Chief Learning Officer - May 2006 - (Page 18)

CO0506.qxd 4/18/06 11:06 AM Page 18 imperatives Benchmarking With Specificity Elliott Masie L e a r n i n g leaders How would you respond if the chief financial These are similar to the questions asked of most functions in our organizations. Process improve- officer of your organization posed these specific h a v e reported ment programs such as Six Sigma and Lean man- benchmarking questions to your team? significant pressure ufacturing are motivating executives to get spe- How many days or hours does it take you to cific in benchmarking key activities. Yet, many f r o m their top on-board a new employee? Is this more or less of these questions would challenge or complete- management to than your nearest competitor? ly stump a good percentage of learning leaders. m o v e toward a much How rapidly can your line managers determine Although we are good at measuring the out- which element of a procedure is not being fully m o r e specific level come of a specific program, we rarely compare learned by their employees? What is your cycle our results at a granular level with our competi- o f benchmarking. time for providing remedial action? How does tors. Most of our industry reports are quite this compare to your industry? vague, talking of broad trends, such as the per- centage of spending on e-learning versus class- How many hours a year do your subject-mat- room training. Yet, it is almost impossible to find ter experts provide assistance on learning data to compare to the mix of learning strategies projects? How does this rank against organi- for a specific role in a specific industry. zations your size? Cardiologists continually compare the details When teaching a new system upgrade, what of their practices with one another in terms of percentage of knowledge transfer is delivered procedures, time, expense, survival rates, train- via classroom, e-learning, performance sup- ing patterns and patient profiles. port, documentation or the help desk? Are Manufacturing benchmarking is getting your allocations similar to other users of this incredibly detailed, right down to number of enterprise system? steps in a key process and comparing that across similar factory settings. How does your organization use the features of your learning management system, and My goal is to get specific in learning bench- what impact does that have on business marking. I can't wait to have a panel of CLOs results, such as increased sales? Is your organ- who will openly compare details to the ques- ization ahead or behind the curve? tions listed at the start of this article. Imagine if we were at an industry conference and could How many minutes of a classroom hour are watch a video of two trainers teaching the spent on new content, context and stories, same topic, comparing and contrasting the practice and discussion, administrative logis- time-to-competency and techniques deployed. tics, or learner-driven conversations? How What if we could take a look at a similar pro- does this mix change by division of the com- gram taught across 200 companies and see how pany or type of trainer? our own approach lined up? If there were a bird flu pandemic on May 1, May 2006 Learning leaders have reported significant pres- what would be the speed at which you could sure from their top management to move transfer all travel-based learning to a digital toward a much more specific level of bench- I www.clomedia.com I Chief Learning Officer format? How does your readiness compare marking. They want more than nice-looking with other organizations? pie charts of industry trends. They need to get How does your organization compare with to a granular enough level to make authentic your competitors on the annualized learning comparisons with the very organizations that time formal and informal per employee, by keep their stakeholders up at night. division and by job category? We have the systems, tools, smarts and appetite Elliott Masie is the CEO of What is your organizational spend on com- to start a new era of learning benchmarking. The MASIE Center's Learning pliance versus skills-based training? How is Let's have the courage and focus to make it Consortium. He can be reached that vectoring in comparative organizations? happen soon. at emasie@clomedia.com. 18  http://www.clomedia.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Chief Learning Officer - May 2006

Editor's Note
Table of Contents
Letters to the Editor
Take Five
Selling Up, Selling Down
Imperatives
Strategies
Guest Editorial
Learning Solutions
Robbins-Gioia University
Environment
Deloitte & Touche USA
CLO Profile
Productivity
Washington Gas
Case Study
Human Capital
Health Care Service Corp.
Tactics
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida
Business Intelligence
In Conclusion
Advertiser's Index
Editorial Resources

Chief Learning Officer - May 2006

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