Yesterday was the Learning & Skills Group members conference (do I sound Very Important if I mention that I am a founder member?), when over 400 people gathered for a follow up event to the Learning Technologies conference held in January.
If you follow me on Twitter, you will have been inundated with my observations of some of the sessions already. Internet access in the main auditorium was (as always) patchy at best, so I was unable to share much from the sessions that took place there. In fact, perhaps this is an appropriate place to mention that, of the two most recent conferences I have attended, I experienced better connection in Lusaka than I did in London!
One of the things I often note about conferences is that the speakers tend to say things that I have been saying for years... only when I say them, no-one pays the blindest bit of attention. However, when luminaries like Charles Jennings and Jay Cross say them, they cause a huge stir. During discussions with my neighbour in Charles's session, I found that I am not alone in this. It's frustrating for us nobodies!
As always, a few of my pet topics came up. Learner empowerment. Permanent beta (aka rolling with the punches). ROI. Aligning with the business.
Jay's keynote addressed the subject matter of his new book, Work(ing) Smarter. He talked about the speed of data generation and touched on the power of the individual to change the market, citing the example of United Breaks Guitars. Even though I had seen it before, and even though country and western music sets my teeth on edge, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of being with people watching the story unfold for the first time. That YouTube video has taken over 8.5 million hits, and United's share price took a massive hit of its own as a result. Never question the power of the individual to change things! He touched on cluetrain manifesto, and I was surprised at the relatively low number of hands raised in answer to his question as to how many had read it.
This addresses the fact that people react very publicly to things. We might think it's a bit rude, or a bit unfair or a bit whatever, when people express their disapproval for all the world to see on FB and/or Twitter, but that attitude isn't going to change anything. We simply have to face up to the fact that that is how the world works now (as predicted by cluetrain) and develop strategies to engage with a public that has a voice and isn't afraid to use it.
As I have been saying for a long time now, if we adopt the attitude that all learning/staff training/call it what you will must be officially developed, sourced and/or sanctioned by the L&D department, we will forever be running to catch up, and we will turn what should be an empowering service into a bottle neck. Several times yesterday, we were reminded that L&D should serve the business. That we should talk in the language of the stakeholders and serve the agenda of the organisation, instead of talking the language of learning to support the agenda of the L&D department.
It would be doing Charles Jennings a huge disservice to say that he talked about ROI. He did touch on the subject, though, and it was implicit in so much of what he said. Since it's a pet topic of mine, I probably heard the ROI message louder than anything else he had to say. I like Charles's no nonsense approach. I am only sorry that he and I have never had the opportunity to work together professionally. He reminded us that the value of anything at all is determined by the buyer. The seller may set the price, but it is the buyer who decides whether or not to pay it. When it comes to learning solutions and/or environments, while it may be the HR department or the CFO who signs the cheque in monetary terms, the real buyer is the user, the learner, the consumer (or not) of the koolaid. So producing a series of numbers that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt (or not) that the training is a Good Thing, does not address the needs or represent the opinions of the user populace. Those things do not have numeric values and can therefore not accurately be reflected in the ROI model. How do you attach a number to things like staff morale, for example?
Furthermore, Charles cited research that demonstrated a chasm between CLOs' perception of their roles and the measures of success and the rest of the C-level suite's perception of the CLO's role and the measurement of success. Startlingly, the C-level suite is so accustomed to making huge decisions with a shortage of quantitative data, that they are utterly at ease basing critical decisions on nothing more than experienced intuition. They have little interest in the numbers. ROI is not regarded as important. So, while the CLO is frantically trying to justify his existence, the rest of the CXOs are quite happy to accept on faith that the CLO performs a necessary function within the business are happy to let him get on with it.
I suspect that ROI becomes important when the L&D department is fighting for its life in the face of huge budget cuts. Those numbers will be what are trotted out in a desperate bid for survival. But, if the CXOs make their decisions intuitively, I suspect they are unlikely to be swayed by the numbers at this point.
Charles also produced some figures which explored how senior managers themselves learn. These majored on (ahem) radical ideas like Talking To Peers. The suggestion is that, when solutions to learning and support needs within the organisation are being addressed, those same affordances be made available to the entire staff complement.
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
Pet topics at LSG10UK
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5 comments:
Karyn
You said "One of the things I often note about conferences is that the speakers tend to say things that I have been saying for years... only when I say them, no-one pays the blindest bit of attention. However, when luminaries like Charles Jennings and Jay Cross say them, they cause a huge stir. During discussions with my neighbour in Charles's session, I found that I am not alone in this. It's frustrating for us nobodies!"
They are HEARING the words for sure, and going through the motions of saying how important it is - but are they actually doing anything about it! I don't think so. It's just too easy to stay with the status quo - rather than try and change things!
Part 1
Karyn - some of your observations about what ROI is in both your and Charles Jenning’s opinion is in my view deeply and fundamentally flawed.
Here’s why:
‘Value of anything is determined by the buyer’ ~ Some buyers may well determine a ‘value’ for the development. The question is how are they making that judgement and what are they determining it is? In any context the legitimacy and veracity of that judgement is wholly dependant upon the criteria they have employed. In many cases that judgment is significantly flawed. All effort within an organisation should be focussed on the achievement of its goals and objectives and through the tiered or nested integration of objectives and tasks everybody from the work’s cat up to CEO should see where and how their efforts and contributions fit into this scheme.
There is no option or alternative here; there is no separation of ‘learning’ from the bottom line of the business. HR development works within the business, just the same as Premises, Marketing, Sales, Logistics, Quality, Stores, Finance, Cleaning, Packaging, Manufacturing etc etc. All these departments measure in hard terms; inputs and outputs. The development function of HR often tries to place its self outside this framework with some pretentious idea that we operate in a field against which we cannot always or should not try to attach numbers – dream on!
You ask the question ‘how do you attach a number to things like staff morale for example?’ Here’s how: You begin by asking why you think staff moral is a problem? What are the immediate indicators, behavioural events, critical incidents, primary indicators that have led to this assumption about staff morale being low? I am doing this exact same thing this week with a manufacturer. By asking these questions and working backwards or forwards depending upon the answers returned we begin to clarify what improved staff morale would primarily impact upon. Examples: Absence levels, HR Turnover, Staffing Levels against Productivity, Rework, Task Timings ,Error Rates, poor procedural implementation against SOPs, disciplinary issues and missed project deadlines. All these are identified as problems originating from poor morale; all of them have financial, material, time and monetary numbers which can be attached to them despite what Jennings and your self thinks or imagines. All of these figures are important, crucial and essential to the company, all of these things focus the training and learning offered into the essential areas, where it will do most good for the business. Do all these issues operate in isolation from other changes within the business, no certainly not, but then again I’m not running cancer cure trials here and Premises, Marketing, Sales, etc etc don’t undertake factor breakdown to fifteen decimal places when providing business case proposals or analysis. To quote from Arriffin Mansor: 'Training is a social science, it is obviously impossible to evaluate the effects of training with laboratory and test tube precision. Just like any other business decision, we have to live with assumptions and informed analysis, not absolute examination and medical scientific rigour. If we accept ROI in general business terms, how could we not accept ROI in training?'
Part 2
The issue of course is why there is poor morale in the first place. However having determined that there is indeed a real Performance Gap resulting from an absence of knowledge or skills in the first place, then we would undertake a training needs analysis and isolate how to attack this issue. I can now propose a developmental response against which I attach a price but I can now also supply a value. Price and value are not the same thing.
One of the primary functions of any developer, trainer, designer (whatever) in HR development is to explore and sometimes help the client (both buyer and end user) clarify what they need rather than what they want because of misunderstandings or screwed up values. The fact that a client puts value into something must be explored and analysed otherwise we might well be collaborating with something which might line our pockets from the price we charge but achieve little of any value for them.
The value of training might initially be determined by the buyer but the final arbiter is not the user as you suggest but the market or the context within which the organisation operates and the outcomes it achieves.
For some material relating to this issue that I uploaded onto YouTube, take a look here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eYypAULJHE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNLWK0p22y4
If you've got this far thanks for reading this Karyn.
Garry, I do not agree with your conclusion. You write, "All of these figures are important, crucial and essential to the company, all of these things focus the training and learning offered into the essential areas, where it will do most good for the business."
The IBM/ASTD research Charles Jennings referred to found that CXOs were content to make decisions on gut feel alone. If managers aren't paying attention to the numbers, just how important can they be?
Companies overlook lots of information that would help them improve the business. Such indicators are important in theory, not in practice.
jay
Jay wrote: “The IBM/ASTD research Charles Jennings referred to found that CXOs were content to make decisions on gut feel alone. If managers aren't paying attention to the numbers, just how important can they be?”
Are you serious? Did you not notice what happened to the banks and the world’s economy from Sept 2008 precisely because they didn’t pay attention to the numbers? In answer to your question: ‘just how important can they be?’ The answer in some instances is absolutely and totally crucial.
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