Chief Learning Officer - March 2008 - (Page 34)

environment and strengths that exist can be amplified,” Siemens said. Unlike other C-level executives, the CLO has no distinct playbook or roadmap, which leaves the door open for experimentation. A cinema auteur likewise can try things a number of different ways before reaching his or her vision. Stanley Kubrick was infamous for making his actors do hundreds of takes before he was satisfied. On the opposite end, Woody Allen is known for telling an actor what he wants out of a scene, shooting it once and then moving on. No matter what style a CLO chooses to adopt, Siemens sees experimentation in one form or another as a route to an impactful program. “Continual experimentation and different approaches help to embrace different mindsets,” Siemens said. “Regardless of what industry you’re in, if you have a cycle of perpetual experimentation, with that kind of approach, you’ll be able to at least gain a sense of what works best within your organization.” Experimentation can come with a price: failure. To try and fail is a noble course of action, but in the business world, it can seal your doom. Ideally, CLOs have the freedom to try and fail on a few things before their superiors throw a red flag. Tim Conlon, Xerox corporate director of learning and talent acquisition, sees the learning leader’s relationship with superiors as similar to a filmmaker’s relationship with a studio head: If you show the capacity to make one project a hit, you’ll be given free rein for the next. “If you do it well, you earn the right to continue to do it well,” Conlon said. “If you screw it up, then it will require a lot more inspection. We’ve been given an allocation of resources that is what the corporation intends to spend, and as long as I demonstrate the right stewardship with that, we get the right programs.” Staunch auteur theorists would shudder at a filmmaker bouncing ideas off a studio head, but the reality is it’s often necessary to get a project to the next step quickly. In the corporate world, communication with senior management is important in order to secure subsequent opportunities. If the CEO or upper management is behind an idea from the beginning, there are fewer hurdles in designing or choosing a learning application or method. More important than the executive liking it at the beginning is the trainees or audience finding it effective. Conlon said that even though the filmmaker auteur can’t initially be concerned with what an audience likes or dislikes, the CLO auteur must be. “I’m not afraid to try new things, but that requires you to take risks in order to keep the content fresh,” Conlon said. “If you keep senior management connected and involved in the process, they become part of it and enjoy it. The participants like training based on what works for them, and based on what doesn’t work, we modify it without any reservation. Anything else than a great experience learning needs to be changed.” However, flops do happen to both filmmakers and CLOs. It’s a reality because of the creative freedom that can come with each role. The upside is that, in either career, you can’t deliver a flop without having delivered a successful project first. In filmmaking, there’s some history of auteur directors getting free rein over a large budget after proving themselves with a smaller one. Director Michael Cimino is a prime example. The follow-up to his Oscar-winning movie “The Deer Hunter” was the massively overbudget box office bomb “Heaven’s Gate.” Cimino’s career never fully recovered and is considered a cautionary tale. Luckily for CLOs, learning applications that don’t work can be changed quickly if necessary, and learning from what doesn’t work often is just as helpful as finding something that does. “Flops come in different flavors,” Conlon said. “It’s rarely binary, where you have a home run and then you strike out, that makes a difference. You have to embrace the notion that if you want to be innovative, you’ve got to take risks and understand that your very best folks that will be taking risks are not always going to have successful experiences. It’s what you learn from it and how you adapt it that matters.” By being agile and quickly adapting to unforeseen situations, CLOs can create programs that have their personal stamp and also fit their organization’s context. While an auteur filmmaker’s goal is to put his stamp on a project, the decisions he makes still are designed to bring the most out of the film’s characters and plot. The personal stamp is a by-product of constantly reacting to the environment in either role. “The minute momentum in one of your learning programs starts to wane, you have to shift it quickly,” Conlon said. “Just because the program works really well, you don’t let it stay static. If you do, you’ll risk having the program be at best only adequate and at worst totally ineffective.” — Ben Warden, bwarden@clomedia.com “If you do it well, you earn the right to continue to do it well. If you screw it up, then it will require a lot more inspection.” – Tim Conlon, Xerox March 2008 I www.clomedia.com I Chief Learning Officer 34 http://www.clomedia.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Chief Learning Officer - March 2008

Chief Learning Officer - March 2008 Editor's Letter Table of Contents Imperatives Selling Up, Selling Down Strategies Take Five Learning Solutions The Treasury Board of Saskatchewan: Training the Trainers With Experiential Learning Clo Profile Environment Xerox: Creating a Learning Masterpiece Tactics Capturing the Knowledge of the Workforce Productivity Succession Planning Tips from the U.S. GAO Human Capital Influencing Competency Management Case Study Case Study Business Intelligence Advertisers' Index Editorial Resources In Conclusion

Chief Learning Officer - March 2008

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