Friday, July 31, 2009
Friday, July 17, 2009
Ultimately it’s line managers that determine the success of L & D - Clive Shepherd
A week or two back I attended an interesting presentation, Great employers need great line managers, by John Purcell, Strategic Academic Adviser, Employment Relations for ACAS and a part-time Research Professor at Warwick University. Here are some notes I took:
- There is a gap between intended policies and actual practices. What matters is not the policy, but what employees actually experience.
- There are big variations in employee perceptions of the quality of line management behaviour in terms of people management.
- Most employees have close ties with their managers; for many, their manager is the organisation.
- In recent research, 44% of employees say their manager never or rarely coaches them; less than half of employees say their manager provides them with feedback on their performance.
- In a report this year by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), assessing employee attitudes to the recession, only 35% said they trusted senior managers, only 36% have confidence in their managers, and 46% report growing stress.
- There is so much that managers can do to support l&d: arranging buddies for new employees, organising job enrichment and rotation, providing coaching and guidance, organising secondments, identifying external technical training and conferences, knowledge sharing and running their own briefings and discussions.
- In another CIPD survey, 44% of employees felt their managers were not very effective at l&d.
John didn't include in his list the important role that line managers play in supporting formal l&d interventions. I was reminded of research often quoted by Charles Jennings, the source of which I have unfortunately mislaid, which showed that the contributions that managers played before and after interventions were much more important in determining success than the contributions of trainers or of learners themselves.
The lesson from all this evidence is quite clear. Unless you recognise that line managers are your most important stakeholder and ensure their commitment to your l&d strategy, you stand little chance of success.
Read the original post here with the comments
New Skills for Learning Professionals - Sahana Chattopadhyay
This month's Big Question from LCB has received a huge response. I have pasted the question here:
"In a Learning 2.0 world, where learning and performance solutions take on a wider variety of forms and where churn happens at a much more rapid pace, what new skills and knowledge are required for learning professionals?"
This is not a very new question and has been doing its rounds in different forums. My colleague and I had begun a similar discussion on our "explore learning solutions" forum as well. We also have a fair idea why this question is cropping up in various forms...Today, the role of learning professionals have undergone and are undergoing a paradigm shift. The main reason is of course the shifting, evolving technology and a flatter world with organizations spread across the globe.
As I read through the different responses to this month's Big Q, I saw that most of the major points had been covered.
Therefore, instead of trying to make the same point using different words, I thought I would synthesize my learnings from the different posts. I have not yet been able to cover all the posts but from what I have read, I have made the following jottings for myself. As I read the rest, I intend to add to this list.
The interpretations are mine and so is the synthesis I have arrived at. The original writer's intent may have been different.
While the key trends I have spotted so far focus on a learning professional's ability to:
Keep learning: Professionals have to become constant learners to be in tune wth the ever increasing flow of knowledge
Be a knowledge networker: Be a knowledge networker capable of identifying patterns and make connections
Solution provider: Use the best solutions and be able to bind different learning ecologies
Be tech savvy: Be comfortable with technology, especially the tools that can be used to create a "learning ecosystem or end-to-end learning solutions" at organizational levels (talking of organizational training here since that forms a large part of our "business")
Be adaptive: Be adaptive enough to see the link between theories of andragogy to present day technological innovations.
Be a social networker: Be good at networking and connecting with the "right" people because there is no way one can know everything. The only way to keep up with the rapid pace of tech development is to share and participate in online conversations.
Don't think of yourself as an expert: Be aware of the vanishing concept of "expertise". Today, everyone can easily gain expertise with access to information and the tools available to share and disseminate.
Have a sound grasp of theories: Linked to the previous point>> this puts a lot of pressure on learning professionals to constantly "innovate" and be the creator of sound instructional design. Only way we stand out is the design/form/structure/format that we present the learning in. Hence, it becomes even more critical to know the theories of learning in depth and apply these in course designs if we have to still make a case as to why organizations should spend in asking us to create a training program.
Be open to criticism and be courageous: Have the courage to put up one's understanding and perspectives out there for all to read, respond, criticise, disagree with, argue, rip apart...This can preferably be done via blogs which is also a platform that allows one to synthesize and analyze one's thoughts. Without this kind of "putting oneself on the block" attitude, it will not be possible to learn.
Understand business drivers: Be a consultant and be able to talk to Line-of-Business managers and grasp the true need of the training. This means being able to ask the right questions and not only focus on the "learning" but the end need of the learning. What is the gap that is impacting the bottom line? That is all that matters to an organization.
All of this means that it is well neigh impossible for an individual to develop on one's own. The whole in this case is way greater than the sum of the parts and knowing how to acquire the necessary information is as if not more important than the specific information itself.
The list of posts I have read so far are:
# Mohamed Amine Chatti - New Skills for Learning Professionals
# Harold Jarche - 2008 article on Skills 2.0
# Clive Shepherd
# Jay Cross - Informal Learning blog.
# E-Learning Curve Blog: Learning Professionals’ Skills 2.0
# Natalie - What Should Learning Professionals Know Today?
# Gina - Adventures in Corporate Education
# Jane Bozarth - New Skills for Learning Professionals
# Harold Jarche -Skills for learning professionals
# Clark Quinn: Web 2.0 Learning Skills
"In a Learning 2.0 world, where learning and performance solutions take on a wider variety of forms and where churn happens at a much more rapid pace, what new skills and knowledge are required for learning professionals?"
This is not a very new question and has been doing its rounds in different forums. My colleague and I had begun a similar discussion on our "explore learning solutions" forum as well. We also have a fair idea why this question is cropping up in various forms...Today, the role of learning professionals have undergone and are undergoing a paradigm shift. The main reason is of course the shifting, evolving technology and a flatter world with organizations spread across the globe.
As I read through the different responses to this month's Big Q, I saw that most of the major points had been covered.
Therefore, instead of trying to make the same point using different words, I thought I would synthesize my learnings from the different posts. I have not yet been able to cover all the posts but from what I have read, I have made the following jottings for myself. As I read the rest, I intend to add to this list.
The interpretations are mine and so is the synthesis I have arrived at. The original writer's intent may have been different.
While the key trends I have spotted so far focus on a learning professional's ability to:
Keep learning: Professionals have to become constant learners to be in tune wth the ever increasing flow of knowledge
Be a knowledge networker: Be a knowledge networker capable of identifying patterns and make connections
Solution provider: Use the best solutions and be able to bind different learning ecologies
Be tech savvy: Be comfortable with technology, especially the tools that can be used to create a "learning ecosystem or end-to-end learning solutions" at organizational levels (talking of organizational training here since that forms a large part of our "business")
Be adaptive: Be adaptive enough to see the link between theories of andragogy to present day technological innovations.
Be a social networker: Be good at networking and connecting with the "right" people because there is no way one can know everything. The only way to keep up with the rapid pace of tech development is to share and participate in online conversations.
Don't think of yourself as an expert: Be aware of the vanishing concept of "expertise". Today, everyone can easily gain expertise with access to information and the tools available to share and disseminate.
Have a sound grasp of theories: Linked to the previous point>> this puts a lot of pressure on learning professionals to constantly "innovate" and be the creator of sound instructional design. Only way we stand out is the design/form/structure/format that we present the learning in. Hence, it becomes even more critical to know the theories of learning in depth and apply these in course designs if we have to still make a case as to why organizations should spend in asking us to create a training program.
Be open to criticism and be courageous: Have the courage to put up one's understanding and perspectives out there for all to read, respond, criticise, disagree with, argue, rip apart...This can preferably be done via blogs which is also a platform that allows one to synthesize and analyze one's thoughts. Without this kind of "putting oneself on the block" attitude, it will not be possible to learn.
Understand business drivers: Be a consultant and be able to talk to Line-of-Business managers and grasp the true need of the training. This means being able to ask the right questions and not only focus on the "learning" but the end need of the learning. What is the gap that is impacting the bottom line? That is all that matters to an organization.
All of this means that it is well neigh impossible for an individual to develop on one's own. The whole in this case is way greater than the sum of the parts and knowing how to acquire the necessary information is as if not more important than the specific information itself.
The list of posts I have read so far are:
# Mohamed Amine Chatti - New Skills for Learning Professionals
# Harold Jarche - 2008 article on Skills 2.0
# Clive Shepherd
# Jay Cross - Informal Learning blog.
# E-Learning Curve Blog: Learning Professionals’ Skills 2.0
# Natalie - What Should Learning Professionals Know Today?
# Gina - Adventures in Corporate Education
# Jane Bozarth - New Skills for Learning Professionals
# Harold Jarche -Skills for learning professionals
# Clark Quinn: Web 2.0 Learning Skills
Read the original post here
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