Many organizations are spending time, energy, and dollars to develop expertise needed to meet organizational goals, a strategy that is of utmost importance for sustaining the right level of capability for meeting the changing demands of the marketplace. It is important to remain steadfast in keeping up with changes in the marketplace, accurately reading the signals, then making the necessary provisions to develop the required capabilities needed by the workforce. A major problem for many organizations is that they tend to operate in a short-term mode and neglect appropriate planning for the development of this expertise. Without a firm strategy for developing the capabilities of its employees, the future seems to arrive at an accelerated pace—and often unannounced, consequently leaving the organization unprepared to respond to the demands of its clients. The resulting effect is the strong possibility that market share will be lost. One of the ways to be better prepared to address the tactical and strategic expertise requirements is to include career development planning in the organization’s business forecasting model. One of IBM’s principal methods of addressing the need to develop expertise is through collaborative learning activities, which offer its global workforce a variety of learning options and tools. Consistent with this thought, this chapter emphasizes the importance of designing a learning strategy to meet on-going skills needs as well as provide insights on how IBM uses the collaborative approach to learning with examples and illustrations of some of their best practices.

IBM remains mindful of the fact that the only thing that is constant in the global marketplace is change, and the company makes every effort to meet the challenges of a constantly changing world economy. The organization has the vision, business prudence, and foresight to see the opportunities that exist within these marketplace challenges, which is one of the compelling reasons the company invests in career development. When IBM amasses the right skills for the present and the future, it helps capitalize on the opportunities that change presents. Companies that do not make provisions for business changes by having the right capabilities could find themselves overwhelmed and consumed by the unstable nature of the global economy and marketplace dynamics. IBM tries to be proactive by developing the right skills that position the company to be adaptable and flexible when “disruptive business changes” occur.

In a 2008 article, “Transforming IBM,” the company restated its position on ways to be prepared to deal with business changes by affirming that “In IBM, we are building a highly adaptable business, tightly integrated across both our operations and the global economy that can sense and respond quickly to changes anywhere, anytime.... More than ever, our success depends on our ability to respond at the speed of the market, at the point of client contact. By changing the way we work, we will improve our responsiveness and productivity and generate profitable growth.”¹ Proactive and enduring companies define their talent and expertise development plans to withstand the storms of business challenges that are sometimes influenced by external economic downturn. Some companies act in a state of panic and anxiety during these times and run the risk of indiscriminately cutting talent when having the right talent is the very thing that enables survival and recovery. Also, having the necessary expertise helps the organization to remain steady in its efforts to be more creative and innovative in the ways things are done and to not only see the challenges, but to see the opportunities and capitalize on them to meet business goals.

IBM continues to make great investments to harness skills—such as deep technical, functional, global leadership, and strong interpersonal skills and global business acumen—that give the organization a solid business foundation. When the skills needs of the organization are aligned with employees’ interests and when these employees are made aware of “what’s in it for them and what’s in it for the organization,” business goals are more likely to be met. This scenario specifically promotes a “joint venture” between the leaders of the organization and the organization’s employees. Mercer Human Resource Consulting defines joint venture as “a partnership in which people collaborate for mutual benefit.” The Mercer article continues to explain that “While some organizations hand over responsibility for career management to employees, others have chosen to be involved selectively. Still others are committed to actively managing for both the business’ and the individual’s benefit. It is these organizations that will win the race to attract, engage, and retain their workforce.”²

Never before has human and intellectual capital been so important to sustaining business success as it is today, which will continue into the future. A “joint venture” is quite similar to a business proposition in that, as a company invests in the development of its workforce, the expectation is that employees will return value to the business. This approach is a value statement that is issued to employees. It also empowers employees to accept the responsibility of being an active partner in this business venture. Inherent in a learning framework such as this is the expectation of high performance and a high degree of contribution that allows the organization to compete to win in the marketplace. IBM uses this unique approach to successfully shape their employee development program.

At IBM, a core element of employee career development is based on the premise of joint venture, where employees are given the tools and resources to execute a plan to act on their career interests and goals, while managers and mentors are expected to provide ample support and coaching. The essence of this career development model is that employees are involved in collaborative learning in an environment that promotes the transfer of tacit knowledge. This learning model is clearly aligned with the IBM values where employees build relationships so that they can deliver collective achievements and value to the business.

IBM’s career development model transcends geographic, cultural, and business unit barriers. The company believes that these factors should not be inhibitors to employee learning and development. In the end, this practice not only enhances and encourages employee development, but also builds the requisite expertise to deliver on promises made to its global clients. Under the umbrella of integrating global capabilities in order to distinguish the company, IBM argues that the “Enterprise of the Future searches worldwide for sources of expertise, resources and assets that can help it differentiate. Finding the right capabilities is much more important than finding the cheapest. These centers of excellence are integrated globally so that the best capabilities, knowledge, and assets can be used wherever required.”³

Finding the right capabilities within an organization is highly dependent on the quality and variety of the learning and development options available to employees. In the past, many organizations relied heavily on formal classroom education to deliver training and development. Today many still use this method as a primary development tool, but it has proven to be quite costly. There is evidence that there is a paradigm shift in the ways some companies deliver learning and development. This shift relies less on traditional classroom training and more on technology-enabled learning, collaborative and tacit learning approaches. This approach gives IBM the opportunity to provide its employees with just-in-time training and learning that take place in a collaborative environment despite distance and geographic boundaries. The learning and development transformations that are taking place in forward-thinking companies offer a blended approach to learning, which includes a mix of classroom education with experiential, on-the-job, just-in-time, and technology-based learning opportunities.

An approach to IBM’s career development is the innovative use of traditional learning tools such as mentoring; rotational, stretch, and temporary assignments; as well as job shadowing, all of which help enable employees to develop technical, leadership, and critical business skills. These methods are not only cost effective, but they also create an atmosphere that fosters collaborative learning where knowledge flows freely among team members.

This chapter addresses each of these learning tools in detail and demonstrates how IBM uses innovative ways to impact learning and development.

One of the unique characteristics of the twenty-first century workplace is the growing practice of group or team learning, and in large part, IBM’s learning and development program is built on the concept of collaborative learning. According to Payton Educational Consulting in their 2004 article, “What is Collaborative Learning?,” they defined collaborative learning as “Learning that is based on the idea that learning is a naturally social act in which participants talk among themselves (Gerlach, 1994). It is through the talking that learning occurs.”⁴ As employees engage in teams with the purpose of learning and knowledge transfer, the generation of ideas tends to flourish, and at the same time, problem-solving skills, critical thinking, and group decision-making skills develop. Collaborative learning cultivates an atmosphere where all members of the team are not only responsible for their own personal development, but also the development of others in the group. This is predicated on the need for all members of the team to perform at a higher level and improve their value proposition to the organization.

In a collaborative learning environment, diversity and inclusiveness are important factors in the development process. This includes diversity of approaches, thoughts, culture, differences in learning styles, and the general make-up of the team. The resulting effect of the focus on diversity is that the learning experience is enriched by giving participants on the team the ability to develop the skills to present and accept diverse points of views and to constructively defend differing ideas with the goal of reaching a productive group consensus.

When leaders within an organization foster a climate that embraces diversity on every level, it breeds a learning environment that is open to new ideas, which is fertile ground for innovation and breakthroughs. Web-based Leaders’ Toolkit, Technology Partners reinforced this idea by stating in their article, “Improving Organizational Performance,” that “a diverse workforce will bring the company a consistent influx of ideas for new products, services and/or processes. Research has shown that heterogeneous groups outperform homogeneous groups, if the diversity is managed. With a constant source of innovation, a company’s competitive advantage will be enhanced.”⁵

It has been a longstanding practice for IBM to cultivate a climate of inclusiveness. This is characteristic of learning communities and learning teams that exist within the company. IBM has benefited by having diverse teams work on tasks that range from the simple to the most complex. Diverse teams tend to stimulate critical and creative thinking, which has the potential to introduce novel ways of solving problems and is also a catalyst that forces people to exercise “out-of-the-box” ways of approaching the way they work. The notion of collaborative learning has its roots in the idea that as employees gain knowledge and new expertise, they make a special effort to pass on this knowledge to their peers. The practice of peer-to peer learning has taken on renewed importance to IBM because there is a pronounced need to enable speed and effectiveness in developing skills that are crucial to the business. This is particularly important in the growth markets. Peer-to-peer learning also supports the IBM diversity efforts because this learning process transcends geographic borders, cultural difference, language difference, and other diversity dimensions.

As the war for talent intensifies, diversity in the workplace becomes a weapon to attract, retain, engage, and motivate employees. Employees want to thrive in a workplace that creates continuous learning and an intellectually stimulating environment in which they are empowered to think critically, creatively, and differently. To underscore the importance of diversity and career development within IBM, Ron Glover, Vice President, Diversity and Workforce Programs at IBM, asserted that “Diversity is becoming a key factor in helping define leadership in today’s marketplace—effectively reaching customers and markets. Today, continued diversity leadership at IBM will quench our insatiable appetite for talent and enhance our ability to create new revenue streams, retain talent, win and retain customers and maintain our marketplace leadership.”⁶

IBM has a long-standing practice of investing in creating employee learning options that are linked to the changing needs of the workforce and equally important, the changing needs of the global client set. In return for this level of investment in learning programs, IBM is expecting improvement in performance and a pronounced impact on delivering creative solutions and services to the global marketplace. The perspective is that the company is expecting employees to demonstrate personal responsibility and accountability to prudently use the menu of learning options that are available to them. The cornerstone of this approach is to allow employees to continually refresh and retool their skills portfolio in order to improve and protect their on-going value to the company. To this point, Price Pritchett, in the employee handbook of the New Work Habits for a Radically Changing World, argues that “Lifelong learning is the only way to remain competitive in the job market. You should invest in your own growth, development and self-renewal....Your employer may help out with this, but ultimately the problem is yours. Your future ‘employability’—your appeal as a job candidate depends on having a relentless drive to update credentials, acquire new skills, and stay abreast of what’s happening in your field.”⁷

Today, the nature of workforce learning and transfer of knowledge require more than just the traditional model, in which most of the learning takes place in a classroom and in a formal lecture manner. As stated before, the new and complementary approach to learning in the workforce is mainly team-based, peer-to-peer, e-learning, and on-the-job learning. This approach builds meaning and improved levels of excitement in the learning process, in that employees get the opportunity to quickly apply their knowledge and get immediate feedback from their peers.

Learning and doing allows employees to build depth because they are using a practical approach that allows them to develop early confidence in testing creative ways of applying their knowledge. This learning practice also affords employees the chance to do personal evaluation and introspection about their progress and take the necessary actions to address the pace at which they are grasping concepts. In addition, when learning is taking place in a team setting, peers are in a position to observe how quickly development is taking place and can offer suggestions, guidance, and support to one another.

These factors play a very important role in building individual and team accountability, trust, and the discipline among team members to constantly improve. When teams use discipline to drive their learning, the benefits they derive are high performance, personal satisfaction, and making themselves more valuable to the organization. Price Pritchett speaks to the importance of team discipline by asserting that “Discipline also is a key component of trust. It sets the stage for reliability, for dependability as crew members come to know what they can expect from one another. Discipline fosters a precious internal integrity among teammates that pumps up pride and builds the character of the crew.”⁸ In short, when team members demonstrate responsibility for their individual learning, as well as the collective learning of the team, everyone stands to gain. These are the expectations of any team that is defined as high-performing and forward-thinking.

Historically, IBM has made it a practice to anchor learning and development on a set of values and basic principles that helped to shape its workplace as high performing. This practice has positioned IBM to maintain its competitiveness throughout the years. The following section includes a glimpse of how IBM links learning and development to a core set of values.

In 1963, the author of A Business and its Beliefs—The Ideas that Helped Build IBM, Thomas J. Watson, stated that “I believe the real difference between success and failure of a corporation can very often be traced to the question of how well the organization brings out the great energies and talents of its people. What does it do to help these people find common cause with each other—and how can it sustain this common cause and a sense of direction through the many changes which take place from one generation to the other?”⁹ Watson’s statement amplifies the long-held value that IBM places on developing its workforce by providing them with a support system through programs such as mentoring, providing a robust plethora of options for career development, and tacit learning opportunities. Once employees take advantage of these resources, they are empowered to unleash “their great talents and energies” to make a marked difference in building IBM’s competitive strength in the global marketplace.

As noted earlier, a constant in the global marketplace is change, and even in the early days of IBM there was a certain level of sensitivity to assure the continuation of things that made the company endure, while at the same time remaining poised to deal with the challenges and opportunities that change presents. IBM has a strategy to refresh, restate, and recommit to its core values and makes every effort to communicate the expectations and implications of these values to each new generation that enters the global workforce.

In 1996 IBM made a statement about “What it means to be an IBMer,” and a key component of that statement is a description of “Team IBM”—“IBMers are diverse. We share and leverage knowledge. We pay never-ending attention to improving our skills. We are accountable. We conspicuously share results.”¹⁰ In today’s environment, heightened importance is given to the talent that people bring to the teams with which they are affiliated. Teams tend to flourish when there is a common expectation that all members strive to develop and refine their skills with the goal of delivering value to the team and ultimately to the organization. “Teams perform best when the teammates bring a variety of abilities, experiences, personalities, and problem solving approaches.”¹¹ IBM aligns skills and career development with cross-organizational learning, with the explicit purpose of enabling employees to develop broad and diverse skills and perspectives. A primary method of exposing employees to cross-organizational learning is done through on-the-job, experiential learning opportunities, including shadow experience, rotational and stretch assignments, mentoring, cross-unit projects, and more. Each of the components of the IBM Experiential Learning Portfolio is discussed in further detail later.

The new norm for employee development is that it is values-based and, to a great extent, team-based. IBM makes it clear that its employees are valued and that the company has an obligation to make learning a meaningful experience. At the same time, the learning environment is such that the transfer of knowledge among employees is fluid. Consequently, knowledge has a multiplier effect, in that as knowledge is acquired, it is multiplied by passing it on to others—this is another characteristic of high-performing individuals. Again, IBM invests greatly in providing the resources and support to its employees’ career development, and in turn, the company expects employees to feel a sense of empowerment and engagement. Employees are empowered to use their knowledge and expertise in innovative ways that benefit the company and its clients. In essence, when employees accept the shared responsibility for their career growth, they become active partners in their on-going development and skill enhancement.

To underscore the importance of the role that values play on talent development, client satisfaction, and the generation of revenue, it becomes necessary to articulate the tenets of the IBM values, along with their meaning and purpose. Table 8.1 lists the three IBM values with a brief description.

In order for IBM employees to live out the true meaning of these values, they must have the requisite skills portfolio to create worth and meaning for themselves and for IBM’s clients.

To get a balanced view of career development at IBM, we would like to share the following input, which was received from two employees highlighting their learning experience and advancement and the factors that drive attraction and retention.

In assessing the perspectives of both employees, it is obvious that they thrive when they have resources and an environment that cultivates innovative thinking and continuous learning. Not only is the commitment of an organization’s talent development strategy a tool that attracts, motivates, and retains employees, but it is also aligned with the company’s value system to deliver on the organization’s promise to the marketplace.

Table 8.2 describes the key components of IBM’s Learning Portfolio, and it is defined as learning through practice, observation, and personal discovery. A major element of this type of learning is built on the premise that the learner has the opportunity to reflect and do a personal assessment soon after the experience takes place. In addition, the learner is in a position to receive meaningful and immediate feedback regarding the learning experience. The table lists the experiential learning options that IBMers are able to use to acquire new skills. These options have proven to have notable impact on career development and are structured in such a way that employees find it easy to incorporate these plans in their development goals. These examples also show that employee learning is truly a joint venture within IBM, primarily because employees, managers, and mentors must work together to gain the greatest benefit from on-the-job learning experiences. (Also see the “Other Experiential Learning Options” section later in this chapter.)