Chief Learning Officer - October 2008 - (Page 28)

“What we try to do is measure the effectiveness of learning using the same metrics that the business uses to assess impact for its overall objectives.” – Sam Szteinbaum, CLO, Hewlett-Packard received a lot of attention in the past few years, he said. “On the leadership development front, we’ve been revamping our offerings. We wanted to make sure our leadership offerings were aligned with the direction of the company and language that’s being used for managers to understand the direction from the top. We’ve worked on some broad offerings that have involved large numbers of managers.” One of these initiatives is Leading for Results, a program targeted at all of HP’s approximately 15,000 managers. Szteinbaum said one of the most important aspects of the course is that company leaders are involved with instruction. “The purpose of the course is to align managers around the company direction, elevate performance and help them be more effective in developing their people,” he explained. “We’ve been doing it with our own leaders as instructors. We’ve embraced the model of leaders developing leaders. In that offering alone, we’ve gotten more than 750 business leaders to serve as instructors to 28 Chief Learning Ofﬁcer • October 2008 • www.clomedia.com help deliver the course. The majority jump at the opportunity. If they didn’t, we probably wouldn’t want to use them. Luckily, the culture at HP has long been one in which people are engaged in development.” Another leadership development offering is the Key Talent Program, which varies by organizational level and region. That program — which can last one to three months, depending on participants’ places in the enterprise hierarchy — blends modalities such as virtual classroom, e-learning, simulations and face-toface interactions into a comprehensive package. “We actually put them into business action teams, in which they work on business-relevant projects that are sponsored by the owner of that business issue,” Szteinbaum said. “We purposely put them to work in areas that are different from whatever their day-today responsibilities are so they’ll get exposed to other parts of the company. We have leadership development modules that feature experts in strategy, communication skills or whatever other topic is being addressed. We bring in senior managers to talk to them in small groups and take questions.” One of those senior leaders is HP CEO Mark Hurd, he added. “We are very fortunate that he’s willing to spend the time and be committed to these types of programs. He’s very engaged with our new offerings on the leadership side. He’s very generous in getting in front of our learners to teach them. On the leadership side, we’re very engaged with him to ﬁnd out his agenda and what he’s driving in terms of messaging to employees and capabilities he feels are important. We’re actually working with him on a yearly meeting that he has with his top 100 leaders. In that kind of session, we’re very involved, but it’s not really a learning event. It’s a management event with a learning component.” While leadership development gets a lot of attention at HP, the bulk of programs deal with technical knowledge, which is perhaps unsurprising for a technology-intensive company. “On the technology side, which is actually a big percentage of our overall offerings, every time we introduce a new product or service, we need to make sure people understand where that falls in relation to the other products and services we have, and how it is relative to the competition,” Szteinbaum said. “As soon as we start shipping a new product, there have to be people in every region who know it, so if there’s an issue with the product, they can troubleshoot and make sure it’s working the way it’s supposed to. “For certain virtual classes we’ve developed, we’ve been able to reach into the business to ﬁnd subject matter experts who help train people in the ﬁeld about the technical side of a product without having to travel wherever the class is taking place. They don’t http://www.clomedia.com

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

Chief Learning Officer - October 2008 Editor’s Letter Connections Business Impact Best Practices Effectiveness Guest Editorial How Fast Is Your ‘B’ Team? Hampton Hotels CLO Profile Save the World, Make a Buck: Seven Ideas From the Nonprofit Sector Developing Leaders at Amnesty International Learning Measurements: It’s Time to Align Aligning Measurement to Business Success Training Employees With Special Needs How to Reach Disabled Learners Hands Off: Facilitating Informal Learning Who Owns Informal Learning? Case Study Business Intelligence Advertisers’ Index Editorial Resources In Conclusion

Chief Learning Officer - October 2008

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