The Performance Improvement Blog

Learning From Toyota Learning

Ever since 1990, when Peter Senge, et al, published The Fifth Discipline and every manager in America put this book on his/her office shelf, organizations have been aspiring to be and claiming to be “learning organizations”. Of course, nobody wanted to admit that they weren’t a learning organization. It sounded so good. I don’t believe most of these organizations understood then or understand today what that claim implies. They might engage in activities that sound like organizational learning such as strategic planning (usually top-down), working in teams, using 360 leadership assessment tools, drawing links and loops for every business process, and maybe even challenging mental models by walking up and down the Ladder of Inference. And they might have an extensive catalog of courses offered by a Department of Learning managed by a CLO. For most of these organizations, however, learning is reduced to a set of tools, tips, and training events. For them, OL has become a collection of faddish activities, not necessarily producing learning and not necessarily contributing to performance improvement.

One organization that appears, from my outsider vantage point, to have become a truly learning organization is Toyota. Organizational learning has become embedded in its culture. From executive suite to factory floor, learning is constant and ubiquitous. The foundation for this learning is The Toyota Way, described in detail in Jeffrey K. Liker’s 2004 book by that name. According to an article in the December 3rd issue of BusinessWeek, Toyota’s All-Out Drive to Stay Toyota, organizational learning appears to be alive and well throughout that company. New managers, regardless of how experienced in the auto industry or in Toyota, are taught and re-taught The Toyota Way starting on the factory floor. Retired Toyota engineers are brought back to coach and mentor these managers on a day-to-day basis. Senior management meets with new hires to tell them the Toyota story and pass down their wisdom. Senior managers are given the learning task of finding a solution to a major problem and presenting that solution to the CEO. Roving experts keep the focus on quality, coaching all 31,000 factory employees, new hires, and veteran managers. Underlying all of this training, action-learning, coaching, and mentoring is a fundamental belief in continuous improvement by constantly learning what will work better and proving that this is the case.

Mistakes Happen

The problem with mistakes is that managers don’t learn from them. Alina Tugend, in the November 24 issue of The New York Times, writes cogently about the way we think about mistakes. She identifies the dichotomy we hold in our heads: 1) we learn from our mistakes, i.e., mistakes are a good thing; and 2) only success should be rewarded, i.e., mistakes are a bad thing. From a very young age and throughout our work-lives we hear this mixed message. Although managers know, intellectually, that “everyone makes mistakes” and mistakes are just part of risk-taking and being creative, managers fear failure and being exposed as less than perfect. Schoemaker and Gunther, in a June 2006 article in Harvard Business Review titled The Wisdom of Deliberate Mistakes, say that managers end up spending “a great deal of time and energy trying not to make mistakes.” They argue that, instead, managers should take some actions that are likely to fail in order to provide themselves with the opportunity for learning.

Real entrepreneurs do not have a fear of mistakes. In a story in the December 2007 issue of Inc. Magazine titled, Everybody Wants to Save the World But When You Start a Charity Overseas, Good Intentions Often Go Awry, the author tells the story of serial entrepreneur Troy Wiseman who started a philanthropy in 1992 to establish orphanages around the world and discovered after twelve years and investing hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money that many of the orphanages didn’t exist or weren’t using his money wisely and he was seeing no impact. At that point he changed everything to achieve greater accountability and success. Wiseman said, “Entrepreneurs aren’t scared of making mistakes. We make our mistakes. And we learn from them.”

Organizations that want new solutions to old problems, that want creativity and innovation in their operations and products, that want employees to “think outside the box” and to “walk the talk”, need to allow managers to make mistakes and learn from those experiences. I would argue that this learning cannot be left to chance. At a minimum, all mistakes (errors, failures, screw-ups, etc.) should be followed by a non-punitive conversation between manager and boss about what happened, what was learned, and what should be done now to be successful in the future.

Complacency Syndrome

Complacency is one of the greatest threats to the performance of service workers. Employees in repetitious jobs have a tendency, regardless of the quality of their initial training, to, over time, lose their edge and give less attention to the details. Recently, we heard evidence of a serious example of this syndrome when the GAO reported testing 19 airports and concluded that…

… terrorists could use publicly available information and a few cheaply available supplies to damage an airplane and threaten passenger safety.

In response to the GAO report, TSA Administrator Kip Hawley testified before U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, saying in part:

Now the most important – the people: Our TSOs. We've trained them. We have career progression now where our employees can move up and enhance their skills. We have a pay-for-performance program. Our attrition is dramatically down. Our attendance is up. And as the people who traveled on August 10 know, our TSOs stood up that day and changed the entire security process overnight. That is not an easy thing to do. It shows a commitment by our security officers.

In addition, Hawley promised in his “Journal” the following testing policy:

Checkpoint IED drills using bomb components and simulated explosives, every lane, every shift, every day, every airport.

If TSA is doing these things, I commend Mr. Hawley. However, I believe that in addition, TSA must provide TSOs with continuous training, coaching, and opportunities for learning (in the classroom and on-the-job) that address the equipment they use, ability to recognize and manage threats, as well as customer service. They should be preventing terrorism on planes, but they also should be making us feel safe and secure and be treating us with respect and dignity. I’m sure these customer service competencies are addressed in the first week of training. But as with any job, especially highly repetitious jobs, over time, workers will pay less attention to the details and start to do things that make the job more immediately satisfying, such as having social conversations with co-workers. Any service job runs this risk. Even Starbucks, which has award-winning training programs, has employees who, over time, become less customer-friendly and less attentive to providing high-quality service. It’s a kind of complacency that needs to be interrupted periodically so that all employees continue to provide high-quality service, whether that is keeping our country secure or selling coffee.

Out of Line

One of the organizational factors that determine the impact of training is alignment. This is the fit between training and intended outcomes of the organization. I was reminded of this important factor today while reading in the New York Times about Cynthia Fitzgerald. She brought a whistle-blower lawsuit against some of the leading medical products companies, such as Johnson & Johnson, Becton Dickinson, and Merck, and her former employer, Novation. I can’t speak to the veracity of her complaint but I am struck by her claim that she received extensive training in ethical purchasing procedures by the same company that pressured her as a purchasing agent to accept dividends and rebates in a manner that violated the ethical principles she had been taught in training.

If true, this is a prime example of how a lack of alignment between training and culture can have serious consequences for a company. One value was being communicated in training while a contrary value applied in the workplace. It doesn’t matter how good the training is if the culture of the organization does not support the knowledge, skills, and values that the formal training program is intended to communicate to employees. I have witnessed a similar kind of alignment problem in sales organizations that train their sales people in “relationship selling” and then hold them accountable for only end of the month numbers. When these kinds of disconnects occur, organizations are wasting valuable training resources. They need to either change what is communicated in training to bring it into alignment with workplace practices or change workplace practices to bring them into alignment with training.

Workforce Readiness

According to a report from a meeting last June of The Conference Board, Corporate Voices for Working Families, Partnership for 21st Century Skills, and the Society for Human Resource Management, a major conclusion of these stakeholders is:

The most vital course of action currently needed on workforce readiness is for business, education and community groups to work together toward developing a shared sense of responsibility.

Much easier said than done! In addition to my day job, consulting on human performance improvement, I’m an elected trustee of Washtenaw Community College in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In this role, I’m involved in many efforts to bring together the nonprofit, education, government, and business sectors for the good of the community. My experience is that when these sectors come together the hidden agenda is usually, “What are you going to do for me?” not “What are we all going to do together to achieve workforce readiness?” Yes, of course, these players need a “shared sense of responsibility”, but they also need a shared goal. By this I mean a common purpose that drives all of them in the same direction and for which they need each other. “A shared sense of responsibility” is not this goal. It’s nice to have, but what is really needed is a target that all stakeholders can observe and measure and know when it’s been reached. For example: all able bodied citizens of this community will have competency in teamwork, civic involvement, professionalism, communication, and analytical thinking by the time they are 25 years old. Now, that’s a goal! It doesn’t prescribe what each stakeholder should do, but it does put a stake in the ground. And if the community can attach some rewards to achieving this goal, all the better.

Secret Employee Uncovers Do's and Don't's of Training

What a creative way to evaluate new employee orientation and training programs! It’s a combination of mystery shopping, investigative reporting, and participant observation. Alex Frankel, over the course of two years, took entry-level jobs in four companies: Gap; Starbucks; UPS; and Apple. He wrote an article about his experiences for Fast Company and his book, Punching In: The Unauthorized Adventures of a Front-Line Employee, was recently published by Collins. All organizations could learn from Frankel’s experience. For example, in contrasting the attitude conveyed on day-one, he writes in the Fast Company article:

Many companies fail from the start by talking down to their new hires and using training materials geared for the lowest common denominator. Gap started employee orientation on the wrong foot by showing us a video about the perils of employee theft. Starbucks handed out Orwellian handbooks telling us to “Be Authentic.” Such approaches produce cynicism and engender a fake sense of belonging, if any at all. Apple treated us like adults.

Although fascinating reading, this approach to evaluating and comparing programs is problematic for organizations to use as an ongoing method for performance improvement. First of all, there is an ethical issue. The trainee-reporters must misrepresent (i.e., lie) themselves to their workplace trainers, coaches, and supervisors. Secondly, it would be an expensive undertaking to have people (you should have more than one perspective) who are skilled in doing this kind of reporting work at an entry level for several months for the sole purpose of assessing how well new hires are brought into the company. And third, organizations can’t afford to wait months for feedback. However, I think stories about these experiences from a number of different people are quite useful. The Success Case Evaluation Method is a good alternative for getting these stories. This method uses elements of investigative reporting in an efficient way to capture and understand the experiences of employees and how those experiences affect the bottom-line. The method certainly could be used with new-hires.

A Solution in Search of a Problem

Geary A. Rummler, in commenting about the “learning and development” field in an interview that appears in the November issue of “Training + Development”, said:

...it’s a solution in search of a problem. People have developed all this wonderful stuff around learning and development, and it’s become a thing in and of itself rather than something that exists to help people be more effective in their jobs.” (TD November 2007 p.75)

The scariest thing about Rummler's comment is that U.S. organizations spend an estimated $129.6 billion annually on this “solution in search of a problem.”(See my 11/8/07 blog post.) The internal training and leadership/management development professionals and the external training and consulting providers are enamored with their tools, technology, and talent. They sell the latest and greatest glitz and glamour. Very few are selling and delivering results. I understand why. It is much easier and safer to be held accountable for training delivery than it is for performance improvement. But organizations can’t afford to keep wasting resources in this way. First they should clarify what business results they want and then buy or build the performance improvement programs that will get them those results. It has been the other way around for too long.

Spending on Training Leaves Money on the Table

ASTD’s 2007 State of the Industry Report estimates that U.S. organizations spent $129.6 billion to improve the knowledge and skills of their employees in 2006. This estimate includes the cost of the internal learning function, salaries and travel of participants, external services, and tuition reimbursement. Spending on the function appears to have stabilized over the past few years.

I applaud the continuing substantial investment in training (ASTD calls it “learning and development”, but we don’t know if employees are learning or developing, so I call it “training”.) activities which demonstrates a commitment to employees. However, I believe most of that investment continues to be wasted. It is spent on delivery, not on results. The best estimates of important business results from training and development continue to be in the 10% to 20% range. Eighty to 90 percent of participants in these programs fail to apply their learning to achieve valuable results for their organizations! Using the ASTD estimate of spending, this means that roughly $104 to $117 billion is being wasted each year. That’s the number that interests me most. The key question for me is, “What do we have to do to ensure that more of this investment in training and development contributes to business results?” And until we shift our focus, we won’t know if organizations should be spending more or less on training.

Women Use Training to Advance in Jordan

I am writing from Amman Jordan, where I am participating in the conference: Leveraging Corporate-Community Partnerships to Support Women’s Progress. I am here to talk with the NGO, government, and private sector attendees about measuring the social impact of their programs. Reading the November 2-3 issue Jordan Times, the local English language newspaper, I noticed an article about a program to train women in Jordan to fill jobs in the tourism and hospitality industry. There is a shortage of 25,000 jobs in the tourism industry, jobs that have traditionally been filled by men. According to the article, families have been reluctant to let their daughters work in this industry. This is slowly changing and the opportunities for women for careers in all aspects of the tourism and hotel business are growing. The applicants attend a six month training program and then work in one of the participating hotels for six months. This appears to be an excellent way for these young women to decide if this is a career for them and for the hotels to decide if this is someone they want to hire. Most of the women in this program are being hired immediately upon finishing their training.

What I wonder about is retention. Having the skills and knowledge is not enough, especially in a society that has a very low glass ceiling. For religious, cultural, and political reasons, women in Jordan and throughout the Middle East have not had access to these careers in the past. What will happen in the workplace? Will they be ostracized and harrassed? Will they get the support they need to succeed? Will their managers continue to help them learn what they need to know to advance so that they will become models for other young women? Will they receive the feedback they need to continuously improve their abilities to compete for jobs? Will their training, education, and development continue within these companies? These are questions that will need to be answered before we can call this a successful way to bring women into the tourism and hospitality workforce in Jordan.