IMPACT & IMPORTANCE
Learning impact is widely discussed. Business owners and managers quickly ask for specific return on investment of learning (in the workflow), but they usually get no answer. At the same time, they understand that learning is somehow important.
So, for this article, let me shed some light on why I am convinced that “learning in the workflow” is important, and outline some of the impacts I have observed in over ten years of working with these approaches.
MINDSET, TERMINOLOGY & PROCESS
Several years ago, I had the honor of helping establish “SkillCamp” in Bayer CropScience. SkillCamp is a globally steered, in-the-workflow marketing and sales (commercial excellence) training initiative targeting several thousand colleagues across many countries.
The first basic impact we were aiming for was to align the mindset of our staff regarding commercial excellence—across countries, regions, and product lines. A key element to achieve this was to make sure we shared a common terminology. In other words, we needed to have a similar understanding of what it meant when we used terms like “customer segmentation”, “product launch”, and “lifecycle management”.
This sounds easy, but in a large organization it is no trivial task. It requires a lot of alignment, communication, and learning. We felt that a common terminology was required to establish common processes and tools for marketing and sales activities. If our colleagues understood, believed in, and used the terminology and processes, we could hope that they would eventually change their behavior and that we would see improved business outcomes.
The cornerstone of all SkillCamp learning activities was an electronic repository called “SkillCamp Online”. It housed all relevant and actionable information to serve as a single point of reference and truth for all global colleagues in marketing and sales, as well as their key interfaces. This so-called EPSS (electronic performance support system) needed constant updating and revision via a tightly organized “curation” process to ensure that content remained current and trustworthy.
We defined five clear objectives for SkillCamp as a sustainable, functional learning and performance ecosystem. These objectives were defined along the learning journey of the individual employee and their role in the organization:
SkillCamp…
- Provides sustainable learning (i.e., learning that sticks)
- Helps learners to use available resources via SkillCamp Online (e.g., tools, examples, plans, supporting knowledge, and videos)
- Aims to improve the performance of individual learners and their communities (e.g., effectiveness, speed, depth of knowledge, and contextual understanding)
- Aims to improve sharing and community building across our organization—globally, regionally, and locally
- Continuously improves the content, learning material, know-how, and messaging of commercial excellence
We measured these objectives with specific indicators. If you are interested in further details, here is an article I published several years ago.
SIMPLIFICATION & ONBOARDING
Fast and effective onboarding was always a major benefit of SkillCamp. The same goes for another global initiative I worked on in the change- and project-management arena. Again, this was for a multinational company and, of course, they had many models and frameworks for change as well as project management.
The impact of 5 Moments of Need thinking plus a consequent workflow learning strategy was that we could bring stakeholders together and simplify the mostly overly complex content and guidelines with a simple filter: what is really needed to execute a given task in those areas? Our rapid prototype quickly grew from addressing the role of a change manager to include the roles of project managers, project owners, and other roles—all according to a simplified and more pragmatic project management framework.
SKILL DEVELOPMENT & OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY
Operational leaders like COOs are often most interested in the concrete business impact of operations. I see workflow learning solutions being successfully leveraged in the operations arena. KPIs like downtime, changeover time, equipment utilization, and onboarding were addressed in a solution for Colgate-Palmolive in the US where learning was brought directly to the assembly line with a kiosk-like EPSS solution.
CONSISTENCY, SUSTAINABILITY & STRATEGY
Leaders are seeking growth, consistency, and sustainability in their businesses. Consistency and sustainability in learning results can only be achieved when learning is established and accessible in the workflow. Knowledge transfer, on-the-job competency, and continuous improvement can be established in a workflow and performance learning framework.
Leaders should be very eager to invest in workflow learning solutions and ecosystems in order to cope with environments that are changing (internally and externally) at an increasingly fast pace.
That’s why I am currently working on a workflow learning ecosystem (StrategyFrame®) for “strategy development”. One element of this environment is the leading German speaking strategy podcast and its English-speaking spinoff: Hope is Not a Strategy.
Strategy is about making the right decisions to get from a given situation into a desired future state. Ideally, an organization follows a clear, comprehensive, and transparent path to create its business strategy. But all too often, such a path does not exist or is not known. Strategy becomes “gut feeling” and is implemented inconsistently.
I believe that learning needs to be a top leadership priority in our fast-paced world. And our business leaders could easily shortcut the path for learning departments by deciding to follow workflow learning principles as outlined, for example, in the 5 Moments of Need framework.
To me, impact includes mindset, terminology, process, simplification, onboarding speed, skill development, operational efficiency, consistency in strategy and operations, transparency, and availability.
Focusing on impact might bring the topic of learning to the forefront of decision makers’ minds—not because of the learning itself, but because of the ultimate business results that workflow learning yields for any organization that needs to survive in today’s fast-paced and ever-changing environment.
Further Reading & Links:
- https://learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/2050/skillcamp-linking-learning-to-business-outcomes-through-performance-support
- https://learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/blended-learning-at-skillcamp
- https://learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/2430/-a-maturity-model-approach-to-measuring-corporate-learning
- https://hope-is-not-a-strategy.podigee.io