Aligning Corporate Learning With Strategy 09-03

Aligning Corporate Learning With Strategy

 

 

Too many corporate learning and development programs focus on the wrong things. A better approach to developing a company’s leadership and talent pipeline involves designing learning programs that link to the organization’s strategic priorities.

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Survey after survey of CEOs points to a shortage of leadership and management talent as a leading concern. In an era when the capabilities of knowledge workers, not technology or capital, is often the key constraint on growth (particularly in emerging markets), this is hardly a surprise. The mystery is how ineffectual the response has been. It’s not that companies aren’t willing to invest in developing their people. They spend heavily in this area: In 2012, companies in developed economies spent nearly $400 billion on training. And yet, at least one study concludes that the majority of managers believe that employee performance wouldn’t suffer if their own company’s learning function were eliminated altogether! As corporate learning professionals, we find this lack of appreciation dismaying.

The fact is that much of the investment and effort that organizations spend on learning is focused on the wrong things. For example, companies often ask us to assess whether the types of learning experiences they provide their employees are “cutting-edge.” The proliferation of online courses and just-in-time knowledge available through mobile apps is prompting organizations to rethink traditional approaches to learning, so it’s understandable that many corporate learning leaders are paying more attention to innovative modes of instruction. In our view, technology has the potential to expand and democratize the reach of learning in organizations. Moreover, research in neuroscience and the science of learning is revealing more every day about how effective learning experiences engage the cognitive and emotional centers of our brains. But breakthrough advances will only be possible when learning is linked to business goals. In our opinion, the emphasis should be on strategic alignment of learning rather than on how learning is delivered.

The importance of alignment in learning and development is receiving increasing attention. In 2009, the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD), based in Ixelles, Belgium, established a system for accrediting corporate learning organizations that included a set of criteria for assessing how well corporate learning aligns with overall corporate strategy. EFMD’s Corporate Learning Improvement Process, which one of us helped develop, was the first effort of its kind to define research-based assessment standards for evaluating and accrediting corporate universities and learning functions. One notable finding in the accreditation reviews was the relatively weak performance on measures of learning alignment and wide disparities among organizations on this dimension. This article builds on the research in this area to identify underlying causes of poor learning alignment and best practices of leading companies.

The word learning, which has largely replaced training in the corporate lexicon, suggests “knowledge for its own sake.” However, to justify its existence, corporate learning needs to serve the organization’s stated goals and should be based on what works. We see many corporate universities turning toward the academic paradigm, choosing to become gateways to the array of learning resources available from edX, Coursera, TED, Khan Academy, and social networking sites. Many companies assign much of the responsibility for deciding what, when, and how they learn to employees. But in our view, this approach won’t address the talent conundrum: There’s too much focus on learning and not enough on meaningful development.

If corporate learning and development is to remain relevant, learning leaders must shoulder the burden of developing the company’s talent capabilities and supporting strategic priorities. CEOs and top executives also have a critical role. Although many corporate initiatives might benefit from personal attention from the top, developing the company’s leadership talent must be on the list. The good news is that many top leaders seem interested in making this happen: In one survey of global CEOs, respondents said developing the leadership and talent pipeline was where they wanted to spend more of their personal time.6 Personal engagement and leadership on the part of the CEO can make a huge difference in setting the right tone for the organization.

About the Research

This article draws both on the authors’ experience in the area of corporate learning and talent development as researchers and managers of corporate learning functions as well as on a three-year program of research with global organizations recognized as leaders in the area of leadership and talent development. The research examined the approaches companies have taken to ensure strategic alignment of corporate learning initiatives with the business priorities of the CEO agenda.

The findings come from interviews and written diagnostic surveys completed by 87 senior learning and development professionals from 61 organizations who participated in an IMD open-enrollment executive education program. Additional research was conducted through in-person interviews with learning and development executives, senior line managers, and participants in corporate learning programs at global companies across a range of industries, including Capgemini, General Electric, Hilti, Nike, Royal Dutch Shell, UniCredit Group, and Unilever. In a few cases, interview subjects also responded to written questions. Several of the organizations made available internal company documents detailing elements of their company strategy and the history, rationale, and decision-making processes involved in the development of their corporate learning initiatives.

For their part, some corporate learning executives are also rising to the challenge. They are beginning to take a more strategic view of their businesses and a proactive stance on the role of learning and development in delivering value — matching what we call the corporate “learning agenda” with the demands of talent development and business goals. We will describe some of these learning executives’ practices, which can serve as a model for implementing a corporate learning strategy. (See “About the Research.”)

Mapping the CEO Agenda

When two of us worked as management consultants, we typically began engagements with new clients by developing a profile of what we call the “CEO agenda.” Culled from analyst reports, corporate websites, and personal interviews, the CEO agenda allowed us to identify the mission-critical concerns of the company’s top leadership and tailor discussions to that agenda. Effective learning leaders take a similar approach, developing a learning agenda for their organizations that is reflective of the CEO’s priorities. Mapping the CEO’s agenda is the first step in aligning learning with strategy. (See “Guiding Questions for Learning Executives.”)

GUIDING QUESTIONS FOR LEARNING EXECUTIVES

Consider the example of Paddy Coyne, vice president of enterprise learning, leadership development, and global talent at Royal Dutch Shell plc. After starting his career at Shell as a project engineer, Coyne then spent 14 years with the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company Inc. before returning to Shell in 2007. When Shell’s previous CEO Peter Voser was appointed CEO in 2009, the company announced plans to concentrate on global business lines that would enable it to be “the world’s most competitive and innovative energy company.”7 Coyne saw an opportunity to rethink the way the company developed its leaders in accordance with Voser’s vision.

Following extensive internal and external conversations on the changing nature of Shell’s context and leadership needs, a project team reporting to the CEO and head of HR identified four leadership attributes they saw as critical for future leaders, essentially replacing the leadership model that had been in place for more than a decade. This meant changing Shell’s approach to developing leaders, placing “in-role” development through on-the-job experiences at the heart of a new leadership development system.

The guiding principle (commonly expressed as “Shell leaders personally develop the best people”8) emphasized line manager responsibility for cultivating desired behaviors. This required learning and HR professionals to adopt new ways of working and to revamp the leadership development portfolio to focus on key leadership transition points. To ensure that learning continued to support the needs of the business, Coyne formed advisory panels of business leaders to guide the development of new programs.

Although Shell’s effort is still ongoing, it’s an example of corporate learning that links professional development directly to business goals.9 Starting with the CEO agenda helps cut through the noise of multiple initiatives vying for attention to reveal the few, critical, “must-win battles” that the CEO is committed to achieve.

How does this approach differ from the starting point of most learning and development programs? Typically, the first step in a new learning initiative is a training needs assessment, which uses surveys and in-depth interviews with business leaders to understand the skills gaps and “pain points” they want training to address. For example, a global consumer goods company we’ve worked with conducted such an assessment for a new leadership development program aimed at midlevel leaders across a number of its operating divisions. The company engaged a team of instructional design consultants to survey dozens of managers, asking them to rank the top development needs of leaders in multiple categories. The collected and tabulated responses demonstrated a desire for additional training in areas including coaching for performance, inspirational leadership, and communications. The course that emerged was a diverse smorgasbord of skills training. Although all of the skills selected were valuable, as a group they did not reflect anything specific about the organization or its strategy. Indeed, the conclusions of these types of training needs assessments tend to be similar across organizations. Given that midlevel managers at many large corporations face some of the same challenges, this is not surprising. What is missing from the picture, however, is a connection to the unique circumstances of the business and the priorities critical to its success.

No matter how talented the instructors or how dedicated the learners, these kinds of learning interventions based on needs assessments are unlikely to move the needle on the business priorities that matter most. Furthermore, by outsourcing the process, the company’s learning leaders missed an opportunity to get “close to the business” in a meaningful way. In some cases, consultants who also provide instructional design and training delivery to the same clients may have vested interests in the outcomes of a needs assessment and can skew the analysis. As discussed above, a better approach is to start from the business agenda to ensure that training supports the capabilities required by the company’s strategy.

Mapping the CEO agenda as a starting point for the learning strategy is powerful because it provides focus for training activities that allow learning leaders to link development initiatives to specific business goals. Yet this approach remains more the exception than the rule. One reason for this may be that declared business priorities (for example, “growth”) are sometimes ambiguous. Learning leaders need to unpack the CEO agenda to identify the key drivers — for example, “doubling sales of new products in emerging markets” — to which learning resources can be directed. Companies that are able to align the mission, focus, processes, and capabilities of their learning assets with tangible business goals truly have a corporate learning strategy.

In many companies, the governance structures for learning and development can dilute the immediacy of the contact with the rest of the business. One study found that less than a third of companies have chief learning officers reporting directly to the CEO or company board.10 More often, learning reports to the head of HR or other functional leaders. This is no reason, however, for learning executives to be disconnected from the strategic agenda. Rather, they need to be proactive in discussing and working with this agenda. Interactions between learning functions and executives in other parts of the business are too often squandered in administrative debates over allocation of training costs and learning hours delivered. Chief learning officers need to take a more strategic approach, and the company’s senior executives must ensure that capability-building efforts are directed at the things that matter most to the company.

Mapping the CEO agenda and its implications for corporate learning is thus the first step in constructing the company’s learning agenda. The next is to operationalize the learning agenda through the portfolio of learning and development activities.

Aligning Learning and Development Resources

After mapping the CEO agenda, it’s important to take an inventory of existing learning and development resources: Companies need to do this on a regular basis to ensure that the activities in place reflect the company’s learning strategy. In our experience, however, conducting such a “learning inventory” is often overlooked.

A few years ago, one of us reviewed the global learning programs for a large, decentralized multinational and was alarmed to find that the majority of spending on learning activities could not be properly accounted for due to lax budgeting procedures among dozens of scattered learning teams working with hundreds of external vendors. Although this situation was extreme (it amounted to tens of millions of dollars), it is not atypical of some large organizations. Just getting a handle on the learning portfolio already deployed can be a challenge.

In addition to doing an inventory of the current training portfolio, the assessment should include a review of the company’s development infrastructure. For example, when Shell decided to transform its approach to leadership development, it had a fairly traditional talent management process in which line managers largely outsourced responsibility for talent development to HR professionals. The new process amounted to a paradigm shift, involving an integrated approach to in-role development, key talent processes, and learning programs. These efforts were designed to help accelerate the development of employees through carefully orchestrated on-the-job learning experiences while making business leaders responsible for building the strength of talent pipelines. The move therefore required a complete rethinking of the development ecosystem, including promotion and succession planning processes and the supporting role played by HR and learning professionals.

Companies should, however, be cautious about making wholesale changes to learning portfolios and organizational structures. Occasionally, such changes are warranted in light of shifts in the company’s mission or business context. Yet radical changes in training curricula can cause major disruptions. Although Shell chose to retire its entire learning portfolio, in part to signal a clear break with the past, this entailed a six-month pause in the delivery of leadership training worldwide as the company reset the focus and emphasis of learning programs. General Electric Co., by contrast, took a more gradual approach. In 2010, GE began to phase in substantial changes to the direction and content of its executive leadership programs for its most senior leaders, while also maintaining many of the deeply rooted structures and features it had used over the years.11

Time and again, we’ve seen new chief learning officers dump existing programs for reasons of turf or temperament rather than strategy. That’s a mistake. As long as the company’s strategy does not change, the link between the corporate learning agenda and the CEO agenda should be relatively stable over time. Reorganizations tend to occur all too frequently in corporate learning departments, but they should be limited to situations where they are warranted — for example, when the learning agenda is misaligned with corporate strategy or the strategy changes.

Some corporate learning organizations adopt explicit mission statements linked to business objectives as a way of embedding the priorities of the CEO agenda into their guiding principles. As the company’s strategy evolves, the learning mission needs to do so as well. Capgemini, a global provider of IT services and consulting headquartered in Paris, founded its corporate university during a period of rapid growth through mergers and acquisitions. The corporate university launched with a mission of being the “heart, home, and hub” of the group — the place where leaders from diverse, decentralized businesses physically came together, developed personal bonds, and built a connection to the company. In 1998, the company purchased a property near its Paris headquarters to serve as the physical location and symbol of the university. In keeping with its mission of cultural integration, the majority of university learning programs were delivered on the campus through 2007.

However, as Capgemini moved into a new phase of growth, the role of its corporate university changed accordingly. Between 2007 and 2012, the university became the driver of global content, ensuring that common methodologies and ways of working were rolled out in a consistent way to the disparate business units. It also organized worldwide learning events centered on business priorities with global implications. To reflect the new reality, the university’s mission statement was revised to reflect its new role. By 2012, the emphasis shifted to virtual and local delivery of programs; less than 3% of university learning took place at the central campus.

Responding to customers’ demands for more integrated IT solutions, Capgemini shifted its strategy once more. In 2013, it reframed the mission of the university to ensure that learning initiatives supported the CEO’s push to break down silos and build linkages between business units. In a sense, this represented a return to the founding mission of the university as a “hub” for exchange and relationship building. Accordingly, the central campus again took on a more prominent role as a learning forum and meeting place for company executives.

Gaining Buy-In for the Learning Agenda

As with the CEO agenda, the learning agenda should articulate the essential strategic initiatives for corporate learning. However, choices about what to keep, eliminate, or add to bring learning activities in line with business priorities should not be made in isolation. To enact change, it’s important to get input and buy-in from both the learning organization and leaders in the rest of the business — all the way to the CEO level. Creating the right supporting structures and interfaces with the business units, HR, and other related functions is critical.

When Eivind Slaaen, senior vice president of human resources at Hilti AG wanted to take the company’s approach to leadership development in a new direction, he recognized the need to engage line managers. Slaaen’s vision for learning at Hilti, a Liechtenstein-based producer of high-end power tools for the construction industry, emphasized development of new managers through on-the-job experiences supported by a multiyear process of formal learning interventions. “We’ve stopped treating learning as stand-alone and see this more as a journey,” says Slaaen. “Rather than thinking you can teach people what they’re supposed to know in a couple weeks of training, we’re pulling the line [management] in as a partner — so you need to convince others to be a part of that journey.”

It’s difficult to overstate the significance of CEO involvement in driving support for corporate learning programs — particularly leadership development and senior management training. (GE’s CEO has famously participated directly in every executive leadership program for more than 30 years — with one exception, when then-CEO Jack Welch underwent heart bypass surgery).12 Having exposure to the priorities of top management is key to establishing the credibility and relevance of learning initiatives. In the case of Shell, the CEO actively sponsored the new approach to leadership development and was instrumental in communicating its importance and meaning through personal storytelling that reinforced the link between leadership behaviors and business results.

At Unilever, CEO Paul Polman has made leadership development a key pillar of his long-term vision. He charged the vice president of global learning and capability development with designing a senior leadership development program that was more external-looking and focused on long-term performance. Executives received invitations to the program from Polman himself, who personally participates in the program. The company signaled its commitment to executive development with the construction of a new learning center in Singapore, the first major expansion of its corporate learning infrastructure in nearly 60 years.13

Although the personal involvement of the CEO in learning initiatives can have a decisive impact, a broader effort of stakeholder management is typically required to promote and gain buy-in for the learning agenda. Learning leaders should map out a concerted “campaign” to inform and gather input from key influencers and decision makers in other parts of the business. For example, our work with one organization revealed that funding models based on participant fees charged to business units was a hindrance to developing a strategic approach to corporate learning. In this case, getting the backing of the CFO was critical to developing more effective financing structures for learning initiatives. A disciplined effort of stakeholder engagement and outreach gives learning executives an opportunity to deepen their understanding of strategic priorities and demonstrate the business value of learning interventions.

Another vehicle for advancing the learning agenda and ensuring that it remains responsive to the needs of the business is creating governance mechanisms such as learning advisory boards. Shell created advisory panels composed of executives representing all of its businesses to help set priorities, advise on the development of new curriculum, and provide periodic reviews of the impact of the programs. Capgemini University invited leaders from the various business units to help steer the curriculum in their areas and designated senior members of the learning team to act as liaisons between the business and the university. These governance structures help ensure that local learning activities remain aligned with the global learning agenda while also helping corporate learning leaders adapt to the changing needs of different parts of the business.

Activating the Learning Agenda

Once the learning agenda is in place, it needs to be activated through programmatic activities and changes to the learning portfolio. As with any change of this nature, corporate leaders should be prepared to face stiff resistance from entrenched forces that want to maintain the status quo. An inclusive approach to stakeholder engagement in early stages of the process will lessen opposition and facilitate implementation.

Nevertheless, there can be difficult choices. In many organizations we’ve worked with, there are good programs that are well regarded and popular with participants but not aligned with the revised learning agenda. Programs and learning initiatives that do not advance the ball toward business goals should be eliminated or brought into line with business needs. Sometimes this requires bringing in different learning personnel with the relevant expertise and instructional design skills to meet the new objectives. The company’s learning agenda should be the “North Star” for all corporate learning and development — the set of orienting principles against which program design choices are tested.

Activating the learning agenda also requires that the goals of the corporate learning strategy be applied at the functional, regional, and business-unit levels. Just as business units need to align priorities and investment with the top-level strategy, learning leaders need to ensure that training and learning interventions are tailored to the specific needs of the business they serve and are aligned with the company’s global learning agenda.

A Key Strategic Question

The approach we have presented is a practical way of addressing the key strategic question for corporate learning: “Are we doing enough of the right things to develop the capabilities our people need to deliver the outcomes that matter most to the business?” Companies that answer this question in the affirmative can activate a powerful lever of competitive advantage.

The close interconnection of development activities with business priorities is the hallmark of an effective corporate learning strategy. It requires much more than just getting senior leaders to turn up at leadership training events. Rather, it means viewing the corporate learning agenda as an essential extension of the CEO agenda as it applies to the company’s human capital.

Reproduced from MIT Sloan Management Review

30 hours of free child care per week for working parents in UK 09-02

30 hours of free child care per week for working parents in UK 

    Parents set to benefit from 30 hours of free childcare, with rollout to start from 2016 – a year earlier than planned.

    Childcare funding rates to increase, with review promised before summer.
    
    New government taskforce will introduce changes as soon as possible.

Prime Minister David Cameron will today announce that the government will bring forward plans to double free childcare for working parents - with some families set to benefit as early as next year.

The Childcare Bill, introduced tomorrow (Tuesday), will double free childcare available for all working parents of 3 and 4 year olds to 30 hours a week – available to up to 600,000 families and worth around £5,000 a year – including the £2,500 they can already save from existing free childcare offers.

And, in a move to underline the government’s commitment to support working families with the costs of childcare, plans are being drawn up to introduce the changes for some families a year earlier than planned, with pilots in some areas offering 30 hours worth of free places from September 2016.

On top of this, the government is also today committing to increase the average childcare funding rates paid to providers (the hourly funding provided for each free place) with the Department for Education set to begin a review before summer, overseen by Childcare Minister Sam Gyimah.

A new government taskforce, headed by Minister of State for Employment Priti Patel, will also work to drive forward the plans and ensure not a moment is wasted in passing the benefits onto working families.

Prime Minister David Cameron:

    My message is clear. This government is on the side of working people – helping them get on and supporting them at every stage of life.

    That is exactly why we are pressing ahead with these reforms - so that not a moment is lost in getting on with the task - going further than ever before to help with childcare costs, helping hardworking families and giving people the opportunity to get into work.

Minister for Employment, Priti Patel said:

    We are doing more than any other government to improve the affordability and accessibility of childcare for working families.

    Having the right childcare in place will mean more parents can have genuine choice, security and peace of mind when it comes to being able to support their family.

Today’s announcement will mean there is now more support than ever before to help with the costs of childcare and will build on the steps already taken by this government to help families across the country.

More than a million families are already benefiting from 15 hours week of free childcare for three and four-year olds, alongside around 160,000 of the most disadvantaged two year olds. The government has also already legislated to introduce tax free childcare – worth up to £2,000 per child per year – within this Parliament.


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Space elevator with inflatable tower patented by Thoth Technology 08-20

Space elevator with inflatable tower patented by Thoth Technology

Space cargo would travel up tower and launch from high altitude or low-Earth orbit

The top of a space elevator platform recently patented by Thoth Technology of Pembroke, Ont. is shown in this artist's concept. The company thinks a 20-kilometre-high version could be built within 10 years. (Toth Technology/Canadian Press)

Pembroke, Ont.-based Thoth Technology has patented an inflatable tower that could carry a "space elevator" higher than passenger jets fly – and eventually into low-Earth orbit.

The patent, which has been granted in the U.K. and the U.S. so far, describes a tower with a space launch platform on top that would initially be built to a height of around 20 kilometres high, but could theoretically be built to more than 200 kilometres high, and reach into low Earth orbit.

It would be made of stacked rings of Kevlar cells inflated with hydrogen or helium to an extremely high pressure. An elevator could ride up the tower, carrying spacecraft, satellites and other goods to be launched into space – along with tourists looking for an extraordinary view.

Carrying space cargo partway with an electric elevator would drastically reduce the amount of fuel needed to send such loads into space, says Brendan (Ben) Quine, the inventor behind the patent and Thoth Technology's chief technical officer.


Right now, rockets carry extra fuel in containers called "stages" that drop off and fall into the ocean as the rocket gains altitude.

Ben Quine, inventor of the space elevator tower, is chief technology officer at Thoth Technology and an associate professor of space engineering at York University in Toronto. (Thoth Technology)

Launching from a 20-kilometre-high tower would cut the amount of fuel needed by a third and make the first stage of the rocket unnecessary, Quine said, making fully reusable spacecraft, including rockets and space planes, more practical.

Caroline Roberts, president and CEO of the company, which is also working on getting a Canadian patent, says the tower could work well with the reusable rocket technology that SpaceX is developing.

She also believe the 20-kilometre-high tower would be an attractive tourist destination.

"From the top of the tower looking out, you would be able to see the bright blue rim of the Earth and a view stretching 1,000 kilometres."

The tower could also support massive wind turbines for power generation and be an alternative to satellites as a place to attach communications equipment.

Quine has already built a seven-metre-high scale model, which he unveiled in 2009 at York University in Toronto, where he is an associate professor.

Roberts says the company hopes to build a 1.5-kilometre-high prototype within five years – a height that would make it significantly higher than the current world's tallest building, the830-metre-tall Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

Roberts thinks a version that could reach 20 kilometres above sea level, starting from the top of a five-kilometre-high mountain, could be built with 10 years at a cost of about $5 billion US.

Quine's invention isn't a traditional space elevator, an idea that has been kicking around since the late 19th century. The traditional concept consists of a fine cable with one end attached to weight in space, orbiting the Earth, and the other end tethered to the ground. The cable would be used as a track for attaching "climbers" carrying goods from one end to the other.

There are two challenges with that concept, Quine said:

    It needs to be built in space.

The cable would be degraded by meteor and lightning strikes, and would have to be replaced every six months.
 

Thoth Technology's elevator tower could be built from the ground up, and easily withstand not just lightning and meteors, but even category five hurricanes, Quine says.

In fact, the design includes gyroscopes to control the tower's movement and actively stabilize it during major storms.

Self-climbing elevator

Quine envisions several possible ways to get the elevator up the tower.

The traditional cable used to raise most elevators wouldn't be possible, since existing elevator cable materials couldn't support 1.5 kilometres worth of their own weight. Scientists have proposed making space elevator cables out of a new, ultra-strong, high-tech material called carbon nanotubes, but "you can't make cables out of carbon nanotubes that are rated for people yet," Quine says.

One possibility is a "self-climbing" elevator attached to claws that reach three-quarters of the way around the tower and wheels underneath the claws to allow the elevator to spiral around the outside.

"My preference would definitely be to have them on outside because then you'd get the view," Quine said. "The safety engineers are going to want it on the inside."

While the company works on the Canadian patent, it is interested in talking to anyone around the world who is interested in licensing its technology and building the prototype, Quine says.

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Changing the Change management 08-20

Changing Change Management 

Research tells us that most change efforts fail. Yet change methodologies are stuck in a pre-digital era. It’s high time to start catching up.

Change management as it is traditionally applied is outdated. We know, for example, that 70 percent of change programs fail to achieve their goals, largely due to employee resistance and lack of management support. We also know that when people are truly invested in change it is 30 percent more likely to stick.

While companies have been obsessing about how to use digital to improve their customer-facing businesses, the application of digital tools to promote and accelerate internal change has received far less scrutiny. However, applying new digital tools can make change more meaningful—and durable—both for the individuals who are experiencing it and for those who are implementing it. The advent of digital change tools comes at just the right time. Organizations today must simultaneously deliver rapid results and sustainable growth in an increasingly competitive environment. They are being forced to adapt and change to an unprecedented degree: leaders have to make decisions more quickly; managers have to react more rapidly to opportunities and threats; employees on the front line have to be more flexible and collaborative. Mastering the art of changing quickly is now a critical competitive advantage. For many organizations, a five-year strategic plan—or even a three-year one—is a thing of the past. 

Organizations that once enjoyed the luxury of time to test and roll out new initiatives must now do so in a compressed period while competing with tens or hundreds of existing (and often incomplete) initiatives. In this dynamic and fast-paced environment, competitive advantage will accrue to companies with the ability to set new priorities and implement new processes quicker than their rivals. 

The power of digital to drive change Large companies are increasingly engaged in multiple simultaneous change programs, often involving scores of people across numerous geographies. While traditional workshops and training courses have their place, they are not effective at scale and are slow moving. B2C companies have unlocked powerful digital tools to enhance the customer journey and shift consumer behavior. Wearable technology, adaptive interfaces, and integration into social 2 platforms are all areas where B2C companies have innovated to make change more personal and responsive. 

Some of these same digital tools and techniques can be applied with great effectiveness to change-management techniques within an organization. Digital dashboards and personalized messages, for example, can build faster, more effective support for new behaviors or processes in environments where management capacity to engage deeply and frequently with every employee is constrained by time and geography. 

Digitizing five areas in particular can help make internal change efforts more effective and enduring. 

1. Provide just-in-time feedback The best feedback processes are designed to offer the right information when the recipient can actually act on it. Just-in-time feedback gives recipients the opportunity to make adjustments to their behavior and to witness the effects of these adjustments on performance. Consider the experience of a beverage company experiencing sustained share losses and stagnant market growth in a highly competitive market in Africa. The challenge was to motivate 1,000-plus sales representatives to sell with greater urgency and effectiveness. A simple SMS message system was implemented to keep the widely distributed sales reps, often on the road for weeks at a time, plugged into the organization. Each rep received two to three daily SMS messages with personalized performance information, along with customer and market insights. For example, one message might offer feedback on which outlets had placed orders below target; another would alert the rep to a situation that indicated a need for increased orders, such as special events or popular brands that were trending in the area. Within days of implementing the system, cross-selling and upselling rates increased to more than 50 percent from 4 percent, and within the first year, the solution delivered a $25 million increase in gross margin, which helped to swing a 1.5 percent market-share loss into a 1 percent gain.

2. Personalize the experience Personalization is about filtering information in a way that is uniquely relevant to the user and showing each individual’s role in and contribution to a greater group goal. An easy-to-use system can be an effective motivator and engender positive peer pressure. This worked brilliantly for a rail yard looking to reduce the idle time of its engines and cars by up to 10 percent. It implemented a system that presented only the most relevant information to each worker at that moment, such as details on the status of a train under that worker’s supervision, the precise whereabouts of each of the trains in the yard, or alerts indicating which train to work on. Providing such specific and relevant information helped workers clarify priorities, increase accountability, and reduce delays.

3. Sidestep hierarchy Creating direct connections among people across the organization allows them to sidestep cumbersome hierarchal protocols and shorten the time it takes to get things done. It also fosters more direct and instant connections that allow employees to share important information, find answers quickly, and get help and advice from people they trust. In the rail-yard example, a new digital communications platform was introduced to connect relevant parties right away, bypassing middlemen and ensuring that issues get resolved quickly and efficiently. For example, if the person in charge of the rail yard has a question about the status of an incoming train, he or she need only log into the system and tap the train icon to pose the question directly to the individuals working on that train. Previously, all calls and queries had to be routed through a central source. This ability to bridge organizational divides is a core advantage in increasing agility, collaboration, and effectiveness. 

4. Build empathy, community, and shared purpose In increasingly global organizations, communities involved in change efforts are often physically distant from one another. Providing an outlet for colleagues to share and see all the information related to a task, including progress updates and informal commentary, can create an important esprit de corps. Specific tools are necessary to achieve this level of connectivity and commitment. 

Those that we have seen work well include shared dashboards, visualizations of activity across the team, “gamification” to bolster competition, and online forums where people can easily speak to one another (for example, linking a Twitter-like feed to a work flow or creating forums tied to leader boards so people can easily discuss how to move up in the rankings). This approach worked particularly well with a leading global bank aiming to reduce critical job vacancies. The sourcing team made the HR process a shared experience, showing all stakeholders the end-to-end view—dashboards identifying vacancies; hiring requisitions made and approved; candidates identified, tested, and interviewed; offers made and accepted; and hire letters issued. This transparency and openness built a shared commitment to getting results, a greater willingness to deliver on one’s own step in the process, and a greater willingness to help one another beyond functional boundaries. 

5. Demonstrate progress Organizational change is like turning a ship: the people at the front can see the change but the people at the back may not notice for a while. Digital change tools are helpful in this case to communicate progress so that people can see what is happening in real time. More sophisticated tools can also show individual contributions toward the common goal. We have seen how this type of communication makes the change feel more urgent and real, which in turn creates momentum that can help push an organization to a tipping point where a new way of doing things becomes the way things are done. 

Digital tools and platforms, if correctly applied, offer a powerful new way to accelerate and amplify the ability of an organization to change. However, let’s be clear: the tool should not drive the solution. Each company should have a clear view of the new behavior it wants to reinforce and find a digital solution to support it. The best solutions are tightly focused on a specific task and are rolled out only after successful pilots are completed. The chances of success increase when management actively encourages feedback from users and incorporates it to give them a sense of ownership in the process.

Article Reproduced from Mckinsey Digital

“They Burned the House Down”: An Interview with Michael Lynton 08-01

“They Burned the House Down”: An Interview with Michael Lynton

Michael Lynton’s “Black Swan” materialized late last year, when someone—the U.S. government says it was North Korea—pulled off the most devastating hack in corporate history. Lynton, the CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment, had to look on as highly confidential company information—salary details, private e-mails (some of them harshly critical of top Hollywood talent), unreleased movies—was leaked for all the world to see. For good measure, the hackers wiped out huge amounts of data on the company’s servers.

The attack pushed a reluctant Lynton to the forefront of U.S. foreign relations when the hackers threatened retaliation if The Interview, a Sony Pictures comedy set in North Korea that includes the assassination of Kim Jong-un, was released. Fearing reprisals, many theaters declined to screen the film, and Sony had to look for alternative distribution. President Barack Obama weighed in, chastising Sony for what he viewed as caving to Pyongyang’s pressure. The R-rated bro film had suddenly become a First Amendment icon.

How does an institution make it through all that? How does it sustain its culture, and retain its talent, as each salacious, embarrassing, top-secret bit of information spills out into public? I visited Lynton in his sumptuous office at Sony Pictures’ fabled art deco complex in Culver City, California, to talk about the experience. He seemed unguarded and optimistic, freely acknowledging the difficulties Sony faced in the weeks after the attack, yet sounding hopeful that the company had made it through intact.

Attacks like this may well be the new normal. Lynton says he can only hope that his company’s nightmare will serve as a wake-up call for other U.S. businesses. —Adi Ignatius

HBR: Let’s go back to the end of last year. Sony had just been hacked. What were your first thoughts?

Lynton: I was on my way to work. It was about 8:00 in the morning, and our CFO called to say that we had been breached. By the time I got to the office, the whole studio was off-line.

And that was just the beginning.
Yes. We received a series of threatening messages warning of a data dump of the information the hackers had stolen, and then the disclosures began. Soon we were dealing with a few things at once. We were trying to keep the business operating. We were dealing with employees who feared their information would be made public. We were dealing with the press, which was publishing some of the e-mails. And then we had the FBI coming in to do forensic analysis.

You were known as a CEO who tended to delegate. Did that change?

Yes, my role changed radically and quickly. The crisis required me to be very hands-on. We set up a command central to ensure that all decisions were made with my understanding and knowledge and approval. That basically became a full-time job, which meant everybody else had to operate the business—which they did, very successfully.

What went into setting up the command central?

The first thing was to establish a means of communication in the absence of e-mail. We were basically analog for a while. We had phones, and that was it. So we set up texting trees and then turned to our employee notification system. That meant we could centrally text our employee population, which we did frequently.

Was this just for crisis-related communications, or to sustain business as usual?

It was for business as usual, making sure people could communicate with one another about the stuff we do on a daily basis—making movies, making television shows, ensuring that everything gets distributed. Then we needed to create a temporary e-mail system. And we had to set up systems to make payroll, pay vendors, and so on. Making payroll alone was a monumental task: The finance department hauled old machines out of the basement to cut checks.

Nightmarish Days: A Timeline of the 2014 Sony Hack

 
NOVEMBER 25: SPE’s top two executives, Michael Lynton and Amy Pascal, first communicate with employees to commend their hard work while the company strives to resolve the system disruption.

DECEMBER 2: Lynton and Pascal e-mail employees acknowledging that a brazen attack has occurred and stating that SPE is working closely with law enforcement officials.

DECEMBER 5: Certain SPE employees receive an e-mail from someone claiming to be a GOP member, demanding that they disassociate themselves from Sony, and threatening, “If you don’t, not only you but your family will be in danger.”

DECEMBER 6: Lynton forwards an e-mail from the cybersecurity expert Kevin Mandia to all employees to explain the nature of the attack: “This was an unparalleled and well-planned crime, carried out by an organized group, for which neither SPE nor other companies could have been fully prepared.”

DECEMBER 7: The Korean Central News Agency describes the attack as a “righteous deed” but dismisses reports of North Korean involvement as a “wild rumor.”

DECEMBER 8: The GOP posts a message demanding that the studio “stop immediately showing the movie of terrorism which can break the regional peace and cause the War” and linking to sensitive information stolen from SPE.

DECEMBER 11: Pascal issues an apology after her personal e-mails are made public. Sony stages a quiet Los Angeles premiere for The Interview.

DECEMBER 14: David Boies, outside counsel for SPE, writes to journalists reminding them that the leaked material is “stolen information” and calls on media outlets not to read or publish any SPE documents in their possession.

DECEMBER 15: Lynton calls an “all hands” meeting to tell employees they “should not be worried about the future of this studio.”

DECEMBER 15–16: Two separate class-action lawsuits are filed on behalf of former and current employees alleging that Sony did not do enough to safeguard their private information.

DECEMBER 16: The GOP posts a 9/11-type threat against moviegoers who try to see The Interview when it’s released on Christmas Day. Major theater chains start to cancel screenings.

DECEMBER 17: SPE decides not to move forward with the movie’s planned nationwide theatrical release the following week. Lynton and SPE executives begin reaching out to potential digital distribution partners, including Google.

DECEMBER 19: The FBI publicly states that North Korea was behind the attack. President Obama, too, attributes the attack to North Korea. Obama calls canceling the theatrical release “a mistake” and adds, “They should have called me.”

DECEMBER 22: North Korea experiences a 10-hour internet outage; connectivity problems continue for days.

DECEMBER 23: SPE announces that The Interview will have a limited theatrical release on Christmas Day.

DECEMBER 24: The Interview is released on Google Play, YouTube Movies, Microsoft’s Xbox Video, and a dedicated site run by the studio through Kernel and Stripe.

JANUARY 20: SPE announces that The Interview was rented or bought online and through cable, satellite, and telecom providers more than 5.8 million times, for a total of some $40 million in consumer sales, and that the movie has made $6 million in box office receipts through its limited theatrical release.

FEBRUARY 4: SPE says the hack cost $15 million through the end of 2014.

FEBRUARY 5: Pascal resigns.

It sounds like a nightmare. I can’t imagine seeing all my personal information suddenly made public.

Well, that was just part of it. The bigger challenge was that the folks who did this didn’t just steal practically everything from the house; they burned the house down. They took our data. Then they wiped stuff off our computers. And then they destroyed our servers and our computers.

So they had it, and you didn’t.

Correct. We had backup, but we couldn’t access it until we had computers, servers, and systems that would allow us to do so. So you have these very public e-mails out there, some of which are salacious. And then you have the challenge of operating the business when the networked services you’ve relied on are unavailable.

Containing the Damage

What did your employees need most from you at that point?

They needed reassurance. They were concerned that their personal information was out there and available, and we had to explain exactly what we were doing to protect them. Some were afraid that the company might go under as a result of all this.

“When you take a job in a movie studio, this is not what you think you’re signing up for.”

How did you reach out to them?

We held big town hall meetings, with 3,000 to 4,000 people at a time, to talk about what was happening. And we held small forums, where we brought together groups of 50 to 80 and listened to their concerns. I usually ate by myself in the cafeteria and made sure people could just come up and speak with me. Physical presence was very important. I left in the middle of all this to go to Japan for about a day and a half, because I had to make a board presentation on our budget. When I got back, our head of HR, George Rose, said, “Why have you been gone so long?” And I said, “George, I’ve been gone 36 hours.” Time felt very compressed, because things were happening so quickly.

Were your employees also angry?

Some were, yes. And once they heard that the U.S. government thought the hack was done by North Korea, some were angry that we were releasing The Interview. When you take a job in a movie studio, this is not what you think you’re signing up for.

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Oleogustus: why we might all be getting a new taste for fat 08-01

Oleogustus: why we might all be getting a new taste for fat

Scientists say they have isolated the ability of the human palate to detect fat as a distinct taste from sweet, salty, bitter, sour and umami

The taste of fat might be joining sweet, salty, bitter, sour and umami as an official sense of the human palate after scientists said they found people have a distinct and basic ability to detect it.

But it’s nowhere near as delicious as it might seem, either in name or nature – they propose calling the new taste oleogustus, after Latin for fat taste, and say that in its raw form it causes people to gag.

A research team at Purdue University in the US tested lookalike mixtures with different tastes. More than half of the 28 special tasters could distinguish fatty acids from the other tastes, according to a study published in the journal Chemical Senses.

Past research showed fat had a distinct feel in the mouth, but when scientists removed texture and smell clues people could still tell the difference.

“The fatty acid part of taste is very unpleasant,” said study author Richard Mattes, a Purdue nutrition science professor. “I haven’t met anybody who likes it alone. You usually get a gag reflex.”

Stinky cheese has high levels of the fat taste and so does food that goes rancid, Mattes said. Yet we like it because it mixes well and brings out the best of other flavors, just like the bitter in coffee or chocolate.

To qualify as a basic taste, a flavour must have unique chemical signature, have specific receptors in our bodies for the taste, and people have to distinguish it from other tastes. Scientists had found the chemical signature and two specific receptors for fat, but showing that people could distinguish it was the sticky point.


The team started out with 54 people but concentrated on the results from 28 who were better tasters in general.Initially Mattes found that people couldn’t quite tell fat tastes when given a broad array of flavours. But when just given tastes that are generally unpleasant on their own — bitter, umami, sour — they could find the fat.

Robin Dando, a Cornell University food scientist who wasn’t part of the research, praised the study as “a pretty strong piece of evidence” for a basic fat taste, but didn’t like the suggested name — preferring to just call it fat. There is no single scientific authority that names senses.

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34 years of Silsila 08-01

34 Years After Silsila, Amitabh Bachchan Shares Pics and Memories

A still from Silsila

SILSILA WAS REMARKABLE FOR ITS CASTING COUP WHICH APPEARED TO MIRROR A RUMOURED REAL LIFE LOVE TRIANGLE

It's been 34 years since actor Amitabh Bachchan's seminal Silsila released on July 29, 1981. #34YearsOfSilsila is one of the top trends on Twitter today.

Silsila, a cinematic examination of an extra-marital affair, was made more remarkable by director Yash Chopra's casting coup - he signed Amitabh Bachchan, his wife Jaya and actress Rekha in the roles that formed the three angles of the film's love triangle, one which appeared to mirror a rumoured real life triangle involving the three actors.

Mr Bachchan, now 72, posted a few images on Facebook:

On his official blog, the actor recalled his memories of Silsila:

"How also can one remove from memory the umteenth years that have transpired on the release of some of the films of then- Silsila 34 years."

On Twitter, Mr Bachchan retweeted pictures of him filming Silsila. This image features him with his co-star Rekha, while shooting Yeh Kahan Aa Gaye Hum, which is one of the most memorable tracks from the film:

 
Here, the Deewar actor is pictured with Mr Chopra, Pt Hariprasad Chaurasia and Shivkumar Sharma, the composers of Silsila's classic melodies:

 

Silsila was the last film that Amitabh Bachchan and Rekha made together. The actress had a cameo in R Balki's Shamitabh this year, which starred Mr Bachchan, but the former co-stars had no scenes together.


Mr Bachchan in serious conversation with Mr Chopra on the sets of Silsila:

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