I just finished reading an amazing book, “Chase the Lion”, by Mark Batterson, where the focus is largely examining change…personal change to be exact. But the same principles he addresses are very relevant for shifting thinking in an organization. The thinking I firmly believe we need to change is how we attempt to build sustained capability in our respective workforces. Training, in and of itself, is not the solution!
Tag: learning continuum
At first glance Change Management (CM) and Change Leadership (CL) may be considered interchangeable and simply more jargon used to confuse a familiar concept. Stay with me on this post as there is a significant difference when the end-game is the desire to create full adoption and sustained capability of any Change initiative.
We were eating lunch on a Wednesday when the elevator music was disrupted with an urgent announcement, “This is a code yellow alert! – Repeat – This is a code yellow alert!” My colleagues and I snatched for the laminated cards that hung around our necks and determined that a “code yellow” meant there was a hazardous materials spill in the building and we were to evacuate immediately. We did. No one was injured. We had the perfect EPS application available to us at the right time.
This title implies that performance support is not strategic. The question I am convinced we need to address is this, “Why not?” Perhaps a better title would be, “Whadaya Need, a Knock on the Head?” Maybe I’m all raked up in a pile over this because I’ve witnessed performance support make a tangible difference in previous lives. Back to the question, “Why not?” Here’s something radical…methinks it’s the stink rubbed off from Training.
A question many of us have sought to answer…or maybe “predict an ETA”…came up in one of my networking groups this morning. “When you do you know that the Learning & Development function in your organization is fully developed?” The answer to this may be as impossible to define as it is to nail Jell-O to the wall.
Internal – External Ecosystem-040722A colleague recently asked me to respond to a question that has been a source of constant challenge [for me at least] in my last three corporate training gigs that span about 15 years or so. I cannot imagine my experiences are that dissimilar to many of us who work in the business of Training. Here was his question, “What’s the biggest hurdle to getting stakeholders (employees, employers, clients etc.) involved and engaged with workplace training – and how do you overcome it?” Personally, I believe this question distracts us from two other questions we really need to answer first…and with conviction. I believe that answering these two questions will define an actionable road map to not only answer his original question, but do something about it…and with conviction.
When we strip away products & services and the marketing glitz & glitter, what is left that sustains [or not] the viability of a business? My vote goes to – the workforce. Even if we do not strip these things away, I still feel strongly that the workforce is at the root of a successful sustainable business. Obviously, there are other external factors like the state of the economy, cost and availability of money, and other environmental drivers and restrainers, but even including them, the pressures and demands on the business to survive, much less flourish, still is largely dependent on the effectiveness of the workforce. Why then do we insist on training them where direct business impact is not part of the outcome?
I can remember my first Learning Management System (LMS) implementation from years ago. Actually, in those days they called them Training Management Systems (TMS). This one, Registrar, if I recall correctly, despite its limited functionality, worked better to meet our needs than the four LMS platforms I have endured since. Registrar was simple. It tracked learning. Learning was simple. You did it in a classroom. Period. With the advent of e-learning, the innovation dam broke, and the TMS morphed into LMS and soon a component of a more complex Human Capital Management (HCM) beast. The core competency of registering, tracking and administering training remained intact, but the feature-rich technology largely overran our ability to embrace all the potential it represented. In other words, many training departments fell behind compared to what the technology they owned could ultimately deliver.
Now that title should generate a ripple or two on the pond, especially when I have been so vocal about the need for just such a shift. So…is this post a confession that I have changed my mind? Not quite. Not even. If anything, I am more passionate than ever, but over the years, I have gotten smarter about moving around obstacles that stifle momentum rather than fight through immovable walls of opposition or resistance. My new approach requires the application of marshal arts – judo – to be more precise. No, not kicking butts, just taking the momentum of my opponents, and leveraging it to my advantage to wrestle them to the mat. Not to pin them in defeat, just hold them down long enough to hear me out – listen to evidence that this “shift” is not a threat.