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Changing Times: Innovate for Impact

Ann Quadagno and Catherine Rickelman

Learning organizations are being challenged more than ever to respond to changing business needs, rapid upskilling requirements, shifts in the markets, and learner expectations. In a recent C-suite study from IBM’s Institute for Business Value, 65 percent of CEOs reported people skills as having a strong impact on their business, and people skills were also named one of the top three factors for affecting the organization (Ikeda, Zaharchuk, and Marshall 2019). Other studies indicate that constant upskilling and reskilling will be the norm for the future.

All these challenges influence IBM’s learning approaches and programs. As a learning team, we need to meet business needs through skill development, job performance, talent retention, and improved engagement. How connected are you to your company’s business goals and strategies and upskilling requirements? Are you aware of the changing expectations of your learners and the innovative approaches the learning industry has to offer?

Imagine you have a sales learning program that consistently has high satisfaction scores and proven business impact. All is right with the world, correct? Well, not quite. The business is telling you that salespeople need to be in the field and on quota faster. You also need to reduce the travel costs associated with the learning. Now what? This is sales, which is not a topic that does well with e-learning. They need practice, so you’ll need to think innovatively.

We did just that for our Global Sales School program. Using many of the innovative approaches shared in this chapter, we were able to reduce training time, travel time, and budget, while still maintaining the same level of learning impact.

However, there’s one thing you need to keep in mind—every shiny object is not necessarily the right shiny object for you. It’s great to try new things; just make sure you’re trying them in a safe space so you can see if they work for you, your organization, and the specific project.

Use Research to Ensure Your Innovation Has Impact

You have a great idea, an innovative idea in fact. But how can you be sure it is the right idea? Your gut? Your experience? Your peers say so? That’ll give you a good start, but you also need to validate your ideas through research.

Maybe you’re looking for an innovative way to implement a learning solution worldwide or the next “thing” that will drive the right business impact. Innovations are being created and implemented all the time, and you can find them through research that others have conducted, your own, or a combination. Accessing research is easier than ever, and one of the best ways to research innovation is to immerse yourself in the future of learning. You can attend webinars and conferences, read literature and articles, and review surveys, among other things.

Leveraging Others’ Research

When looking for research from others, there are many free or low-cost resources you can take advantage of. Consulting groups, for example, dedicate time to conducting research and finding and collecting research from external sources, including ATD, Bersin by Deloitte, Gartner, Corporate Executive Board, the Conference Board, Forrester, IDC, trade magazines, and many colleges and universities. If you aren’t sure where to begin, start with a simple Internet search.

Conducting Your Own Research

The best data you can use is data that is specific to your audience and company. You can use a variety of methods to collect your data, and mixing and matching methods will give you even more insight (Figure 24-1). The variety will let you compare the information to see patterns. When conducting research, be clear on the questions you are trying to answer. The research may move you in a different direction or drive additional areas of study, but your beginning questions should be well thought out.

Figure 24-1. Methods and Benefits for Data Collection

Don’t overlook the data that you may already have—look to your LMS or CMS for information around average learning time per employee, insights into what type of learning programs are being taken, what subjects are most popular, and so forth. And don’t forget that your HR department is a great resource for general data about your audience, such as population characteristics, performance data, job role distribution, training courses taken and completed, and hiring plans.

Forming Conclusions

Once you’ve collected the data, you need to evaluate it to find patterns and insights around your training question or idea. The activity of consolidating the data will naturally lead you to the best grouping, and you will start to see patterns. For example, does all or most of the research point to the same thing, like “coaching is the most important skill for sales managers”?

When we were researching the curriculum for a new offering for sales managers, our hypothesis was that coaching was one of the most important skills. When we surveyed our top sales managers about which skills were the most important, coaching came out as the number-one skill. Evaluating research from others, which also showed that coaching was the number-one skill for success, provided further support. Based on our research, we built a groundbreaking learning solution that used several of the innovations discussed here. This solution has proved to be very successful from both the learner feedback and the business results.

To help decide if a new approach is worth pursuing, try some of these tips:

• Start researching what others have done with the innovation. What was the outcome? How did they use it? What were the parameters of the use? What did they learn?

• Refine your approach based on what you learned from your research and put your business goals and audience needs first. Use design thinking and Agile approaches to better ensure your approach is based on solid information.

• Try it. Create a small pilot to test the approach; then observe, collect data, and talk about the experience with peers and users.

• Evaluate the outcome. What worked and what didn’t? How could you change it to work even better? Is the approach even worth pursuing? If so, how? Refine your assumptions and your approach.

• Start implementing your solution in other programs, collect data, and refine your approach. Continuously improve—innovate, test, revise, repeat.

Driving Learning Impact With the Lines of Business

Sound familiar? Involving the business as part of learning solution design and deployment is obvious, but we often forget to given our increasingly shorter deadlines, reduced or missing stakeholder involvement, and efforts to keep up with skill needs. We want the business’s opinions and feedback to ensure we’re deploying relevant content that provides business impact. However, how regularly can you get their time and attention? How many times have you deployed something only to find that something has changed? Or the business decides to do it themselves, and then wonders why there are no measurable results?

Skill needs, changing client requirements, and shorter time to production make it even more important for the business and learning function to have a closer partnership. Collaborating together can:

• Improve the employees’ perception of the value of learning.

• Shorten the design and deployment cycle because the learning team knows in advance what changes might be coming and can strategize on how best to address them.

• Create tools and templates so subject matter experts can author end-user content.

• Leverage business expertise in training challenges and create activities that bring an element of authenticity to the programs.

Examples and Best Practices That Have Worked for IBM

Design thinking and Agile principles emphasize the importance of engaging with the end user right from the beginning and co-creating with identified sponsor users who represent the target audience. Who better to work with when you are going to need buy-in to advocate or drive consumption of the solution? Do employees and business leadership become your stakeholders or pilot users? Consider the following best practices.

Engage the Business

Invite business contributors or visionaries to join a development initiative as sponsor users. They can be as involved as time allows, but having this group (especially for transformational initiatives) saves time and strengthens the relevancy of the program.

The IBM Manager Champion Group is a great example of this. Every year, the top 50 managers from across IBM are selected for a year-long cohort experience during which they participate in projects that provide feedback to the business and the learning team. The cohort makes a yearly trip to corporate headquarters for an in-person session during which they engage in identified business challenges to provide a manager’s perspective around how to make our learning offerings, talent initiative, and business processes more effective. It’s innovative and aspirational as well as immediately applicable.

Use Business Leaders as Co-Facilitators

Create a faculty of experienced business professionals who can join the facilitation team for identified learning programs. At IBM we created a Faculty Academy to ensure business leaders brought real business stories to the programs. Joining the Faculty Academy requires members to give a certain amount of time every quarter and have the opportunity to take part in the learning development. This is especially effective when upskilling executives or senior managers, because faculty members can guide practice assignments and help with content. Our onboarding program receives rave reviews when we leverage business leaders to inspire and provide clarity about IBM, how it functions, and what the business priorities are. This also prompts proactive engagement between the teams.

Use Business Coaches

Identify business coaches and guides who are willing to give feedback during the apprentice or practice portions of an employee’s experience. This can be especially effective if key knowledge or skills cannot be found in many places. If digitized, the feedback from these coaching sessions can be made available for enterprise-wide program reuse.

Conduct Showcases

We have quarterly virtual sessions at IBM where we demo different learning solutions, and these sessions are open to anyone interested in learning about a new tool or best practice. Through those sessions we also share perspectives, demo new learning approaches, and discuss recent business priorities. We can then leverage the information we’ve acquired or developed. We share research to help inform business stakeholders of the value and reasoning behind the approaches used.

Throughout the year, periodically assess your own engagement activities, ask to be part of strategic planning, or offer to share the latest in innovations as business teams are looking at their skill needs. Building habits like this so that they become part of your corporate culture can strengthen a learning organization’s ability to respond on demand, anticipate where new methods will be required, and create a joint sense of ownership to drive the company’s impact in the market.

Creating Unique Learning Experiences Quickly

While ADDIE (analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation) remains the “grandfather” instructional design model, learning teams can also use a variety of other approaches to drive continuous improvement to create great outcomes and improve customer satisfaction. Often, we no longer have the time or access to content experts, and our learning assets are becoming outdated faster than ever before.

Learning and talent development professionals have to be nimbler, strengthening our ability to shift direction as things change and drive measurable impact whenever possible. We, as an industry, have had to rethink the way we work to create better learning experiences. Methods and models such as design thinking, Agile, and user experience tools allow us to more directly involve target audiences in design and development activities. Today’s employees are more sophisticated, more “digital”—and they expect more from their experience. We are also being asked to tie our learning into the way we work. While IBM still has a learning portal, learning teams are also integrated into business systems so the learning content is right where employees need it. Here we look at design thinking and designing with Agile in more detail.

Design Thinking

Look at the following instructions:

Prompt 1		Prompt 2
Take one minute to design a vase.	or	Take one minute to design a better way for people to enjoy flowers in their home.

What was different about the two prompts? What made designing for the second prompt different? The first prompt contained a solution. This constrained creativity and problem solving, creating a forgone conclusion with no mention of a user or experience. It also failed to provide a context for how the product would be used.

The second prompt opened the mind, providing the opportunity to get creative: “How will those consumers find value in your design?” To improve an experience:

• Focus on human problems rather than technical solutions.

• Explore a wide range of options to lead to a better set of outcomes.

• Make mistakes. It is OK, and doing it early saves time and money.

At IBM, design thinking includes three pieces: the principles, the loop, and the keys (Figure 24-2). Let’s look closer at each.

Figure 24-2. Design Thinking at IBM

The Principles

Our principles represent our attitude. They allow us to see problems and solutions from a new point of view.

• Keep the focus on user outcomes: We must always prioritize the needs of the people who will use our solution.

• Take time to see the world through one another’s eyes, which drives unique insights, advancing the whole team’s thinking.

• Restless reinvention means everything is a prototype. When you think of everything as just iteration, you’re empowered to bring new thinking to even the oldest problems.

The Loop

The loop is a behavioral model for discovering users’ needs and envisioning a better future.

• When designing, you maintain constant motion on a continuous loop of observing, reflecting, and making adjustments to the solution.

• We observe by examining our users and their world to understand them, uncover their needs, and get feedback on ideas. When observing, we set aside our assumptions and immerse ourselves in our users’ environment; it is about taking it all in and seeing what others look past.

• Then we reflect and look within to synthesize what we’ve learned. We articulate a point of view and come up with a plan. We build understanding of a situation by making sense of what we’ve observed or made. Reflecting individually is important but reflecting together raises everyone’s collective understanding.

The Keys

The three keys—hills, playbacks, and sponsor users—are all about scalability. These core concepts help us not only design, but also deliver meaningful outcomes.

• Hills turn users’ needs into project goals, helping the team align around a common understanding of the intended outcomes to achieve.

• Playbacks are a time for your team and stakeholders to understand the work and voice their input. They reveal alignment or discord about what the team intends to deliver.

• Sponsor users are real users. We collaborate with them to increase our speed and close the gap between our assumptions and our users’ reality. They aren’t just passive subjects—they’re active participants who work alongside the team to help you deliver an outcome that meets their needs.

At IBM, we look at our requirements, engage sponsor users from the beginning, and perform sprints using flipcharts and other tools such as Mural to determine our user needs, learning outcomes, and how to measure impact. Then we develop, deploy, and loop back around.

Figure 24-3 is an example of output after a design thinking session. The learning team evaluated a specific persona and then created an empathy map examining what this persona might say/think/do/feel—first in the “as is” state (meaning right now) and then in the “future state” in order to look at what needs to change in the learning experience.

Figure 24-3. Example Empathy Map for a Specific Persona

Using Agile Methods and Principles

There are similarities between design thinking and Agile. At IBM, we ascribe to three Agile principles:

• Clarity of outcome. Begin with clarity about the outcome and let it guide every step along the way.

• Iteration over perfection. Listen, iterate, learn, and course correct rather than waiting until it’s perfect.

• Self-directed teams. Build small teams with the right skills to encourage self-direction and innovation.

You may already be familiar with Agile, especially if it is used in your company. We suggest you consider how you can use these practices to change the way you identify, design, develop, and implement your learning solutions. At IBM, design thinking and Agile are used prolifically. And, now that the IBM Leadership, Learning, and Inclusion teams have made them a part of how we work, it is easier to partner with the business and iterate learning solutions in a collaborative way.

Whatever the method, we encourage you to reflect as a team on how these processes could address pain points that prevent you from becoming more innovative or that affect your ability to experiment and improve learning impact. How can you experiment in ways that help you get better at getting better?

Innovation and Trends in Learning

Recently, we heard this discussion around the idea of innovation.

How do you view innovation? Is it technology, strategy, or a combination of the two? In truth, incorporating innovation in learning will always require solid instructional design based on neuroscience and cognitive science. The shiny new object might not be shiny at all if it doesn’t have solid instructional design, giving it measurable impact on learning and performance. The best shiny object may simply be a new way to use a more mature technology. Let’s discuss a few of those innovative learning approaches.

Curating and Filtering Content

Curation is the process of finding, selecting, organizing, contextualizing, and sharing the best and most relevant digital content on a topic to meet a learner’s needs.

There is power in curating the best content because it allows for speed to market for content your learners need. If you have an urgent need, you can deliver the best, most relevant content without requiring a long development timeline, a large development budget, a dedicated development team with advanced digital content development skills, or extensive time from subject matter experts.

There are two levels of curation (Figure 24-4). Level 1 is identifying and using the best-of-the-best content from a variety of sources around a specific subject. Level 2 is filtering the right content from the level 1 curated content, based on the learner, specific learning objectives, current and desired skill level, job role, learning styles, length of content, relevance, and more.

Figure 24-4. The Two Levels of Curation

At IBM we use a learning platform called Your Learning to aid in content curation at both levels. The platform pulls in content from trusted advisors—including third-party content vendors, learning professionals, and subject matter experts—and continually manages it, adding or deleting based on relevance, learner reviews, content owner management, and source metadata.

Microlearning

Imagine: You are riding the train into work and have just a few minutes before you arrive at your station. What a great time to learn! You open a video on your phone and discover a new technique that changes the way you do business; later you get a quiz question that tests and reinforces what you learned. You might even get a little practice exercise. That is the power of microlearning.

Microlearning allows anyone to focus on upskilling, even without a large amount of time. Let’s be real, in society today, we have become conditioned to expect and be comfortable with shorter content; it fits into our on-the-go, multitasking, wait-in-line lifestyle. To offer content that meets the needs of today’s learners, think about learning solutions made of short, bite-size nuggets.

Microlearning can be leveraged in a variety of ways. It can be used to deliver and reinforce learning content, assess retention, support performance just-in-time, promote practice, and achieve the benefits of spacing in content. You can even bundle multiple microlearning nuggets, use them as pre- and post-event learning, or partner them with more traditional approaches.

To make microlearning work, consider these best practices:

• Ensure that microlearning is the appropriate approach.

• Package it as a complete learning point.

• Ensure it is a learning experience and not just content.

• Use systematic instructional design.

• Be engaging.

• Deliver in the working-memory capacity of humans—three to seven minutes.

• Use visuals to make the content sticky.

• Be flexible to allow personalization if, how, and when learners use the program.

• Design for accessibility.

Bundling

Bundling is a way to associate and deliver content that supports achieving mastery of learning objectives. Often the content is micro, nonlinear, self-paced, and self-selected (Figure 24-5). It allows a structure to be imposed or suggested, but often gives the learner the flexibility to determine their own path. Bundling can be as simple as an email with links to microlearning or as sophisticated as a custom tool. It can be accessed via the company intranet or embedded in work, other learning programs, communities, emails, wikis, or any other place you can post a web link.

At IBM we created an internal platform that provides an easily accessible, engaging, reusable, and configurable framework for housing, presenting, and tracking content that also supports internal and external content access. The framework allows the learner to easily navigate and complete the learning content that will help them most and fits the timeframe they have. We include features that drive engagement, mastery, and recognition.

Figure 24-5. Bundling Attributes and Application

IBM learning bundles are also integrated with our personalized learning platform, Your Learning, which means our structured microlearning programs are fully integrated. The following are just a few examples of how IBM has used bundling.

Advanced Sales Coaching: Master With Easy Navigation

Each box on the platform’s landing page represents an activity within the learning bundle. From this initial page, users can easily identify:

• the subject

• how long it will take to complete

• the number of points they will earn as they “rank up” in accelerating sales

• the format of the content (for example, video, document, blog, article, book chapter, or podcast), which is represented by the icon to the left of the activity title and by the background image.

• whether they’ve already viewed or completed the content, as shown by an orange status indicator

• recently added content, which is indicated by a “new” label.

The Story of Cloud and Cognitive Patterns

Two years ago, the IBM Cloud & Cognitive (C&C) solutions line of business was formed to address the needs of IBM’s top integrated and industry clients, offering depth for the C&C portfolio. The new leadership was also responsible for identifying new C&C opportunities and managing strategic cross–business unit opportunities. The mission was to rapidly improve the skills of 378 cloud and technical sellers to confidently and competitively sell these solutions. To do this, IBM designed an extensive program focused on cloud and AI content. It presented the go-to-market strategies for 16 client conversation patterns with three to four use cases for each pattern. This amounted to a total of 58 use cases. Phase 1 was launched in 45 days, and the solution itself was reused, repurposed, and reinvented to reach more than 40,000 IBM employees. With a 15-person learning team, IBM ran a series of five sprints over two months, bringing together more than 250 experts and creating more than 700 use case elements, 58 assessments, and 200 videos.

The solution leveraged IBM learning bundles for delivery (Figure 24-6). The team first created a framework using design thinking sessions and a lot of SME input. This pattern was then replicated quickly because multiple development streams could work simultaneously. In the spirit of Agile, sprints (or iterations) took two to three weeks, and we held daily standups and retrospectives at the end of each sprint.

Design features included:

• use of microlearning and macrolearning

• content curated for easy consumption

• mastery assessments

• media variety

• practice and feedback to build skills

• digital open badging.

Figure 24-6. Cloud & Cognitive Patterns Bundle System

Small Private Online Course (SPOC)

You’ve probably heard of MOOCs (massive online open courses), which are often used by universities. But have you heard of SPOCs (small private online courses)? At IBM, we call them digital learning guides because we use them to guide learners through structured or semi-structured content. Not only can they stand alone, but they can also be integrated in other approaches. For example, a SPOC can create the structure for digital face-to-face learning programs. SPOCs can contain all types of content, including microlearning, curated content, live virtual classroom sessions, internal and external content, and quizzes and tests.

A SPOC is typically supported by technology, which can be simple or complex. It can include content presentation, tracking, quizzing, and testing, as well as student and instructor interaction, peer reviews, group projects, and social connections. You can chunk content to help the learner navigate and choose the content they want to focus on. Figure 24-7 shows an example of the SPOC interface for the Global Sales School program, which is a blended solution that uses a SPOC for the digital portion of the program. SPOCs also allow for facilitator moderation and monitoring, tracking, and reporting on progress.

Figure 24-7. Example of a SPOC Interface

Digital Face-to-Face

Converting traditional instructor-led training to digital face-to-face training is becoming more in demand as skills become a currency and training organizations are asked to do more with less for increasingly dispersed audiences. Because it is a global company that is widely dispersed not only geographically but also with a large remote workforce, IBM needs to look for ways to generate the same impact as face-to-face learning, but with a faster, less expensive approach. This need continually drives us to evaluate ILT programs for transition to digital face-to-face, if not in whole, at least in part. Our move to increase our digital approaches is also supported by learners; 75 percent of IBM learners reported that this approach gave them confidence to learn new skills.

To ensure we make the best decisions for ILT program conversions and new learning programs, we have identified four best practices for digital face-to-face learning. We have found that the most effective experiences appropriately blend and leverage all best practice dimensions. Let’s look at each dimension:

• Interactivity

One-on-one work. Includes role play and practice for skill improvement using teleconference, videoconference, or in-person if co-located.

Group activities. Use breakout sessions through videoconference or teleconference breakout rooms to complete activities and build relationships.

Mentoring. Pre-arranges virtual partnerships with mentor guides and integrates meetings into the program schedule.

Coaching. Pre-arranges virtual coaching partnerships using trained coaches.

Individual activities. Use work-based activities with peer or manager reviews.

Relationship building. Uses videoconferencing, group activities, and social learning to build relationships.

• Approaches

Schedule. Conduct multiple sessions that are no longer than two hours each and are spread over several days or weeks.

Microlearning. Quickly closes micro skills gaps in a self-paced environment by capturing and maintaining learner attention.

Content curation. Uses the best content available and is built to meet the objectives; diverse content leads to expanded learning and engagement and appeals to different individual learning styles.

Cohort grouping. Cohorts build relationships and expand partnering.

Collaboration over time. A learning journey provides for building long-term relationships.

Just-in-time. Allows flexibility by including self-paced learning to ensure access when needed.

Work-based learning. Integrates activities that kick off or complete a job requirement.

• Technology

Videoconferencing. Delivers lectures, enhances engagement, promotes relationship building, and simulates the classroom experience.

Self-paced learning. Integrates digital learning to support learning objectives and reduce class time.

Gamification. Increases engagement when used in any asset.

Social learning. Host discussions via social networks, thus building relationships and peer-to-peer learning

Video-based learning. Uses simulations to demonstrate behavior and provide enhanced engagement.

Simulations. Demonstrate behaviors and help evaluate the behavior being displayed.

• Feedback and Measurement

Knowledge and skill assessment. Uses traditional online testing techniques or gaming for assessment. Self-paced assessments can be made using a wiki, gaming engine, or testing software. One-on-one interactions can be used to assess performance, for example, with coaching or presentation skills.

Peer reviews. Expand perspectives and peer-to-peer learning.

Practice and feedback. Provide practice and feedback via in-person or virtual peer, manager, or coach interactions.

Stand-ups. These assessments can be recorded via video and used to measure against criteria. Video tone and content can be evaluated with software.

Digital Face-to-Face Example

Bright Blue, an IBM program for new sales managers, is a cohort journey that uses many digital face-to-face best practices. It is a mix of live virtual classroom sessions, SPOCs, small group activities, peer reviews, microlearning, group projects, quizzes, and executive sponsorship. Mixing different learning strategies helps the learners stay engaged with the content and one another and learn in multiple ways (Figure 24-8).

Figure 24-8. Creating a Cohort Experience in Bright Blue

Digital Badges

Digital badging is a nano credentials program established using the Mozilla Open Badge standard, which issues badges to people who have accomplished résumé-worthy activities. The activities may be deep learning, and the badges serve as proof of mastery and accomplishment, or they could represent the achievement of a certain level of experience or expertise. Badges are validated against a public set of criteria developed by the issuer (which can be an employer, educational institution, or company).

Learners can share their badges across social media. These badges also travel with the badge earner, allowing them to broadcast their accomplishments and skills, thus helping them to enhance their personal brand. Digital badges show the holder’s expertise and experience and improve their employability. Privacy is protected because the earner owns the badge once they earn it, and they can decide if, how, and where to share the badge.

What does the badge issuer get out of it? A leading-edge skills program that attracts, engages, retains, and upskills the best talent.

In 2015, IBM launched the IBM Digital Badge Program with a pilot for online learning and saw dramatic results. Not only did student enrollment increase by 129 percent; the number of enrollees who actually completed the courses also increased by 226 percent. Further, the number of students who passed the end-of-course exam increased by 694 percent compared with the six-week period leading up to the introduction of digital badges.

Since launching that first program, IBM has issued more than 2 million badges for employees, clients, students, and partners around the globe. IBM offers five types of badges: knowledge, skill, proficiency, two professional certifications (used internally and externally), and an achievement contribution. In addition to increases in learning success, we’ve also seen an increase in engagement—87 percent of badge earners said they were more engaged because of the program. Internally, we’ve also seen that digital credentials rank third after technical and personal development in driving learners to take learning. Based on business results, technical sellers with certification badges were more likely to make their revenue target than those without. The program has also received an excellent net promoter score.

Innovation for Impact—Stories of Success

Earlier this chapter mentioned a story about IBM’s Global Sales School program, which had to reduce learning time and still achieve the learning outcomes the business needed. After using many of the approaches covered in this chapter, the program was able to successfully reduce seat time by 54 percent and reduce travel by 25 percent. For entry-level sales training, we more effectively structured the new sellers’ progress through their online learning and promoted connections with other new sellers. We created a digital learning guide (DLG) that leverages a SPOC and a dashboard for facilitators and sales managers. The DLG allowed us to schedule online learning by week rather than supplying a full syllabus of activities because it uses a single screen of assignments over multiple weeks and highlights tasks in red when they are overdue. It also includes a discussion area for sellers and facilitators, peer reviews of assignments, and easy ways to connect with other participants. Facilitators and sales managers have a dashboard that allows them to track seller progress and review assessments that outline areas for improvement and exceptional performance.

Another success we’ve had is the Advanced Sales Coaching (ASC) program, which has become a premier program at IBM. It was developed in response to internal and external research indicating that coaching was the most critical skill for sales manager success and thus sales team success. Where better to start than the most critical skill for the audience? The ASC program is based on the IBM learning bundles and features:

• anywhere, anytime access on a laptop, an iPad, and mobile through an online app

• 16 business topics to support managers and sellers

• curated content

• microlearning

• self-paced and personalized content

• engaging, interactive video simulations

• challenging quizzes and games to keep it fun

• practical practice and feedback from professional coaching advisors

• a little bit of competition with peers to keep it interesting.

The results of the program were stellar, and the impact was real. Managers who participated actively in ASC had far better business results than those who did not:

• Active ASC sales managers exceeded the revenue plan for three of four parts. Nonactive ASC sales managers missed the revenue plan for three of four parts.

• Revenue attainment for sales managers who completed one or more ASC bundles exceeded non-ASC sales managers by 7.8 percent.

• Revenue attainment for active ASC sales managers outpaced non-ASC sales managers by 6.9 percent.

• ASC sales managers exceeded quota by 6.5 percent.

As you can imagine, this program has been a game changer for IBM and has spurred many other programs using similar techniques and innovations.

Summary

Companies are always trying to be first to market, and growing market share requires being ready to roll out the next thing before anyone else. Training organizations are challenged similarly. If you aren’t updating or innovating quickly enough, you can lose leadership’s interest and investment. But innovating just to bring in the next shiny object doesn’t answer the L&D professional’s responsibility to show impact in the form of newly created skills or faster responses to client needs. They need to be able to plan and develop for skills that haven’t even been defined yet!

There are many ways to be innovative. Do your research to ensure you are tightly connected to the business needs and become more Agile in how you develop and deploy your learning content. This chapter provided insight into methodologies, tools, and design approaches we are using at IBM. We hope you can leverage these ideas and make a difference in the effectiveness of your learning experiences.

Key Takeaways

Being innovative can be a game changer for your organization. However, innovation without research, a focus on the audience and business, and good instructional design will not be successful.

When you use an innovative approach to learning, you should be able to describe the reason you are using the innovation, as well as the expected outcome. The innovations discussed in this chapter have the anticipated outcomes; however, each situation is different and you are the best determiner for if, when, and how to use an innovation.

There are many ways to combine different innovative approaches. Once you have done your research, be bold!

As learning professionals, we owe it to our organizations to bring forward proven instructional approaches and new approaches that could have a big impact by making use of new technology, new research, changes in the business, and changes in the audience and the way we interact with the world.

Don’t leave the business out! Engage employees (who are your end users) in what you are working on and co-create learning experiences that include them as part of the development and deployment efforts.

Questions for Reflection and Further Action

1. How connected are you to the business goals in your organization? Is there a direct line of slight from L&D to business goals?

2. Can you easily articulate to your team the priorities that drive the business needs in your organization?

3. What innovative approaches should you learn more about to be more effective with your business needs?

4. What resources should you regularly engage with to stay current on innovation and trends?

5. How do you assess and track changes in organizational needs at all levels within the organization?

6. Of the many approaches listed in this chapter, which can you add to your portfolio?