MindLeaders: Fueling the Learning Revolution

What Will You Stop Doing Next Year?

It’s that time of year. 2009 is coming to a close and 2010 is just getting started. The holidays are coming to a close and the urge to make New Year’s resolutions is kicking in. What are yours? I’m not talking about personal resolutions here, but resolutions for your business and your learning program. What goals do you have for the coming year? How will you achieve them? What will you measure as proof of accomplishment? What are your deadlines?

Some common goals I’ve seen include:

• Increasing participation in learning program initiatives
• Reducing costs and increasing business value
• Identifying and developing leadership talent
• Building a corporate culture of learning
• Implementing talent management initiatives
• Starting or revamping pay for performance programs

All of these goals are good ones. And most of these goals are biggies; one-liners that are easy to say, but much more difficult to accomplish. Make sure your goals have clear, actionable steps tied to deadline dates. Know what you will measure to demonstrate achievement. Get agreement from management on the goal, deadline and measurement. It’s vital to demonstrating business value and ensuring that your learning program is regarded as successful.

In the midst of all that, don’t forget to stop doing those things that aren’t working at all or aren’t working as well as they should. To take on new tasks and goals, you have to give up what’s not working, even if it was a great idea that just didn’t work out as you’d hoped. We all have limited time and attention spans. Don’t waste those precious resources on things that don’t directly contribute to achieving your goals for 2010.

What are your goals for 2010? How will you accomplish them? And what will you stop doing next year? Tell us! We’d love to hear from you.

And Happy New Year!!

Trends to Watch in 2010

Now that the year is winding down, it’s time to talk about the emerging trends in HR and L&D. Josh Bersin just finished a research member roundtable discussing the big issues that are emerging in 2010. I’ve listed the top five items he and his roundtable came up with, along with some commentary.

1. Diversity as a talent management strategy – Bersin has a client who studied the relationship between diversity and engagement and proved there is a direct link between a more diverse workforce and a more engaged and high-performing team.
2. Leadership assessment as a core component of leadership strategy – Leadership development is a pressing issue at most organizations. Do you know who in your organization has the highest leadership potential?  (Hint: It’s not just the people fulfilling a current leadership role.) HR has to find a way to effectively identify high potential future leaders so they can be developed and retained.
3. Career development isn’t synonymous with promotion – Career development means working with teams and managers to improve performance. And promotion isn’t the only way to move. Lateral moves, special projects, and development all present opportunities to build skills and develop a career.
4. Build skills in HR and L&D – In focusing on the rest of the organization, it’s easy to lose sight of the need to build skills and capabilities within L&D and HR. Both organizations are going through major transformations and team members need to be fully trained and engaged.
5. First line management is the weakest link – Even after leadership development there are still going to be supervisors that do not “honor or understand their role as manager.” Identify and support these folks in better management habits. (Remember they probably learned their bad habits from managers they worked for.) If you cannot reform, consider removing them from the role. These are the troopers that make your organization do well, and it’s kinder (and better for the organization) to remove them now rather than later.

You can read thefull text of Josh Bersin’s article for more information. Other trends I see coming next year are:

• Continued integration of L&D and Talent Management – This is a big challenge for HR and L&D teams to merge their operations, technology, and processes. Done well it can yield big business results.
• Budgets won’t be as tight in 2010 – After the squeeze of the great recession organizations will begin to loosen the purse strings, even if it’s just a little bit. However, L&D organizations will have to do better providing metrics and business cases for their services. Usage metrics alone aren’t going to cut it much longer.

What other trends do you see emerging? How do you think 2010 will go? Tell us your thoughts in the comments.

Front-line Leadership Development Drives Business Performance

Think leadership development has the most impact when it’s focused at the executive level? Think again. A new study from Aberdeen Group highlights the importance of front-line and mid-level leadership development to overall business performance. The study surveyed executives from over 525 organizations, including 189 that already have formal L&D programs in place specifically for front-line and mid-level managers.

Front line managers are being squeezed. They must deliver business results, which is itself a big task. And now, as the need for retaining key talent increases, they are increasingly being held accountable for key talent management metrics. This shift is reflected in the areas they note of most concern, including the need to capture organizational knowledge before leaders leave the organization, high potential leaders leaving the organization to advance more quickly, and the lack of enough experienced leaders in the market forcing the organization to grow leaders internally.

Many front-line and mid-level managers struggle to achieve all of their goals. However, when L&D can intervene to help managers achieve both business and people results the impact to the overall organization can be huge.

·     Best in class companies generate 35% year over year improvement in manager ratings, 27% year over year improvement in key employee turnover, and 69% of employees rating themselves as “highly engaged.”

·     By contrast laggard companies generate only 2% year over year improvement in manager ratings, key employee turnover worsened by 6% year over year, and only 22% of employees rate themselves as “highly engaged.”

To achieve these results, L&D must align their development efforts with organizational strategy, and define the skills needed to execute that strategy. Key skills for managers include people development skills, how to give and receive feedback, and how to give performance reviews. In addition, executives must be involved in developing future leaders within the organization. Best in class companies integrate their learning programs with both performance management and succession management. And finally, clear performance metrics have to be use to evaluate both managers and the learning program.

What kind of metrics? Well, as I’ve discussed in some past blog posts usage metrics are not sufficient to prove L&D benefits. Some of the most important metrics best in class companies are using include management business objectives achieved, retention of key management talent, customer satisfaction and employee engagement. Obviously in addition to measuring performance, the L&D program must be promoted to managers, have a well-defined process to identify and address specific knowledge gaps, have established competencies for each level of management, and have a process to identify and develop high potential leadership talent early in their career.

For more information you can read the entire report from Aberdeen Group called Learning and Development: Arming Front-line and Mid-level Managers to Deliver People and Performance Results.

What do you think? Are front-line and mid-level managers given enough L&D support to perform the tasks vital to the organization?

Pressure to Reduce Costs Revealed in Survey

Expertus and TrainingIndustry.com surveyed training leaders about their learning and development program. Questions included plans to reduce costs, efficiency gains from their LMS, plans for customer training, metrics used to measure learning, and how marketing is used to improve learning and development program utilization.

The surveys were completed by training leaders from a wide variety of organizations and represent a number of different industries. The results were compiled into six reports titled the “Training Efficiency Masters Series.”

Key finding include:

• Over 90% of those surveyed felt some pressure to reduce costs, and more than half said that the pressure was “significant” or “intense.”
• One of the most popular technology investments is migrating from ILT to e-learning or blended delivery.
• Cost savings are most likely to being reinvested into improving content quality (65%), improving analytics (61%) and upgrading technology such as LMS or authoring systems (61%).
• Most efficiency gains from LMS have been from employees’ ability to find and register for training, tracking compliance training, and lowering administrative costs.
• The two biggest obstacles in using the LMS were lack of integration with other technology systems and inflexible reporting capabilities.
• Nearly one half of managers involved with customer training felt their budgets would increase. By contrast only one third though employee training budgets would increase.
• Most agreed that customer training is revenue producing, but that the number one expected benefit of customer training was improved customer satisfaction.
• Fewer than 25% of respondents are using business outcome or ROI metrics. Most are using usage metrics such as course completion, registration numbers, and participant’s reaction to the training.
• E-mail blasts are the most effective marketing activity followed by phone calls and management recommendations. Most respondents don’t track their marketing reach or effectiveness.
• Over 93% of respondent’s organizations have learning portals. Within the next two years 45% say they will upgrade their existing portal and 14% say they’ll launch a new one.
• Half of respondents said including informal learning technologies in their learning programs is “critically” important.

For more information, you can read the executive summary and see the detail of each report in the “Training Efficiency Master Series.”  

What do you think? Do these results match with your experiences?

Be a Learning and Development Entrepreneur

Are you running your learning and development program like a business? Or are you managing it like a department? The more I read about the challenges facing learning and development managers, the more it strikes me that successful learning and development managers are acting like entrepreneurs. Why do I say that?

Learning and development programs are under increasing pressure to reduce costs and demonstrate business value to the overall organization. Yet most learning and development managers are still simply generating usage metrics. How many employees were trained? How many topics were covered? What were the mastery scores? What was the overall reaction to the training? These are the metrics many managers are using to justify spend, maintain budget, and sell the value of the program. And they are insufficient.

Learning and development managers must start viewing their programs as a business and measure things that a business would use to sell its customers on ROI. Examples include improved employee performance, reduction in errors or safety issues, reduced turnover costs, and improved cycle time. These are the metrics that will help demonstrate business value and improve win rates when it comes to budget and investment discussions.

Another area where learning and development manager must start thinking like entrepreneurs is in their marketing strategy. For many, e-mail blasts reminding students that the training is available administered via the LMS is as far as it goes. Again this is an insufficient strategy.

Program managers must start communicating with non-students to determine buying criteria are for learning and development programs. Once managers understand buying criteria from both a student and manager perspective then effective marketing communications can be put together to help sell the learning and development program. And of course, marketing efforts must be measured to determine effectiveness and contribution to the bottom line of the program. Just like a business.

I’m sure there are other ways in which learning and development managers should be acting like entrepreneurs. What are some examples you can think of?

Do You Have a Portrait of Your Ideal Employee?

In marketing there’s lots of talk about your ideal buyer. What is this person’s job title? What does their day look like? What are their skill sets? Their pain points? Their goals? Their challenges? Knowing the answers to all these questions and more allows marketers to better speak to their ideal buyers. It allows them to create content that gives them value. And it allows them to figure out not only who they are selling to, but just as importantly who they aren’t selling to.

It seems like HR could benefit from something similar. Who is your ideal employee? What skill sets do they have? What kind of behaviors do they exhibit? What attitudes do they bring to the workplace? How do they impact the day of those they work with? What impact do they have on the bottom line of the company? Having answers to questions like these allows a picture of the ideal employee. It helps to paint a picture of someone who fits into the existing company culture, and contributes in a meaningful way.

If you want to have more ideal employee on staff, know what you are looking for. It will help make your screening process more efficient and your hiring process have more hits than misses. Of course the flip side of catching ideal employees is to hang onto them. Do you know how many ideal employees you currently have on staff? Do you know if their turnover rate is higher or lower than the average? Do you know what the company is doing (or not doing) to hang onto them?

You should understand what your ideal employee’s pain points and goals are, not just a required skill set. What do they want their work environment to be like? What benefits are likely to appeal most to them? What changes can you make to increase their retention? In The Shriver Report, most employees agree that businesses aren’t keeping up with their needs. I suspect it’s because HR is focused on skill set descriptions and stopping short of creating a full picture of what their ideal employee looks like, and what they need to do to attract and retain them.

LMS Market Still Strong, Despite Recession

Bersin and Associates is predicting that the $850 million LMS market will continue to grow at a rate of 10 to 15 percent. This is good news for learning and development organizations. The strength in the LMS market indicates that corporations view employee development as a business driver that they are willing to invest in. Training is moving out of “nice to have” into “must have.” Finally.

In addition, informal learning and the advent of social learning networks have changed the game. More and more corporations are trying to embrace information sharing, collaboration, and harness the power of informal learning that is happening within their organizations. In some cases the LMS is a major player in facilitating this. But certainly not in all cases.

The downside to the good news is that LMS systems are still difficult to manage. They are generally complex and in some instances cost millions of dollars and take a few years to fully implement. This issue is going to get worse over the next few years. Talent management and learning management are converging, and corporations are already wishing for more interoperability between LMS systems, talent management systems, and HRIS systems.

If your organization doesn’t have an LMS yet, chances are they will be looking at one in the future. If they do, ensure that there are clear goals for what functionality is important to the organization. Is it customizable reporting? Is it simply to serve up e-learning? Is it to provide an internal social network? Be clear about what is needed, and then assess vendors to determine if they have the potential to meet those needs.

What do you think? Is your company assessing or implementing an LMS system this year? What features are most important for your organization?

Sales Training Drives HIgher Performance Levels

Have you trained your sales staff this year? Not product training. Not training in how to fill out their expense reports. Training in prospecting skills. Training in closing skills. If you haven’t, you are missing on an opportunity to increase your company’s performance according to a recent report released by Aberdeen Group. How much of an opportunity? Best in class companies experience:

• Over 80 percent of sales reps meeting their annual quota (compared to 65% for average companies)
• Average deal size/contract value increasing by 7% year over year (compared to average companies which had a flat deal size year to year)
• Average annual revenue increasing 11% year over year (compared to 2% decrease for average companies)

Best in class companies deploy training that focuses on what sales reps say and do to create perceived customer value to create these results. (Not just how to calculate quota or track number of sales appointments.) These companies have processes for:

• Sharing collective knowledge
• Training their internal trainers
• Reinforcing training on a regular basis
• Capturing organizational best practices
• Defining competencies (and training needs) for each sales role

Best in class companies also train often and train consistently, regardless of economic conditions. In fact, they are increasing spending on sales training over the next 12 months. This makes sense. As the economy recovers, these companies want to be positioned to capitalize on the positive changes.

One of the key takeaways of is that training and reinforcement should happen frequently. This doesn’t necessarily mean continuous onsite training. Consider what content you can license, how you can train internal trainers, and how access to training content can continue to reinforce new skills.

For more information, you can read the entire report, Sales Training: Translating Tribal Selling Knowledge into Bottom-Line Productivity.

Play is far superior to Work

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and [...]Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

I love this quote from Tom Sawyer. Not just for the insight on its face, but also for its context: the fence still got whitewashed. Work got done, and yet everyone had a grand ol' time accomplishing it. And with the growth of "serious games" and "virtual worlds," the training and organizational development world might be starting to agree with Mark Twain.

At MindLeaders, we believe deeply in Play and Fun. We believe that it's a core part of building knowledge, and of building teams and relationships. Our greatest example of this was held on Friday: our annual Halloween Party.

 

Outrageous costumes roam the halls all day long, we feast on a massive potluck lunch, and we gather up for an early end to the day to give prizes for all kinds of contests held throughout the week and eat and drink together. My friends envy me on Halloween Party day. When I show them pictures of the costumed craziness that goes on, their cracks are usually something along the lines of "Do you guys do any WORK in your office?!?"

Tom Sawyer's answer to that is no. Nobody is Working in our office on that day. Everyone's doing a lot of Playing. But much still gets accomplished, and the effects continue throughout the year. When MindLeaders employees talk about the company culture or what it's like to work here, the Halloween Party is frequently one of the first things mentioned. We've been doing it so many years that it's part of our DNA. Teams work together months in advance to come up with group costumes. Silos disappear on that day as everyone explores the halls to enjoy cool costumes or check out office decorations.

Our Halloween Party is strictly a company-building type of Play. For a great example of a teaching type of Play, check out DevLearn 2009's "Zombie Apocalypse." People are getting familiar with all types of social media, scouring it far more deeply than any Work class assignment would ever compel them to do, and it's Play. (And if you're trying to come up with a play idea, it's hard to go wrong with zombies.)

Got a team that needs to communicate better? Trying to teach some tough skills to someone? Want to knock down some tension or closed doors between teams, departments, or management and employees? Do some Playing. Not the fake kind of play that's still an obligation. If someone watching from the outside would question whether you're Working, then you have the right kind of Play.

Social Media's Rise Doesn't Mean Formal Learning is Dead

The landscape of employee development is shifting under our feet. While learning and development organizations are facing lots of changes, two developments are driving most of them.

·     Technology and social media are allowing information to be shared quickly and easily

·     Learning management and talent management are converging

Remember when e-learning came into the market and there was lots of talk about the death of instructor-led training? Stand up training is still here. E-learning is here. And now we have the influx of social media platforms and a lot of chatter about how it will wipe out formal learning (and e-mail and other forms of communication). And guess what? It won’t.

Formal learning is far from dead. The fact that learning management and talent management are converging is one reason why. Integrating learning into career development and performance improvement will always be formalized in organizations. And of course content lends itself to different deliveries. That which lends itself to instructor-led or e-learning formats isn’t likely to be completely replaced by the new social media and information sharing technologies. So social media's rise hardly means the death for formal learning. It does make for some interesting challlenges though.

Learning organizations are faced with helping organizations integrate these technologies in a way that makes sense. New roles will emerge and new skills will become necessary for learning organizations to move forward effectively.  But the ones who can will reap some real benefits. These new technologies let peers easily share information. They allow transparency between groups. They make it harder to blow smoke about what you are up to. They practically eliminate the ability to information-hoard. Yes, there are some who won’t like that much, but the benefit of easily accessible organizational knowledge is well-worth the price.