Formula 1 Team Principle = Strategic Learning Consultant


I was talking with a friend of mine the other day that I have not seen since before Christmas.  It was great to catch up and of particular interest to him was my new job as a Strategic Learning Consultant.  I proceeded to tell him what my role was and who I worked with but I could tell it was falling on deaf ears.  However it was at this moment I had an epiphany relating to how I could help him understand my world.

We both share a love of Formula 1 and already that evening we had engaged in number of conversations relating to the upcoming season.  It dawned on me that my new job was just like that of the Team Principle in an F1 team or alternatively assistant to the Team Principle.  Now for those of you who do not follow F1 I will briefly explain the role played by the Team Principle.  F1 is a team based sport.  However, F1 is unique in the fact that, within a team there are two sub teams, one for each driver.  Each sub team may have 30-40 members that have roles ranging from mechanic, pit stop crew, PR, catering, dieticians, physio therapists, managers, etc.  And this is not including the army of designers and engineers back at the factory.  It is the Team Principles job to manage all these individuals to achieve not only the goals of the broader team but also that of their sub team.  Frankly it’s an extremely difficult job fraught with complexity, politics and the balancing of often rather large egos.  And all this is before you devise and implement a strategy in an attempt to win a race.  Essentially the team principle is balancing a lot of plates.

So the question is how does this relate to what I do?  The balancing of plates is something every Head of L&D must do.  This may be establishing the learning demand for the upcoming year, implementing a new LMS or even organising their curriculum.

The “Learning Consultant” part of my job title relates to my ability to help L&D functions make the best, most informed decisions in relation to all the plates they have in the air.  In many cases this will include understanding the impact that a change will have on the other plates that are still spinning.  An example of this may be providing insight on the benefits of implementing an LMS and then beyond that understanding the types of MI that can be generated as result of using the system.  In the F1 world this would be the same as understanding the effect of putting different tyres on the car may improve the handling of the car.


The “Strategic” in my job title refers to the fact that all consultancy I provide will create L&D transformation that in turn directly delivers against the business goals.  Taking the previous example of an LMS and the MI it can generate.  The strategic bit is how we can ensure that the correct MI data is captured that enables L&D to demonstrate how the training held on the system is supporting business growth and inform future decisions relating to learning.   In a similar fashion putting new tyres on a car can improve handling but may increase the number of pit stops a car needs to make so does this benefit the overall race strategy?

At its most basic I am someone who can see the broader picture and understand that L&D is more than just delivering ‘shiny’ training programmes to the masses.  It’s an understanding that training needs to deliver against business goals as must all the other components that make up an L&D function such as governance, processes, technology, etc.  In essence my job is to help your L&D department run like a well-oiled machine, or even a championship winning F1 team!

Tom Ridley
Strategic Learning Consultant


 

Hold on, let me google this…


A human dilemma, I’m trying to stick to a healthy eating regime, but just 2 weeks in it starts getting tough. Wanting a quick fix and dreaming of chocolate/tangtastics/maoam/crème eggs/biscuits it is becoming difficult to think of healthy alternatives. So, naturally as a Gen Y I turn to google. And in front of me I have 12,500,000 different websites that share with me healthy snack ideas.  So luckily (or sadly) post-chocolate sugar crash and carbohydrate overload can be avoided!

This gets me thinking, because this is only one example of me using google to instantly seek information. Just as examples here are a few of my recent searches on Google:


·         Can you eat the skin of a Kiwi? (Yes and there is actually a dedicated Kiwi website).

·         How do I make a rainbow cake? (returns 51,300,000 results – mainly all recipes and ideas)

·         What exactly is meant by ‘hangry’? (Up comes 246,000 results and in case you’re wondering the meaning is – according to the Collins English Dictionary – ‘irritable as a result of feeling hungry’- an emotion I regularly experience).

I really could go on here, but you might be thinking why am I telling you this? What I am trying to say is this, google is just one example, but the internet, youtube, Siri, Cortana, social media (list could go on!) all of these are gateways to knowledge and as a Gen Y having knowledge readily available is second nature and quite frankly I’m not sure how I could be without it. I mean how many times have you heard ‘ooo let me quickly google it to find out’?.
If this is the way that many of us are now learning and acquiring knowledge outside of work, why isn’t it reflected (for so many) within the workplace?  An expectation of many (especially Gen Y and generations that follow) is that learning is on-demand, easy-to-access, available at the point of need it, personal and relevant. So should we be looking at ways to support this??
Continual developments of learning technology that can support social learning it is making itself known and present as a way of learning in the workplace environment.
A recent quote from the Towards Maturity report actually highlights the benefits the support for this type of learning in the workplace can bring: There is an ‘increase in employee engagement of more than 250% from employees who engage in on-the job learning and sharing’. Although this learning shift does require a slight change in Learning and Developments role, so we shift from courses to resources, move from a broker of learning to a guide and not to be forcing content on employees but rather tempt them to engage in content. But are we afraid to make this shift?
It’s a subtle shift and certainly can be effective when supported through technology. I’m certainly not saying that this type of learning should replace all the formal learning that may happen with an organisation, but it certainly is a thought for us to think about borrowing from the concept proactively. So supplement this type learning rather than seeing it as a replacement to what is of existence already, we know it can be done and we know it can deliver organisational benefit and with this way of learning being second nature to so many it’s certainly a concept we should be thinking about implementing, not ignoring!



Sophie Cannon

Strategic Research Analyst

Strategic Consultancy De-mystified

So far this year there has been a strong focus within the consultancy team on focusing our offering and making it clear to people what we can do.  Answering the question of what we can do is made difficult by the fact that we have a team with a broad skill set in which each of us has then specialised within specific areas.  With this in mind it made sense for us to articulate our capabilities in way that matters to our clients and this can be summed up quite simply in the following statement...

"We can help you more clearly understand your goals for L&D.  We can select the capabilities within our team that are best suited to achieving your goals.  And by bringing this together we can bring about real L&D transformation"

And for those visual learners among you, this graphic might be better!

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

Recently I went on a trip to Las Vegas. It was a reunion of people I had worked with in Las Vegas over 35 years ago. It was so wonderful to see everyone again and on my return I was struck with a reoccurring theme from Las Vegas on a macro and micro level.



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 

 
 
 

Learning Tech 2016: The Learning Boffin’s Perspective



As always Olympia showcased Learning Technologies for 2016. There was an incredible turn out of vendors offering different learning solutions. Us Learning Boffins went to the show to have some good conversations and pick up on the key themes that are being talked about in the learning world. Below we capture some of our after thoughts in bullet form:

1.       Social is not a replacement for all learning: This was a debate we took away; so many people are talking about social but is it a replacement to already existing learning or is it a supplement? We argued that…this type of learning is not a replacement to all learning; it brings most benefit by supplementing and complimenting formal learning. Organisations should look to borrow from social media/learning proactively rather than totally replace all existing learning.

2.       Uberfication of learning: Many were saying the way he acquire knowledge outside of work is normally different than the corporate world. Technology can support this, we saw a number of different vendors showcasing opportunities to support this type of learning. More than previous years.

3.       A role shift for L&D professionals: Supporting social learning requires L&D to shift from a learning broker to a guide, by not forcing content but rather tempting people to use content. But formal learning still remains, so there needs to be a balance between the broker and the guide for an L&D professional. How best can we approach this?

4.       Uptake on social can be difficult: Market your social learning offering vigorously, never expect people to utilise it without this. Again is this meaning a role shift for L&D?

5.       Favourite quote of the show: from Julian Stodd: ‘In the old world, technology was a mechanism of control over the individual: in the new world, it should be facilitating’. Highlighting how technology is a ‘booster rocket’ to support new ways of learning.

6.       What if dragons den were to evaluate the investment your organisation has on learning? Could you show the impact you are really making?  Interesting question that we should all be thinking about in L&D. How honestly could you answer it?


This covers off only a fraction of the show, but what do you think of our points above? Do you agree or something different? Let us know…… 

L&D Strategy - A Piece of Cake?












Today is "Bake Off Day" at the KnowledgePool offices.  The sheer number of cakes in the kitchen this morning is more than enough to cure any Monday morning blues so we thought we would show you our contribution!

Our cake is based around the capabilities that lie within the consultancy team and is based upon our "World of Learning" diagram.  Given the breadth of what we can do it was actually quite hard to find a cake base big enough to hold our concoction.  Not to mention the looks we received whilst purchasing enough icing to sink a battleship!

Unfortunately we cant send all of you a piece in the post so instead here is a a copy of the "World of Learning" diagram which is ultimately more useful and won't increase your waistline!

School reunion

Generally I would avoid school reunions. There is too much reminiscing about how many boyfriends you had and who asked you to dance at the end of the school disco for my liking. This may be because I didn’t excel in either of these topical areas! I accepted this invitation to prove a point about learning. My own career path had nothing to do with the exams I took at 16, 18 and later, although it was good learning (I still recall the definition for Homeostasis for example) I can’t say it helped me in later life. So the question I would ask was “What was the most useful learning you have ever done in your life?”



I have to say my sampling wasn’t scientific as I migrated to the same people I had been friends with back in the day. I just wanted to find out what learning they thought had most impacted their lives. Was it English with Mrs X or Maths with Mr Y?


The Geography Major. He had a slow start out of university and blamed that on himself as he didn’t know what he wanted to do. He went into sales and is now a Regional Sales Director for a software specialist. His most useful learning he said was two training courses that helped him ‘Manage people to success’ and ‘How to make decisions’. So all that intellectual learning about ‘rotational slumping’ went to waste? “No not at all”, he said. It proved to him that he could go from knowing nothing to knowing something. He learned how he personally absorbed and embedded information. Text books helped, seminars were seen as warm places to sleep and writing down everything and highlighting made all the difference in the world to his revision of facts.


The Hair Dresser. She is an owner of a local salon, a true entrepreneur with a growing business. Self-admission that attendance at school was not a priority but when the weekend came was sweeping ‘snippings’ at the hairdressers she later became the owner of. She changed the question because she wanted to tell me what she would like to have learned. She wanted commercial training, she needed to know how to talk to a bank manager and convince them she was worth a loan. Then when she had the loan it was how to spend it wisely and not run out. So a bit of financial planning. None of that was available at our multi ability school and she wouldn’t agree that pure maths would have helped, in her eyes it wasn’t related to business at all. Apparently she asked in her final year if there was anything to help her open her own business and was told to stay and do her ‘A’ levels. The advice she was given didn’t match her question in her opinion so she left academia. She learned everything she needed from the internet but as she was rating her own learning she didn’t know if it was the best ….she wasn’t even sure it was her best. 



The Finance Director. This chap was never a swat, homework was often late and there were many detentions. He managed a B+ average so who would have thought he would have reached the lofty heights of FD for a well-known high street company? What happened? He left and went to college and was suddenly aware of ‘growing up’. The best thing that he learned was that ‘he could do it’. A tutor who saw him in his class three times a week saw his potential, he made him stay behind and told him (apparently very firmly) to stop sabotaging his future. He told him he was better than a B+, his mind was more capable than most and he was short changing himself. To have another’s’ belief in him was empowering, it stopped him thinking he was ‘average’ and he went from average to spectacular; achieving a first in Mathematics and first time passes in his ACA qualification.


During the evening there were more questions and more people to meet and more glorious baby pictures shown to me and telephone numbers exchanged but what was the trend about learning? Quite clearly in my mind it proves the principles of adult learning …..make it at the right time, make it appropriate and relevant. Make it about the learner, give confidence to your learner and make it a positive experience and don’t sheep dip. It would also appear to be that you should never give a dog a bad name. Learners may develop the desire for learning at any stage in their journey so ‘educators’ of all types should keep open minds as to their ability to learn , not assume that their people won’t be able to absorb information. This is not a commentary on academic learning; it really was trying to find out what made a difference to my peer group, what affected their careers. For some it was about the teacher who got through to them, for others it was improving management skills as you don’t learn that at school and for everyone is was about their desire to learn because it meant so much more than at school.


So if we have to prove the value of learning we should start with proving the value of learning to the learner first! Don’t sheep dip your learners and expect performance improvement as you will not get any, make it relevant to their needs considering the strategic direction you need to go and for goodness sake inspire learners to achieve their potential not your potential. 


Six Principles of Adult Learning
  1.  Adults must want to learn, they learn effectively only when they have a strong inner motivation to develop a new skill or acquire a particular type of knowledge.
  2. Adults will learn only what they feel they need to learn Adults are practical in their approach to learning; they want to know, “How is this going to help me right now?” 
  3. Adults learn by doing. 
  4. Adult learning focuses on problems and the problems must be realistic 
  5. Experience affects adult learning adults have more experience than children. This can be an asset and a liability. 
  6. Adults want guidance. Adults want information that will help them improve their situation. 

Rachel Kuftinoff

Learning Consultancy Director
 

Prove it or Lose it in 2016!

Determining the impact of a training program in your organisation is a challenge. In 2016 it looks to be a key trend for learning and development professionals - because we need to prove the value of learning or face losing the budget for it.

But establishing the business benefit of learning is rarely attempted as it is deemed "too difficult", but just because it is hard to do doesn't mean it should be ignored and it doesn't make it wrong to do. So we need to move towards being more convinced by and committed to the business benefit of learning.

There is poor consistency of organisations establishing the return on investment and effective gains on learning activity(1). With budgets continuing to be squeezed - no wonder the issue has started to become a focus for many. Huge benefits can be achieved from effectively recording the impact of learning; we will discuss only a handful in this blog:

1. Show the contribution of selected programmes
2. Earn respect from senior management
3. Improve furture learning and development decisions
4. Alther or remove ineffective programmes

Lets explore them in more detail:

Show the contribution of selected programmes
Being able to show the value of selected training programmes gives your stakeholder's confidence that the budget you are given for learning is making a real difference to the business. Not being able to display benefit will give senior stakeholders the go ahead to cut the budget and chip away at your department. No benefit, no budget.

Gain respect from senior management

Going beyond just sharing the amount of learning you are shifting and proving exactly how it is impacting the business gives your stakeholders the confidence that the work done through L&D is giving organisational benefit. We see organisations that have lost confidence from their senior stakeholders and have therefore started to see their learning department diminish. Being confident for your stakeholders gains their respect, if marketing get their budget by confidently sharing their expected payback of activities, then L&D can and should do the same for learning spend!

Improve furture learning and development decisions/programmes

Evaluating programmes can inform future decision making for your organisation. Identifying the programmes that worked or didn't work allows you to know whether to repeat that programme or deliver something different.

Remove ineffective programmes
Good evaluations and identification of impact allows an organisation to identify and remove ineffective programmes, to stop them running again and end up being another wasted investment.


Cuts will happen in the learning department if the benefit of learning is not understood or collected. NO BENEFIT -  NO BUDGET!. And with budgets continuing to be squeezed it is vital that leaning and development consider and prove the benefit they are making.

We at KnowledgePool (part of Capita Plc) know how to do this; our experience can help you to prove the impact of your learning. Contact us through the blog, Twitter or LinkedIn.


 
 
 
 
 
Sophie Cannon
Strategic Research Analyst


 
 
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