The Performance Improvement Blog

Teaching Organization

Learning in organizations should occur at different levels (individual, team, and whole-organization) and in different ways. Any organization that relegates all learning to instructor-led, classroom-based teaching, is not doing the most it can to improve performance. One method of facilitating learning that doesn’t receive enough recognition for its benefits is the process of one organization teaching another. Bill Taylor, in his Harvard Business blog post titled The Rise of the Teaching Organization, writes:

…the organizations with the most original ideas about how to compete and win — aren't just committed to learning. They are just as committed to teaching. They understand that the only sustainable form of market leadership is thought leadership.

While I agree that teaching is a great way for organizations to learn, teaching doesn't necessarily mean learning. Toyota, Disney, Motorola, Florida Power and Light, and Zingerman’s Community of Businesses, to name a few of the prominent "teaching organizations", have been generously teaching other companies for roughly two decades with, I would contend, relatively little impact on their industries (i.e., auto manufacturing, hospitality, high tech manufacturing, energy utilities, and gourmet retail food).  Some who commented on Taylor’s blog appear to think that the problem is a lack of a will to learn. I think it’s not so much the will to learn; I think it’s more the will to change.

If students of benchmark companies have not prepared their organizations for change, when they return to their companies they find little support for a new production system, or a customer-centric way of operating, or a dramatic reduction in errors, or infusing quality in all aspects of the business, or any other model of improvement that they have learned. For people to change they need to know how the change will benefit them, that the effort is likely to pay off, that they will have the consistent support of senior management, that they will have the opportunity to begin applying their new learning immediately, and that there will be some way to determine to what extent the change has occurred and has been effective. Teaching can be a powerful way to learn but those organizations that truly want to bring about change in their own companies and industries need to create the conditions that ensure effective application of that new knowledge. 

Failure of Regulation or Leadership?

Was the U.S. economic disaster of the past 18 months a result of lax enforcement of regulations or poor leadership? According to the Times, 150 lenders have failed since mid-2007 and 2200 more are at serious risk of defaulting in the near future because of their business practices. The New York Times writes:

At bank after bank, the examiners are discovering that state and federal regulators knew lenders were engaging in hazardous business practices but failed to act until it was too late…the financial overseers failed to act quickly and forcefully to rein in runaway banks, according to reports compiled by the inspectors general of the four major federal banking regulators.

While the media blame regulators, regulators blame bank leadership. For example, in a recently released audit of the now closed Haven Trust Bank in Duluth, Georgia, the Office of Inspector General of the FDIC concludes:

Haven failed due to bank management’s lack of oversight and failure to control risk in its loan portfolio.

Taxpayers demand and deserve effective oversight of financial institutions. But enforcement of rules and regulations is only needed because of a failure of leadership. Bank executives have acted recklessly, emphasizing short term results at the expense of long term sustainability. In doing so, they have put their banks, and the resources of their customers, in jeopardy.

Bill George, in his timely new book, 7 Lessons For Leading in Crisis, argues that it was this failure of leadership that resulted in the demise of some of the most famous financial institutions. He says that the leaders of these institutions continue to avoid responsibility. He writes:

What shocks me is that leaders are not accepting their responsibility for this fiasco, in spite of the trillions of dollars and millions of jobs that have been lost…Some failed leaders are still in denial, refusing to take responsibility for the missteps that caused their firms to collapse.

Two major leadership themes run through Bill George’s book. One is the notion that truly high performing leaders take responsibility in a crisis. They own the organization’s failures, learn from those  mistakes, are transparent about this, and apply that learning to the next crisis. The other theme is that high performing leaders keep an ethical compass pointed at their personal “True North”. This is George’s belief that truly great leaders are guided by a set of values and ethical beliefs that help them make the right decisions, especially in a time of crisis. He does not see this ownership of responsibility and a focus on their True North in the behavior of many financial institution leaders today.

It’s easy to fix blame for the failure of banks on regulators who face a great deal of resistance when they try to enforce rules and regulations. The more fundamental problem is with the failed leadership of banks. 

A Learning Partnership

One of the organizational factors that contributes to achieving business results from training is "alliance". Sean Murray and I discuss this factor in our new e-book, Getting More From Your Investment in Training: The 5As Framework. Alliance refers to a learning partnership between learner and learner's boss. This partnership is critical to the success of any learning intervention (training, coaching, mentoring, internship, etc.). It's based on the assumption that part of the boss' role is to help the learner set learning goals, create expectations for success, apply the learning, and measure performance outcomes. 

John Baldoni’s new book, Leading Your Boss, provides an excellent description of how to develop a high performance partnership between employee and boss. In his review of Baldoni's book, Wally Bock writes, “The advice won't just work for dealing with your boss. It will also work for you if you are a boss.” It occurs to me that a potentially powerful learning opportunity for both learner and boss is for them to read Baldoni’s book at the same time and discuss the implications for the way they work together and with their team. The advice in the book provides the basis for the two to discuss important issues that they might not otherwise bring up with each other. It is a way for them to learn how to work together more effectively. Yes, it’s risky, but what a great way to open the door to a learning partnership.  

New e-Book for Getting Business Results from Training

Getting business results from training, or any learning intervention (for example, coaching) for that matter, often has more to do with organizational issues than it does with design and delivery of the learning event. Learning professionals have become very good at creating powerful learning experiences for participants. Yet, the number of participants who apply this learning to achieving important business results for their organizations is still quite small. Some researchers put that number in the 10% to 20% range. 

Sean Murray, CEO of RealTime Performance, and I want to increase that number. We have identified five organizational factors that contribute to the impact of learning interventions. We believe that when learners and managers of learners attend to these factors, it is much more likely that training will contribute to business success. These factors are: 

1. Alignment: Align learning with strategic goals.
2. Anticipation: Anticipate success.
3. Alliance: Create a learning alliance between learner and boss.
4. Application: Apply learning immediately.
5. Accountability: Hold learner and organization accountable for business results.

These factors make up what we call the "5As Framework". You can read more about this framework in our new e-book, Getting More From Your Investment in Training: The 5As Framework. The e-book also has valuable tips and tools you can use to get more impact from your training programs. You can download the first two chapters free or you can purchase the whole e-book at the RealTime Performance Web site. Let us know what you think.

Leadership vs. Management

“Leaders are people who do the right thing; managers are people who do things right.” Warren Bennis gave us this catchy way to talk about the difference between leaders and managers. If only that difference was so clear in reality. Henry Mintzberg, that venerable scholar of management studies, author of the classic HBR article, The Manager’s Job: Folklore and Fact, wrote a recent opinion piece for BusinessWeek in which he argues that the captains of industry need to do more managing and less leading. He writes:

…what we've been calling a financial crisis is actually one of management. Corporate America has had too much of fancy leadership disconnected from plain old management… U.S. businesses now have too many leaders who are detached from the messy process of managing. So they don't know what's going on.

Bill George, in his latest book, 7 Lessons for Leading in a Crisis, cites many examples of CEOs who were successful in saving their companies from disaster (i.e., bankruptcy or worse) precisely because they left their C-suites and got into the trenches with managers and customers, found out what was going on, and then worked with their managers to solve problems. One example he describes is David Neeleman, former CEO of JetBlue, who took responsibility for his airline’s Valentine’s Day disaster two and a half years ago that nearly destroyed the company he founded. See the interview.

Neeleman did and interview with Matt Lauer in which the embattled leader owns the problem, says what his company has already done to correct the problem, and offers restitution to everyone who was stranded at an airport during the days that JetBlue grounded its planes. He was able to take these actions because he immediately went into the field with his managers to analyze the system failures and figure out solutions. Unfortunately for Neeleman, he saved the company but in so doing, lost his job (Go figure!).

There are times when leaders need to manage and managers need to lead. John Baldoni, in his latest book, Lead Your Boss: The Subtle Art of Managing Up, explains that at times even mid-level managers need to take on a leadership role and “speak truth to power”… if that is what is required for the good of the company.

Good management and good leadership are not much different. Mintzberg says that leadership is “management practiced well.” The recent crisis in auto companies and financial services firms provides many examples of leaders not managing well and managers not leading well.  They offer excuses (e.g., “I made the best decision I could with the information I had at the time.”) without taking responsibility and they offer a different future while not doing anything fundamental to change the present.

Confessions of a Learning Consultant

Every year billions of dollars are stolen from corporations. No, I’m not talking about the latest financial services company in need of a bailout, or another overzealous hedge fund manager. I’m talking about employee training and development. Only 10% to 20% of participants in these programs will apply what they learn to achieve business results. The American Society for Training & Development (ASTD) estimates that companies spent $134 billion on “employee learning and development” in 2007. That means approximately $107 billion was wasted that year and probably a similar amount was wasted in 2008 and 2009.

Trainers and instructional designers are unwitting accomplices in this fraud. They obediently fulfill client requests for performance improvement programs, not realizing or not caring that these programs will have little impact. I confess: I have designed and delivered programs that could have had no more than minimal impact on my clients' businesses. Maybe this transgression is not criminal in the sense of a Ponzi scheme; it is, however, misusing valuable resources of organizations that cannot afford waste, especially in this economy.

This misdeed is not the fault of learning professionals alone. Company leaders apparently are not willing to do what it takes to ensure that their learning investment pays off. Managers don't make learning a priority. This is like investing in new manufacturing machinery but not in maintenance of that equipment. It’s like investing in new computer technology but not in help-desk support. Learning is a process that requires care and feeding. For employees to learn, they need preparation, a positive mindset, the encouragement and support of people they respect, an opportunity to apply what they learn soon after learning, and reinforcement of learning over time - in addition to a high quality instructional experience. Learning professionals and their companies need to stop squandering valuable resources and start doing the things they need to do to get the results they want.