LSG Handout

8/14/2019 LSG Handout

1/12

1

HandoutforLearningandSkillsGroup

What Would Andrew Do?

How to sell senior management on the value of learning. (Cross)

Excerpts

TheMetricsCycle

Theres no cookie-cutter formula for applying metrics, but there is an underlying

process. Generally, youll follow these five steps to identify, agree upon, assess, and

use metrics. This is not rocket science. Its the same process you already use to

accomplish a lot of things in life. Lets briefly consider each step.

1. State Desired Outcome. Results do not exist inside the trainingdepartment. In fact, results do not exist within the business. Results come

from outside the business. Imagine a no-nonsense businessperson, say,

Andrew Carnegie. If you can explain yourself to Andrew, youve mastered thisstep.

2. Agree How To Measure. The only valid metrics for corporate learning arebusiness metrics. Examples are increased sales, shorter time-to-market,

fewer rejects, and lower costs. How do you decide what measures to apply?

You dont: thats the responsibility of your business sponsor, the person whosigns the checks. Together you agree on whats to be done and how youll


2/12

2

measure success or failure. Once youve settled on the project and its

metrics, get it in writing.

3. Execute Project(s). The projects could be training and/or an incentivebonus plan and/or more advertising. Training programs are often part of a

larger scheme, and its fruitless to try to isolate them. In fact, savvy training

directors look for major corporate initiatives they can hitchhike a ride on. Gowith the flow, dont fight it.

4. Assess Results. You must evaluate the impact of your efforts with themeasures you set up back in step 2. In other words, you are not allowed tomimic Charlie Brown, who would shoot an arrow and then paint the target

around it. Why stick with the measures you came up with before? Because

thats how to maintain credibility with your sponsor. You can bring upunforeseen outcomes or anecdotal evidence, so long as you follow up on

those original methods first.

5. Begin Anew. The only thing worse than learning from experience is not

learning from experience. Your post-mortem on the completed project shouldinclude a section titled What to do better next time. This is where you startthe cycle anew.

6. All my examples are drawn from business. That is the focus of this particulareffort. Many of the same techniques work well in government and education

as well, but those are not my areas of expertise.

WhatMakesanEffectiveExecutive?(Drucker)

They asked, "What needs to be done?"

They asked, "What is right for the enterprise?" They developed action plans.

They took responsibility for decisions.

They took responsibility for communicating.

They were focused on opportunities rather than problems.

They ran productive meetings.

They thought and said "we" rather than "I."

TalkingwithYourSponsor

Executives focus on one thing: execution. You need to figure out what your sponsor

hopes to execute.

You get his or her take on the firms near term objectives, to suggest what you planto do to meet them, and to agree on how success or failure will be measured. This

step is not optional.

Tell your sponsor you want to understand her business objectives. Be a performance

consultant. Act like its a different game than the one you usually play.


3/12

3

Subtract ten points each time you say learner, learning object, instructionaldesign, blended, program, instructor, content, or asynchronous.

Add ten points each time you say reduce time to market, improveproductivity, speed up cycle time, streamline the way we do business, serve

customers better, slash costs, improve partner relationships and knowledge,increase market share, etc.

Add ten more points each time you personalize whats above: reduce our timeto market, improve our productivity, speed up our cycle time, etc.

Got it? Your challenge is to find out how your sponsor sees her corporate and unit

objectives. You need to know enough to make concrete recommendations.

Whatsinitforme?

(ASTD/IBM)


4/12

4


5/12

5

Theplayersandtheirneeds

(Cross)

TimeMatters

While training directors may have different objectives from CEOs, everyone in

todays business world shares one need: they want it all now. Benefits you dont see

for two years are hardly benefits at all. Given enough time, a million monkeys at a

million terminals could develop your entire curriculum, complete with Flashanimations and a repository of SCORM-compliant objects. Nobodys got time to wait.

The appropriate time metric for most eLearning is time-to-proficiency. How long will

it be until your people are performing competently? By competent, I mean able to

meet or exceed the expectations of customers, be they internal or external to theorganization.

Time-to-proficiency depends on a multitude of factors. Before the first learner enters

the system comes prep time:

Time to assess needs and specify solutions

Time to hire or train development staff

Time to create new lessons or re-purpose existing ones

Time to implement technical infrastructure

Time to make sure all the parts work together

Time to publish, often a combination of print, CD, and web

Then theres time spent learning.

Time to access the lessons


6/12

6

Time in self study

Time in practice

Time for proficiency testing

Time for reinforcement

Timing is perpetually traded off with breadth and cost. A Fortune 100 company can

justify investing years to develop its in-house corporate university.

PushandPull

Organizational learning tends to be mostly push or mostly pull. Push is the sort of

learning you encountered in school, where authorities selected the curriculum and

lessons were imposed on you. Pull describes the way you learn from Google or

discovered how to kiss a lover. With pull learning, you select what you want to learn

and how you want to learn it.

Pull learning is more cost-effective. It doesnt require as much in the way of controlmechanisms, structure, and outside assistance. Furthermore, lessons learned

through pull are more likely to stick because theyre relevant to perceived need,delivered when required, and usually reinforced with immediate application. Pull

learning delivers more bang for the buck.

Organizations that increase the ratio of pull to push can lower their overall

investment in learning without sacrificing results. Given the greater payback of pull

learning, the objective is to achieve greater results while spending less.


7/12

7

Why am I advocating cutting the overall spend? Because its an easier concept tosell. Managers have been skeptical of the value of training for decades. One hopes

that the lure of the Holy Grail of achieving more from less is an offer they cantrefuse.


8/12

8

EvaluatingthepaybackofLearnscapes

ReturnonInvestmentinInteraction

(Cross & Husband)

The focus in this new world of work is to do whats important and involve those whoknow whats important, why its important and what they know (or know how to find

out) about a problem or issue.

So, to begin measuring increases in productivity and value in a networked social

computing environment, we propose the concept of Return on Investment in

Interaction (ROII), which we have derived from the principles of Metcalfes Law of

Networks.

Lets define some core assumptions about ROII :

1.Continuous flows of information are the raw material of an organizations valuecreation and overall performance.

2.Information flows are carried by links, alerts, RSS feeds, search engines,

aggregation and filtering of content, etc.3.All leading vendors productivity platforms now feature collaborative social

networking and computing,

4.These platforms architectures facilitate purposeful cross-silo communications

and exchange.


9/12

9

Social networking pioneer Valdis Krebs has outlined four generic metrics that are

becoming widely accepted as leading to observable, tangible, measurable outputs:

(Footnote: Krebs, V., Measuring the value of social computing in social networks,

The Network Weaver blog, June 29,2008)

1. Increase in size of network

2. Increase in internal network connectivity

3. Increase in connection to valuable 3rd parties4. Increase in number of projects

DimensionsofTodaysLearningProcess

(Cross, Learnscaping)

Business contextCore/contextObject orientationBottom-upCustomer voiceUnpredictableIncessant changeServices/intangibles

Network effectsDense interconnectionsAccelerating cycle timeInterdependenceVolatilityLong tailAmbient findabilitySignal:noise

LearningInformalAdaptationBecomingKnow-whoDrip feedNeed-drivenPerformance support

WorldviewEmergenceIllusion of controlHolisticPerpetual betaEverything flowsAll is connectedProcess

KnowledgeCollective intelligenceSocially-constructedContext-boundBreakdown of disciplinesGroup phenomenonSocial intelligenceCognitive breakthroughs

Internet valuesConnectionsOpennessTransparencyAuthenticityInteractivityLoosely coupledInteroperability


10/12

10

ProfitandLossExample

Imagine that my roadside stand sells $100 worth of lemonade and my total expenses

were $20 I spend on lemons, sugar, and paint for my sign. Fill in the blanks:

Lemonade Stand Results

Profit = ________________

Margin = ________________

Revenue = ________________

Cost = ________________

Cash flow = ________________

Earnings = ________________

Price/earnings ratio = ________________

ROI = ________________


11/12

11

Industrial-age problems

Check any that apply to your organization

Substandard revenue Sales are declining, customers are postponing decisions

Sales force cannot express benefits of new products

Sellers unaware of industry conditions and competition

Friction in relationships with distributors

Our partners are not well informed

Sales and marketing are on different planets

Arms-length relationships with customers

Deficient service

Response time to customers is substandard After-sales inquiries are bogging down our call centers

800 numbers and phone trees are driving customers away

Service is inconvenient for customers, not 24/7 We dont learn from our customers

Not building customer loyalty

Customer and prospects are confused, frustrated

Inefficiency and bureaucracy

Deluged by internal email

Cant find the right person in a hurry

People dont know who knows what

Cant the right information when you need it

Project coordination is tedious and things fall through the cracks

Re-invent the same documents and processes over and over again

Departments squabble more often than they collaborate

Dont learn from the people who join us from competitors

Execs cant get a read of progress or lack thereof

Documentation is dated, versions confuse

Unenthusiastic, sluggish staff

Recruiting is harder than ever

Some do the minimum to get by

People are not innovators and dont keep up

Our know-how is walking out the door due to retirement and turnover

People are glum because of the economy, an industry slump, whatever

Turnover is too high

When good people leave, we never see or hear from them again

No time for experimentation or prototyping

Underdeveloped organization

Difficult to collaborate inside the corporate firewall

Difficult to collaborate outside the corporate firewall

People prefer to work solo than on teams

Takes too long for new hires to become productive

Analysis paralysis

Wait and see attitude = missed opportunities


12/12

12

Culture clash, as if we are two organizations with different priorities

Suboptimal execution

Not everyone is on the same page

Our people dont know our history, values, culture

Set in our ways, reluctant to change

Not moving fast enough to stay ahead of competitors Functional silos thwart process improvement

Still acting like two separate organizations long after the merger

Hard to find out where we are as an organization

Teams dont talk about the trends and force that drive our business

Dont reflect on the lessons of our successes and failures

Dont take advantage of our collective intelligence

Not learning

We are falling behind

Not prepared for onslaught of digital natives

Training cant keep pace with the business

Learning systems are outgrowth of classroom

Training administration, creation, and delivery cost too much Managers hoard information

Not learning fast enough to keep up with the needs of our business

References

ASTD/IBM Strategic Value of Learning Research Report. 2006. Sugrue, Brenda;

ODriscoll, Tony; and Vona, Mary Kay.

Cross, Jay. 2009. What Would Andrew Do?How to sell senior management on the

value of organizational learning. Internet Time Press. $19.99 from jaycross.com

Cross, Jay. 2009. Working Smarter: Boosting Brainpower for Fun and Profit. $14 on

Amazon.

Cross, Jay. 2008. Learnscaping: Getting Things Done in Organizations. Internet Time

Press. $25 from jaycross.com

Cross, Jay and Husband, Jon. Return on Investment in Interaction, Not Your Fathers

ROI. Chief Learning Officer magazine. To be pubished July 2009.

Drucker, Peter. What Makes an Effective Executive, Harvard Business Review, Vol.

82, No. 6, June 2004.

LSG Handout

Documents

Transcript of LSG Handout