What stories are you telling as a leader?

These words captured the imagination of a whole country and helped shape its future! Such powerful are these words that even after six decades they create goose bumps.These words having a separate entry in Wikipedia, catapulted Martin Luther King Jr. into the ranks of Churchill and Lincoln as an orator. One of the black singers from the crowd shouted at King-“Tell them about the dream, Martin.” that King made these famous improvisation in the speech. The rest as they say, is history!

Story-telling has always been the integral part of human interactions across societies and generations. We all have our fond memories of story-telling by our grannies and parents. But, never ever in corporate history, had story-telling assumed such critical importance as it is now! 

Stories connect people at emotional level much beyond the logic. In the triad of Logos, Ethos and Pathos- It’s the Pathos that drives the strongest connect among human species. Great leaders are master story-tellers -Churchill, Gandhi , Mandela were legendary leaders who would weave stories in human psyche that would drive them to action. In more contemporary business settings, Walt Disney and Steve Jobs were known for their compelling story-telling prowess. It’s often said that when logic fails in driving home the point, emotion does the trick. Stories build and capture emotions.

Modern day enterprises are trying to leverage the power of story-telling in building credible leadership. Narratives are part of competencies that leaders of today more than ever, must possess and apply. Narratives help build 3-Es: Envisioning, Empowering and Enacting.

Envisioning: Creating big picture is at the heart of story-telling. They serve as powerful anchors and imagery. What logic can’t make us see, pathos tie us to the underlying emotions that paint the big canvass. The Taj Mahal was built twice- once in imagination and the one that we see in reality. Leaders successfully paint these big pictures through narratives. Howard Scultz, CEO of Starbucks didn’t build the coffee brand on superior coffee brewing but by painting a space of the third place between home and office! As a leader, what envisioning do you do to drive the organisational goals?

Empowering: ‘I have a dream!’ this quadruplet of words liberated an entire generation.‘Swaraj Hamara Janam Sidh Adhikar Hai’ (Sovereignty is our fundamental right) was the war-cry in Indian freedom movement given by Tilak. These are the words that moved nations. A profound story, however, is more than just rhetoric! It calls into action. As a leader, do your corporate stories empower your employees?

Enacting: Great stories are naturally relating to people’s mind as much as to their hearts. People find themselves as playing various characters in such stories. Take Jobs’ famous product launch speeches of i-phones. He created a villain out of other smartphones and then introduced i-phone as the hero that tackled and won over such ‘bad’ elements. Again, a masterly act of story telling that coaxed buyers to action. Do your corporate presentations (yes, there are some good power-point stories despite of the established fact of ‘death-by-power-point’ line) compel your teams to act?

Successful leaders are waking up to the importance of narratives and actively promoting a culture of story-telling throughout their organisations across levels. They are making smart use of technologies (read, social media such as Enterprise Social Networks-ESNs) to propagate their compelling stories at a regular interval. Most of the forward looking CEOs and leaders connect through their twitter, FB and other ESN platforms. Tech-savvy political leaders are good examples of this growing tribe.

As a leader ask yourself these questions-

Are you an effective story-teller? Do you tell your side of the story often and convincingly? Are you creating a culture of story-telling across the hierarchies? Are your front-line employees narrating compelling stories to the customers?

Answers to these questions will determine your and your organisation’s ability to win over the heart and mind-share of your customers and stakeholders much beyond the market-share!

Social Media Tools: Icing on Your Learning Cake!

Look inside any publications or resources of workplace learning & performance and chances are that you’ll be surprised to see social media featuring with almost unprecedented regularity. Questions that might crop up in a learning professional’s mind could sound like-

Is it yet another fad? Is the trend sustainable? Are we going for a overkill?

And possibly, some more like these!

Speak to people in the fraternity and possibly you find the opinions divided. But no one seems to disagree on one thing- Social media’s compelling trend has already set in the workplace and one can ignore it at one’s peril!

Still few companies encourage their employees to go active on social media and harness its power for organizational effectiveness. Majority of them, in fact, hold a cynical outlook towards such platforms. Generational gaps make things even more distinct- Baby boomers downplay social media and its power to transform workplace whereas Gen Y employees will go to the extent of snubbing off companies as prospective employers who hold unfavorable social media policies at workplaces!

I was pleasantly surprised hearing one of the hiring managers narrating this interview process wherein she was literally quizzed by one of the interviewees asking about her company’s social media practices when she offered the candidate to ask any questions if he had at the end of the interview. This is just an example and a precursor of things to follow in coming years at workplace.

The question that needs to be asked of learning and performance professional is – ‘How do you usher in Social media in workplace learning with least disruption and resistance?’

Before I try to answer the question, let me provide a perspective on social media. Social media is a broad term that encompasses wikis, blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, twitter, Pinterest of the world. They are the creation of web2.0 technologies. Despite their apparent omnipresence, an article from T+D magazine cites ‘So far, only a minority of firms are actual “power users” of Web 2.0 technologies for the purpose of enhancing learning. Just 9 percent of learning professionals surveyed said Web 2.0 technologies play a major role in the learning function in their company.’ So it’s evident that when it comes to formal learning plans most of the L&D professionals would rather fight sigh of these platforms.

 

Think of company intranet and Sharepoint sites- if there were any studies conducted to establish how motivated employees are visiting and taking formal classes, participating on discussion boards, posting comments and seeking work-related solutions, I am sure results would be far from encouraging for those running such LMSs.

 Let’s try to understand the factors behind such an attitude.

• Learning through such platform is perceived to be too formal and rigid in format- Andragogically not very encouraging.
• They appear to be intruding into learners space
• They’re uni-directional in the sense that content flows in one direction- from company repository towards learners. Little scope for collaboration in learning!

Now let’s attempt to see how social media platforms such as micro-blogs, twitter etc. overcome the above challenges. By the very nature of being informal learning platforms they are received more openly by the learners if positioned in a right manner and with due seriousness accorded by executives.

Why so? One need not split hairs to see the logic-

• Once given right thrust, these media are informal and less time consuming- they are ‘non-intrusive’ as one executive summarized them
• Learners have the freedom to collaborate on any given topic- in a sense, co-create the whole learning experience. One gets a sense of being creator and contributor
• Learners are motivated to learn from peers’ experience and offer their own solutions to people who need them

What kind of learning is most suitable to such informal tools?

While formal and structured learning would continue to be delivered through various traditional modes- class-rooms, e-learning or blended, these social media will play out synergy in terms of reinforcement tools thereby enhancing learning sustainability. They add learning effectiveness of such formal tools. The challenge for learning professionals is to strategically integrate such informal tools into their mainstream training.

A critical success factor here would be buy-in from executives and functional leaders. The seriousness will be top-down and initial success will largely depend on how committed are your executives and leaders in driving such learning collaboration. Many executives have natural penchant for such new technologies and avenues while even bigger population of theirs will have love-hate relationship with social media. The key is to know their disposition towards social platforms and try to work around it instead of rushing in with such tools blindly.

Culture and beliefs do change albeit slowly.

Go on and read the following real-life experience of a mind-shift. Names and identities have been changed to keep anonymity.

An initiative to bring about a mind-shift in coaching & mentoring using micro-blogs: A case study

MedDevice is a 163 years old medical equipment and devices company with global operations. Traditionally, the company had been a pioneer of several medical equipments and enjoys tremendous equity among medical fraternity. Recently, it has entered into Indian market and has strategic commitments to grow the market which contributes miniscule to its global sales. The start-up in India has a team of 65 sales consultants with 12 people managers. Keeping up with its strategic vision, they have hired professionals from various established competitors and the team brings in diverse background experiences and practices. Managers have different experiences when it comes to people management and practices in coaching & mentoring people. In order to achieve strategic objectives both on business and people front, the country leader realizes the importance of bringing a uniform people coaching and mentoring culture within the unit.

After a thorough consultation with business leaders and identifying the training needs, a two-day formal course on Coaching is developed in house and delivered by its L&D function to all people managers.

The course comes with a pre-work survey, pre-read and pre-work materials. The workshop got local and global praise and recognition for being meticulously designed and effectively delivered.

The head of L&D of MedDevices, however, is far from being contended. His work has just begun. Sustaining initial excitement and learning of participants is the litmus test. After all, it’s similar to bring about cultural changes, shifting established mindset of leaders and creating a self-sustaining drive for coaching and mentoring. He contemplates Social learning tools such as micro-blogging and discussion boards. After initial thoughts, he zeroes in on existing BlackBerry technology that every manager has access to. Using BlackBerry messenger, he creates a platform titled ‘Confluence: The convergence of ideas’. To initiate, he started with a particular discussion query pertaining to Coaching & Mentoring over Confluence to which participants are expected to express their thoughts and comments. Gradually but steadily, all participants are drawn into this micro-blogging activity and the momentum builds up. Six months later, there is a definite shift in the mindset of all people leaders with their coaching roles. The qualitative improvement of all people managers in their interactions with team members is all there to see. This innovative effort was also recognized through a best practices entry in a training award category of a reputed magazine.

 

A case for spreading training lingo among business leaders

Talk of the effectiveness of learning interventions, level-4 & ROI and you see workplace professionals scurrying for covers. With business leaders getting more demanding about the returns on every dollar spent, it’s getting tighter.

But, what’s the real issue? Most of the learning professionals will admit that training effectiveness for business leaders means business impact of any form of training on their business metrics. ‘They are interested in seeing impact on numbers only!’would be the most common refrain. No wonder, long ago ‘Abraham Maslow said, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” Has ROI become that hammer?

I see this as more of a symptom than a well diagnosed root-cause. It doesn’t take the brain of a genius to trace back the origin of such a cause. We, as workplace learning professionals, keep the effectiveness measures and metrics too closely guarded.  Ask any learning professional and chances are that he assumes that the measures of effectiveness for any learning initiative for him and the business stakeholders are in the same currency. For you, it’s more to do with behavioral impact (read level-3) while for the stakeholders it’s all about higher orders- level-4 and 5 (read ROI according to Jack Phillips model). The topic of discussion here isn’t about various models of evaluations and their eternal debates of superiority but it is centered around the ‘disconnect’ between learning & development professionals and their business stakeholders.

So, where does lie the real disconnect?

Training professionals really live in a secluded world when it comes to training effectiveness. We have debates and discussions around various models- their pros and cons either as a community or even among professionals within an organization. If we poll such professionals regarding the awareness of such models and metrics among all stakeholders they cater to, the result will be abysmal.

The moot point here is- how knowledgeable are our stakeholders about the very yardsticks that we intend to apply for measuring training effectiveness? Various papers and authors have concluded that possibly ROI and stuff of that nature could even prove to be an exercise in vain and at times counterproductive.

Tony Bingham, President and CEO-ASTD, in his extensive interviews with prominent business leaders of the world found them expressing their clear expectations from learning interventions- these are more to do with sustained impact on behavioral front rather than an effort to showcase business improvement results. These leaders surmise that any sustained behavioral modification post training, will eventually lead to business improvement.

Question then needs to be asked is how do we bring our stakeholders on a common language for training effectiveness?

Several years of performance consulting with key stakeholders has made me believe that the following approaches might be of help

 

• Educating business stakeholders about various metrics of evaluating training effectiveness. They should make all levels of measure part of their vocabulary when it comes to learning intervention. Business has its lingo like MS%, Evolution Index, Growth, CAGR etc. which we are expected to be well versed with , hence, they must reciprocate adopting and adapting to the language of Level-1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 as well wherever required.
• Begin with the end in mind– Setting a clear expectation of training outcomes in terms of impact on behavioral parameters of desired performance. How does the success look like?
• Making leaders realize their contribution to the table when it comes to sustaining a certain behavioral modification from individuals. It’s a team game and immediate managers are the primary drivers of such change initiatives.
• Last but not the least, ask a lot of incisive and thought-provoking questions pertaining to the core business issues rather than settling with whatever symptomatically they infer. Ask enough, ask deeper.

The challenge and onus then, are with us as a community of workplace learning professionals. Appreciation of our worldview of training effectiveness will greatly be enhanced by making business adopt and align with this vocabulary.

Are you ready to rework your stakeholders’ vocabulary the next time you are consulting with them?

 

Bias for Talent Management in Organizations

Organizations of today have two queens to deal with- Customers and the Employees. We all knew the old saying ‘Customer is right!’, what about the employees?

Unlike in the past, talent (read, employees) is in command of affairs and she takes it to wherever deemed fit. Hence, pro-actively engaging your in-house talent is the real challenge for many business leaders and specifically the HR function. The average shelf-life of talent in organizations are turning out to be 2-3 years. No wonder then that the wisdom shared by Vinit Nayar, CEO of HCL, through his book “Employees First, Customers Second: Turning Conventional Management Upside Down” is finding echo in the corporate corridors so profoundly.

Like a CFO who strategically manages and engages corporate wealth in value creation for its stakeholders (hence called a strategic business partner) the HR and business leads are expected to manage its human capital through various measures- career pathways, succession planning, managing bench-strength, work-groups focused on special projects among many others.

Employee retention and loyalty then becomes a function of pro-active employee engagement, meeting individual career aspirations and aligning the same towards organizational goals.

Transparency and unbiased approach towards employee engagement comes as defaults in the entire game-plan in successful management of organizational human capital.

If you are biased, talent has the uncanny habit of being biased in selection for the next workplace.

HR and business leaders listening?

Preventing your flipped-classes from the flip-flop!

The other day my daughter came back from the school and she appeared visibly excited.  When asked, she started sharing the new experiment that her school was bringing in-it was about flipped classes.
Later she explained how she watched the video on Square roots posted on the school portal where her teacher had explained various methods to derive Square roots. She was all praise of the new methodology. For me it was no new thing-I’ve been flipping certain sections of my leadership classes for almost a year now.

That evening I asked to myself, these innovative practices are welcome moves by the schools as much as for the corporate learning practices but how solid are the foundations to usher in the changes?
As anyone knowing the topic would suggest that flipped learning is all about VSQ- Viewing,  Summarizing & Questioning!
The first two steps are system supported where schools and organisations would provide for the necessary logistics and resources. These would include videos, handouts, note taking templates or simply any pre-read materials. The challenge lies however on the third dimension-Questioning!
As students or your class participants are expected to return to ths class-room having watched the video or worked through the pre-read. Subsequently, they would ask to either clarify their doubts if any, or to build an informed discussion to challenge or critique the topic. This brings us to the missing link- students and professionals are inadequately prepared to ask meaningful questions much less to engage in higher order debate through Socratic questioning. Hence, to me, flipped-classrooms make profound sense only if the participants have opened minds to ask, critique and challenge constructively to take the topical discussions to a higher plane. Are our schools and organisations doing enough to build the spirit of questioning and challenging among our students and employees?
If not, then any such forward looking initiatives would benefit only a small section of learners leaving a majority in awe and confusion. What are your views on flipping the class? I would look to your comments and critiques. 

Why leaders often play down plans to evaluate training impact?

This is kind of a dichotomy in Organisational learning efforts! While there’s an ever-growing pressure from organisational leaders to show the impact of training, it poses a certain dilemma for the leaders and practitioners of training & development. I know of situations when training function approaches business leaders with plans to measure training’s impact on commercial outcomes (level-4) and you hear comments such as “Oh! Actually don’t bother to measure business impact rather focus on if the learners had any change on behaviors”. You persist a little more and you may further listen ‘we don’t expect training to commercially impact but it should make participants go home with certain skill-building!’
Where’s the disconnect?
Have you heard of the term ‘Putting your stake on the table’? These leaders hesitate in bringing in their stakes on the table meaning, they have concerns in following up such training interventions for their impact on business. For such effort, any learning professional would say, there are distinct and disciplined effort from both the learning function as well as the learners and their managers. Such learning professionals would make it amply clear at the outset that what are expected of the business leaders besides the learners and what they themselves would bring to the table!
Following up any learning interventions requires the basic ingredient of being disciplined and for seemingly obvious reasons, business has it’s dynamics of pulls and pushes. These often create a slip-up on commitments to pursue such disciplined efforts and business doesn’t want to show cutting sorry figures. This leaves the organisational leaders to settle for less concrete measures and intangibles. I’m not suggesting that these are not desired- some programs are better suited for Level-3.
What does such a situation leaves the learning professionals with?
They should proceed with the consultative approach to need identification and appreciate that there would be programs better suited for evaluations of commercial impact and others for impact on sustained change in behaviors.
Performance consulting is the way.
What do you think of such cases and what are your approaches? I would be interested to listen.