Training Industry Quarterly - Summer 2011 - (Page 7)

AT THE EDITOR’S DESK | DEBORAH MASTEN THE “WORK” WASN’T CHANGING; THE JOB FUNCTION DOING THE WORK WAS CHANGING TRAINING FOR TRANSFORMATION A s I’ve benchmarked with my peers, it seems that many organizations are at various stages of transformation, giving us the opportunity to play a leading role in making the transformation a success. At jcpenney, that transformation started with a change to the store’s leadership organization. Although the “work” wasn’t changing, the job function doing the work was changing. Training played a huge role in the change initiative and its successful implementation. It began when the training team developed a work/role matrix identifying who owned the work, where roles intersected and collaboration was needed, and determining where we could use existing training and which training might need a slight adjustment or a complete overhaul. This became the strategy document for our “go forward” training plan. The need for role clarity was evident. As we met with our subject matter experts, we often had to stop to decide who should do the work and how that work might be sequenced. jcpenney has long been a fan of Root Learning’s Socratic Method of using a visual to help drive meaningful dialogue and discovery. We engaged Root Learning to help us develop a Learning Map® module to drive understanding of who does what and where roles overlapped. As a result, the implementation of the new store’s leadership organization was a great success. The store’s leadership team knew their roles in March, and on April 4 stores across the U.S. spent the afternoon learning about the new roles, using the Root Learning Map® module to kick off the session. This Month’s Guest Editor Deborah Masten was appointed vice president and director of associate development of J.C. Penney Company, Inc. in 2002. She leads the training organization for the enterprise—stores, merchandise, supply chain and customer care centers and is responsible for all 145,000. She has been with jcpenney in various ﬁeld and home oﬃce positions for more than 25 years. Email Deborah. Know someone who’d make an outstanding guest editor? Interested in becoming one yourself? Contact us at editor@trainingindustry.com. This was just the beginning. Over the next six to eight weeks, each role had a defined checklist of training and projects that needed to be completed. A follow-up two-day workshop will be conducted by district managers using a leader’s guide and materials developed by our Plano, TX-based training team. As I write this column, it feels good that we were able to provide each role with a unique training checklist, a timeline for “role” certification, and an online “community” where they could ask questions and get suggestions from their peers. The training was a blended approach of an online community for performance support, interactive “live” distance learning for more formal instruction, a live in-person workshop led by their district managers, and certification to conclude their training phase. Although we didn’t necessarily use the new “social media” tools, we socialized the learning through a variety of training mediums. 7 TrainingIndustry Quarterly, Summer 2011 / A Training Industry, Inc. ezine / www.trainingindustry.com/TIQ http://www.trainingindustry.com/TIQ

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Training Industry Quarterly - Summer 2011

Training Industry Quarterly - Summer 2011
The Formula for Performance
Table of Contents
Ad Index
Training for Transformation
Working Smarter: New Ways of Learning
Classroom Training: 7 Scary Problems
Technical Training: Where Does it Belong?
Social Learning: Focus on Collaboration
Performance Management: Focus on People…and Profit
Adding Social Media Tools to Learning Portfolios: 10 Questions to Consider
Bridging the Gap: Training and Business Results
Managing Knowledge in High Performance Organizations
UPS
Web 3.0: Transforming Learning
The Soft Touch

Training Industry Quarterly - Summer 2011