Chief Learning Officer - October 2007 - (Page 55)

SPECIAL 5th ANNIVERSARY SECTION If the audience is everyone, and information is less controlled, and the walls are broken down, how do CLOs remain vital, an integral part? CLO: SK: I think you do it in the way you used to do it. Back to what I said earlier, you’ve got to know the business model. You have to go in making the case that you can be helpful. I was lucky in that I was positioned by Welch and then by Goldman — I worked with the top people. At GE, I was a member of the corporate executive council. I sat in that group for my whole seven years on the job. You’re always in there, not only with some credibility that that gives you, but you’re listening firsthand to the problems they have, the opportunities that develop, the way in which they say their people need help. You can get in that way, and if you can’t, then you’re three steps down, sitting in another building, always trying to tug at their seat to get attention. It doesn’t make it impossible, it just makes it a lot harder. But in general, it’s Marketing 101: You always have to tell somebody what’s in it for them, not what’s in it for you. You can’t go in and tell everybody that you’re excited by some new concept or academic model — you have to show them that this stuff is useful in addressing their issues. Wharton, and they’re not going to last. The good parts are going to become part of the job, and the job will move toward more of a uniform set of expectations, and we’ll come to learn together – Which CLOs are adding value in the most important ways? – and those will emerge as best practices. CLO: So, tell me what you’re doing now. SK: Well, it turns out, if you offer two days a week to six or seven people, it becomes more than full time. I should have done the math before I did that. I wasn’t looking to retire. Technically, I’m retired from Goldman, only in that my status changed. I’m still there, but I’m part time. I don’t have day-today responsibilities. I still work a lot with Goldman clients, which was always a big part of my job. I do some development and training myself. I also work with LRN, which started as a legal online training development organization. People are doing a lot more compliance, but they’re not getting a lot more compliance. The idea is, what can you do to get cultures that will be legally compliant but also will become more self-governing, more transparent? That’s very interesting to me. Again it’s part time. Nothing is more than half time. I’m writing a book also, and I’m doing some odd jobs. I do some consulting projects, I do some public speaking. I’m still on five nonprofit boards. And I’m also working as a senior adviser to Homeland Security. So, if you add that up, I think it adds up to more than full time. CLO: What does the future hold for the CLO? What are you seeing now that leads you to a general idea of the direction that it’s going? SK: It’s going many directions. Among the directions it’s going are the right ones. There might be things I don’t see, but the things I do see, the trends I’ve mentioned toward greater inclusion among the workforce, toward greater use of the technology, toward greater reach-out to the external constituents — all that’s good stuff. I’m not smart enough to see bold new trails that no one is doing because if I’d seen them, I would have been doing them myself. But to answer your question, there’ll be more standardization around the things that are right to do, that are important adds for the job. And less, therefore, just masking it by changing the title and leaving the old duties in place. There’s more of a legitimacy, and this isn’t just me being profound. This is what happens to professions about 10, 12, 15 years out. They begin to have codes of ethics. They begin to have licensing to practice. Wharton (at the University of Pennsylvania), as far as I know, has the first and still only degree program aimed at legitimating pursuit of a chief learning officer degree. It’s a joint effort between Wharton and the Graduate School of Education. That kind of thing is what you see happening in various branches of engineering, even medicine. The testing of ideas and the bringing together of people and deciding, “What are you going to teach, and what are you going to test on?” and the market will decide. You will move toward more uniformity, toward the good parts of the CLO, and away from the fads and away from the side of people who merely changed the title and thought they had met the need. It’s beginning to find its own voice, its own standards, its credentials, its body of knowledge. That’s what’s going to happen going forward. The parts that are not value-added are going to drop from the curriculum — they’re not going to be peddled at CLO: Sounds like a very active retirement. SK: It is. I never had a sense of direction — I’m no one’s example of how you choose a career. It’s funny, people in academe see me as risk-oriented. I’m willing to leave academe to go work for tough guys like Welch. I’m just scared of the opposite — I’m afraid of (being) the person who didn’t get into IBM early, the Beatle who left the group just before they made it. I’m just afraid of missing something really interesting, so I tend to overcommit and trust that somehow it’ll work itself out. So, I’m in a bundle of things, but I’m enjoying it a lot and hope I’m adding value. CLO: My last question for you: Is there anything you’d like to say to the learning executives out there? But it really is important work. It’s a great profession. It didn’t start with the naming of the job. Again, it always sounds corny in print. It’s great to be involved in people’s learning. They grow professionally. It does help the company if you do it right. It’s really a very nice business to be in. — Mike Prokopeak, mikep@clomedia.com 55 October 2007 I www.clomedia.com I Chief Learning Officer SK: It all sounds corny in print. It really is important work. You get discouraged sometimes. It is more amorphous. Even within HR, it doesn’t have the sense of specificity. If you’re HR, and you do wellness, or you do employee relations and manage out difficult employees, or you do rewards and comp and get people paid on time, or you manage union negotiations — there are parts of HR that feel more tangible. And, of course, in the divisions that make the money, much so. http://www.clomedia.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Chief Learning Officer - October 2007

Editor's Letter Table of Contents Letters to the Editor Taking the Lead Trends Best Practices Effectiveness Guest Editorial Elements of Social Media Arrive on the Learning Scene Trend Micro: Making Learning More Modular CLO Profile Learning’s Role in Talent Management INTTRA: Using Global Learning to Better Enable Talent Management Operationalizing Communities of Practice U.S. Army: Sharing Lessons from the Field Looking Back, Moving Forward Leveraging Business Data to Develop Strategic Learning Solutions Chrysler LLC: Metrics, Score Cards and Automobiles Advertisers' Index Editorial Resources Connecting the Dots: Recognizing Talent Development Differences at Nonprofits Nonprofits in Health Care: Learning at ENH Case Study Business Intelligence Case Study In Conclusion

Chief Learning Officer - October 2007

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