Learning Development Stories Podcast

"People loved it."

These were the words Dana Hariton McQuade used to summarize her organization's reaction to launching a new global leadership development framework for different leader levels (new, emerging and accelerated). She delved into the details of launching this new initiative on episode seven of the Learning and Development Stories Podcast. It necessitated bringing together three teams – L&D, organizational development and HR analytics – to create experiential learning programs that ultimately touch thousands of employees.

"When we announced the whole pathway around this, we could not offer enough classes soon enough," she said. "People were so hungry for it. Everyone came out feeling stretched and grateful for the opportunity."

Dana currently is the Director of Development at Prism Brain Mapping for North America and previously held learning roles for Lenovo and Morgan Stanley. Here are other insights she shared during the interview.

Engagement Dana noted that in general, data is lagging when conducting employee engagement surveys. It is also a one-way conversation as employees fill out the survey and then often times the dialogue ends there. With the rollout of the new leadership development initiative, Dana felt the organization took big strides to improve engagement.

"Employees felt their voices were heard," she said. "There was satisfaction in that they knew the organization took the time to develop them. Employees want to know better approaches to do their work and many want to know about how they can advance. Showing we took time to develop people was an important engagement point."

Linking learning to business objectives

There were two key ways in which this new initiative linked to key business objectives: 1. It addressed succession planning.

2. It connected the dots to what the company says about itself and what that actually means.

Lessons from mistakes Anyone who ever takes on a new initiative will surely look back and think about doing things differently the next time around. If not, that could be quite problematic! For Dana, she would approach relationship building with key HR stakeholders in a different way the next time she launches a big new initiative.

"This culture was fast moving, sometimes firing first then aiming," she explained. "I had my head down a little too much working and I didn't feel like I had a seat at the table. I didn't understand the why until much later on. This hurt me. Going forward, I will articulate what I need to be successful." Communicating the impact

Dana had particularly interesting insights to share around mobilizing learning communities in which attendees of a program share insights, both during and after a program. Key to this process is moderation.

She also stressed the importance of communicating key L&D initiatives during new employees' on-boarding process.

Knowledge transfer

While travelling for work in Asia, Dana noticed that many people were doing professional development using WeChat, the Chinese multi-purpose messaging, social media and mobile payment app.

"People are learning in different ways that we are not capturing. If the interface isn't easy, people will get learning where it is easy and relevant. We need to make learning accessible."

Recommended tools and resources

Dana sees great opportunities for organizations to leverage immersive learning in part because going through experiences leads to higher retention.

This could play out in various ways. One such example would be enabling new hires to go through an immersive experience in which they might actually be able to see and experience the organization's corporate headquarters located in another part of the world.

"This is completely different than watching a video," she said. "When you can see touch and smell, you will be a better ambassador."

Dana recommends that others in the L&D space refer to content from Josh Bersin and David Rock. A piece we particularly discussed was Rock's article on why learning needs to be effortful in order to be effective.

You can connect with Dana on LinkedIn.

Are you leveraging the influencers in your organization to communicate the impact of your L&D activities? If you answered no and are intrigued about how to do this, then you will want to hear Dave Atack's insights on episode 6 of the Learning and Development Stories podcast.

Dave, formerly the Head of Learning at D.E. Shaw and the VP of Learning Strategy and Performance at Xerox, shared how he identified a working group of influencers in a previous role to hear their feedback about what onboarding should look like and to mobilize them around a new initiative. These were respected and sought after individuals. According to Dave, these influencers ultimately served as a source of sharing information about the initiative to the new hires and managers.

The following are other key points from the interview.

Successful Initiative

One of Dave's most profound work experiences was working on a

health initiative training for developing nations as part of a consulting project. He and his colleagues worked with some 50 people from these different countries' health ministries to help them digitize their respective nation's health systems. A three-day training

workshop in Pretoria, South Africa provided the participants with the skills to strengthen their health information systems.

Knowledge Transfer

One of the key goals of the training in South Africa was to mobilize the workshop participants with the tools to teach their colleagues when they returned to their home countries.

According to Dave, the key to success is realistic practice. "It is important that people have the opportunity to practice the new knowledge and skills in a realistic way so they can then teach others," he said. "We don't know what it looks like when they go back to their countries, so during the workshop we try to simulate what they will encounter."

Lessons from Mistakes

Sometimes we need to be more skeptical. Dave shared the story of choosing a vendor for a particular system. After selecting a company among hundreds, Dave and his colleagues needed to test the system prior to full implementation. It was during this stage, after a significant amount of time had been invested, that the team learned that this company was facing a dire financial situation and not paying its own employees.

"We ultimately wasted lots of effort in evaluating platform. We should have been more skeptical about their finances. Don't take things at face value," Dave said.

Tying Learning to Objectives

Dave explains: "The purpose of learning is to drive organizational performance. If not, why are we bothering?"

For Dave, it starts with sponsors (internal or external). What do they expect? What is success? What do you expect performers to be saying about how learning is making a difference?

As an example, he shared how he approached this during the onboarding of new employees.

"We needed to reduce the number of hours managers spend answering the questions of new hires. We also needed to ask managers and new hires if the onboarding was helpful. So it was quantitative and qualitative."

Employee Engagement

In Dave's opinion, it is hard to measure the link between L&D activities and engagement. "My point of view is that there is a link and it is important we try to keep finding it," he said.

At Xerox, Dave and his colleagues had tools and data to create linkages. They weren't able to find the link. In part, it wasn't initially built into the data set. Better planning was required.

Marketing Communications

In addition to the influencer example highlighted at the outset of this article, Dave also touched on the importance of post-program communications. For example, this has involved collecting data immediately after a program, three months out and then six months out to understand how learning has been implemented and improved an individual's job. This would be reported to the managers so they could see both the good news and areas for improvement.

Resources

For a tool, Dave believes that every L&D professional needs to understand machine learning. The tools are not fully developed yet to make this possible yet. But in his words, this is an "untapped gold mine for organizations to get into."

In terms of content, he recommends Wired Magazine (because it provides a broader context around technology) and Harvard Business Review (because one can see L&D issues from a different perspectives).

What is the best way to launch a strategic centralized learning function within an organization? Malika Viltz-Emerson, an L&D leader who has worked for the likes of Xerox and Grubhub, answered this question on episode 5 of the Learning and Development Stories Podcast.

Linking Learning to Business Strategy

In a recent role, Malika needed to develop a learning function that aligned to the organization's strategy and technology capabilities.

"People were craving knowledge so we needed to develop learning paths to help employees have the tools to be successful," she said.

To align learning to the business, Malika first did an evaluation. This entailed going through a listening phase. It was imperative for her to have a "seat at the table" with business leaders (for example, being present when leadership was meeting with their managers).

She created a strategy by partnering with stakeholders of different lines of business, identifying key performance indicators and then aligned this to learning. She came up with a scorecard that highlighted how learning initiatives could generate results on a quarter-to-quarter basis.

"By being in the room during business conversations, we can identify tactics that might otherwise be missed," she said. "We can come up with strategic approaches on how we can partner."

Following this exploration, Malika and her team created learning paths that were user friendly and provided a positive overall experience.

"Managers were seeing positive changes in how employees were doing their jobs," she said. "There were changes in how employees communicated with each other and shared information."

In summary, Malika highlighted five critical success factors for transformational learning:

• Strategic linkage
• Learner centered
• Technology enabled
• Integrating solutions
• Collaboration

Lessons from Mistakes

Throughout her career, Malika used a standardized approach when doing analysis. In one particular role, she believes that she relied too heavily on this approach and it didn't work as effectively. Part of the reason was that millennials made up a significant portion of this organization's employees.

"I had to learn what works better with that group," Malika explained. "That humbled me. I work in L&D and performance which means I am always a student and need to be continually learning myself."

The Link between Learning and Employee EngagementMalika is not a proponent of surveying employees too frequently. However, it is important to do from time to time. She and her colleagues were able to leverage the analytics and data from the learning platform to gauge how employees engaged with learning. "Engagement changed with the learning platform. There were more interactions. We found that people were coming to us and asking for information. People are often eager to learn but don't have the tools and resources in place." Communications TacticsFor Malika, there are two key components to communications: interactions with leadership and promoting the learning experience to employees. For leadership, the scorecard was an important component. It visually communicated the impact of learning from the previous quarter and identifying opportunities for improvement in the future.

For marketing the overall L&D function, Malika initially communicated with key stakeholders to get their buy-in. Eventually, she needed to go into marketing mode and raise awareness more broadly about key initiatives, such as a new learning platform coming to the organization. In this case, a serious of videos was one means to generating buzz. Once launched, the learning platform itself became a means for raising awareness.

Fostering Knowledge Transfer

Malika thinks L&D professionals need to be "navigators". By that, there is an abundance of knowledge that is available online. L&D professionals need to make sure that whatever learners are consuming is the most impactful. For Malika, it is important to provide

personalized learning, to capture conversations and then to create an atmosphere that encourages collaboration. Resources

In terms of tools, Malika believes L&D leaders need to be actively involved in due diligence and that a learning platform is key to capturing the impact of informal learning.

In terms of resources, she recommends the CLO Magazine, eLearning Guild, ATD, Slack and the Learning and Development Stories Podcast. Books she recommends for L&D professionals are

Clark Quinn's Revolutionize Learning and Developmentand Dan Lyon's book Disrupted.

If you are looking for inspiration on how L&D activities can foster innovation in an organization, then you will thoroughly enjoy episode 4 of the Learning and Development Stories podcast.

Jane Hoskisson, Director of Learning & Development at the International Air Transport Association (IATA), shares how her organization is driving innovation through a program that is being rolled out to some 1,500 employees in some degree. After programmatic activity that takes employees through the design thinking sequence, the teams come back and present to stakeholders who make assessments about the viability of the project.

LINKING LEARNING TO BUSINESS STRATEGY

In formulating a strategy, Hoskisson convened people from across the business into L&D steering groups to identify the skills needed for the organization. "We were able to design what we needed for the organization in order to upskill so that we actually built learning that employees needed and that is relevant to real business problems."

EMPLOYEE ENGAGMENT

Hoskisson notes that employees want to engage in work that is purposeful and brings fulfillment.

"Learning can play an important role because if you invest in people you are telling them you are important to us and we want to develop you. You give them purpose – you are giving them learning that will help them be more successful at their job. We are lucky because we are a trade association representing an amazing industry so it is easy to say 'I can see how I add value to my organization but the wider world as well.'"

COMMUNICATIONS TACTICS

On the topic of communications, Hoskisson explains: "The more I am in L&D, the more I see it is about communications and marketing. Yes it is about learning design and yes it is about equipping people. But there is no point in putting together great programs if people don't understand why you are doing them. We invested lots of money last year working closely with people who are skilled in marketing in branding. We thought it was important. People need to see a story about how learning links together and is relevant in the day-to-day. It can't be abstract."

Hoskisson makes it a point to link learning to organizational values. One value at IATA is the simple human touch. Hoskisson tries to incorporate this into programs by keeping it simple and making it meaningful at the individual level.

She also points out the link between communications in impactful learning experiences.

"The better you can make training for people, the more participants will tell stories for you."

KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER

As a knowledge organization, Hoskisson believes that it is important for her team to instill knowledge awakening. "It is less about knowledge transfer but awakening people's mind on how to apply learning in every day jobs. It is our job to create conditions for people to understand and apply this in a context that works for them."

MISTAKES

It can be difficult to pull the plug on a program that isn't driving the intended change. This is one mistake that Hoskisson noted from her personal experience. She inherited a program that had been in existence for 20 years and she didn't have a good feeling about it. Many in the business were involved in sharing their knowledge, so it was even more difficult to terminate the program. But she noted that she had waited too long.

She tries to avoid this from happening in the future by constantly reviewing the performance of programs. It is important to bring a "critical eye without being jaded."

RESOURCES

Hoskisson notes curiosity as an invaluable resource. "If you are not curious, you are a disservice to your business. You need to know what is down the line in the business."

A powerful example of the power of curiosity happened recently when a colleague's 15 year old son came to work for a week of experience. He asked lots of thought provoking questions that the team hadn't been considering.

For ongoing learning, Hoskisson recommends resources from Brené Brown and content on Tech Crunch. She also draws upon mentors in the learning space who provides inspirational thoughts.

Many organizations are grappling with how to keep employees up to speed with the digital transformation that is impacting society. Adilson Borges, Chief Learning Officer of the France-based retailer Carrefour, joined the Learning and Development Stories podcast and shared how his company is addressing this issue in its L&D activities. It is not through a one-off, expert-led learning event, but rather a peer-to-peer mentoring program.

"Digital transformation is impacting business for all organizations," he said. "Our program brings together individuals who are skilled with using digital communications and matches them with those interested in learning more about digital transformation."

As part of the program, the L&D team set up the infrastructure for a successful mentoring program in which the groups met in pairs on average of four to five times over a six-month time period. The L&D team provided a framework as well as different tools and elements that enabled participants to share their knowledge. The program also was a means for the different tandems to discuss important topics that impact Carrefour's business, like big data, artificial intelligence and apps that facilitate customers' shopping experience. In summary, the program included a kick-off to set the stage for the mentoring program, group interactions and then a concluding wrap-up event. Carrefour saw a 40% improvement around participants' knowledge of digital transformation.

"We identified five or six different dimensions - general themes around digital transformation, artificial intelligence and using big data. We asked participants questions about these topics before and after the program," explained Borges on how the impact of the learning was measured.

LINKING LEARNING TO BUSINESS STRATEGY The way we shop is evolving, due in part to how devices like Google Home and Amazon Echo are impacting the way we buy new products. According to Borges, it was key for the organization from a business perspective to equip leaders to understand these dynamics and gain perspective on what is coming up next.

"It really is about going beyond the training itself to enable people to incorporate the content on a regular basis so they can change the business," said Borges.

LEARNING FROM MISTAKES "There is one way to not make mistakes - don't try anything new," said Borges. "Mistakes are part of the process. We have to celebrate them."

Borges highlighted a learning lesson from his career: moving too fast and failing to spend enough time listening to sponsors to really understand what they needed. This ends up leading to re-working different elements down the road.

Another issue he highlighted is truly collaborating, especially with difficult personalities, to co-develop learning solutions.

KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER There is lots of content out there. One role for L&D leaders is selection. But for Borges, the most important goal around this theme is understanding the learners and looking at learning as co-creation. What are the tactics and techniques that are needed to develop participants' full potential?

One way is ensure that there is a mechanism for learning to be shared from the bottom up. On that note, Carrefour has developed a digital workplace in which employees can learn from each other. It is about peer-to-peer transfer and matching to help learning happen in the organization.

"This can help people develop their full potential," said Borges. "I can see those individuals developing their skills and put their learning into action and I can learn from them at the same time. It can also capture best practices."

EMPLOYEE ENGAGMENT Go to an HR website and odds are you will quickly come across content around improving employee engagement. Organizational learning can play a role in this.

Borges recounted a story of how a learning program has improved morale. Carrefour has 120,000 employees coming from a range of socio-economic backgrounds. As an employer, Carrefour has a training program in place that validates basic skills - language skills, math, etc - designed to help future employment opportunities, both within and outside the organization. Those who have taken part in this program have 20% higher likelihood to recommend Carrefour as a place to work and a 25% higher likelihood to want to continue working at the company.

COMMUNICATIONS TACTICS Within Carrefour, there are some 250 employees involved in L&D across the different business units. As a larger group, the L&D employees meet once a month and discuss projects. They try find common points of interest with the goal of identifying joint initiatives that can have a large impact on everyone, notes Borges. In terms of project management, Borges believes that communications must integrate all stakeholders.

Other communications tactics of a typical program might include the following:

- A newsletter announcement - Special events (kick-off sessions and learning days) - Multimedia (particularly short videos that capture a program's outcomes)

RECOMMENDED RESOURCESBorges' recommendations for L&D professionals include the following:

Tool: Empathy. Put yourself in the place of the learner.

Resource(s) for ongoing learning: Mindset by Carol Dweck. The book focuses on having a growth mindset.

You can connect with Adilson Borges on LinkedIn at the following link.

Think about this statistic: 80% of one-time learning events fail.

Wes Parker, an L&D leader with the software company Omnitracs, is passionate about reversing this number. One of the key ways he has been able to succeed in this goal is by implementing the full learning transfer model, as he explained on episode two of the Learning & Development Stories podcast.

Wes recounted how he and his colleagues used the full learning transfer model during a new leadership initiative at the Omnitracs. This involved the following:

1: Communications to the Csuite, HR business partners and leaders.

2: Video and e-learning components in which best practice on the topic of leadership is shared.

3: Interactive live webinar to review knowledge and practice skills around coaching, corrective action and developing people. Participants needed to come up with their own action items to close performance gaps.

4: Accountability partners were assigned and they would meet 30, 60 and 90 days after the webinar to share progress.

5: The leaders were provided tools that they needed to explain to their respective teams in different meetings.

6: Participants were given access to a website that included tools highlighting performance management best practices.

7: Weekly reinforcements.

"We saw dramatic results in the performance of our leaders," said Wes. "In three months, there was new knowledge and skills and then by six months we could see real business impact and ROI. A one-time learning event is critical, but by adding a meeting before and after, a website and reinforcements, you can really move the needle. It is more than learning. It is about learning application."

Learning from Mistakes

On each episode of the Learning and Development Stories podcast, we ask guests to share lessons from mistakes.

Wes noted how in his team, they make it a point to review mistakes in their weekly meetings.

"We ask what mistake we made in the previous week, how we fixed it and how to prevent it going forward," he explained.

He shared the personal story of how he failed to thoroughly vet a facilitator who came highly recommended. Consequently, a number of issues propped up.

"Never trust alone," advised Wes. "Verify, especially on critical opportunities."

Linking Learning to Business Objectives

The aforementioned leadership program is one example of how Wes linked a learning initiative to a business strategy. He advised others to think proactively about linking learning to business objectives through a line of sight tool (also referred to as an impact map tool). This involves writing out the following across four different columns:

- The strategic objectives of the organization.

- How different objectives will be measured.

- The performance or behaviors needed to achieve the measurement / objective.

- The competencies (knowledge, skills and attitudes) to perform behaviors.

"You have this line of sight to see how this competency links to performance so this objective will be met," he explained.

There are also times to be reactive as unforeseen circumstances arise. Wes advises to consider what strategy objectives the training request relates to, as this ensures each learning initiative is aligned to the business strategy of the company, department or team.

Employee Engagement

"Training is one of the main things wanted by employees," Wes said. "That is not going to change. Research shows we are all motivated by external motivators - reward and recognition - and internal motivators - purpose, choice, control of what we do, connected to other and we want to be seen as capable. That is where training comes in."

Communicating Learning Initiatives

"Field of Dreams" doesn't work in terms of launching learning programs. You have to communicate effectively. Wes advises L&D teams to conduct communications audits to understand how the organization communicates. He also recommends close collaboration with marketing communications colleagues. In terms of messaging, he stresses the importance of focusing on the benefits, not the features.

Resources

Wes suggested that L&D professionals leverage the full learning transfer model and the line of sight maps. (Additional information about the full learning transfer model is at the following link).

To stay abreast about the latest in learning and development, Wes recommends signing up to receive daily emails from the likes of:

• Society for Human Resource Management
• Internal Society for Performance Improvement
• ATD
• eLearning Guild

In terms of teaching content that can be used in your organizations training programs, Parker recommends The Society for Human Resource Management.

Employee engagement is an issue facing most all organizations, according to a Gallup survey. What is learning and development's role in addressing this issue?

Brandon Carson, Director of Learning at Home Depot and author of Learning in the Age of Immediacy, shared his opinion about this on episode 1 of the Learning and Development Stories podcast.

"We know that employees are more likely to be engaged when they understand their expectations and when they are aware of the opportunities available to them," Brandon said during the interview. "Learning organizations are in a great place to be advocates and stewards of that because we have direct relationships with employees and the business. We know that training provides opportunities for employees to realize their full potential at work."

You can hear his additional insights on this subject by jumping to the 15:30 mark of the interview. The below summary highlights other key topics covered during the interview.

Stories

On the positive side, Brandon points to a current project in which Home Depot is creating a mobile app for associates on the floor (2:47). It is a fairly transformative program as it is pushing Home Depot to re-think how learning occurs. It focuses on how people should be supported in their job by taking learning out of the back room in a transactional environment and bringing it into the context of employees' work stream.

"This has been the most interesting programs I have worked on with in recent years," Brandon said. "We are trying to re-think how training takes place in this environment based on helping the customer and associate we support."

Brandon shared several personal anecdotes of lessons learned from his career (10:12). He notes that mistakes occur when:

• We think that the learning person has all the answers.
• Failure to actively listen to all involved.
• Ego is involved.
• Failure to figure out what drives the business value of whatever we are doing and understanding when training will have an impact.

Strategies

In terms of how to tie learning to business strategy (7:10), Brandon makes the following points:

• Learning organizations shouldn't have their own Key Performance Indicators, but rather should align with the business KPIs.
• Say no to the things that will not bring value and say yes to the right things.
• The learning leader needs to have a really good understanding of how learning works.
• It requires a rethinking of how learning should function in the enterprise.

Knowledge Transfer

Successful transfer of information that leads to new capabilities is a difficult task. According to Brandon, "It is a mash up of context, data, information, engagement, motivation and emotional output." (23:30)

Who is responsible for the act of knowledge transfer? Brandon believes it is a partnership between the learning organization, the learner, the line manager and leadership.

Communicating the Value of Learning to Stakeholders

Brandon highlights the example of a new learning initiative at Home Depot in which it wasn't enough to just communicate to associates the value (30:00). "Just showing folks here is a cool app is not enough. It required buy-in from all different levels. We had to show from the learning organization's perspective what the value was and talk about it quite a bit."

This is about instilling the culture of learning.

Reliable Resources (35:00) Tool: curiosity, which fosters critical thinking and drives creativity and innovation. Reading: Edward Tufte's website and a book by Donald Norman on the Design of Everyday Things.

Recommended sources for external content that can be used for trainings: Home Depot produces most of its own content but does use Ted Talks videos and lots of product knowledge videos.

Connect with Brandon Carson Brandon Carson is the Director of Learning at Home Depot and the author of "Learning in the Age of Immediacy – 5 Factors for How We Connect, Communicate, and Get Work Done". Learn more about the book and connect with Brandon on Twitter and LinkedIn.