business acumen Archives - Chief Learning Officer - CLO Media https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/tag/business-acumen/ Chief Learning Officer is a multimedia publication focused on the importance, benefits and advancements of a properly trained workforce. Fri, 08 Sep 2023 16:33:17 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/cropped-CLO-icon-Redone-32x32.png business acumen Archives - Chief Learning Officer - CLO Media https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/tag/business-acumen/ 32 32 Aligning learning: 3 essential skills executives need in L&D managers https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2023/09/08/aligning-learning-3-essential-skills-executives-need-in-ld-managers/ https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2023/09/08/aligning-learning-3-essential-skills-executives-need-in-ld-managers/#respond Fri, 08 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000 https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/?p=128803 As you lead the charge for a more strategic learning function, you need managers and learning professionals with the skills to implement your vision and deliver on your commitments.

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As a senior leader, you are responsible for aligning learning and development efforts with your organization’s strategy. You’re focused on the ever-elusive training impact and return on L&D investment.

Let’s look at a few facts to set the context in which you and your learning team operate: The unemployment rates are at an all-time low — 5.4 percent in Canada and 3.6 percent in the United States

Record-high job vacancy rates and skills shortages contribute to chronic difficulty for organizations hiring needed workers. In addition, our aging population means this trend will remain, so hiring employees with the required skills will continue to be challenging.

As learning leaders, we know L&D is part of the solution. And the data backs us up: 51 percent of HR managers indicate training employees is their primary method of addressing the skills gap in their organizations. And yet, these managers lack buy-in from leadership for L&D:

  • 54 percent say leadership often sees L&D as a cost, not an investment.
  • 52 percent report facing resistance when asking for budget approval.

Given this landscape, the time is now for L&D to move from the shadows and become a strategic partner that works proactively to directly contribute to the organization’s priorities. L&D needs to move from a cost center to an investment and get buy-in and support from leaders across the organization.

As you lead the charge for a more strategic learning function, you need managers and learning professionals with the skills to implement your vision and deliver on your commitments. 

L&D professionals are the shoemaker’s children

Learning professionals take care of and develop employees in their organizations, but don’t always take care of their own development. Tier1 Performance Institute’s “2023 Learning Trends Report” identifies that learning professionals get very little professional development from their organizations and rely on general interest learning such as podcasts, articles, books and websites. Fifty-six percent of learning professionals want more professional development. 

When learning professionals don’t invest in their own development, they continue operating with the same mindset and expectations. They continue to use the same delivery channels, technology and design approaches. They hold onto beliefs such as “strong learning objectives and performance outcomes form the basis of good instructional design,” and “learning outcomes are measured by Kirkpatrick Levels 1, 2 and 3.” While this may be accurate, it represents a narrow view of L&D. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, many L&D teams were caught off guard by this overreliance on familiar, established approaches.

Learning managers need to expand their comfort zones and learn about the world of business so they can execute your business-focused, strategic vision for L&D. Being business-fluent helps learning managers be more responsive to and anticipate business needs. It provides the impetus for having a variety of solutions to ensure the solution will suit the need and environment. 

Furthermore, if learning professionals are unable to prioritize their own development, how can they expect other employees to commit to the programs they implement? It’s the proverbial airplane oxygen mask — put the mask on yourself before putting on your child’s. Learning professionals, starting with learning managers, need to develop their own skills so they can, in turn, develop others. They need to role model innovation and continuous improvement. They need to embrace cutting-edge technology and step outside their comfort zone to gain new skills and knowledge. 

Essential skills for your learning managers

Learning and development managers must stop being the shoemakers’ children and develop these three essential skills.

Learning acumen includes adult education principles, assessing needs, instructional design, facilitation, evaluation and learning technologies. These may seem obvious, but two nuances need highlighting. 

First, learning managers need to shift from doing the work to managing others. They need to build on their instructional design skills and: 

  • Translate business goals into priority projects and identify metrics for success. 
  • Build relationships in their organization to facilitate work between their team and the business units they serve. 
  • Develop processes and standards to ensure consistency and quality across their team. Consistency reduces design time, decreases the manager’s review time and provides a predictable experience with stakeholders. When combined with quality standards, this elevates the reputation of the learning function in the organization.

The second nuance is that some learning managers move into the learning manager role from the business. They might be high-potential employees on a “tour of duty” with a stop in L&D. They may have a background in a contiguous role such as HR and now have learning under their umbrella of responsibility. These managers need a foundation in learning acumen to guide their team members effectively.

Managing projects and programs. This includes setting up and managing projects, and closing out projects or transitioning them to ongoing programs. Managers need project management skills to lead their teams and liaise with their client groups. As with learning acumen, managers need to establish processes, project management templates and standards for working with stakeholders. 

Managers who lead their teams with learning expertise and project management skills build positive experiences with other business units. Timelines are met, budgets are adhered to and scope changes are managed more smoothly. Managers in different business units gain confidence that the learning manager’s team will balance learning priorities with the needs of the business unit and the project. 

Business acumen is the third skill managers need to lead the learning function effectively. It includes understanding L&D as a business function and how it operates in relation to other functional areas. It includes financial acumen (knowing how money moves through an organization and the finances for the learning function. It also includes data and analytics) how to find and analyze data and communicate the story data tells.

At its core, business acumen is about learning the language of business. As long as learning professionals remain in their learning silo and talk about learning impact according to Kirkpatrick’s Levels instead of business outcomes, they will continue to operate outside the business and be unable to articulate their value and contribution. They will remain a cost centre and not an area in which to invest. Learning managers need to become bilingual — speak the language of learning and the language of the business — to understand the performance needs and recommend the best solution — training or otherwise. 

The opportunity 

When learning managers develop their capabilities and gain essential skills in learning, managing projects and programs and business acumen, the L&D function can move from being a cost center to a valuable contributor. L&D takes on the role of a business partner able to implement your vision and position the organization for success in the current environment of talent shortages and an aging population. 

Managers in 67 percent of organizations expect to increase their L&D budgets so ensuring these investments yield tangible benefits becomes even more important. By enhancing the capabilities of your learning managers, you can transform learning from a cost center to a business partner. You not only maximize the potential of your L&D budget, but also ensure your learning function contributes meaningfully to the success and adaptability of your organization in an ever-evolving landscape.

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Teach these four key concepts to develop well-rounded leaders https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2021/09/09/teach-these-four-key-concepts-to-develop-well-rounded-leaders/ https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2021/09/09/teach-these-four-key-concepts-to-develop-well-rounded-leaders/#respond Thu, 09 Sep 2021 11:00:31 +0000 https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/?p=67887 For organizations wanting to minimize the stresses of leadership in flux, now is the time to build a leadership pipeline focused on these four critical areas.

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Right at the start, professional training, learning and development made a misstep. At the time workplace training and L&D was being formalized in the mid-1900s, people were segmented and siloed within their organizations in terms of the professional development opportunities they were offered.

For example, if you joined an organization in a finance role, and you were lucky enough to be provided professional development opportunities, those opportunities would likely solely be within the field of finance. As a result, corporate L&D has produced huge cadres of specialists, but very few generalists.

Moreover, the skills that many consider to be leadership skills are typically only taught to someone after they are promoted to a leadership role, requiring a new leader to be accountable for new functional outputs as well as new interpersonal skills, which is often a burdensome expectation.

If you’d like to successfully get in front of the leadership transition that is about to occur, before the last group of boomers retire by the end of this decade, there are four key concepts you must start teaching now to have well-rounded leaders in your future leader pipeline: 

  • Personal development
  • Interpersonal development
  • Business acumen
  • Next-level learning

Here’s a brief look into each of these topical areas and why they are important. 

Personal development. We have heard a lot about emotional intelligence in the last few years, and the need for leaders to uber-possess this quality. Unfortunately, typical workplace practices such as the competition for promotions and the type of outputs “graded” in-performance reviews often surmount the development of EQ. In general, we default to explaining what EQ is, but fall short of helping people develop it.

In addition to being able to manage oneself, there are other personal capabilities a future leader should demonstrate, such as being able to work collaboratively across the organization, communicating well in both writing and speaking and being able to independently look for opportunities to expand one’s capabilities, such as through volunteering. Personal development is critical to working with others, as well as to working independently, and will only become more important as a broader work-from-home culture takes hold.

Interpersonal development. Interpersonal skills are the lifeblood of organizations; without them work simply doesn’t get done. However, we make a huge assumption in believing that everyone in our organization knows, for example, how to work cooperatively, understands how teams form and perform or is able to agreeably come to consensus. These are fundamental workplace skills that everyone should possess, and we assume people in leadership roles do possess, but rarely are they purposefully developed in our workforces below the leadership level.

Business acumen. As I mentioned, those of us in professional training and L&D have created masses of specialists and very few — if any — business generalists, unless the employee is a chosen “hi-po,” and there are very few organizations that utilize this developmental model. It is critical that we develop future leaders’ business acumen, or organizations risk suffering irretractable mistakes made by leaders who lack a full perspective of how the organization operates, makes money, keeps money or hedges against risk.

Understanding organizational finances is one important aspect, as are the concepts of continuous improvement, competitive intelligence, project management — the list goes on. Typically, organizations reserve these kinds of topics for people in operations, but why? What is the benefit of isolating increased performance? You don’t need an organization full of PMPs , but it is exceedingly beneficial for everyone in the organization to understand how projects are conceived, teamed, scheduled and monitored. Likewise, think of the money your organization could save, or generate, if everyone had a basic understanding of continuous improvement and was on the lookout for opportunities within their own role.

Next-level learning. “Next-level learning” is a term I invented. It encompasses the knowledge and skills we presume a leader possesses, especially in the executive ranks, but that we rarely purposefully teach to our up-and-coming leaders — things like, but not limited to, assessing risk, planning strategy, behaving ethically or polarity thinking.

Many of these capabilities in the “next-level” category are learned through experience and reflection. For instance, it’s not very effective to teach the “concept” of ethics, it’s more impactful and results in deeper learning to experience an ethical dilemma and have to reason through the best course of action. Building the ability to think through a situation from multiple angles (i.e., how will this impact our people, our finances, our reputation in the industry?) and arrive at a well-reasoned, defensible decision is not achieved quickly or easily. We need to start building capabilities in this realm early in people’s careers so that they possess these capabilities before ascending to leadership roles. 

There are a number of demographic shifts happening in the business environment today and for the foreseeable future. For organizations to minimize the stresses of leadership in flux, now is the time to build a leadership pipeline focused on these four critical areas.

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Building leadership skills organically https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2021/06/24/building-leadership-skills-organically/ https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2021/06/24/building-leadership-skills-organically/#respond Thu, 24 Jun 2021 10:00:48 +0000 https://staging.chieflearningofficer.com/?p=67223 It’s time to rethink leadership development.

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We are all well aware of the variety of impacts the pandemic has had on organizations both large and small in the last 18 months. One of the most worrisome developments is the impact to leadership pipelines.

According to the 2010 U.S. Census, baby boomers were expected to exit the workforce by 2030, simply based on their age. This timeline has been greatly accelerated by the pandemic because many younger boomers have decided that remaining in the workforce wasn’t worth the lifestyle or family impacts.

A recent survey by Fidelity Investments determined that a fifth of individuals within 10 years of retirement had accelerated their workforce departure date, which means that at this very minute, we are short thousands of skilled and capable business leaders. Additionally, as happens any time the economy contracts, many organizations also reduced their training budgets and staff in an effort to tighten their belts over the past year.

The result of these two impacts is that many newly minted leaders and future leaders need to develop their leadership abilities, and since a majority of in-person training courses are still sidelined for the foreseeable future, this will need to be accomplished in non-traditional ways.

There are a few ways you can organically develop leadership skills in your employees. What makes these approaches truly wonderful is that they are accomplished while on the job rather than through “training.”

Developing business acumen

Many young businesspeople simply know how to do the job that they are assigned without an understanding of the business, the business community or the industry in which they work. 

One way to help them sharpen their understanding of the business is to host an organization wide “open house.” Assign one or two individuals per department or team to develop a presentation — a PowerPoint or the like — about the work done in their department. There should be a “big picture” tack as a part of this assignment that requires the developers to gather information from other individuals within their department, as well as externally (their internal customers).

During the open house, individuals can move from department to department and learn how each plays a critical role in the organization. This can easily be done using virtual technology and breakout rooms, and is something that can be done in-person in the future.

You will be amazed at how much people learn — but more importantly — how they begin to coordinate and cooperate with one another as a result of the open house. As an example: I might think the fact that it takes 48 hours for a new customer application to make it from your department to mine is ridiculous, until I learn during the open house that a background check must first be completed on all new customers.

Looking outside your organization itself, you can help up-and-coming leaders to understand more about the world of business by creating reading and discussion groups. An easy-to-implement approach is to assign reading from publications like the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review or Business Week, and then engage the employees in a group discussion around two or three key points in the article. 

Some questions you might ask them to consider are:

  • Did the company grow responsibly?
  • What red flags were missed by the company featured in this article?
  • If this happened to us, what would be a reasonable next step?
  • How can we implement this best practice?

Note: Reading groups can also be utilized with industry publications. 

One of our clients uses a similar approach using LinkedIn Learning assignments. A department manager chooses a course for everyone in the department to take, and the employees come together  once a month to discuss their learning from that course. The department manager further develops their leadership skills by assigning two employees to facilitate the discussion each month.

Understanding performance management 

All managers and leaders get their work done through others. This means that, at times, providing corrective feedback is required. Rather than leaving your newly minted leaders to learn how to give corrective feedback through trial and error, this assignment gives them to other manager’s or leader’s insight into how to handle an issue.

Have your up-and-coming leader present the same scenario to four or five different managers to get their perspective on how they would handle an issue. Create a short scenario that addresses a particular need in your organization. Once they have spoken to a number of different managers, they should summarize their notes and meet back with you to reflect on what they learned. The sample scenario below addresses communication, team behavior, and meeting management:

I have an employee on my team who sees meetings as a competitive sport. Rather than allowing others to express their ideas and working collaboratively for the best end-results, they point out the flaws in other people’s ideas and will state their own over and over, until it is the only option left on the table.

  • The rest of the team doesn’t want to “compete,” so they give up contributing.
  • This person does have great ideas, but I’m worried about the effect on the team as a whole.
  • What would you do?

Promoting analysis and teamwork

This activity helps all individuals in the department better understand how the department works as a whole, and how to contribute to more efficient and higher quality outcomes.

The activity involves mapping how work is done in an individual department, from the way the work comes in — i.e., a contract, a customer request — through the various steps in handling it until it is resolved — i.e., moves to the next department, case is closed.

The mapping should include the steps and process, who is involved (an auditor, the manager, a machinist), and generally how long each step takes. The goal is to create a workflow chart so that anyone reading it can clearly see the steps and can identify how long each process takes for that department to accomplish its work.

Once the mapping is complete, a large group analysis of timing and efficacy can be facilitated by the manager or an appointed employee from the group. An operating rule for this activity is that everyone is allowed to ask “dumb” questions and make objective observations about how the work is getting done.

This activity impresses upon up-and-coming leaders that all processes can be improved and that all individuals have valuable input.

Understanding what leadership does

This activity is unique and fun. Create a “scavenger hunt” that allows a future leader to become aware of the types of things that a leader concerns him/herself with. This assignment gives them insight into the role and responsibilities of a leader in your organization.

Create a list of things that you would like your up-and-coming leader to research or find. Give them a period of time, such as two weeks, to research the list and then meet with them to discuss their findings.

Here are some ideas for a leadership scavenger hunt:

  • Have them bring your company’s vision and mission down to their level. What do the mission and vision mean to them in the work that they do?
  • Have them sit in on various management or leadership meetings to understand their purpose and what is discussed.
  • Research who your company’s biggest customer is or who your top three competitors are. 
  • Identify the department with the biggest budget and research why. 
  • Identify the company’s biggest people challenge (some ideas: recruiting, retention, competitive pay, training).
  • Identify the company’s biggest revenue generator — how much and what proportion of revenue it contributes.

These are just a few ideas, of course you will want to customize the scavenger hunt for your own specific knowledge outcomes.

Giving someone the assignment to research and reflect on these types of “big picture” questions develops an understanding of the business and begins to enable them to change their perspective from contributor to leader. 

To conclude

Leadership development can seem like an onerous process with a lot of moving parts, but starting small with activities and assignments such as these can build the knowledge and capabilities of your future leaders in an organic way which is “customized” to your own organization.

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The value of participating in cross-functional teams https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2021/06/01/the-value-of-participating-in-cross-functional-teams/ https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2021/06/01/the-value-of-participating-in-cross-functional-teams/#respond Tue, 01 Jun 2021 13:30:49 +0000 https://staging.chieflearningofficer.com/?p=66737 Cross-functional teams contribute to a culture of collaboration, continuous improvement and innovation in organizations.

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A cross-functional team is a group of people with different functional expertise working toward a common goal. In many cases, the team is simply a group of people from different departments or functions working together to solve a problem, improve service outcomes or enhance product development.

Because of the team’s diverse makeup, each member brings an area of expertise that significantly improves the team’s capability for critical thinking, problem-solving and brainstorming, which ultimately adds value in strategically achieving the desired outcome. Consider the following advantages of cross-functional teams:

1. Different Perspectives Spark Innovation
We all see problems from our own perspective. Bringing people together from different parts of your organization can shed light on the root cause of a problem and help identify innovative solutions. Diverse ideas provide better data.

2. Increased Collaboration Drives Positive Change
Involving people with different areas of influence helps gain buy-in and build trust. It is an opportunity to get everyone “on the same page” that ordinarily might not work together.

3. Opportunity For Increased Business Acumen
Collaborating with people who are experts in different areas of the business increases awareness and helps employees better understand how their work fits into the bigger picture. It allows team members to see the value of their contributions and the larger impact. It helps increase understanding on how a cross-functional project contributes to your organization’s key strategies around quality, process improvement and performance.

4. Challenge Past Practices and Proactively Identify Levels of Risk
Each team member brings their own “expert lens” in identifying elements of risk and assessing effective workflow. A new set of eyes can be a huge advantage in finding errors and opportunities for improvement. Cross-functional teams create an environment where “this is the way we’ve always done it” can be challenged, which offers a new perspective for what “operational excellence” can look like.

5. Opportunity for Increased Employee Engagement and Leadership
While a certain degree of team dynamics and organizational structure is important, seeking input in a multi-directional team approach, particularly from those doing the work, yields greater results. Key stakeholders identify current barriers of a situation and what areas of process improvement need to be considered. Because of the team’s diverse expertise, this experience offers a more transparent approach for process improvement and employee engagement. Those involved as active participants may also emerge as newly identified “high-potentials” for your next pool of emerging leaders.

So the next time you are asked to be on a cross-functional team, consider it a valuable opportunity to contribute to your organization’s success and drive towards change and innovation.

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What is leadership, and who is a leader? https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2020/01/06/what-is-leadership-and-who-is-a-leader/ https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2020/01/06/what-is-leadership-and-who-is-a-leader/#respond Mon, 06 Jan 2020 16:29:06 +0000 https://staging.chieflearningofficer.com/?p=61319 Everyone knows what leadership is, but few people can articulate what it truly means. Creating a cohesive definition within your organization is a crucial step for developing future leaders and maintaining unity and a strong leadership focus.

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We talk about leaders and leadership nearly every day in the business world, but have you ever tried to actually define leadership? It can be much harder than you may think, but taking the time to define leadership and what makes a leader is crucial to building a cohesive culture and developing future leaders.

What is Leadership?

As part of the research for my new book, “The Future Leader,” I interviewed more than 140 CEOs around the world and asked them each to define leadership. Many people struggled or had to pause to think because it’s a word we use so frequently without really defining. We take the concept of leadership for granted and assume that we all know what leadership is and what a great leader looks like. Once the CEOs found their definitions, their answers ran the gamut. From more than 140 people, I didn’t receive a single duplicate response.

Some CEOs defined leadership as having business acumen, like setting a vision or achieving goals for a company. Other people focused on human qualities like empathy, humility or diversity. Every answer was different, but they were each correct. Every leader has their own personal definition of leadership, which influences how they lead and the culture and direction of their company. The definition of leadership can also change as the leaders themselves change. With new leaders come new approaches to leadership, which impacts overall culture and employees.

Who is a Leader?

Who then is a leader? There have been countless people through history that led people but were inhumane and destructive. Does that still make them leaders? In my mind, a leader is someone who does more than just lead people. They have to be driven by the right motivation and make a positive impact on the people around them.

A leader is someone who can see how things can be improved and who rallies people to move toward that better vision. Leaders can work toward making their vision a reality while putting people first. Just being able to motivate people isn’t enough — leaders need to be empathetic and connect with people to be successful. Leaders don’t have to come from the same background or follow the same path. Future leaders will actually be more diverse, which brings a variety of perspectives. Of course, other people could disagree with my definition. The most important thing is that organizations are united internally with their definition of leadership.

Creating Leadership Filters

With so many definitions of leadership, each organization needs to have a clear definition of what leadership is and what it means to be a leader within their company. The definition can evolve over time, but having even a basic, agile definition is better than no definition at all.

A shared leadership definition within the organization can keep everyone on the same page and help prepare certain types of leaders for the future. Organizations also need to have leadership filters so that the right people end up in positions to lead. If the shared leadership definition of an organization revolves around humble leaders acting as servants, that fuels the leadership filters and helps ensure leaders who fit those characteristics are developed and promoted. Similarly, an organization could filter for leaders who meet their business or financial goals, which means only leaders that prioritize those things would be promoted in the company.

One example of this comes from IBM, which created an intensive leadership program designed to attract, develop and promote the best candidates for leadership roles. IBM uses technology to identify the skills and mindsets required of successful leaders and then screens potential candidates for those characteristics to make informed hiring decisions. IBM’s leadership filters start in the recruitment phase so that potential leaders are identified and hired early on.

Leadership filters ensure the company has a consistent definition of leadership and that the people who best represent the culture and values are promoted to leadership positions. A leader focused solely on raising profits and earning more money wouldn’t fare well in a company focused on developing empathetic leaders. Leadership filters help promote the right people and maintain a cohesive work environment.

Everyone knows what leadership is, but few people can actually put it into words. Creating a cohesive definition within the organization is a crucial step for developing future leaders and maintaining unity and a strong leadership focus.

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Be a First Line Manager https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2017/06/13/first-line-manager/ https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2017/06/13/first-line-manager/#respond Tue, 13 Jun 2017 05:01:11 +0000 https://www.clomedia.com/?p=38824 One of the most valuable early career experiences I had was as a first line manager. I’d completed this job rotation in a highly operational environment where results were reported […]

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One of the most valuable early career experiences I had was as a first line manager. I’d completed this job rotation in a highly operational environment where results were reported and evaluated at the close of every day. Gaining this familiarity with managing people and output was instructive for two reasons. First, first line managers have a significant amount of leverage on performance. Next, a litmus test for learning solutions is their relevance for and usability by this important group. It’s a lesson I haven’t forgotten.

According to “The Leadership Pipeline Model” by Stephen Drotter, Ram Charan and James Noel, I was evolving from being an individual contributor to a team leader, and my progress was measured by team performance. During my transition to this role, my soon-to-be former manager gave me advice that did not make sense to me at the time, but has proven invaluable over the course of my career: “Make your people successful and everything else will come together.”

David DeFilippo.

I strongly recommend that learning specialists in the early to midstages of their career spend time in a first line management role outside of human resources. It’s a great opportunity to supervise employees who interact with clients, to use the processes and tools HR provides, and it can inform your approach to designing and implementing learning solutions. While I graduated from that role more than 25 years ago, I regularly draw from those experiences in my current role as a chief learning officer.

Working with and managing those closest to a firm’s clients is an invaluable reality check about the challenges employees who are responsible for client service and issue resolution face daily. I can think of no better experience for a manager than mediating an escalated issue that a company representative has to resolve, and then simultaneously providing feedback and coaching to ensure that individual is better prepared for the next time as the direct supervisor.

Stepping into a situation where you as a team leader are in charge and ultimately accountable, but may not have the same depth of subject matter expertise as those you manage, is also an important early career experience. Being able to complete high quality work through others and transitioning from the doer to the coach role sets the stage to ascend to the next levels of management. It also builds the consultative skills and hands-on experience needed to add more value as a learning leader.

Experiencing HR’s solutions and processes as a first line manager is also a great way to assess their usability and practicality. Using the performance management, payroll change or benefits procedures while also focusing on operational throughput is a great way to gauge the utility of these practices.

For example, as a first line manager back in the days of paper-based performance management, the standard, handwritten form we used was bright orange so when it was time for an annual review employees jokingly referred to this as “agent orange time” due to the negative association with the process that was reinforced by the form’s color. To mitigate this response, I quickly learned to show and discuss employee results on a separate white form that I would then staple to the official form. In our current era of sophisticated talent platforms, this experience is akin to configuring the system to focus on the user experience functionally and aesthetically.

With the advice from my long-ago manager top of mind, I remember that liberating moment when I realized that the true measure of being a first line manager was my team’s achievement, not my own. Only by developing and building skills in those around me could I progress to the next role or step in my career.

Translating this notion to our learning leader work ensures that we enable individual and organizational performance, development and growth through our consultation, processes and tools; it often simplifies rather than overcomplicates these practices. By experiencing and seeing our organizations through the first line manager’s eyes, we can add more value as learning leaders because we can confidently attest to the fact that we have been on the front lines.

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Do Your Employees Understand How Business Works? https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2017/02/21/employees-understand-business-works/ https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2017/02/21/employees-understand-business-works/#respond Tue, 21 Feb 2017 20:23:44 +0000 http://live-clomedia.pantheonsite.io/?p=37462 Prepare for better business by simulating the basics.

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employees and business acumentYou’d think, by the time professionals enter the workforce they’d have mastered certain skills, like business acumen, but no. That’s why a vendor like Advantexe Learning Solutions, a business simulation-centric training company, announced the launch of a new and advanced virtual learning program, Business Acumen 101, or BA101, this month.

BA101 is designed to teach employees at all levels how to make decisions that will advance the company through interactive short lessons, job aids, gamification and hands-on business simulation. This content covers skills in business strategy, financial management, marketing and sales.

The learning program includes computer-based business recreation exercises that offer users the opportunity to apply their newly acquired skills by essentially taking control of the company in a risk-free environment. Learners can then attempt different business strategies, test ideas and practice different techniques so they can experience the direct results their decisions have on a company’s financial performance.

“Instead of reading eight pages and then creating a theory on what the answer is, imagine being put in the leadership chair of the CEO, and you are responsible for setting and executing the strategy,” said Robert Brodo, co-founder and executive vice president of Advantexe. “You have to think about your market, customers and competitors, and then you actually have to execute your strategy through people.”

Advantexe also has started to develop what they call “driverless learning,” where the entire learning process comes to the user through embedded content with a simulation. “You start with the simulation with no instruction,” Brodo said. “You turn on learning, and then are thrust into this situation where you are presented with information and must weave through it. If you need help, you have access to it inside the simulation so you don’t need an instructor.” He said this kind of hands-on learning approach prompts learners to develop a personal action plan where they can take knowledge gained and review it with a manager.

Once participants complete the program, employees are encouraged to think more strategically and long-term within the company. Brodo said the program is customizable and could be tailored for any particular company’s strategy. The ultimate goal with BA101 is to “provide any organization with a scalable learning tool so that everyone in the company can be aligned in making the right business decisions.”

Camaron Santos is an editorial intern for Chief Learning Officer magazine. Comment below or email editor@CLomedia.com.

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