Chief Learning Officer - November 2007 - (Page 54)

case study Avnet: Learning at All Levels Brian Summerfield “Avnet’s strategy focuses on three pillars for success: profitable growth, operational excellence and the development of our people.” — Roy Vallee, Chairman and CEO Most organizational leaders have come to recognize learning as “strategic” (with undoubtedly varying definitions of what exactly that means), but rare is the executive who actually counts enterprise education as a central component of overall business success. Avnet Inc., a Fortune 500 company that distributes value-added hightech products such as computer hardware, semiconductors and microwave components, is fortunate to have a leader with such a mindset. “Our mission is to be the premier technology distributor globally,” said Roy Vallee, chairman and CEO. “To accomplish that, Avnet’s strategy focuses on three pillars for success: profitable growth, operational excellence and the development of our people. “These three pillars are intertwined — we don’t believe you can have one without the other. Having a great team that is motivated and engaged to serve our customers will drive profitable growth, and a focus on operational excellence helps us ensure we have the best, most efficient processes to support our customers. All three pillars work together, and they are grounded in a foundation of our core values.” A few years ago, Vallee selected Steve Church, senior vice president and chief human resources development officer, to hold up the people-development pillar of the company’s overall strategy. The selection was an interesting one, primarily because Church’s background was in business, not learning. “Our CEO, Roy Vallee, recognized the importance of having a business leader running an organization that we view as strategic,” Church said. “I’ve spent nearly all of my career running businesses. I realized that in all of my years, I ran it with two primary priorities: customers and employees. This afforded me the opportunity to take everything I learned about running businesses and applying that from the employee side. This has been very gratifying for me, and I thoroughly enjoy what I do.” Church runs much more than just the learning function, though — he also has responsibility for all human resources activities, including hiring, compensation and performance management, as well as corporate communications. This arrangement is highly beneficial for all applications related to talent, he said. “We ultimately want to link our employee-value proposition to our external brand promise,” Church explained. “Avnet is a service company in a service industry. Most companies say, ‘It’s all about our people,’ but we live and breathe that every day. The way we interact with our customers and suppliers is really all about people who are engaged and excited about what they do and can deliver our brand promise.” November 2007 I www.clomedia.com I Chief Learning Officer 54 http://www.clomedia.com

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

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

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.