TRANSFORMING TRAINING A Guide to Creating a Flexible Learning Environment: The Rise of the Learning Architects David Mackey Siân Livsey London and Philadelphia Publisher’s note Every possible effort has been made to ensure that the information contained in this book is accurate at the time of going to press, and the publishers and authors cannot accept responsibility for any errors or omissions, however caused. No responsibility for loss or damage occasioned to any person acting, or refraining from action, as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by the editor, the publisher or any of the authors. First published in Great Britain and the United States in 2006 by Kogan Page Limited Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licences issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned addresses: 120 Pentonville Road 525 South 4th St, #241 London N1 9JN Philadelphia PA 19147 United Kingdom USA www.kogan-page.co.uk © David Mackey and Siân Livsey, 2006 The right of David Mackey and Siân Livsey to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. ISBN 0 7494 4171 2 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mackey, David. Transforming training : a guide to creating a flexible learning environment : the rise of the learning architects / David Mackey, Siân Livsey. p. cm. ISBN 0-7494-4171-2 1. Employees--Training of. 2. Organizational learning. I. Livsey, Siân. II. Title. HF5549.5.T7M223 2006 658.3’124--dc22 2005031003 Typeset by Digital Publishing Solutions Printed and bound in the United States by Thomson-Shore, Inc Contents Acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 Part I: Creating a learning environment 11 1. Organizations, learning and change 13 Introduction: the transformation of learning 13 Factors for organizational success 15 Growing rates of change impacting organizations 17 Drivers and opportunities for learning 20 Traditional challenges, new challenges for learning 23 New approaches to learning provision 26 Transforming learning management and leadership 30 Frameworks for learning solutions 38 Working relationships 41 The commercial models 43 Chapter summary 43 2. Establishing the learning function 45 Introduction to the corporate learning architect 45 The establishing status 48 iv Contents Positioning the learning function in the organization 50 Implementing learning 51 A learning strategy 52 Creating and implementing a learning strategy 55 The learning implementation plan 65 A learning policy 67 Chapter summary 73 3. A journey to learning excellence 74 The transforming corporate learning architect 75 The journey to learning excellence 88 Researching the journey to learning excellence 90 Considering the learning potential 99 The plan for learning for the organization 105 Chapter summary 111 4. Managing learning without a team 113 The tactical learning architect, the ‘one-person learning function’ 114 The functional learning architect: managing learning without a learning function 118 The individual learning architect; managing learning for individuals 123 Chapter summary 127 5. The business of learning 128 Commercial models 129 Evaluation and assessment 137 Branding and communication for a learning function 151 Transformed learning strategies and implementation 155 Learning function engagement 156 A transformed learning architecture 162 Chapter summary 167 Part II: The rise of the learning architect 169 6. Skills of a learning architect 171 Skills of a learning architect 172 Influencing 173 Project managing 177 Coaching 181 Mentoring 186 Facilitating 189 Marketing 191 Contents v Negotiating 195 Chapter summary 198 7. Qualities of a learning architect 199 Be well informed 200 Understand the business of the organization and get close to it 206 Keep your motivation 209 Create a network 212 Know what you want 213 Build trust and rapport 217 Know how people learn 220 Be recognized as a contributor to the organization 222 Obtain management support 225 Be creative 228 Chapter summary 229 8. Delivering learning 230 Methods of delivery 231 Internal or external players? 248 Chapter summary 257 9. Current learning issues 258 Coaching 259 Diversity 263 Health and safety 266 Skills shortage 268 Engagement 274 E-learning 275 Chapter summary 278 References 279 Further reading 280 Index 281 Acknowledgements The researching and writing of this book has allowed me to experience the generosity of many learning architects. People have given their valuable time to share experiences of what the world of learning has meant for them and in doing so they have contributed to my learning, a gift I am grateful for to the following: David Kinson, Simon Hazeldine, Nickie Gibbs, Sue Roberts, Alison Wibberley, Sarah McDermott, Caroline Mather, Ian Bennett, Jayne Dickenson, Brian Snowdon, Julie Steele and Darrel Biss. I wish to acknowledge the tutors, trainers and mentors who have enabled me to develop my skills and qualities as a learning architect. Special thanks go to Steve, my family and friends, for their continual support, friendship and inspiration. Siân This has been an exciting project, mostly made so by the many people who have been prepared to share their experiences and their views on learning and on the development of people in today’s often challenging world. Particularly I would like to mention Rob McWilliam, Margaret Burnside, Chris Dunn, John Kilvington, Dermott Bradley, Matthew Guy, Brenda Myrans, Steve Burnett and Nick Alcock together with two people who provided early stimulus for this project, Sue Newton and Mark Woodhouse. The most special of thanks go to my wife, Sally, whose own studies continue to inspire my efforts. David Introduction We are aware that readers have different outcomes for wanting to read an introduction to a book. It may be that you are the type of reader who starts at the beginning of a book and works his or her way methodically through until the end. You may have flicked through some of the chapters, and are now at the front of the book trying to make some sense of what you have scanned. It may be that you have a specific topic that you are searching for, and are hoping that the introduction will indicate the book’s layout in a little more depth than the contents. You, like us, are attracted to books that will provide you with a valuable resource, a book that will stimulate thought and provide some comfort for the role you have in learning. Whatever your reason for reading this we hope that the introduction and the rest of the book will provide you with the outcome you want. WHY WE HAVE WRITTEN THE BOOK You may well be familiar with organizations striving to continuously improve and become more competitive through a variety of structured approaches to learning. Identifying those approaches that will work within the modern, changing organization is at the heart of a debate travelling far and wide. We hope this book is a significant contribution to the debate, 2 Transforming training since we are deeply involved in that debate in our everyday work, and in particular we became more involved in it as we assembled this book. We have debated with an extensive range of colleagues, business partners and friends. There is raging agreement that the need to harness learning has never been so important and raging disagreement about the best approaches for success. We have mused over our personal histories in the world of learning, training and people development. Can everything be really changing as quickly as it seems? Where did it all start, this journey to excellence in learning? For how long have people in organized societies been seeking to improve capabilities that will provide success in life? Were the first recog- nizable results of training the highly drilled Roman legionnaires? Or way before that, just how did the Egyptians learn how to organize a work force for such enormous projects? Is the most realistic reference point for us an acceptance that useful training and learning only began with the intense automation of the factories of the early 20th century? Whatever the true overall timescales, we need to recognize that little of that history has pre- pared us to succeed in a world where the fundamental role of learning is growing at an unprecedented rate. We recognize that little of our personal experience has prepared us for the current rate of change impacting orga- nizations and impacting the management of organizational and personal learning. We strongly suspect that is true for almost all readers. Our belief is that in today’s world of learning few organizations have yet found all of the best ways to do things, and much of the fine detail remains to be agreed. In the preparation of this book, we have talked to people who have embarked on remarkable, innovative journeys to organizational and indi- vidual learning. Other journeys have already proven expensive and less than successful. There remain many opportunities for new travellers to embark in totally inappropriate directions. We humbly offer guidance as to geography and orienteering. This book shares with you ideas of best practice for your personal journeys to individual and organizational learn- ing. In addition, this book sets out to assist you to recognize and prepare for the likely hurdles on those journeys. No two journeys to learning excel- lence are the same. Issues, concerns and frustrations differ between chosen journeys, though we hear a common theme. ‘Because of my experience, because I’ve read the literature, because I’ve been to the conferences, I know what I need to do and why, but I am really struggling with how to do it and to make it all work.’ This book is about how. Depending on the nature of your journey, the ideas we share with you may be revolution or evolution. If you have made a journey beyond the one we describe, we genuinely look forward to hearing about it. We know we have so much more to learn. Introduction 3 We searched for a title for all these people responsible in different ways for designing, building, implementing, evaluating and maintaining learn- ing in changing organizations: people bringing learning to organizations, to teams, to individuals, both in traditional training and development functions and those elsewhere. We have chosen the term learning archi- tects. We were taken by an image of people building structures for learning and then seeing their ideas grow and flourish, to be ‘inhabited’ by people absorbing benefit. Architecture is about providing solutions robust enough to handle the forces of change, solutions that are regarded as strong and resilient by those individuals who will benefit. The challenge for many learning architects is the provision of an organization-wide architecture for learning, an architecture capable of supporting proactive, focused learning solutions in today’s environment of change. As we have developed our ideas they have been shared and developed with a number of people occupying a range of roles in large, corporate organizations, and with people working in smaller organizations, as well as with individuals working alone. These people, for all their different designated roles, have an important shared interest – to provide effective learning for a range of people. In their different ways they all fully qualify for the title of learning architect. WHAT THE BOOK IS ABOUT This book is written mindful of our peers in training and development, corporate universities, learning functions, human resources (HR) and organization development (OD) – particularly those charged with an ever- growing list of new responsibilities. You may have a very modern title in a function with itself a modern title. Your current focus may well be in one or more challenging directions. Your task may be to develop organizational learning, a learning organiza- tion or to align with a new knowledge management function. Your focus may be on the realignment of your function in a ‘value-adding’ business partnership with your parent organization while selecting appropriate learning interventions from an ever-increasing list of possibilities. You may well be faced with operational challenges connected with new govern- mental legislation, reskilling the learning function team, creating a new vision for the function and all these in organizations existing in states of constant, churning flux. As a networking colleague observed, ‘We’ve become, as a company, pretty good at handling massive, continuous amounts of change. But it’s proving difficult for anything to stay still long 4 Transforming training enough for us to provide training on it, or even, sometimes, deciding exactly what “it” is!’ We are very conscious that a growing number of our colleagues managing learning functions are facing highly significant change as they have become almost the only permanent resource assigned to learning and development. Departmental sizes have been reduced, and this might well be combined with a transfer of learning budgets from a central fund to the line. You may sit, splendidly alone, in a learning function or you may be the ‘learning specialist’ in an HR function. Being the sole learning profes- sional in an organization requires new operational models and, indeed, a learning architect approach. I have 180 people reporting to me, 120 making highly sophisticated electronic components and the others interfacing into the remainder of the corporation. Now I’m told that the company is to stop having a central training department and I am to ‘take responsibility for the development of my people’, whatever that means! At least I have a training budget, so I have talked one of my brightest managers into making sure we get the right training with best use of that budget. She doesn’t yet know a great deal about training, but I’m sure she’ll make it happen. We have also written our book for those many people charged with providing the benefits of effective learning interventions even though per- sonally they are less familiar with the world of HR, training, learning, personal development or organizational development. Many of those who today manage, implement and motivate learning are not the familiar faces of old. As the number and size of traditional central learning functions reduce, there is a clear growth in the numbers of both internal and external people charged with the provision of organizational learning. Typically, these new people include functional trainers in line departments, training consultants, coaches and mentors, as well as line managers charged with the direct development of their teams and team members.