Chief Learning Officer - November 2007 - (Page 44)

productivity Leveraging Change to Build Productivity Craig Mindrum Any senior executive knows the prospects of succeeding at a major change initiative are questionable at best. The research about the difficulty of successful change varies only to the extent of its bleakness. Surveying the literature, you can find failure rates estimated anywhere from 50 percent to 85 percent. In other words, the chances of successfully managing a major transformational change initiative are worse than playing against the house odds in Las Vegas. Does it have to be this way? Not if you understand the deeper reasons why change programs so often fail — and the contribution learning executives can make to improve those success rates. The unfortunate secret at the heart of most organizational change management initiatives is that, at least in practice, such programs still owe too much to an approach to management science that is almost 100 years old. Rooted in analyses of how to improve productivity among manual laborers, it is manipulative and, at times, even undignified. Today, the top-down tactics managers too often engage in to get their people to perform in new ways and improve productivity in response to strategic and marketplace change must be replaced by bottom-up programs that November 2007 tap into knowledge workers’ enormous intellectual energy and creativity. And no one is better placed and prepared to be the catalyst for this new approach to effective change than learning executives and the enterprise learning function. It’s time for learning leaders to step up. A Short History Lesson Frederick Taylor is sometimes credited with inventing management science for the industrial age. His classic 1911 treatise, “The Principles of Scientific Management,” laid the foundation for the modern assembly line, reinventing the way people worked toward a common goal and contributing to a 50-fold increase in manufacturing productivity in the 20th century. To a modern reader, however, the condescension and smugness in Taylor’s attitude toward “Schmidt,” the laborer hauling pig iron for Bethlehem Steel and the object of Taylor’s “scientific” approach (we would call it “process re-engineering” today) are distressing, to say the least. I www.clomedia.com I Chief Learning Officer 44 http://www.clomedia.com

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Chief Learning Officer - November 2007 Editor's Letter Table of Contents Imperatives Selling Up, Selling Down Strategies Take Five Rediscovering the Essence of Learning Cornell University Maintains Productivity While Pursuing Higher Education CLO Profile How Loyalty and Employee Engagement Add Up to Corporate Profits A Strategic Foundation The Evolution of the LMS Ariba: Growing Sales Skills in Conjunction with LMS Technology Leveraging Change to Build Productivity Equinox Fitness: Leveraging Change to Build Productivity Tangibles or Intangibles: Where’s Your Value? Raising the Stakes: The Strategic Role of the CLO Case Study Business Intelligence Case Study Advertisers' Index Editorial Resources In Conclusion

Chief Learning Officer - November 2007

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