higher margins and higher profits.

How do companies such as Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, Intel and Johnson & Johnson continue to be so successful year after year? They are leaders in research and development spending.

Why? R&D is a contributing factor to the kind of productivity that positions you for success. Research and development also doubles as an investment in skills development.

Higher investments in R&D have shown to have strong links to improving the ability of employees to better evaluate opportunities and make decisions. By developing new ideas and finding better ways to utilize technology, you are more enabled to disrupt yourself, and disrupting yourself is critical.

TECHNOLOGY IS AN ENABLER, BUT NOT THE ENABLER In order to develop new perspectives and approaches to deal with challenges that inhibit economic growth and opportunities that give way to growth, an organization must truly embrace that people are its heart.

Technology is an enabler of growth, but it’s only as powerful as the people trained to use it. The greatest enabler is an organization’s leadership building a culture that is committed to investing in its people because they know the more talented they are, the more likely success is to follow. If you want economic growth, invest in your people.

Zane Schweer works at Global Knowledge and leads its yearly IT Skills and Salary Survey and Report, which focuses on IT skills, certifications and professional development.

Email Zane.

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Insights. On Demand.

TRAINING INDUSTRY WEBINARS

WE PROVIDE THE ACCESS, YOU GAIN THE INSIGHTS.

From exposure to fresh perspectives and approaches from some of the world’s greatest mentors, like Allen Mulally and Marshall Goldsmith, to convenient continuing education credits and interactive demos on the latest learning technologies, we have everything you need to extend your professional development and improve your L&D initiatives.

Browse free webinars or on-demand presentations. www.trainingindustry.com/webinars

WHAT’S NEXT IN TECH STELLA LEE, PH.D.

THRIVING IN THE FACE OF DIGITAL DISRUPTION – STRATEGIES FOR L&D Digital disruption has been finding its way rather aggressively into the L&D space – big data learning analytics, AI-powered adaptive learning management systems, blockchains for educational credentials, VR-based compliance training, chatbot tutors, and automated assessment marking based on machine learning algorithm are just a few examples of technologies that are fueling the learning market right now.

LOOK BEYOND THE L&D SPACE AT THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION LANDSCAPE AT LARGE. As L&D professionals, how do we manage the tsunami of change that is the daily reality of workplace learning?

The ability to learn about these digital disruptions and to implement them requires agility. Here is a list of actionable suggestions for you to start cultivating an agile mindset.

BE LIFELONG LEARNERS Rapid change and disruption require us to update and refresh our knowledge continuously. As learning professionals, we ought to seek out new and diverse learning opportunities. According to the Class Central Learner Survey, 23 million new learners signed up for their first massive open online course (MOOC) in 2017, taking the total number of learners to 81 million. Aside from many online learning platforms to choose from, consider joining communities such as Meetup, subscribing to blogs, online journals, and following key trends and thought leaders on Twitter and LinkedIn. In addition, think tank organizations like the World Economic Forum often publish

emerging technology trends. In general, it is good practice to keep look beyond the L&D space at the digital transformation landscape at large.

GET FAMILIAR WITH THE TOOLS As new tools and platforms emerge, get access to them and try them out first-hand.

Many digital tools offer test modules, sandboxes and free versions for download.

Vendors are also keen on setting up demo sessions and go over product features, so leverage these options. You don’t need to be an instant expert in chatbot programming or VR creation, but it helps to have foundational knowledge of these modern technologies to think beyond the LMS box. Jane Hart at Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies maintains an up-to-date directory of learning and performance tools. It is a great place to start.

LEARN FROM OTHER DEPARTMENTS Build a community of practice beyond your own discipline by connecting and collaborating with related business units such as marketing, IT, and customer service. There is a lot to be gained by understanding how to craft an effective message from a marketing standpoint.

IT folks can decipher some of the technological terms for you when dealing with new technology such as machine learning and quantum computing, and customer service best practices can help you engage your stakeholder groups better. By learning from other units, L&D departments also can be better business partners to build capabilities and facilitating knowledge transfer within the organization.

BE PROACTIVE CHANGE AGENTS

role in change management and be strategic about change. We need to shift our mindset so it comes from a lens of change, adaptation and constant transitioning. Along with a learning strategy, a change vision needs to be created, and be part of the overarching message. Modern workplace learning is a continuous process, not a oneoff event. To prepare the business and its employees, a structured change management framework needs to be in place. L&D can really drive this process by aligning the case for change with the deployment of new learning experiences and technologies, assessing the change readiness for different types of learning, and to mitigate employee’s anxiety by offering day-to-day support and periodic check-ins. Prosci and The Association of Change Management Professionals (ACMP) are two change management organizations that can help you learn how to manage change.

Understanding how technology is transforming businesses takes awareness and deliberate effort. To thrive in the face of digital disruption, we as L&D practitioners must remain flexible in our strategies and approaches, continuously learning, building collaborations, transferring knowledge across the organization, and being at the center of change.

Dr. Stella Lee has over 20 years of experience in consulting, planning, designing, implementing, and measuring learning initiatives. Today, her focus is on large-scale learning projects including LMS evaluation and implementation, learning analytics, and artificial intelligent applications in learning.

Email Stella.

Amidst all the disruptions and changes, L&D professionals need to take an active

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LEARNER MINDSET MICHELLE EGGLESTON SCHWARTZ

RISING EXPECTATIONS

IN L&D

The race is on. Today’s fast-paced world is leading to increased expectations on just about everything – and learning and development (L&D) is not immune from this pressure. Whether it’s training professionals getting new employees to proficiency as quickly as possible or learners challenged with finding the information they need to efficiently solve a problem on the job, the pressure is real.

With the challenge of turning expectations into concrete results, how can training professionals ensure they are delivering learning solutions that hit the mark? How can they meet the unique needs of their learners and reach the goals set by the organizations they serve? Identifying key success metrics is an important first step when developing a training strategy.

L&D is becoming more integral as the speed of business increases. As the Greek lyrical poet Archilochus once said, “We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.”

Success is dependent on our training and preparation. We can’t merely set goals and expect to achieve our desired outcomes without effort. We need to roll up our sleeves and put in the work.

DEFINING SUCCESS

L&D IS BECOMING MORE INTEGRAL AS THE SPEED OF BUSINESS INCREASES. As learning professionals, we must set the bar for organizational performance and prepare employees to meet and exceed expectations. For employees to excel in the workplace, they must have training that is relevant and applicable to their roles. They must be able to practice their skills in the context of their daily workflow, and they must have access to related information at the point of need.

Learning professionals have become accustomed to wearing many hats and juggling competing priorities to ensure successful training takes place. It often feels like there’s a tradeoff to be made when it comes to competing priorities.

Choosing among price, quality and speed are challenges frequently faced by learning professionals. The scenarios are endless.

You could quickly deploy an off-the-shelf training program to avoid the cost and time to develop a personalized program, or you could focus on developing a highly personalized program that inevitably takes longer to produce but could be irrelevant when launched. Can you ever have it all?

By narrowing the scope of a project and focusing on what success looks like for the learner, training professionals can gain a deeper understanding of the components that are necessary for effective performance. If you’re not sure where to begin, start by defining success in terms of the three big variables: price, quality and speed.

• Price: What is your training budget?

Identify available resources and areas where you may need to invest.

• Quality: Define how the program will help learners improve their performance and what features will enhance or inhibit the intended outcome.

• Speed: Determine the timeframe in which the solution needs to be deployed and how learners will access the information.

All these factors contribute to the scope of a project and play a role in defining success. By keeping the learner in mind when designing the program, L&D is better positioned to create more strategic training offerings that target what learners need to succeed.

MANAGING EXPECTATIONS As the tempo of business continues to rise, organizations are challenged with keeping pace. This challenge puts increasing pressure on business units to do more in less time and with fewer resources.

By taking a step back to consider what learners need to succeed in the context of their work environment, L&D can develop learning solutions that create value and prepare employees to navigate the challenges of their role.

Michelle Eggleston Schwartz is the editorial director at Training Industry, Inc. Email Michelle.

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CLOSING D E A L S DEMONSTRATING THE IMPORTANCE OF COMPLIANCE AND DIVERSITY TRAINING, LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES GROUP ACQUISITION SPINS OFF NEW BRAND

BY TARYN OESCH

From the #MeToo movement to Starbucks’ closing its stores for an afternoon of anti-bias training, the past year has brought to the fore the importance of inclusive workplaces. In fact, compliance training and diversity and inclusion (D&I) are more important than ever as risk mitigation practices.

Jonathan Satchell, chief executive of LTG, doesn’t believe that the importance of this issue is going to diminish in the coming years. After acquiring talent management software company PeopleFluent in June, LTG launched

THERE ARE SIGNIFICANT BUSINESS BENEFITS TO HAVING A DIVERSE WORKFORCE.

PeopleFluent’s Workplace Compliance and Diversity (WCAD) division as a separate brand in the LTG portfolio, to be named Affirmity and launched in November.

“We looked at that business,” Satchell says, “and it’s simply marvelous.” It has “a lot of consulting and intellectual prowess, a really respected research faculty,” and insufficient marketing behind it. By launching it as its own business, LTG will improve its go-tomarket capabilities beyond the success it’s already seen.

Beyond government requirements to demonstrate diversity, a wide body of research supports the idea that there are significant business benefits to

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having a diverse workforce and inclusive organizational culture. Affirmity offers software that captures data about the workforce and consultants who interpret that data and make recommendations to improve diversity and comply with regulations. Combined with Eukleia, an LTG company that creates compliance training content, LTG now offers a full spectrum of compliance training and consulting products services.

This focus on D&I also demonstrates the increased focus LTG is placing on the U.S. market, where, Satchell says, “it’s high-growth, it’s high-quality,” and there are many “great companies.” He says that PeopleFluent has about one-quarter of the affirmative action market in the U.S., and while the U.K. doesn’t have “the same stringent legislation in our markets on reporting,” he believes that D&I will become more important there, and in the rest of Europe, as well as the U.S.

merger of LMS company NetDimensions with PeopleFluent) is strategic. “Talent management and learning management are incredibly closely aligned,” he says.

“They are symbiotic with each other. And what we didn’t want to do was … just rely on some form of cross-selling to achieve results between those two businesses.”

NetDimensions’ management team was “a year ahead” of PeopleFluent in terms of the post-acquisition transformation, so LTG hopes that they will be able to help PeopleFluent’s management team through this change.

“Now we have a single sales force with different [specialties],” he adds.

Customers have the option of two LMSs, as well as the rest of PeopleFluent’s suite of products, and the management teams are working on integrating these products for “a very harmonized” user experience.

With the acquisition of PeopleFluent, LTG rounded out a portfolio that now covers an entire employee life cycle, from talent acquisition and onboarding to talent management and development.

Compliance is an important part of that life cycle, especially as diversity and inclusion become more and more important for risk management, compliance and even public relations.

Satchell says LTG will also be rolling out a new brand for vendor management services, which also comes out of PeopleFluent.

Satchell says that when LTG came to market in 2013, its goal was “to consolidate the corporate learning industry.” Since then, the company has rapidly progressed toward that goal and expanded it to include other aspects of talent. “We have all of the financial firepower to make further acquisitions,” he says, “and they can be in a more significant size than the $150 million we spent on acquiring PeopleFluent six months ago.” As long as the opportunities to acquire strong talent companies exist, it seems, LTG will continue to consolidate the market.

Satchell says the way LTG has merged and spun off new and existing brands (for instance, it recently announced the

Taryn Oesch is the managing editor of digital content at Training Industry, Inc. Email Taryn.

C O M PA N Y N E W S

ACQ UI S I T I O N SAN DPA RTN E R SHIPS Mediafly, a mobile sales enablement solution that enhances how sales organizations engage buyers, announced the acquisition of Alinean, Inc., a software and consulting company dedicated to empowering B2B sales and marketing teams to better communicate and quantify the value of their products and solutions to buyers. The acquisition will complement Mediafly’s Evolved Selling™ platform by adding interactive sales tools that help sellers sell based on facts instead of anecdotes.

Collaborative Solutions has completed its acquisition of Australia-based Theory of Mind Pty Ltd., a highly-regarded Workday services firm in the Asia-Pacific region. The combined firm, which will operate as Collaborative Solutions, LLC., is a unique, global-reaching consultancy with local expertise in all the primary geographies around the world.

Grace Hill announced the acquisition of The Strategic Solution, effectively aligning the multifamily industry’s leading provider of online training and compliance coverage with the top provider of online policies and procedures. The move provides a comprehensive way to integrate policies and procedures with training, resulting in improved company performance, reduced compliance risk and increased employee engagement.

NovoEd, the leading provider of social and collaborative online learning for the enterprise, announced that the company has been acquired by Boston-based private equity group Devonshire Investors.

Resources provided by Devonshire will allow NovoEd to accelerate its momentum in the corporate and executive education markets.

John Wiley & Sons, a leader in research and education, announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Learning House, a diversified education services provider, from Weld North Holdings. The addition of Learning House to Wiley’s portfolio of tech-enabled education services positions them as a leader in the market for services that help institutions, corporations, professionals, and students to achieve their goals.

HT2 Labs has acquired Riptide Software’s Learning Record Store (LRS) product through a combined partnership between the two companies. This acquisition between two leaders in the e-learning industry will add Riptide’s U.S.-based presence to HT2’s global footprint, forming the most comprehensive LRS platform and services business available powered by the Experience API.

INDUSTRY NE WS REVOLUTIONARY TECHNOLOGY THAT MANAGES AND MEASURES LEADERSHIP COACHING

As companies continue to invest in leadership coaching, the need to manage and measure coaching’s impact is critical. SkylineG’s scalable leadership coaching technology, C4X, now makes it possible for companies to manage coaching programs end-to-end, track the investment they make in leadership coaching, and measure impact.

INNOVATION FUND TO FUEL DEVELOPMENT OF LEADERSHIP TECHNOLOGIES AND SOLUTIONS

The DDI Innovation Fund is a strategic corporate venture fund that will enable DDI to invest in and partner with

cutting-edge companies with innovative digital, mobile, and leadership-focused capabilities that complement DDI’s existing suite of leadership selection, development, succession planning, and consulting solutions.

COACHING ASSESSMENT BUILDS ENGAGEMENT

Progress Coaching has announced a unique two-step coaching assessment strategy. The Dual Coaching Assessment uses a two-step strategy to better understand manager expectations as well as the goals of the employee.

Both sets of results are combined into a customize coaching strategy by speaking directly to what both parties want.

HOW TO QUICKLY AND RELIABLY QUANTIFY ANY SKILL

Degreed has enhanced its lifelong learning platform with the launch of Skill Review, a lightweight tool that uses machine learning to quickly, yet reliably measure a person’s mastery of any skill in 30 minutes or less. This, along with the company’s easy-to-use Skill Ratings and robust, proprietary Skill Certification technology, gives Degreed the most complete set of solutions for quantifying people’s skill sets.

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