The Action Learning Way

‘A high performing learning organisation is no longer a support function operating at the fringes of the enterprise, but a critical lever for generating strategic change and contributing to the organisation’s overall mission and business priorities,’ says Jeanne C Meister, internationally recognised thought leader, speaker and author in enterprise learning, in conversation with Deepak Chandra, Associate Dean at ISB, who also drives the development and growth of the CEE . Meister’s name is synonymous with the establishment and institutionalisation of global corporate universities. Currently, she is developing an executive education programme on Creating High Performing Learning Organisations for the ISB, to commence on November 3, 2008.

Here are Meister’s views on what exactly is a high performance learning organisation,  the trends of corporate learning, challenges for  learning executives, and more -

Chandra - The learning function at major organisations is going through a transformation. Do you agree with this, and can you share some examples?

Meister – I have been researching, writing and consulting with learning organisations for the past 15 years and I see five major trends regarding corporate learning coming into focus in 2008.First, the job of the head of learning often called a Chief Learning Officer or a Chief Talent Officer is becoming more complex and business focused. For example, in a recent study I conducted with 285 senior learning officers in North America, I found that the performance criteria by which learning executives were being evaluated were much more aligned to creating “tangible” business impacts such as: their ability to use the investment in learning to generate increases in revenue growth, customer satisfaction and/or employee retention.
Second, in this tight global labour market, an investment in learning needs to be closely aligned to reducing the time to competency for new hires. Companies are looking at very tangible measures to prove the business impact of an investment in learning such as reducing the amount of time in which a new hire is fully competent or reducing the turnover in a strategic job family. This begins to put a dollar amount on how the investment in learning delivers improved business performance.
Third, increasingly, companies are extending their investment in learning to customers and channel partners. This can take a number of different forms such as developing customised programme for leaders of a company’s top tier customers or leveraging an online learning management system to provide customised learning programmes directly to desktops of employees. In either case, Chief Learning Officers are realising they can use the company’s investment in learning to develop deeper bonds with customers, which can result in increased revenue.
The fourth trend is that the learning officer and staff require a new set of skills to manage the learning department as a high performing business unit.  As senior executives assume leadership roles in a learning governing board, they are requiring learning executives to have a broader general management skill set including; business acumen, strategic planning, financial management, superior communication skills, performance consulting skills as well as the deep knowledge in using the latest tools, technologies and partners to develop, design, and deliver state-of-the-art learning programmes to a global workforce.
The last point is that the explosion of social media on the consumer front is changing how learning officers approach the design and delivery of new learning programmes.

Some recent examples of the above trends include an increased expectation to deliver services, content and media to mobile and personal devices – for e.g. new devices like Apple’s iPhone and LG Voyager allow content to be accessed and viewed on a mobile device almost as easily as on a computer. Also there is a renewed emphasis on building collaborative learning environments for employees to tap into the power of communities to solve business issues. Another example is the growing use of Web 2.0 and social networking to provide an opportunity for greater personalisation of learning as well as an increased ability to use technology to tap the collective knowledge of job families around the globe.

Chandra - Are corporate universities similar to high performing learning organisations?

Meister - Since I wrote the first book on corporate universities in 1994, there has been an explosion of organisations branding their learning functions under a university moniker. Now there are more than 3,000 organisations world-wide that call themselves a “corporate university.” However, some of these corporate universities are merely an attempt to re-brand the learning function while others truly demonstrate excellence in the strategy, design, development, delivery, governance and measurement of world-class learning to a global workforce. I believe the real litmus test on whether a corporate university is a “high performing” learning organisation is whether an investment in corporate learning has been able to generate increased business results and shareholder value for the organization over a period of time. This means not only developing a learning organisation that is recognised as state-of-the-art but also has demonstrated an ability to use learning as a vehicle that yields productivity gains, revenue growth and net income growth. A high performing learning organisation is no longer a support function operating at the fringes of the enterprise, but instead this is increasingly viewed by senior management as a critical lever for generating strategic change and contributing to the organisation’s overall mission and business priorities.

Chandra - Finally, what do you see as the top three challenges for learning executives as they begin to transform their function into a high performing learning organisation?

Meister- Undoubtedly, the single biggest challenge remains the ability of the learning executive to measure how the investment in learning produces business results. Over the years, I have seen this challenge expand to not only being able to develop meaningful metrics but also being able to communicate these metrics to senior business executives. One reason why measurement continues to be a top challenge for learning executives is that most learning executives measure effectiveness in terms of inputs to the learning function (course completion rates, budget spent on learning, learner satisfaction scores, etc.) rather than in terms that can be translated into business impacts, such as increases in revenue or decreases in costs or in employee turnover. Today’s learning executive is becoming accountable for the management of the learning department as a “business.”

The second top challenge for learning executives is to align their learning investments to the strategic workforces whose performance is most directly linked to overall company performance. In other words I have seen high-performance learning organisations make a concerted effort to identify their mission critical job families and to focus
their performance improvement efforts on employees that add most directly to the organisation’s bottom line. In this era of competition for top talent, the ability to focus learning investments on strategic workforces that will generate shareholder value is becoming critically important.

Finally, learning executives need to be expansive in their thinking and recognize the need to reach outside one’s immediate network to learn about the latest technologies and innovative design methods to create a future vision for learning in 2020. The way we work, collaborate and communicate is evolving and as boundaries become more fluid and globalisation increases. Learning organisations will begin to experiment with using social networking tools to develop online communities of practice and online collaboration workspaces so learning is seamlessly integrated into our workday.