Organizational change is not new to the American business landscape, but organizations continue to have difficulty systematically formulating and implementing effective change. While sustaining organizational health is a crucial competitive advantage, many companies are not proposing and formulating change efforts that will help fulfill the mission and strategic plan of their organizations. To sustain high performance, organizations must build the capacity to learn and keep changing over time. To do this, learning leaders should create a learning space that’s agile, with proper alignment of action and learning with the greater business strategy.
For the past few years, the recession has forced organizations to embrace change. But according to global research performed by research firm the HPO Center, organizations fail to get the focus right in reorganizations. Cuts are made in the wrong projects, poorly performing employees stay in place and organizations focus mainly on internal cost savings. According to Andre de Waal, academic director of the HPO Center, learning leaders should focus on five success factors of leading organizations that enable them to survive now and stay fit for the future. All reorganizations should be made based on measurements of these five factors:
1. High quality of management.
2. High quality of workforce.
3. Long-term orientation.
4. Continuous improvement.
5. Renewal, openness and action orientation.
Every factor is subdivided into 35 characteristics. These characteristics make the difference whether an organization can be classified as a high-performance organization or not.
“For example, in the fifth factor, ‘renewal and openness and action orientation,’ there is a characteristic called ‘organizational members spend much time on communication, knowledge exchange and learning,’” de Waal said. “The data we have collected from questionnaires reveals that, on average, an organization, on a scale of one to 10, will score a 6.0 on this characteristic. This means the learning function of most organizations is mediocre at best. Thus there is a great need for reorganizing this function so employees can better share knowledge.”
According to de Waal, when reorganizing the learning function, every activity, project and investment should be viewed in the light of whether or not it will improve the organization’s performance. If not, the organization should not make the decision or undertake the activity, project or investment at all because it will not help it advance in the marketplace.
“Organizations should develop and formulate new, unique business goals, then reorganize the learning function in such a way that people will exchange knowledge and experience about these business goals,” he said. “In this way, alignment is achieved.”
An example of this; in 2009, Whirlpool Corp. restructured and aligned its employee training into a closed-loop learning method. Reinventing the learning function at Whirlpool has led to higher impacts to its bottom line through skill acquisition. The company started its new system by offering a strategy course to 100 middle managers by integrating online classes, traditional classroom lessons, the application of skills and engaging the employee’s manager to allow the learning to come alive in the workplace. This process illustrated positive impacts on employee productivity and applications of skills based on employee survey results, and minimized the cost of learning and development.
“Prior to the new program, 95 percent of our training was conducted in the classroom,” said Tammy Patrick, global director of Whirlpool University. “As 2008 was nearing a close, the world was dipping into this long, deep recession that none of us had ever experienced. But our CEO, Jeff Fettig, and senior executives are very committed to learning and development and wanted to leverage these unplanned circumstances to rethink our learning space. It was time for an overhaul.”
One of Whirlpool’s development programs, Leading People at Whirlpool, was revamped so employees would experience a blend of online courses, classroom instruction and learning labs to practice newly acquired skills. Managers are also equipped to coach and encourage employees throughout the 12-month program to ensure employees have feedback on their application of skills daily. Employees check into a physical classroom intermittently, but the majority of the program is conducted virtually.
“Prior to 2008, if we had any learning products that we needed to scale across the entire salaried population, it could take us anywhere from six to 18 months to roll out,” Patrick said. “Now we can constantly update and repeat material at a low cost. Our senior leadership is involved. Everyone is learning the foundations of Whirlpool from day one and developing every day after that. There’s now a loop that was absent before.”
Ladan Nikravan is an associate editor of Chief Learning Officer magazine. She can be reached at lnikravan@CLOmedia.com.
