Chief Learning Officer - August 2007 - (Page 27)

Photographs by Nicolas Gourguechon, ©2007 they needed someone to build a learning infrastructure for the international division — I came into a start-up. They had very little growth going on in the international division in terms of learning and development. I worked for four years in that part of our company, which eventually led me into the position that I’m in today.” Wolfe said despite the success that followed the establishment of Steelcase University in 2000, continually demonstrating the value of learning to the company’s 13,000 employees is one of his greatest challenges. When he’s not engaging senior executives across Steelcase and soliciting their support for specific learning programs, Wolfe works to demonstrate learning’s strategic value to everyone else. “We have created some champions at all levels of our organization who really believe and see how that value can occur, but in order to get most of our employees and leaders across the company to really understand and value that, it’s an ongoing journey,” Wolfe said. “I call that receptivity.” Learning has slowly but surely filtered its way into most functions, departments and businesses across myriad industries, and strategy, growth and global business concerns are all considerations for the modern CLO. Wolfe said there are many other challenges, particularly in the global market, for which learning can help facilitate or ease business operations. Fundamentally, though, one cannot get past the need to believe learning has intrinsic value and that it can become a critical way for an organization to set itself apart. “We created an executive development program five years ago, which identifies high potentials globally throughout the company who have the potential to become an executive,” Wolfe said. “These individuals are put on accelerated development programs and stretch assignments, but most important, they’re monitored. “I’m chair of the talent development council, which is made up of our CEO, four of his direct reports, the vice president of global human resources and myself. Every quarter, we spend a halfday monitoring the development of the individuals in this accelerated program, and then we formalize recommendations to either stretch or change their assignments.” Wolfe said the executive development program plays an integral role in terms of strategy, employee engagement and developing a pipeline of future executives. Steelcase also uses a team of performance consultants that constantly works with internal cus- 27 August 2007 I www.clomedia.com I Chief Learning Officer http://www.clomedia.com

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Chief Learning Officer - August 2007

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