The economy is moving through a significant downturn and headed for an extended period of growth that will bring tumultuous change. On one side of this equation, budgets and staff are being cut in many learning organizations, which affects how training is delivered to operational units. On the other side, the earmarks of growth can be seen in an increase in consumer spending, increased housing starts and a stock market that is trending up.
This degree of change requires the chief learning officer to think differently. CLOs must quickly comprehend the significance of these mega-changes and find creative and innovative ways to bridge the skill gaps that can result. That often requires learning leaders to adapt learning delivery strategies if they intend to continue to bring measurable results to their operational components. Failure to adapt in time may hamper the CLO’s ability to deliver essential learning in a competitive and high-stakes marketplace.
To fully grasp the magnitude of change that affects the private sector, learning leaders need look no further than the many mergers, acquisitions and spinoffs in 2011. For example, Cisco Systems acquired six companies, Bristol-Myers Squibb acquired ZymoGenetics, Google acquired two companies and Facebook acquired five firms.
Reuters reported a frenzy of activity at the start of 2011 and cited the estimated value of worldwide takeovers to be $352 billion, up 78 percent from 2010. Then, near the end of 2011, business unit spinoffs were front and center.
Another reliable metric of growth, and therefore a lens into the depth of this economic upheaval, is the number of patents being issued. According to U.S. Patent and Trademark Office records, there were 219,614 patents for inventions issued by the end of 2010. This was a 31 percent increase over the relatively static years of 2006-2009.
Post-Change Strategy
Government is also going through changes. Congress is putting federal agencies on a crash diet with a plan to shed billions of dollars during the next several years. In the face of impending budget cuts, most local, state and federal agencies are making plans to downsize by offering buyouts or early retirements. This downsizing will inevitably result in a number of programs being eliminated, while others will be combined through reorganizations in an effort to reach greater efficiency. This reshaping process will bring forth new workforce communication challenges. Similar to the private sector, federal CLOs will see traditional boundaries crumble and new organizational relationships created.
It is during these times that strong learning leaders discover creative ways to bridge these evolving organizational relationships and get things done. The following four-step process can help determine the best learning strategy to better enable the workforce in the wake of significant change.
1. Diagnose and assess: Take time to learn about the business cultures and core values of the component parts of the newly formed organization. This can be done via interviews with key stakeholders, a well-designed survey instrument and focus groups.
2. Discover and analyze: Research learning delivery methods and find out how each key business unit or leader prefers to have learning delivered: classroom, online, simulation, social networking or blended. A reflection of these methods will enable the learning leader to target the most appropriate method to use when piloting learning initiatives. The answers will bubble up from the data.
3. Identify and pilot: Identify the most strategic and mission-critical training to senior leadership. Run a pilot program that addresses those objectives using the most appropriate method determined in the discover and analyze step.
4. Evaluate and repeat: Conduct an evaluation employing quantitative and qualitative research methods. Incorporate information learned from the pilot and repeat steps three and four for each mission-critical learning initiative.
Change will spawn new enterprises and perhaps new industries, which will trigger a domino effect with an explosion in development of new infrastructures to support these enterprises. This phase brings creative leadership challenges which the CLO will see in the gradual or wholesale crumbling of traditional boundaries. These new organizational structures and operational systems bring their own problems, which are often linked to multiple barriers that prevent a leader from finding the common ground that could lead to a solution. The learning leaders’ first step in moving forward is to identify the barriers that may stand in the way of making progress.
Knock Down Walls
In the book Boundary Spanning Leadership, authors Chris Ernst and Donna Chrobot-Mason collected data from 25 organizations across five continents, analyzed 2,800 survey responses and interviewed more than 300 people. The premise of the book is based on the concept that leaders must identify and overcome the barriers that inhibit their ability to find common ground among seemingly competing interests. This research identifies five different types of boundaries that inhibit and at times prevent a leader from obtaining the organizational results desired during periods of significant change: vertical, horizontal, stakeholder, demographic and geographic. Chief learning officers probably will encounter one or more of these barriers, particularly within a merged organization. The vertical boundary is the first, and it refers to the power structure in most organizations that may prevent an easy exchange of ideas between members. When organizations merge, for instance, it is not unusual to encounter a potential clash of these structures.
Horizontal challenges are all about leading through peers and the experts found in all operational enterprises. This challenge is composed of many well-meaning people who want to approach the challenge from various directions, but get bogged down in the process.
The stakeholders present their own challenges. They represent many divergent interests that must be reconciled for the benefit of all. Each interest group wants its perceived share of the available resources in a new or combined enterprise.
Demographic boundaries are probably the most diverse of all of the five. They encompass race, gender, age, education and ideology. It is difficult enough to deal with these special interests in most organizations without having a multiplier effect that can occur after a merger or some other significant enterprise-wide change.
Finally, geographic boundaries involve regional and cultural challenges that pose barriers related to distance. CLOs already have experienced many challenges of this type as they continue to listen to and reconcile headquarters and field interests in global and distributed organizations.
These labels provide learning leaders with a greater understanding of the barriers they may encounter as they help their organizations adapt to new infrastructures. An understanding of the boundaries will make it easier for CLOs to focus on the best tools at their disposal to span chasms that keep communities apart. There are tools CLOs can employ to bridge these barriers and find common ground to proactively rather than reactively manage and lead change.
Tools for a Change Agent
For instance, Boundary Spanning Leadership offers six strategic tools which can assist the leader to not only identify the barriers that separate competing interests, but find common ground that can lead to successful resolution of an issue. Some successful managers and leaders may be using these techniques already, but the CLO in particular can use these tools to become a more effective change agent.
1. Buffering: In this technique the CLO provides a buffering space between competing interests to create a safe zone for dialogue. This safe zone can lead to the resolution of differences.
2. Reflecting: Through a reflecting process, the leader provides an opportunity for competing interest groups to see, and perhaps feel, the concern and perceptions of the other interest group.
3. Connecting: This is a technique to discover similar interests, opinions and experiences that can bring competing parties closer together. When a leader creates an opportunity for people to learn about their similarities, they are often more open to understanding each other. A good example would be two people who have competing interests, but both hail from the same alma mater or city.
4. Mobilizing: Reorganizations and other forms of enterprise-wide change tend to reframe boundaries, and with them new communities form. As these new communities evolve, they are bound together by their own distinct values and loyalties. By mixing in different kinds of people — from other departments, units or levels in the organization, for instance — the newly formed group begins to grow as one and adopt new core values that can be beneficial to the collective.
5. Weaving: This is an intricate process of interlacing operations and support systems together so they become interdependent. The creation of matrix teams is a way to accomplish this weaving.
6. Transforming: When functions are merged and boundaries overlap, organizations can reinvent themselves or specific parts in the organization, and they are transformed in the process. This is a valuable tool because it enables the workforce to see and better understand differing perspectives.
The chief learning officer is the ultimate change agent. Learning leaders must understand the power they possess to train and develop workforce capabilities that help employees bridge differences. The strategic and tactical tools discussed here can help. One must be prepared, because major change is at the doorstep.
Fred Lang is the chief learning officer for the U.S. Department of Commerce. He can be reached at editor@CLOmedia.com.
