Chief Learning Officer - December 2008 - (Page 69)

LEARNING TEAM AWARD • GOLD • DIVISION 2 Sun Microsystems Sun Learning Services Just a few years ago, Sun Microsystems had a highly decentralized learning structure: More than a dozen legacy distributed learning functions supported a corporate university, sales training, management development and other elements, resulting in redundancy and a lack of an overarching vision. However, all of these pieces were brought together into Sun Learning Services (SLS), a centralized learning organization, nearly three years ago. This move coincided with the arrival of Karie Willyerd, who was brought on as the company’s ﬁrst enterprise-wide chief learning ofﬁcer. Sun has come a long way in a short time. This year, SLS took Gold in the Learning Team category of the Chief Learning Ofﬁcer Magazine Learning In Practice Awards. “To be recognized as an entire team, working together, creates both elation and humility,” Willyerd said. “Our team has worked very hard and overcome signiﬁcant challenges.” When Willyerd started, she viewed learning at Sun as a “mixed bag,” with a ﬂawed overall structure but a lot of great resources, including a library; research services; and a large, intact learning group inherited from a recent acquisition. “There were a lot of moving parts, and it took a design team over four months to recommend a new organization design so that we wouldn’t break anything when we reassembled all the parts,” she said. “We started slowly, but high involvement by everyone helped us implement more quickly. “Fortunately, everyone knew that together we could be better. It wasn’t easy — and there are some very talented people who are no longer on the team — but we were driving toward a vision. Arranging everyone into coherent and effective teams was quite a challenge. Ultimately, we developed a matrixed organization with teams dedicated to instructional design, development and delivery; making sure geographical regions were being served; or tending to a speciﬁc audience. It helped that most of the team came from inside Sun, although not always from within the learning groups, and we made a few key hires externally.” While all these changes were going on, Sun’s leadership was emphasizing a leaner, more efﬁcient approach to operations company-wide. Thus, the newly created learning groups also made efforts to cut back on personnel and spending while demonstrating value, which turned out to be beneﬁcial for SLS’ learning delivery. Manette Chadwick and George Selix of Sun “Figuring out how to deliver more training less expensively was critical to our success, and that led to our many initiatives around remote, informal and social-media learning,” Willyerd said. “Reaching new audiences and attracting new customers was essential to increase adoption, and Sun Learning Services had the potential to be an important viral contact point for the company. Furthermore, we knew that we weren’t doing enough training for several key audiences, so we had the challenge of expanding our offerings and providing innovative new programs.” Along with those challenges, SLS also had to integrate or get rid of multiple LMSs, competency management systems and ancillary tools and technologies. And while much has been done already, Willyerd and her team are just getting started. “We know all the corners that still need dusting, and there are a lot of new opportunities for us in our market. Still, it feels great to have our team acknowledged from the outside like this, and it’s nice to step back for a moment and enjoy our achievements.” – Brian Summerfield 69

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

Chief Learning Officer - December 2008 Editor’s Letter Contents Connections Business Impact Best Practices Effectiveness Guest Editorial The Future of Learning CLO Profile Learning Opportunities Embedded in Social Networking ManTech Leverages Knowledge Management Approaches for Social Networking Agility Training for the Learning Organization Creating an Agile Organization With Learning 2.0 2008 Learning In Practice Awards Corporate Social Responsibility: How Can Learning Contribute? Union Fenosa Corporate University: How CSR Education Impacted the Bottom Line Training in the 21st Century: Everything Old Is New Again Zions Bancorp.: Connecting the Dots Case Study Business Intelligence Advertisers’ Index Editorial Resources In Conclusion

Chief Learning Officer - December 2008

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