| Business and technology leaders are grappling with business innovation and continuous process improvement. They know they must transform their companies or watch them die. Few have failed to recognize people as the critical success factor, and training budgets are usually part of business transformation efforts. Training, however, is but one component of a successful and sustainable corporate learning strategy. In spite of the dismal failure rate of business reengineering efforts, leaders determined to compete for the future and command their industries have further recognized that sustained learning is the foundation of continuous performance improvement. Successful business units and even entire enterprises are busy reengineering the learning process itself. To them, learning has become a core business process and strategic competitive weapon.
Many companies, however, have not yet recognized the business value of learning as a core business process. They make the common mistake of perceiving learning as a binary proposition: an employee is trained or not. Perhaps this is true of incremental learning where the same old ways are augmented with new techniques, but the paradigms and the culture do not change. Learning and becoming effective in new business and technology paradigms is a different matter. In order to cross the chasm and then to ensure continuous process improvement, an architecture for organizational and individual learning is needed. .
Meilir Page-Jones, President of Weyland Systems, developed a seven stage model of what software developers actually experience as they learn and develop skills associated with a new technology. Correspondingly, successful reengineering programs start small, build proof-of-concept prototypes, demonstrate performance improvements, and take the next step. The secret to both business process improvement and learning is to take small, incremental stepslearn a little, apply a little, … learn a little, apply a little.
Each step requires four fundamental learning actions that make up a learning architecture: inform, educate, train, and do. Effective learning results in much more than just knowledge of something. Such cognitive learning must be complemented with affective outcomes (emotional learning such as valuing) and applied skills learning if learning outcomes are to provide measurable benefit for the business.
A Learning Architecture
Inform. People are explaining creatures and want to stay in-the-know. Advanced technology and business reengineering knowledge is evolving very rapidly. Each company has its own unique knowledge as made visible in its problem-solving processes and other components of its culture. Employees must stay informed and keep abreast of the company's specific reengineering and technology plans. And they must share knowledge created from current transition projects.
To change the fundamental ways they work, people need to know what's in it for them, what their role is, and what others are doing in the enterprise. Business transformations without constant streams of relevant information and knowledge sharing are doomed people need to learn from others within a changing organization. In addition to newsletters, brown bag theaters, and other forms of corporate communications, CEO, Scott McNealy uses voice email to instantly update Sun Microsystems' employees worldwide. And the monthly talk show "The McNealy Report" is broadcast over WSUN Radio. But no air time is needed as the show is digital and part of Sun's intranet. Shared vision, values and goals are the prizes if the entire workforce is kept in-the-know, especially in times of great change.
Educate. Concepts and theory are prerequisites to skills training and acquisition. Exploration and discovery are key aims of educating. Learners should be provided with a non-threatening, non-pressured opportunity to learn new concepts. As the goal is to develop a new way of thinking, educational activities must be learner-friendly: fun, interactive, easy, challenging, and engaging. For example, Object International pioneered object technology education and its board game, The Object Game, was designed using accelerated learning principles. It is a fun, fast, and effective way to explore and discover the basic concepts of object technology. Let's develop the big picture and have a little fun before facing the many, serious details and techniques of business engineering and advanced technology. Since we are reshaping existing mental models, we must be careful to meet learners where they are as they participate in educational experiences. Education means formulating concepts and learning first principles in the new paradigm. Conceptual learning is prerequisite to and provides the framework for learning new skills.
Train. Being informed helps us understand the "why." Being educated in the basic theories helps us to learn "what." Training provides the "how-to." Training is usually aimed at learning techniques of performing tasks. Of course, training should be centered in doing, but not with toy case studies. The most effective means of learning a task is to perform that task. To be effective, the performance of the stated task must be based on actual project deliverables (adrenaline accelerates learning!). A major U.S. airline transitioning to object technology developed the framework for a learning organization to underlie its migration. The centerpiece of the strategy was to guide work teams in the development of their own individual development plans (IDP). This approach was used since the company was moving into uncharted territory, release deadlines were tight, and very specific, just-in-time skills were critical to the success of the work teams. The goal was to tie training directly to measurable project goals and deliverables. In addition to this bottom-up approach, the corporate technology training group nurtured the learning activities and developed training programs to be used as the new technology was rolled out to larger corporate audiences.
Do. Companies that recognize the nature of learning by doing establish mentoring and apprenticeship programs to foster learning in the midst of real business projects, delivering real business results. The role of the mentor is typically fulfilled by experienced personnel who have already mastered the new paradigm and, importantly, have mastered the skill of mentoring (mentoring is not osmosis while working shoulder to shoulder). Mentors are often outside consultants or new hires recruited because they have been there and done it, successfully. Migrations to new business and technology paradigms are not end states; they are the beginnings of continuing change in the business world. Thus learning must be continuous and occur everywhere in the organization, as an integral part of the organization.
Through direct participation in the new paradigm, apprentices will, over time, grow to journeymen, some to masters. Traditional IS services companies such as IBM now integrate live project mentoring into their education and training offerings. For example, mentors at IBM's Object Technology University (OTU) participate with their learners both in OTU's residency programs and back on the job. Outside assistance will be needed less and less as new paradigms become mainstream in the organization and apprentices grow to become mentors. Recognition of the need for a mentoring approach to paradigm shifts is now widespread. The Journal of Object-Oriented Programming publishes an annual directory of over 300 firms that offer mentoring services in the field of business object technology.
Once a learning step has been completed along the way to mastery, the scope and complexity of problem domains can be expanded. The next iteration of learning and project deliverables can proceed with additional information, education, training, and experience. Because there are no cookbook or silver-bullet solutions, the transition from traditional corporate training to a systemic learning organization requires heuristics: learn a little, do a little; learn a little, do a little. Each iteration fosters better decision making for the next iteration. Further, learning must be lockstepped with the work objectives of corporate reengineering teams: companies are not in the learning game for learning's sake. They are in it for measurable performance improvement. They want business deliverables. Several methods are available for measurement of learning and performance improvement outcomes although most businesses prefer to track the latter as evidence of the former.
Now is the time to reengineer traditional corporate technology training and lay the foundation for learning organizations. It is no easy task. Vision, courage, hard work, and, of course, corporate politics are needed to transform the traditional technology training paradigm and organization. What can a technology trainer do to get started? First become aware of the concepts and strategies of learning organizations. The term learning organization is an oft-ill-defined notion and is dressed in hype and scholarly excess. David Garvin's definition is one of the more practical business definitions: "A learning organization is an organization skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and modifying its behavior to reflect the new knowledge and insights." Such organizations do not just happen, and, to be useful over time, they must be based on a solid learning architecture.
To cut through the hype and find the substance of learning organizations, the following books provide both the theory and practical, measurable steps: The Fifth Discipline and the companion Fifth Discipline Fieldbook by M.I.T.'s Peter Senge et al, Re-Educating the Corporation and Transitional Learning by Daniel R. Tobin, former technical trainer for Digital Equipment Corporation, and my Blueprint for Business Objects, which contains 26 tactics for deploying a top-down or bottom-up approach to learning transformation. And, of course, a good WWW search engine will serve up some very interesting links to explore and discover organizational learning and learning organizations. These resources can take a technology trainer to stage two (aware) of Page-Jones' mastery model. Today is the best day to get on with the business of transforming learning into a strategic competitive weaponlearn a little, do a little, and iterate.
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Learning has become a core business process and strategic competitive weapon.
The secret to both business process improvement and learning is to take small, incremental steps--learn a little, apply a little, … learn a little, apply a little.
Companies are not in the learning game for learning's sake. They are in it for measurable performance improvement. |