Chief Learning Officer - November 2007 - (Page 48)

productivity change,” Smith said. “So, companies are always playing catch-up.” Worse still, in a kind of rubber band effect, the lagging learning program brings up the rear, actually impeding the organization’s ability to rise to the challenge of the next wave of change. Because it represents a considerable investment, companies are likely to implement a learning program, no matter whether it’s still relevant. For the workforce performance leaders, on the other hand, enterprise learning is fully integrated into the strategy and is helping drive the change. That approach can be seen in a current initiative at Diamond Consulting, where Linda McKula, head of the professional education and knowledge management groups, has been tapped to lead a major technology and business change program, Practice Enablement. The program is wide-ranging in that it intends to transform how Diamond’s global consultants work, from back-office administrative support to front-office work with clients. It covers “soft” areas such as work-life balance, as well as “harder” areas such as performing time and expense reporting. Ultimately, the initiative will put in place the technological and process foundations to help Diamond’s people collaborate more effectively. McKula said she sees this initiative as something that can counteract the problems of “lagging” learning initiatives. “Many of the technology-based tools available to improve the performance and productivity of knowledge workers end up not satisfying their needs, but not because there is anything wrong with the tools themselves,” she said. “What happens is that proper learning does not take place at the right time to enable people to take advantage of all the relevant functions and features. After a period of time, you miss the window of opportunity. The tool is what it is, and the process is what it is, and it’s really hard to change it. So, we see this as a chance to start fresh and to enable people upfront to perform in new ways rather than having such enablement bring up the rear.” An important ingredient to success has been the planning and commitment of the senior executive team that had the insight to frame the project correctly and put the right leaders in charge. “Certainly, no one had to include me in a project like this,” McKula said. “But our executive leadership saw the challenge ahead and properly characterized it as a change project, not just a technology project. Ultimately, programs such as this do not fail because the technology or the processes designed are bad — they fail because people don’t embrace them, don’t learn them or don’t understand them. We’re working proactively to make sure that doesn’t happen.” Significantly, that proactive work has involved a healthy dose of working from the bottom up. McKula’s team began by conducting hundreds of interviews with Diamond employees across all levels and geographies to identity their primary pain points (obstacles to their ideal performance environment when working in the field). Those interviews then informed the specific programs subsequently designed to better enable the practice. Latent value resides all the time in employees’ individual and collaborative minds, so companies need to create an ongoing knowledge refinery that can transform this resource into additional value. Change Management as an Internal Capability A logical question to ask is, “If learning and change must be integrated and executed simultaneously, what is the extent to which change management needs to be an internal capability rather than something leased on an ad hoc basis?” This is a question being asked at BP, a global energy company, said Claire Hamlin, leadership development and learning manager. “Because of the extent of change in our industry and our leadership’s commitment to driving that change, executive conversations are now taking place about building up an internal change capability, led by our learning and development function,” she said. If organizations must rely on primarily external change experts brought in to support a specific need, in effect, they have put themselves in precisely that lagging or rubber band position they are trying to avoid. What companies need instead is an ongoing capability that sustains continuous change, in part by continuously tapping into people’s experience and knowledge. Traditional training mostly has been a one-way phenomenon — management declared a need or a new strategic direction, a central group created a course that was then delivered to employees along with “inducement” to change. Today, organizations must get the flow of intellectual energy going the opposite direction too. Latent value resides all the time in employees’ individual and collaborative minds, so companies need to create an ongoing knowledge refinery that can transform this resource into additional value. Hamlin said one important trend helping to connect learning with the business is a new services orientation on the part of the traditional training organization. November 2007 I www.clomedia.com I Chief Learning Officer 48 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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