Recently I went on a trip to Las Vegas....

14:19:00 Learning Boffins 0 Comments

Back in the late 70’s and early 80’s Las Vegas was a very adult place to work. It was as if a child catcher had scooped up the children from the streets and hidden them out of view, seeing a child was a rare occurrence. For those under 21 there was the mezzanine floor in every hotel which meant you didn’t have minors crossing the casino to go to the rooms or the pools. Now, there are children all over the place, having a great time on the roller coasters, in the themed play areas for children and many activities arranged by the hotels. The demographics of the gamblers has changed too, they are younger, often from further afield. Vegas is not the home playground it used to be. The games have changed as well; there are less craps tables, fewer poker pits and more poker machines, no Baccarat and more 5 line slots and more consumerism, more shopping! In the 80’s the Fashion Show Mall was the only shopping on the strip with boutiques in some of the large hotels on the south end of the strip. Now every hotel it seems has a mall of high end shopping, crystals and rhinestones everywhere!


A group of us were catching up and asking what each are doing for work. As there was a fair distribution of countries represented we all had to explain who we work for in detail as it wasn’t a given they would know the company we worked for. We then had to explain what the actual job entails (and in my case as a consultant for L&D it took more explanation than I realised it would do, as it is not a role you find in other parts of the world.) Not so with Emily. She is 6ft 2” tall and used to work in the showroom as a Showgirl. “So what are you doing now Emily?” Response ……. “I work as Lead Aerospace Engineer for NASA”.

Enough said.

Some transformations (and that is the micro and macro theme here) are so startling they are reinventions of a grand scale. So from a city which reinvented itself to the personal reinvention you wonder how that journey could be conceived. Where did they start the re invention process or equally important WHY did they start? What was the motivation?


It depends what you are measuring so we come back to metrics again. You have to measure the right things, you have to read the information you are being given in the right way and you have to react to them. The reaction to the metrics or the action you take will be determined by a board or a committee of thinkers on a council (if you are a city) or by you if it is a personal transformation but the key is that change has to happen; standing still knowing the metrics indicate there should be a change is not an option. Let me tie this in to Learning and Development and specifically the transformation of your Learning and Development department. What transformations have we seen?

The most frequent transformation we work with here at KnowledgePool is the Globalisation Transformation. As companies have grown and their learners have spread around the world the ‘metrics’ measured to change from local to global might have been:

• Do all learners have access to the same quality of learning? (sampling of materials) 
• Is money been spent on duplicitous learning? (spend analysis on suppliers or internal resource) 
• Are all learners’ skills being developed in alignment with the global business objectives? (course title and course objectives) 
• Can we measure skills acquired on a like for like country to country basis? (monitor different methodologies for sales, leadership, management, customer service) 
• Can we (head office L&D) service all the requirements? (calls or demands for learning, count of those which go unsatisfied) 
• Can we stop cutting costs and become more efficient and effective? (what does effective and efficient look like, SME opinion needed) 
• Does our learning provision actively encourage recruitment? (survey of employees on their opinion of learning) 

None of these are the traditional metrics of number of training courses run, number of attendees, and cost of providing lunch. Those are important but they will not transform the way learning departments behave. (Other than cutting out the mid-day sandwich). So what if you don’t know what questions to ask? What if you can’t find the objectivity you need to make your Learning and Development department relevant, efficient, future secured…..transformed? External eyes can help with that Operating Model Transformation and of course Knowledgepool have the consultants to do that for you.

So what of the transformation from Showgirl to Space Engineer, what is that wild story? Maybe that is for next time because ‘What happens in Vegas ….


Rachel Kuftinoff
Learning Consultancy Director