International Opinion
By Brenda Sugrue and Tony O'Driscoll (December 2005 Issue)
0 Comments 
Article Rating: 
Email to a friend | Print Version
Learning is becoming an increasingly important function for all companies, to help develop and maintain the individual and organisational skills needed to create a competitive advantage, to increase efficiencies, and improve bottom line results. IBM’s 2004 Global CEO Study revealed that CEOs are focused on accelerating growth, enabling transformation, and increasing productivity.
They also recognise that employees’ development is essential to achieving these goals. In fact, 75 per cent believe that employee education is critical for future enterprise success. As a result, chief learning officers (CLOs) and other learning executives are increasingly being called upon to play a more strategic role in organisations.
However, the question remains: do their strategies for maximising the impact of learning align with what C-level business executives (i.e. middle management) perceive as valuable? How should the corporate learning function respond to the strategic business needs of growth, transformation, and productivity? How should it be held accountable for adding value to the business? Most importantly, are C-level executives and CLOs in sync with the role that learning plays in responding to changing business needs and how that response is measured?
To address these questions, IBM and ASTD Research recently partnered on a study to investigate the C-level executive mindset and how it compares to that of CLOs. It was the first known study to specifically examine the alignment of C-level and CLO perceptions around the strategic value of learning. The ASTD/IBM Strategic Value of Learning Study 2005 included in-depth interviews with C-level executives and CLOs at 26 organisations across 11 industry sectors. At each organisation, a C-level executive and CLO were interviewed separately and asked the same questions focusing on the learning function’s response to business needs and its performance relative to that response. The questions were based on the assumptions that learning needs to accelerate growth, enable transformation, and increase productivity. Then, the answers were compared to determine where perceptions aligned and where they did not.
The findings suggest that there are significant opportunities for CLOs to align more closely with C-level expectations and aspirations, for learning to become more strategic and central to the ongoing success of the enterprise. Key outcomes of the study: Learning is seen by senior executives to have a significant impact on a number of business outcomes, including revenue, productivity, turnover, and innovation. Both C-level executives and CLOs discussed the challenges involved in measuring learning’s value contribution and return-on-investment (ROI).
Study results suggest that CLOs should balance metrics and ROI data with anecdotal evidence, particularly stakeholder perceptions. Learning governance is seen by C-level executives and CLOs to be the primary mechanism for aligning learning with strategic business needs. While both groups discussed the importance of aligning learning investment planning with business process planning, there was disagreement among the CLOs interviewed regarding the best mix of centralised and decentralised management. One solution involves hybrid management models that incorporate both. C-level executives and CLOs see the integration of learning goals with business goals as a critical indicator of alignment, and want to increase the transparency of the learning function. Both groups look to stakeholder and customer perceptions as alignment indicators. When looking at measuring the value contribution of learning to the organisation, both groups placed greater emphasis on perceptions as measures. C-level executives indicated that they rely on the perceptions of their business unit or line leaders.
In the area of efficiency, C-level executives and CLOs emphasize similar indicators: learning access and usage, technology/automation, cost per unit, strategic alignment, and benchmarking. C-level executives view learning like any other function, requiring that it deliver productivity gains on a year-to-year basis.
Understanding the important role learning plays in a company’s success is just the first hurdle, and, as IBM’s Global CEO study reveals, many CEOs already acknowledge that employee education is a critical success factor for future enterprise success. So while this is true for many companies, a huge window of opportunity remains. By taking learning to the next level, CLOs can play a proactive role in driving organisational productivity, transformation, and growth.
More information about the ASTD/IBM Strategic Value of Learning Study 2005 may be found in the October T+D magazine article, “The C-Level and the Value of Learning,” at http://tdmagazine.astd.org.
Brenda Sugrue is the senior director of research for ASTD. Tony O’Driscoll is a research learning strategist at IBM Almaden Services Research. Copyright © 2005 from T+D magazine by Brenda Sugrue and Tony O’Driscoll. Adapted and reprinted with permission of ASTD.
Readers Comment
Be the first to comment on this news story