Chapter 4

Engaging Leaders in Key
Learning Activities

What’s in this chapter:

• How to govern the learning function—ensuring that the learning process is relevant to the business, aligned with business priorities, and managed in a fiscally responsible way.
• How to design and develop learning solutions that are seen as rigorously following the regular business process for developing new products.
• How to engage leaders as teachers—including teaching, coteaching, guest speaking, and postlearning program coaching.

The theme throughout this book is how to engage business leaders in your learning activities to create strong alignment with business priorities. In previous chapters, business-centered needs analysis and business-case creation were discussed as two such leadership engagement opportunities. As you well know, there are many activities within learning functions. However, not all activities are created equal. There are a few key activities that can create tremendous value for both the business and the learning leader. You can create unprecedented levels of engagement and alignment by directly engaging your business leaders in these key activities.

In this chapter, we focus on three key learning processes that offer tremendous opportunity for value-add engagement of your stakeholders:

• Governing the learning function.
• Designing and developing effective learning solutions.
• Engaging leaders as teachers.

These three processes constitute critical touch points between learning and your business. Closely involving your leaders in all three processes will ensure the consistent relevance and alignment of your organization’s learning solutions with its business goals. Together, these processes make up step 3 of the Strategic Learning Alignment Model: Engaging Leaders in Key Learning Activities.

Governing the Learning Function

As I have mentioned throughout this book, business leaders often complain that the learning function is removed from the business. Of course, these same business leaders fund the learning investment, which can potentially lead to a serious disconnect between business and learning. But what do these leaders want? They simply want transparency vis-à-vis their investment. They want to know:

• Is the learning relevant to the business?
• Is the learning aligned with business priorities?
• Is the learning function managing the learning operation as a fiscally responsible business process?

These are fair questions for any investor—all pointing to the potential disconnect between business and learning. Governance systems can help eliminate this disconnect. A governance system entails the use of multiple advisory boards to ensure that your learning function is transparently on the right track. And through this formal governance system, senior business leaders and other key stakeholders provide guidance and oversight for their investment in the learning function. Thus, governance provides a strong linkage between learning and business leaders. And this in turn ensures that learning is aligned with the business’s strategy and priorities. This linkage enables the learning function to deliver more impact to the company, which continues to increase the learning function’s credibility.

In addition, gaining such visible support for learning from senior leaders helps to position the learning function as strategically important to the business. The leaders also bring their collective business knowledge and experiences to aid in managing the learning function. When you review award-winning learning functions, you often see that a formal governance system is in place; this is a clearly a best practice among top learning organizations—which, in fact, frequently credit their success to the strength of their governance systems.

Modeling Learning Governance After Corporate Governance

Using formal governance bodies is not a new concept—it is borrowed from the world of business. Successful for-profit and nonprofit organizations typically have a board of directors. The board’s members are selected on the basis of their professional knowledge and relevant experience. To provide more diversity of thought, members also come from other unrelated industries, universities, and/or associations. The perceived quality of a corporation’s governance system, such as its board, can actually influence the company’s share prices (what people are willing to pay for an ownership share in the company) as well as the cost of raising capital (obtaining loans and other outside investment dollars). In the article “A Board Culture of Corporate Governance,” Gabrielle O’Donovan (2003) highlights the recent renewed interest in corporate governance. In part, this is due to the high profile collapses of a number of large U.S. firms, such as Enron Corporation, and the failure of their boards to properly govern the corporation.

Across different industries and companies, the Board of Directors performs a similar set of essential oversight activities, which include

• accountability
• operational effectiveness
• program service and quality
• effective controls
• adherence to enterprise priorities.

For more, see figure 4-1.

These five basic governance responsibilities can certainly be applicable to your learning governance system. In fact, by using governance systems for your learning function, you can deliver powerful alignment with business goals.

The Structure of Learning Governance

Learning governance systems can vary in their roles and responsibilities and member composition. These can range from strategic-level, CEO-led boards to advisory councils to more operational learning councils:

• A strategic-level, CEO-led board includes senior leaders from across the company and focuses on direction, policy, and prioritization of learning.
• Advisory councils include a mix of midlevel through senior-level leaders who provide guidance on the direction of a curriculum.
• Operational learning councils include representation from multiple training group leaders within a company and focuses on the efficiency and effectiveness of learning across the company.

The size, geographic footprint, and complexity of your organization will influence the design of your governance system. However, at minimum, all organizations should have a strategic-level advisory board and a curriculum advisory council. You want your leaders to direct and “own” the business relevance of your learning strategy and learning solutions. Figure 4-2 summarizes the various governance bodies, roles and responsibilities, and membership composition you can use in your organization.

Designing Your Governance Team’s Membership

The success of your learning governance system is largely influenced by the membership composition of your governance bodies. A stakeholder analysis, such as the one reviewed in chapter 2 (see worksheet 2-2), is extremely helpful when planning your learning governance membership to provide a visual representation of key influential stakeholders.

In addition, a stakeholder analysis identifies your most passionate supporters and most resistant stakeholders. In the early stages of organizing your governance system, it is wise to include one or two resistant leaders, who naturally will be well outnumbered by passionate supporters. As these resistant leaders engage in a learning governance role, their resistance is typically converted into more constructive guidance. In addition, your passionate supporters will exert subtle peer pressure, which typically neutralizes your resistant leader.

Along with your most senior members, you may want a midlevel leader to participate in your governance system as a career development opportunity. Midlevel managers typically view interacting with the C-suite level of senior leaders as a highly desirable opportunity. Figure 4-3 provides an example of a governance membership plan. Attention is paid to membership diversity and 18-month tenure rotations. A diverse membership consists of multiple business units and geographies. Diversity also may include variety in gender, age, and race, as well as a mix of leaders representing a range of support for your learning.

Clearly, the majority of the members of your governance system should have some passion about the importance of learning to the business. However, having a few members known for lesser support of learning will add to more robust advisory discussions and typically results in their increased support of learning. As members rotate on and off the board, make sure that you are providing adequate orientation to the board’s charter, member roles, history, and current priorities.

Building Support for Learning Governance

Your organization may have strong C-suite support and engagement for learning, making governance relatively straightforward to implement. However, many organizations are not this fortunate. If your organization resembles the latter, here are a few strategies to drive learning governance.

The first strategy is to use your stakeholder analysis to identify your most senior passionate supporters. Approach them to serve as a steering committee. Then, with stakeholder analysis, present their participation on the steering committee as a way to address the issues and concerns that are so important to them. Be prepared to discuss their roles and responsibilities, and specify the estimated time commitment that this will involve.

Another strategy is to engage the chief financial officer in helping you ensure the company’s investment in learning is getting a return. By engaging the CFO, he or she gains insight into the learning investment and can help direct spending to strategic priorities, and also becomes intimate with your process of engaging business leaders to ensure your learning is business relevant. The other business leaders will advocate your learning to the CFO, increasing his or her confidence that your learning is mission-critical to the organization.

You can even leverage your CFO as a sponsor for evaluation studies. Your key recruiting point for senior leaders is for leadership engagement to keep the learning investment aligned, relevant, and valuable to the business. Ask the CFO for assistance in recruiting other senior leaders to a steering committee.

Finally, in a worse-case scenario, leverage passionately supportive leaders wherever you can find them. To do this, approach a respected leader with whom you have worked on providing valuable learning solutions or who really needs your learning services. Request his or her personal mentorship to guide the learning function, and enlist him or her to help you add more members to your governance committee.

The bottom line: Do not go it alone—engage leaders in some level of governance assistance!

Creating and Using a Charter for Your Governance Body

When you are ready to start recruiting governance group members, you will need an initial charter describing the group’s purpose and its members’ roles. Once your governance group convenes, there will be opportunities to further refine and align your activities in keeping with your charter, building a further sense of ownership among your members.

Charters provide clarity and manage expectations. Without an agreed-upon charter, the governance group is like a boat without a rudder, and it will not take long for your business leaders to become frustrated with the lack of clarity and view their participation as having little value. To prevent this, consider how to design a charter that clearly defines the group’s responsibilities and members’ specific duties. But this charter does not have to be cumbersome—it can be as simple as the one depicted in figure 4-4.

Planning Your Governance Group’s Meetings

The first priority in planning your governance group’s meetings is to seek out a key senior leader to serve as the sponsor for your governance group. Ideally, for governance at the level of a strategy board, this sponsor should be your CEO. Most governance groups at this level meet three or four times a year. Work with your sponsor to craft meeting agendas. If your CEO’s busy schedule prohibits him or her from giving hands-on agenda support, seek out another senior leader from within your strategy board who has the respect and ear of the CEO. For regional, curriculum, and enterprise learning councils, enlist one of the most senior leaders as your council sponsor. Ensure that the leaders from whom you seek advice are seen as credible, strong performers in your business.

Meetings can vary in length and content based on the level of governance. For most of your governance meetings, two to four hours in length is optimal. To minimize potential travel and time away from the office, try to tie the scheduling of your governance meetings to other scheduled meetings of senior leaders. Business leaders appreciate the convenience, and perhaps one less airport security line. Large organizations typically have an annual calendar. If this is the case, schedule and communicate your meeting dates well in advance.

For strategy board governance agendas, you may want use an annual theme for your discussions, such as social networking technology for learning. This creates continuity and gives a cadence to the meetings. To create additional continuity, you may also want to use standard agenda items, such as time set aside for the “voice of the customer,” when you obtain input from the members of your governing committee about customers’ preferences regarding your learning solutions and processes. Because these committee members travel and interact with many employees across the company, they are a good source of this customer information.

In communicating the agenda for each governance group meeting, specify and communicate your desired meeting outcomes to your group members. For each agenda item, are you seeking directional approval, seeking a final decision, simply informing, or seeking input? This helps frame your expectations vis-à-vis the leaders and provides more organization to your meetings. And ensure that your strategy board agenda items are truly strategic. Of course, your strategic agenda items should be relevant and aligned to the company’s strategic issues. Figure 4-5 gives an example of an actual Strategy Board Agenda.

Use external thought leaders to both educate and drive your strategic agenda for learning. Expert, outside thinking helps open new paradigms of thought in your governance meetings. Business leaders are accustomed to monitoring external trends and research to inform their work. Providing your strategy board with related premeeting reading helps set the context for meeting discussions, educates, and engages members before the meeting. Be careful to screen academic experts and reading materials to make sure that their communication style will resonate with business practicality versus theory.

 

Take adequate time to prepare for your governance meetings. Prepare your meeting content for concise communication and ensure that it reflects the language of business, not the jargon of learning. Use quantitative data when available. In completing these tasks, your governance sponsor can be extremely helpful in guiding you. For strategy board meetings, make certain that your agenda content remains at the strategic versus tactical levels. To increase engagement during the meeting, prepare comments and questions to start discussions.

Postmeeting Follow-Up

Business leaders expect follow-up and action. After each meeting of your governance group, create a summary of key decisions and actions like these:

• The topics covered, such as how to leverage the synergies of the multiple training departments across the company.
• Decisions made to establish a companywide, mandatory learning council for training leaders across the company.
• Particular actions—for example, “By end of year, launch the Company Learning Council.”

This summary confirms to your governance leaders’ your alignment with their meeting contributions and demonstrates implementation actions. The summary will be useful for those members unable to attend the meeting and also serves as a reference tool for all. Figure 4-6 includes an actual example of a postmeeting summary.

Recognizing the Leaders Serving on Your Governance Board

By serving on a governance board or council, your business leaders are committing their most precious asset: time. Recognizing their contributions should be part of your overall governance system. There are a variety of easily deployed recognition approaches. Here are a few possibilities:

• letter of thanks from the CEO (or another C-suite leader)
• handwritten thank-you notes specifying a particular meeting contribution
• photos of governance group members in a prominent location—a “Hall of Fame”
• wall plaque citing their participation in the governance board/ council
• relevant business book with a handwritten bookmark of thanks from you
• engraved desk item.

You will have a better sense of what recognition approach will work best within your organization.

Designing and Developing Learning Solutions

For the most part, governing bodies set the overall strategic direction for the learning function. The learning solutions you create reflect the execution of this strategic direction. The design and development of learning solutions offers a tremendous opportunity to engage business leaders and stakeholders. This engagement strategy presents this design and development effort as a learning process in which business leaders can be heavily involved—or even lead. It incorporates a collaborative, rapid design model, which ensures that the solution is business relevant, is aligned with business priorities, and is truly “owned” by the business. Thus, it is helpful to view the design and development of learning as a new product development (NPD) process. Using the framework of an existing business process, such as NPD, builds credibility for the learning function. Once again, the language and tools of business are highly applicable to the learning function.

Setting the Context: The New Product Development Process

In the language of business, your design and development of learning solutions can be viewed as an NPD process. You will find that “NPD” is a frequently used business acronym, and it is probable that your business is currently using an NPD process. (Your marketing business leaders can direct you to the specific model used by your particular organization.) Designing and developing learning solutions entails a series of related activities that lead to the delivery of a learning solution. In viewing your design and development as an NPD process, you gain credibility with your business leaders because they are familiar with this process, and your use of it thus indicates that you are following systematic business rigor. Enlisting business leaders to help design and develop your learning solutions also gives these products a high level of business relevance.

This engagement strategy also minimizes, if not eliminates, the endless “prove your value” conversations that those involved in learning functions typically experience. By being willing to participate in learning governance and sponsorship, your business leaders showed that they had decided the learning solution was important. Now these leaders are designing and developing the learning solutions, thus ensuring their business relevance and impact. They help you with business-specific learning objectives and application exercises. Finally, your leaders have come to have strong ownership of the learning solution and thus have become strong “ambassadors” for both the learning solution and your learning function.

The most common, collaborative NPD process is based on the model presented in Robert G. Cooper’s book Winning at New Products Accelerating: The Process from Idea to Launch (1986). Cooper refers to this process as “Stage Gate.” It is divided into five stages that constitute key activities and deliverables (there is also a pre-NPD discovery stage, which is akin to an initial idea generation and a high-level needs assessment):

• Stage 1, Scoping, includes research and deeper investigation of the need. In learning terms, this is where you obtain a sponsor for the potential learning solution.
• Stage 2, Building the Business Case, includes product and project definition, project justification, and a project plan. This is typically where funding for the new product is approved. In learning terms, this is where you have obtained approval and funding for a new learning solution.
• Stage 3, Development, is the actual detailed design and development of the new product or learning solution. (This stage is the focus of this section).
• Stage 4, Testing and Validation, incorporates trials in the marketplace, or what learning professionals refer to as pilot programs.
• Stage 5, Launch, is full production, marketing, and selling. In the language of learning, this equates to the ongoing delivery of programs.

Each stage is followed by a quality control decision gate. Multifunctional teams—such as marketing, customers, suppliers, engineering, and operations—work together through the stages and gates. All key stakeholders are engaged, resulting in speedy product development. At each gate, a multifunctional leadership group conducts a review against preestablished criteria. Review decisions can range from stopping to continuing to improving the new product’s design and development. Investments increase as you move through the NPD process, ensuring that the investment risk is managed.

The discipline of the Stage Gate approach also ensures a strong market orientation, with customer feedback built into the process. Other benefits include higher product quality, minimal reworking, and the most efficient and effective use of resources.

This inclusive NPD framework is becoming more and more important because its participatory ethos fits so well with the way that companies are increasing the internal and external collaboration they use in their NPD efforts. They are including more and more customers and suppliers in real-time collaboration. This trend toward increasingly collaborative design is a result of both intense global market pressures and improvements in communication technologies.

The NPD process is easily transferable to your learning solutions. By collaborating with your business leaders, together you create learning solutions that in turn

• lead to higher levels of alignment and buy-in
• give your learning a strong business relevance
• validate the need to make the required investment in the learning solution.

Therefore, every strategic learning solution should have an executive business sponsor. And as you and your business sponsor come to agree on success metrics and jointly request the necessary funding, this process in a very visible way displays your alignment with the business, which diminishes the pressure to “prove the value of learning.”

More and more, companies are viewing their vendors or suppliers as partners with a stake in their products’ successful life cycles. One key way to form these partnerships is to engage your potential suppliers in the design process. Thus, these suppliers benefit from hearing about the business needs firsthand from the business’s leaders. They also get a sense of the context for various requirements such as delivery mode and cost management. Extending these same principles of engaging your learning vendors and/or suppliers in helping to design your learning solutions means that these external partners will gain a whole new level of partnership with you—including a much deeper understanding of the context of the business issue and the business-defined learning requirements.

As you engage these business leaders, you will find that most of them do not want to become involved in levels of evaluation and conversations about return on investment. Instead, they are more interested in a rigorous, systematic business process that creates a value-adding learning solution. Think of the information systems or marketing functions within your organizations. They have stepped off the constant “prove your worth” merry-go-round. Like these functions, if your learning solution is driven by strategic need, created to fulfill business requirements, and delivered in a way that works with the realities of business, positive results should logically follow. Thus, by engaging the business leaders in the actual design and development of learning solutions, they come to co-own these solutions.

Introducing the Rapid Design Team Meeting

As you have seen, stage 3 of the NPD process includes design and development. In learning language, these are the “D and D” of the familiar instructional design model ADDIE—analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation. Rather than replacing instructional design models such as ADDIE, the NPD process complements them by adding more business rigor and thus strategic alignment.

The Rapid Design Team meeting is a best practice strategy for eliciting leader engagement that you can use in designing and developing learning solutions. This type of meeting entails a collaborative, rapid design session focused on the capabilities of training to achieve business results. The initial discussion focuses on the desired business results and performance indicators and the critical behaviors required to achieve the targeted results. From this, key skills, knowledge, and attitudes capabilities are identified. These translate into potential learning objectives. What makes the Rapid Design Team meeting particularly effective is the role business leaders play in identifying

• business results
• critical behaviors
• necessary capabilities.

The learning function participates to contribute adult learning expertise, but clearly this is a business-driven design session. Meetings typically include two days of engaging business leaders, development suppliers (if applicable), target audience members, and learning professionals in the design and development of a learning solution. The key outcomes from the meeting are

• a learning solution design
• development supplier selection (if applicable)
• a development project plan.

If you do not use outsourced suppliers to develop your learning solutions, you can adapt the Rapid Design Team meeting format to your internal model by omitting the supplier participation and replacing it with an internally created design. The overall meeting will still yield a business-designed and -developed learning solution. Notes on adapting the meeting to your internal development model are given in each step and in each tool.

A successful Rapid Design Team comprises key business leaders, content experts, and target audience members. To ensure a highly business relevant design, diversity factors such as geographic and/or business unit representation are key. Participating on a Rapid Design Team is an ideal developmental opportunity for high potential talent. They are exposed to senior business leaders from across the company and thus are able to contribute to a significant, strategic learning solution. Although your business leaders may be familiar with collaborative design sessions through their own NPD process, most likely the Rapid Design Team is a new concept for them to associate with the learning function. You will thus need to clearly communicate its purpose and their roles and responsibilities.

The main framework of Rapid Design Team meetings is the High Impact Learning Map (HILM) developed by Robert Brinkerhoff. An HILM is a visual representation of how learning is linked to business impact. It begins with business goals and results and then moves to the performance or critical behaviors needed to achieve the business goals and results. From the performance and critical behaviors indicators, capability requirements are identified. The key skills, knowledge, and attitudes needed to ultimately achieve the business goals and results are transformed into learning objectives. Discussion of potential learning solutions is purposely designed last and is derived from business goals and results. A detailed illustration of an HILM appears later in chapter 4 (see figures 4-15 and 4-16 later in the chapter).

For externally developed learning, there is additional uniqueness in that the Rapid Design Team meeting engages potential learning development suppliers in the actual meeting. Finalist suppliers are invited to attend and then create a real-time proposal for a potential learning solution. The team members vote and select the “best” supplier. Again, the business leaders are intimately engaged in shaping the learning solution. Key success metrics for the meeting process include

• feedback from the Rapid Design Team in assessing the value, efficiency, and effectiveness of the meeting
• learning solution quality, as evaluated by learners as highly relevant to the business
• repeat participation of Rapid Design Team members in future team meetings.

The rest of this subsection provides a step-by-step road map for implementing a Rapid Design Team meeting in your company. To give an overview, figure 4-7 provides a process map of a meeting where external vendors are included. And figure 4-8 depicts a meeting where the learning solution is developed internally.

Creating a Team Charter

Although your business leaders may be quite familiar with an NPD design and development process, associating this with the learning function may be new for them. Therefore, it is essential that you draft a team charter that clearly articulates the purpose, roles, responsibilities, and outcomes for the Rapid Design Team meeting. The scope of what is required of these roles should be clear to ensure that team members are fully aware of their commitment. The charter should also include a detailed profile of each team member. Two sample charters are shown in figures 4-9 and 4-10, representing both the externally developed learning and internally developed learning models.

The Team’s Membership

In chapter 3, we saw that it is critical to have a business sponsor for all your strategic learning solutions. You will find that your business sponsor is a key resource to coach you on appropriate team membership. Your business sponsor has line-of-sight to help you identify key leaders, subject matter experts, and potential target audience members. In addition, the talent management processes within your business can identify high potential employees who could benefit from the development opportunity of participating on a global design team. Make certain that your sponsor has final approval of your Rapid Design Team’s membership. A planning matrix such as the one shown in figure 4-11 will help you design your team’s composition.

Please note validated learning opportunity and program sponsorship is input to the Rapid Design Meeting Process. This input process is discussed in the Business Learning Needs Process found in chapter 3. Upon completion of the Rapid Design Meeting Process, the New Product Development Process begins.

 

 

For multinational companies, it is critically important to create global diversity on your Rapid Design Team. Regardless if your company is global, a diverse team will yield a better learning solution. In figure 4-11, the sample team selection matrix, moving from left to right across the matrix, important membership criteria in this example include representation from all business units and the corporate center. In addition, all global regions are represented to ensure global applicability of the learning solution. The learning group representation includes curriculum, deployment, and instructional technology representation. A representative from sourcing is included. Varying levels of the target audience are also included. Use this tool to perform a final assessment of your Rapid Design Team’s composition. In addition, you may want to use a tool like this to create a searchable database of business leaders engaged in your overall design and development efforts.

Please note validated learning opportunity and program sponsorship is input to the Rapid Design Meeting Process. This input process is discussed in the Business Learning Needs Process found in chapter 3. Upon completion of the Rapid Design Meeting Process, the New Product Development Process begins.

Identifying Potential Learning Suppliers

If you use outside resources to develop your learning solutions, the step of identifying potential learning suppliers is ready for your implementation. However, if your learning solutions are developed internally, you will substitute your learning development staff for external learning development suppliers in the Rapid Design Team meeting. For internal development models, you will omit the steps of searching for and selecting potential external supplier finalists, given that your development is completed internally.

For externally developed learning, your initial supplier research will enable you to create a request for proposals for potential suppliers. The Rapid Design Team meeting RFP highlights the specific steps of your suppler selection process: It includes a description of the scope of the work you are requesting, and it also specifies your selection criteria and processes. Figure 4-12 provides a representative excerpt for such an RFP describing the Rapid Design Team supplier selection process.

Selecting Your Supplier Finalists

There is probably a host of learning suppliers from which to choose. Before the Rapid Design Team meeting, it is the responsibility of those supervising the learning function to screen responses and select a workable number of appropriate suppliers. The suppliers who are selected to participate in your team meeting and interact with your business leaders should be prescreened to ensure that they are viable potential partners. Your selection criteria for suppliers may vary according to what is important to your company:

• One criterion could be the supplier’s global expertise. Look for evidence that the supplier has a global network to deliver its services and has documented experience in a number of global geographies. Ask questions on how it localizes and translates its learning materials. Inquire on how it manages quality around the globe.
• Another criterion could be the supplier’s ability to transfer its capability for internal delivery within your company. Examine its learning materials to ensure that they are designed for internal trainers’ use. Explore the supplier’s process for training the trainer.
• A final criterion could be the supplier’s ability to drive down costs. Ask for examples of how it has lowered costs for other clients. An example could be how it has provided an e-learning segment to replace a face-to-face training day.

Before staff members completed the tool given in figure 4-13, six suppliers were originally screened as potential partners. An initial assessment of the suppliers’ capabilities left three potential suppliers remaining. These three suppliers are evaluated at a deeper level using the selection criteria described below. Typically, the field is narrowed to two or three supplier finalists.

Planning the Agenda for Your Team Meeting

For externally developed learning, the agenda for your Rapid Design Team meeting has four key components:

• a current state analysis
• a high impact learning map exercise
• supplier presentations
• the final selection of a supplier partner.

A full two days are used for this meeting.

However, for internally developed learning solutions, the agenda for your Rapid Design Team meeting will include

• a current state analysis
• a high impact learning map
• a review of the initial internally developed design.

Note that this meeting runs the equivalent of one full day. The agenda reflects a half-day session on day 1 and the remaining half-day session on day 2. Your internal learning developers will require the time overnight to create an initial learning design for review on day 2. In addition, having a team dinner further engages the Rapid Design Team’s members with each other and your learning function. A one-or two-day meeting is a substantial time commitment for business leaders, who will thus expect a meeting that offers a level of value equivalent with the valuable time they have invested. Therefore, careful planning and effective execution are critical. For examples of both externally and internally developed versions of a two-day meeting agenda, see figure 4-14.

Communicating the Team Meeting’s Results to Key Stakeholders

You need to communicate the Rapid Design Team’s process, logistics, roles and responsibilities, and premeeting preparation to these stakeholders:

• The managers of the potential team meeting invitees. (You are seeking approval for those who report directly to them to participate in the meeting. This communication must precede a direct invitation to the meeting team member.)
• Business leaders invited to serve as team members.
• Supplier finalists selected for participation in the team meeting or your internal learning developers
• The business sponsor of the learning solution.

 

 

In addition to information regarding the meeting, the business Rapid Design Team members will also receive instructions for completion of prework, which asks the business leaders to begin mapping the linkages of potential learning and job performance to the desired business goals and results. The prework tool is Brinkerhoff ’s High Impact Learning Map.

Using the High Impact Learning Map as the Framework for Your Team Meeting

The High Impact Learning Map (HILM), mentioned earlier in this chapter, is the primary framework for your Rapid Design Team meeting. It is a visual representation of how learning is linked to business impact. HILMs are used to

• analyze the business impact that is needed from learning
• identify learning and performance requirements
• clarify expectations for learning results
• guide measurement and evaluation.

Robert Brinkerhoff developed the initial concept of the High Impact Learning Map. His seminal books on this topic include High Impact Learning (Brinkerhoff and Apking 2001) and the Success Case Method (Brinkerhoff 2003). Both books are invaluable to gaining a greater understanding of how to align learning with business results. Because the HILM is the framework for your Rapid Design Team meeting, this subsection provides you with a basic overview of HILMs. Figure 4-15 illustrates a partially completed example of an HILM template for a sales profitability learning solution.

Source: Ingersoll Rand University, 2010

 

 

The HILM has three key components: results, performance, and capability. Subcategories consist of business goals; key results; critical behaviors; and key skills, knowledge, and attitudes. Each subcategory is ultimately asking a key design question of business leaders, for example:

• How will this learning help the business?
• How will the success of the learning be measured?
• How should this learning be applied?
• What performance capabilities will the learning address?

As these questions are answered, they are entered into the HILM template. A category code, such as “BG” for business goals, is used for each entry to make subsequent design discussions easier. The actual design document typically attaches category codes to components of the design, ensuring visible alignment with the HILM. Typically, there are a small number of business goals, and eventually this leads to a robust list of the key skills, knowledge, and attitudes necessary to achieve the business goals.

When creating an HILM like the one given in figure 4-15, begin at the right with business goals and work your way left to specific learning (knowledge, skills, and attitudes) required to achieve the business goals. The HILM focuses on learning requirements for a key job role, such as sales managers. The entire learning solution originates from the business goals. This is followed by the business results that will be necessary to achieve the goals. Critical on-the-job behaviors required to achieve the business results follow. The HILM culminates in a listing of the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that will be necessary to successfully perform the critical job behaviors linked to achieving the desired business goals.

In advance of your meeting, you want the leaders on your Rapid Design Team to be thinking about the critical behaviors, skills, knowledge, and attitudes needed to achieve the predetermined business result. To accomplish this, business leaders are asked to complete an HILM as prework. Include directions on how to use the HILM. Ask your business leaders to identify five to six business goals and key results related to the overall topic of the team meeting. They should be instructed to include 5 to 10 critical behaviors and 8 to 10 types of knowledge, skills, and attitudes required to deliver these critical behaviors. You want them to complete a high-level HILM to familiarize them with the tool and to jump-start their thinking on the topic.

Conducting the Meeting

For a more successful Rapid Design Team meeting, use both a scribe and a meeting facilitator. A junior curriculum developer is ideal for the scribe role. If you have virtual attendees, consider using web meeting technologies—such as the online meeting tool GoToMeeting (www.gotomeeting.com), which, it proclaims, “allows you to host an online meeting with up to 15 people—so you can do more and travel less.” Select technologies that allow for real-time participation and viewing of documents.

Whenever possible, have your senior business leader sponsor kick off the meeting. Key messages include meeting outcomes and the expectations of the design team. In most cases, the program sponsor will not be able to attend the entire meeting. Arrange for a daily debriefing to ensure that the sponsor is engaged with the team meeting’s progress, issues, and decisions.

As mentioned above, the HILM is the central framework for your Rapid Design Team meeting. Figure 4-16 gives an example showing the key elements of an HILM completed for a sales effectiveness and productivity learning program. In this case, the business leaders and Sales Council knew that to achieve their goals of higher profit margins and a more expansive revenue relationship with the customer, salespeople would need to increase their effectiveness and productivity.

All your supplier finalists or your internal learning developers will attend day 1 of the meeting to gain a deeper understanding of the business goals, business context, learning requirements, and learning preferences of the target audience. They will observe firsthand as the business leaders create the HILM. During day 1, each supplier finalist or your internal learning developer has an opportunity to ask further questions of the business leaders, learning function leaders, and sourcing team members, if applicable. To maintain equity, all supplier finalists remain in the meeting and are privy to the other supplier finalists’ questions.

At the close of day 1, the supplier finalists or internal learning developers are given instructions for preparing their day 2 design presentation. Overnight, the suppliers or internal learning developers are busy creating their initial learning design.

For outsourced development, day 2 is made up of individual supplier presentations and supplier selection. Only one supplier at a time is allowed in the room to present, which ensures that there is no unfair advantage to their presentation order. Make sure to review the supplier selection matrix with the Rapid Design Team before the supplier presentations. A sample matrix is depicted in figure 4-17.

For internally developed learning, you will adapt this supplier presentation portion to include your internal learning developer’s presentation of their recommended design. One technique is to have the recommended design mapped out on the walls. The internal learning developer presents the design first. Following this, each Rapid Design Team member individually records design edits on Post-it Notes. As they finish editing their notes, they should place them near the corresponding section of the design. Once this is complete, conduct a walk-through of the design edits and create affinity clusters. Once the affinity clusters are complete, discuss the potential design edits. If necessary, to arrive at final design editing decisions, you can use multi-dot voting (in this type of voting, individuals vote on their priorities using a limited number of dot stickers, and then the votes are visibly compiled, revealing a ranking of items from highest to lowest based on the greatest to least number of votes per item).

Selecting the Learning Supplier

The step of having the learning supplier selected by the Rapid Design Team is for externally developed learning only. Once the suppliers complete their presentations, they will leave your meeting. This allows for candid discussion among team members regarding the supplier selection matrix results and other issues critical to supplier selection. In most cases, a decision will result. In a few cases, additional information may be requested from these suppliers and virtually shared with the team to aid in making a final supplier selection decision.

Once the supplier is identified, you need to communicate both to the winning supplier and to the other supplier candidates. Suppliers not chosen often ask for feedback on why they were not chosen. In the spirit of continuous improvement and future potential partnerships, you should provide basic feedback to these suppliers. An example of a communication to a supplier not selected appears in figure 4-18.

From Design to Development

Once your learning design is selected, you are ready to move to the development of the learning solution. It is important to review with your Rapid Design Team members their ongoing roles and responsibilities for the development stage of your new product development process. In the development stage of your learning solution, the primary role of your Rapid Design Team is as reviewers and approvers. They can also help you find content experts in the business. In addition, review with them the NPD project plan key development stages and decision gates:

• Indicate that the rapid design meeting is part of stage three— development—of the NPD project plan.
• Note key review and approval decision gates.
• Remind them that stage four of the NPD will involve testing and validation—in this case, their involvement in piloting learning programs.

In the NPD excerpt depicted in figure 4-19, note that the dark-colored cells highlight potential engagement points for Rapid Design Team members.

Engaging Leaders as Teachers

So far in this chapter, we have focused on engaging business leaders in the first two key learning activities: strategic governance and the design of learning solutions. The third key activity of learning functions is the deployment and delivery of your learning solutions, which you can best accomplish by engaging leaders in delivering your learning solutions—not only a powerful driver to create strategic alignment but also a boon for organizational and individual development. This approach, which is commonly referred to as “leaders teaching leaders” or “leaders as teachers,” is a broad concept describing a variety of leadership engagement activities, including teaching, co-teaching, guest speaking, and postlearning program coaching.

The CorpU 10th Annual Benchmarking Study of Learning Excellence and Innovation, which studied more than 150 companies, estimates that approximately 35 percent of these organizations engage leaders in teaching leadership programs and 28 percent in teaching for nonleadership programs. Organizations such as General Electric, PepsiCo, BD, Colgate-Palmolive, Procter & Gamble, 3M, and Intel are pioneers and role models for incorporating leaders as teachers into their learning strategies. Although these are large Fortune 500 firms, smaller organizations also can and do engage leaders as teachers. Ed Betof ’s seminal book on this topic, Leaders as Teachers: Unlock the Teaching Potential of Your Company’s Best and Brightest (2009), provides a detailed approach to creating a leadersas-teachers program that can be tailored to organizations of all sizes.

The Benefits of Engaging Leaders as Teachers

As the world economy continues to move from being industry based to knowledge based, companies are increasingly aspiring to become true teaching organizations. In a teaching organization, everyone is a teacher and everyone is a learner. In a rapidly changing, competitive global marketplace, speed to market is paramount. Global competitors can quickly replicate a successful new product. However, they cannot quickly replicate an organization’s intellectual capital. The speed of knowledge transfer and shared learning become a company’s competitive differentiator in a global market. In The Cycle of Leadership: How Great Leaders Teach Their Companies to Win, Noel Tichy and Nancy Cardwell (2004) describe this as a “virtuous teaching cycle.” In the “virtuous teaching cycle,” both the learner and the leader as teacher experience mutual, interactive learning. The leader as teacher develops a teachable point of view and is informed by the learner’s viewpoint and experiences. Likewise, the learner benefits from the leader as teacher’s point of view and experiences.

In the context of a teaching organization, leaders as teachers are an important lever for knowledge transfer and shared learning. In Betof ’s Leaders as Teachers, a number of business benefits derived from leaders serving as teachers are discussed. The following list of business benefits is inspired by Betof ’s work on the value of leaders as teachers:

• Drives common messages for change across the organization.
• Creates two-way, reciprocal learning.
• Provides platform for exposure to talent within the organization.
• Improves the leadership skills of those who teach.
• Increases the levels of employee engagement.
• Communicates that learning is valued by the organization.

With these principles in mind, let’s look at some of the ways in which leaders serving as teachers can strengthen the learning function. Leaders can serve as instructors, coaches, on expert panels, and in a host other teaching roles. For the sake of brevity, here I focus on a leaders-asteachers process that is more informal and creates more personal connections between the leader and students. I’ve chosen a particular program that embodies these principles with which I’m very familiar, Ingersoll Rand’s Visiting Executive Program. This branded program is modeled after a style of dialogue known as the “fireside chat,” which is useful to consider in some detail.

Creating “Fireside Chats” with the Visiting Executive Program

There are many excellent resources, such as Betof ’s book, that provide road maps for using leaders as faculty in your learning programs. However, the focus in this chapter is on a highly successful, scalable, and relatively easy-to-implement guest speaker role for leaders as teachers. This guest-speaking role is the key feature of the Visiting Executive Program—as it is branded by Ingersoll Rand—which is unique in the level of intimacy, informality, reflective insight, and customized, relevant messages that it provides.

The Visiting Executive Program is similar to the “fireside chats” used so successfully by U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II in the 1940s. Via radio broadcasts, FDR spoke in intimate and conversational tones with the entire nation. In response to his fireside chats, millions of letters were sent to the White House expressing renewed hope, confidence in the recovery plan (the New Deal), and unity in the face of that time’s economic troubles (see Mankowski and Raissa, 2003).

The Great Depression was a time of much suffering and uncertainty for America. When FDR gave his first fireside chat in 1933, more than one-third of the workforce was unemployed and every bank had been closed for eight days. He crafted his communication to be brief (15–45 minutes), and he used basic language and stories to explain complex financial recovery issues facing the country. In explaining complicated New Deal issues, he used a simple baseball analogy. He spoke in terms of “we” instead of “you.” He invited the American people to “tell me your troubles.” All 31 of FDR’s fireside chats are available through the Museum of Broadcast Communications (www.museum.tv), offering a deeper understanding of FDR’s authentic communication and leadership style.

The Visiting Executive Program promotes authentic communication for leaders. It is a vast departure from a formal guest speaker presentation using multiple slides. In fact, there is one rule: “no slides.” Leaders who serve as visiting executives relinquish their prepared slide presentations to create a direct, informal dialogue with learning participants. Of course, some leaders balk at giving up their slide presentation security blanket. But with your help and support, they will grow comfortable with their fireside chats with learning participants. They will actually get quite good at this. In fact, participants consistently rate the visiting executive portion of learning programs as the high point. Similarly, the leaders participate again and again as visiting executives and report its high value in return for the time invested.

The Visiting Executive’s Purpose

A program like one for visiting executives deeply engages leaders in learning. In addition, the visiting executive enhances the relevance of the learning by linking the business to the learning content. Ultimately, the overriding purpose is to engage leaders in creating better alignment between learning and business priorities. In the process, there are also other benefits, such as leadership development, business relevance, and exposure to talent. From a developmental perspective, the visiting executive role helps leaders craft what Noel Tichy refers to as their “teachable point of view,” which he defines as a cohesive set of ideas, values, and ways of energizing people that can be put into action. This is based on the premise that in order to teach, a leader must have a teachable point of view, which has four key elements:

• Ideas: How does your business make money and win in the marketplace?
• Values: What behaviors are required to put your business ideas into practice?
• Emotional energy: How do you keep people motivated and working with high energy?
• Edge: Which difficult decisions must be made?

In addition to these four elements, a successful teachable point of view is best communicated in a storytelling mode, which integrates ideas, values, and emotional energy and edge with one, two, or all three story-lines. In Leading Minds, Howard Gardner (1996) points out that humans learn through stories. In studying successful leaders, he found that three basic storylines were most common:

• Who am I?—personal stories that explain how the life experiences have shaped the leader and his or her point of view.
• Who are we?—stories that demonstrate how joint experiences, attitudes, and beliefs of the group form a shared point of view.
• Where are we going?—stories that capture the necessity of change and excitement concerning the future direction of the group.

Most important, the visiting executive should develop his or her own teachable point of view. Self-reflection during the creation process generates authentic messaging. Like FDR’s fireside chats, the message should be easily understood and concise.

Creating a Sustainable Visiting Executive Process

At this point, some of you may be thinking that although the Visiting Executive Program is a good concept, in the past you have experienced issues with executives honoring their commitment as guest speakers. In many organizations, this experience of last-minute cancellations or no-shows is common. However, a few companies do have a 100 percent visiting executive commitment rate. There is no magic here; the difference is creating a business process that will ensure that the visiting executive is effective and sustainable for the organization (see the sidebar).

Figure 4-20 provides an overview of the Visiting Executive Program for the learning leader that contains many of the process elements described above. Specifically, the document addresses purpose, role/ responsibilities, selection, and support materials available. The learning leader leverages portions of this overview document, such as roles and responsibilities, to communicate with the visiting executive population.

The program’s process itself drives accountability for leaders to honor their visiting executive commitments. If a rare, urgent business matter creates a conflict for the visiting executive, this is already accounted for and rectified by the process. In contracting with the visiting executive, they must partner with the staff managing the learning function to identify and secure their emergency replacement. In effect, the replacement visiting executive participates in the process as an understudy.

 

 

Setting measurable goals, tracking, and reporting on this performance capture the attention of business leaders. Tracking participation levels by business unit, geographies, functions, and so on gives transparency to the process and generates accountability.

Leveraging and publicizing your most senior leaders as visible role models in the Visiting Executive Program sends a powerful message to business leaders across the organization. If the CEO can lead a visiting executive session without cancellation, surely other leaders can find similar time.

 

To ensure that you have a scalable pool of visiting executives, target appropriate levels of leaders from various geographies. To manage travel costs, every attempt should be made to leverage the visiting executive in his or her regional geography or leverage a scheduled trip to another region. In the example given in figure 4-20, the targeted visiting executive pool is made up of 25 percent senior executives who are one and two levels down from the CEO. At Ingersoll Rand, each year there are about 90 visiting executive sessions across the globe. Many visiting executives request to participate in multiple sessions.

Finally, arranging for visiting executive sessions on an annual basis, in alignment with the business calendar, provides the necessary lead time for scheduling. Typically, the visiting executive is offered a choice of sessions. The operative word here is “choice,” which gives them a sense of control and accountability for their selection of a participation date.

Visiting executive sessions can be held virtually or remotely using current collaborative technologies. However, face-to-face sessions are optimal.

Preparing Your Visiting Executive

When preparing your visiting executives, there are two important things to always keep in mind: Time is money for your business leaders and, despite their powerful roles, most of your business leaders are apprehensive of failing in front of others in their fireside chats. Armed with this knowledge, you can create a process and tools that conveniently, concisely, and quickly brief your visiting executives for their success.

Once your visiting executive is confirmed for a session, send the visiting executive a course briefing document, which provides specific learning outcomes, instructional methods used, target audience description, and a “windowpane” illustrating the entire course agenda. In addition, the document should give suggestions for key messaging points. Follow up with a conversation to answer questions, review logistics, help prepare the executive’s message, review the course and participants, and allay his or her concerns. Typically, the visiting executive’s understudy participates in this briefing. Figure 4-21 depicts an example of a visiting executive course briefing document. For additional context, the briefing can also include a conversation with the course instructor. Moreover, soliciting and compiling potential questions from course participants can be helpful in directing the visiting executive as to what is top of mind for the participants.

Evaluation Feedback for the Continual Development of Visiting Executives

One goal of the Visiting Executive Program is developing the leadership skills of the leaders who teach. Providing feedback from your observations as well as from course participants is helpful. Given the achievement orientation of most senior leaders, it does not surprise me when a visiting executive anxiously awaits feedback on his or her session. They often ask how their performance calibrates with those of other visiting executives. Figure 4-22 illustrates the specific participant evaluation questions regarding the visiting executive and the summary of his or her evaluation results. The best practice is to debrief the results with the visiting executive.

Recognizing Visiting Executive Participation

There are a number of ways to recognize your visiting executive’s participation. Here are a few proven approaches:

• Placing a photo from the session and a focus story in your company’s main employee communication media.
• Publishing an annual Hall of Fame listing of your active visiting executives.
• Creating a physical visiting executives’ Hall of Fame in your learning centers.
• Sending a framed photo from the visiting executive session.
• Sending a thank-you communication signed by the entire group of course participants for the visiting executive session.
• Sending a thank-you communication to the visiting executive from your CEO.
• Listing visiting executive participants in talent review discussions and documentation.

Different approaches will work for your particular company. The important thing is to include recognition as a key part of your visiting executive process.

 

• To drive transparency and business leader engagement, engage your leaders in learning governance.
• Set up different levels of learning governance to drive strategy, curriculum content/delivery, and learning operations.
• Use a governance charter to ensure clarity on roles/responsibilities and membership criteria.
• Recognize leaders serving on your governance boards.

 

Select one of your existing learning governance bodies. Using the sample representation list below, place a check mark next to the membership team representation you believe is critical to the success of this learning governance body. Now review the actual membership team for this governance body. What gaps exist, and how will you close them? If you currently have no learning governance in place, apply this exercise to a governance body you plan to create.

 

 

• The design and development of new learning solutions is very similar to the development stage of new product development processes used by businesses.
• A growing trend for businesses in their NPD processes is collaborating with customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders to co-design and develop new products.
• Using a Rapid Design Team process, this collaborative approach can successfully be applied to the design and development of new learning solutions.
• By engaging business leaders, suppliers, and other stakeholders as co-designers of your learning solutions, you will achieve increasingly relevant learning, align learning with business priorities, and strengthen leaders’ ownership of the learning.
• The High Impact Learning Map, which creates a direct connection between business results and learning, is the framework for the Rapid Design Team meeting.

 

Using the Stage Gate NPD process as a model for the development of your learning solutions, identify how your business leaders, suppliers, and key stakeholders are currently engaged in the development, testing and validation, launch, and postlaunch review stages. Are there gaps to close?

 

• The leaders-as-teachers process engages your business leaders to create a more agile and competitive teaching organization.
• There are many business benefits from a leaders-as-teachers initiative, including developing the leadership skills of those who teach.
• One powerful leaders-as-teachers method is the guest speaker fireside chat, which gives leaders an intimate and highly relevant way to converse with course participants. At Ingersoll Rand, this method is branded the Visiting Executive Program.
• The success of a Visiting Executive Program is directly related to its management as a business process.
• Make sure that participation in your Visiting Executive Program is easy, successful, and desirable for your business leaders.

 

1. For each of the stakeholder audiences listed below, list your key “selling” points for deploying a visiting executive– type program in your organization.

 

 

2. Using the list below, indicate which elements are currently used in your guest-speaking programs. Where is there opportunity for you? Mandatory elements of the Visiting Executive Program business process include:

• Charter (program purpose) supported by senior leaders.
• Contract providing clear roles, responsibilities, and expectations.
• A design that is scalable.
• Goals and metrics for the program.
• A repeatable mechanism to identify a pool of the visiting executive.
• An annual scheduling process aligned with business leaders’ schedules.
• Preprogram briefing conversation with the visiting executive.
• User-friendly briefing materials to assist the visiting executive.
• Ongoing feedback and development provided for the visiting executive’s effectiveness.
• Tracking and reporting for the program.
• Reward/recognition for visiting executives’ participation.

If you do not currently have a guest-speaking program like visiting executives in place, rate the ease (high, medium, low) of implementing each element in your organization. How will this rating inform the design for your guest-speaking process?