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Spotlight on Charles Jennings

By Mike Levy (June 2004 Issue)
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News from Reuters: the world’s largest multimedia news and television agency, and creator of vast amounts of content, is in the process of rethinking its training and development strategy towards process-based learning. Heading up that strategy is Charles Jennings, head of Global Learning for Reuters. He has responsibility for the development of knowledge, skills and capabilities for some 16,000 staff worldwide, working in offices in 200 cities in 94 countries. ‘The key challenge is to turn information into capability,’ says Charles. He strongly believes that in a world saturated by information (growing at some 30 per cent a year, he says), the role of the trainer is to ensure that learners know how to access the information they need rather than the information we think they should have.

This former Professor of Electronic Communication at Southampton Business School is no stranger to the training world. He has an impeccable record of developing and implementing technology-based learning solutions spanning 21 years. He has held positions with Dow Jones as a director of Strategic Technology and, before joining Reuters in 2001, was director of the Online Courseware Factory. Reuters is all about content; it is up to the user to contextualise that content. In the same way, Charles believes, Reuters employees must be empowered to contextualise the knowledge and skill base made available to them.

There is no ‘one size fits all’ in Charles Jennings’ world. ‘Everyone learns in a different way,’ he says. ‘Some prefer to learn alone, others in collaborative teams. Some people prefer to learn in little chunks, others in big blocks. Some like to develop their own unique approaches to learning and a few feel really swamped by it all.’

Charles believes there is a real knowledge revolution going on. ‘In 1986 the percentage of work-related knowledge you kept in your head was 75 per cent,’ he says. ‘But in 1997 that had fallen to 15 per cent and it’s who knows what today.’ The implication is that we cannot hold all the knowledge we need in our brains any more. Instead, says Charles, we have to know how to access the information we need – when and where we need it. We are moving, he says, from ‘just in case’ learning to ‘just in time’; from ‘learning pull’ to ‘capability push’ and from objects rather than courses.

The explosion is information and, suggests Charles, the need to contextualise it for the user has serious implications for the way in which training is delivered. He cites research carried out by Kim Cameron at the Michigan Business School. This looked at knowledge retention rates using different delivery approaches. Bottom of the list is the old-fashioned lecture (5 per cent retention rate); discussion group rates a better 50 per cent; practice by doing 75 per cent; and, top method, teaching others (90 per cent). In short, the classroom approach to learning is very inefficient.1

The implication of all this for Reuters is that it is looking very hard at how training is designed and delivered across its worldwide base. ‘When we ask people what kind of training they want, most say “one-to-one coaching”,’ says Charles. ‘But in a business where software, for instance, is constantly changing and our people are spread around the globe, this approach is just not affordable.’ The implication for Reuters is that a much more blended and user-directed approach to learning is necessary.

The first big challenge for Charles and his team was to find out the cost of internal training. ‘Training costs are easily hidden in expenses and other areas,’ he explains. ‘In Reuters and other companies, we have to move from a world where managers say, “We would like a two-day classroom course on X, please.” We are now much more focused on asking, “What are the performance outcomes that are needed? What is the best and most cost-effective way of delivering them?”’

Asking these kinds of questions is saving the business significant amounts of money, says Charles. Rationalising training and gearing towards ‘as needed’ means that the business is investing heavily in e-learning and other technology-based solutions (though Reuters still holds many classroom-based training sessions each year).

In terms of training strategy, Charles and his senior management team are working towards a single training methodology – a Reuters approach that is consistent across the globe. ‘It’s not an easy task and we have to work hard at reducing duplication,’ he says, citing examples of past courses run in different regions that have the same name but totally different content. ‘We need to ensure that there is a global view.’

The task of remodelling the Reuters way of learning is ongoing. ‘We are working towards a complete culture change in the organisation. I would like to see a significant move away from discrete learning to a world of knowledge objects,’ says Charles. He also recognises that we are all starting to accumulate knowledge in a very different way: ‘If I want to know how to do something, I don’t go to books or CD-ROM these days; I go first to Google.’ It seems that if you are into electronic media and new technologies, Reuters might have some very good news for you.

Reference
1. Kim Cameron, NTL Institute for Applied Behavioural Sciences, Michigan Business School.

 

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