W

Knowing and DoingHow to Put LearningWhere the Work Is

The idea that knowing and doing should be tightly linked may seem

like a management no-brainer. But progress in putting learning more

directly on the path of work has been slowed by conventional thinking.

How can leaders move learning to the places and people where it can

most powerfully further the strategy of the company? First, they must

put aside old habits and form a new perspective about where the most

important learning takes place.

by Frank P. Bordonaro

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here else would onewant to have learning occur than atthe places where it can most directlylead to better performance? For cen-turies people have been learning instudios, laboratories, and fabricationplants under tutelage and with toolsand materials in their hands. Duringthe Renaissance, plaster sculptures

were hauled from one painting salonto another so students could use themas models while master painterscoached. Similar arrangements con-necting learning and work havedeveloped in the crafts, skilled labor,and to some degree the sciences.

What about business? The ideathat knowing and doing should belinked in the management and profes-sional ranks is only now coming intoits own. The obvious common senseof such linkage is still rarely dis-cussed among leaders in most corpo-rations. For the learning strategist,that spells opportunity.

Why has corporate executive edu-cation been separated from the workto begin with? In general, manage-ment and professional skills have not

Editor’s note: This article is adaptedfrom a chapter in Corporate Learning:Proven and Practical Guidelines, byFrank P. Bordonaro and MichaelDulworth, to be published in April byJossey-Bass. The company examples inthis article were used in the article“Budgets Are Getting Squeezed—Timeto Invest in Learning?” HumanResource Planning, vol. 26, no. 4.

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originated from the hands-on, appliedbranch of education. They haveinstead been an outgrowth of a secondmodel, based on university traditions.Preparation for business leadership,like preparation for other socially ele-vated roles, has been thought to resultfrom a long socialization processwherein conceptual material is readabout, discussed, and explored byextended example. Even in today’sbetter university executive programsand in corporate learning centers,management learners work under animplied absorb-store-apply model.

What is the practical implicationof this? If you are a human resourceor learning executive sitting in a cor-porate office, you are probably incharge of the most senior training andlearning going on in the company.That’s a nice opportunity for leveragebut it’s also a limitation. It means youhave inherited the second model, theone removed from the work. You mayeven be in charge of a corporate uni-versity, a name that speaks volumesabout the underlying model. Andthere is a further, closely connectedbarrier between you and the points ofaction: hierarchy. Senior people areorganizationally distant from cus-tomers. So you are not only removedfrom the work in time and space butthe roles of your audience lack theimmediacy of customer impact. In afast-moving world, this is a box youdon’t want to be in. After all, some-one is in charge of learning that hap-pens close to customers, and if it isbased on local traditions and

parochial impulses, if it is removedfrom the rallying cry of the company,then it too has disadvantages.

This article is about helping lead-ers of learning to break out of thehistorical box that confines them tothe absorb-store-apply model and tomove learning to the places and thepeople where it can most powerfullyfurther the strategy of the company.

The timing is good to make such ashift. Recent advances in technologyand the effects of financial strugglesin the corporate world have conspiredto bring about some refreshing depar-tures from old habits. As the pace ofwork has increased and reinventioncycles have been shortened, the pres-sures to use what I know and learnthings I can use now have increased.That’s why the recent spate of inno-vations in simultaneous knowing anddoing is welcome.

Thanks to these beginnings,today’s learning planners are in aposition to seek competitive advan-tages for their companies throughthoughtful adaptations of these newpractices.

PLANNING STEPSBut where to begin? The simple callto put learning where the work iswon’t help much if the work is hap-pening everywhere. A few simpleplanning steps are needed:

First, assume for planning purposesthat the rest of the organization existsto help the people on the customerfront to win. Then lay out the otherimportant work in order of its organi-zational distance from the customer.

This means you need to look atthe organization horizontally insteadof vertically. Picture the enterprise asa chain of four interconnected zonesof work.

In Zone 1, the customer front,people have a number of ways inwhich they engage, secure commit-ments from, and retain relationshipswith customers. Typically, these cus-tomer facers locate, inform, educate,

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listen, counsel, interpret needs, setexpectations, and exchange promises.

Zone 2, operations, is aboutservicing and supporting what ishappening at the customer front: dis-tributing information and communi-cation devices, formalizing andrecording commitments, convertingverbal and written transactions intomonetary ones, and carrying outfollow-up activities with both cus-tomers and customer-facing individ-uals. This zone is also a carrier ofmessages (such as regulations andpricing policy changes) from furtherinside the organization and some-times monitors Zone 1 activities onbehalf of management.

Zone 3, finding market opportuni-ties and creating and designingproducts, is concerned with offeringproducts and devising services ofpotential value to customers. This isabout scanning the universe ofpotential customers and, consideringwhat the organization can reason-ably expect to provide, selecting themarkets and the value propositionsthat will be offered to them.Decisions made here end up placing customer facers in front ofcertain customers instead of othersand with certain products and ser-vices instead of others. Dependingon the industry, these products andservices range widely, from financialabstractions to new tire treads, butthe idea is to assemble and reassem-ble whatever existing or new partsone can get one’s hands on and cre-ate something of potential value to acustomer in a selected market.

Zone 4 is interpreting reality andallocating resources. This is the busi-ness of the top brass and their sup-porting experts.

ON THE PATHThese definitions ought to soundfamiliar; they account for most of thework that goes on to bring value tocustomers. They do not say muchabout work done just to maintain an

Frank P. Bordonaro, a con-

sultant in corporate learning

based in Wilton, Connecticut,

is former chief of learning

for Prudential Financial,

McDonnell Douglas, and S. C.

Johnson.

A B O U T T H E A U T H O R

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organization’s existence, which repre-sents a huge share of most compa-nies’ resources. Those kinds of workhave been purposely, if only tem-porarily, swept aside. Why? Becausewe tend to gravitate toward themwhen we plan learning, which is whycorporate learning functions are sooften preoccupied with supervision,management, and leadership. Thepoint is not to discount the impor-tance of those undertakings but toencourage more concern for workthat is directly on the path leading tothe all-important customer.

Consider the total learning field ofplay just described and use it to makean inventory of the learning invest-ments going on in your organizationtoday (staff, curriculum, populationserved, and gross annual dollars).This inventory may be as detailed asyou like or it may be approximate.The idea is to get a feel for the distri-bution of resources being invested inthe work that is on the path to thecustomer.

You might try this simpleapproach. Devote a single sheet ofpaper to each of your businesses. Foreach business, divide the sheet intorectangles, with each rectangle repre-senting a zone of work (1 through 4).Now adjust the size of each rectangleto show the degree to which changesin role, process, and performance ineach zone are important to the busi-ness strategy. For example, if thestrategy calls for a shift in distribu-tion channels but not a shift in prod-ucts or markets, Zones 1 and 2 wouldbecome larger than Zones 3 and 4.

Within each rectangle, draw a cir-cle to indicate the dollar amount cur-rently spent annually on learning.Size the circles so you can compareat a glance the amounts spent in eachzone. Inside each circle, put the cur-rent headcount for learning, training,and development. This exercise cangive you a feel for allocations andmisalignments quickly.

Next, make note of where acrossthese zones your present corporate

learning function has control andaccountability. The common arrange-ment is for Zone 4 to be the concernof more senior positions, whereasZones 3 and 2 are the concern ofdivisional and functional learninggroups, and Zone 1 is in the controlof local (operating unit) management.In companies dominated by a retailbusiness model, the corporate officemay be in charge of local training,and there are all kinds of matrixarrangements. For the moment, how-ever, we are trying to answer basicquestions:

• As we look at the learningwork being done in the zones, wheredo we seem to be best addressingperformance needs? Where do we fallshort? Where are we uncertain oflearning effectiveness?

• In light of the company’s rally-ing cry, how would learningresources ideally be allocated, regard-less of who is in charge of them?

• Which specific kinds of workand which target populations in eachzone are most important to the strat-egy of the business?

NEW GROUNDHere are some examples, one foreach zone, of companies that havebegun to move learning and workcloser together:

Zone 1: Century 21Century 21, a residential real-estatepowerhouse, with 88,000 brokers,knows all about the challenges ofrunning a complex learning supportsystem at the customer front. Beforethe company reinvented its fieldtraining, a staff of 4,500 trainersswarmed the 6,600-office operation,running classrooms of franchiseesthrough manuals produced by a largecentral staff. Today, just 150 roving“master trainers,” who collaboratewith local manager-coaches and a handful of central-office designers,handle the same massive learning

task. The learning load grows daily.To compete, brokers need skills inpresentation software, digital photog-raphy, Web-based advertising, andwireless office management, to namejust a few. Century 21’s system han-dles it all.

How does the company do it?First, it figured out which contentwas absolutely crucial for brokers toproduce income. All learning contentand objectives were then geared tothat simple goal. Media selectionswere made with an eye to optimumvalue and ease of distribution (forinstance, no streaming video whenstored video would do). The learninggroup made access easy, offering 120hours of free on-line learning; hold-ing live, on-line classes; and makingvirtual classroom learning at home anattractive option.

The company’s final results arehard to fault. Attrition, the cost mon-ster of all storefront businesses, wascut in half in the first two years ofoperation, while agent income grewby 16 percent. All of this saw thefirm through a 145 percent expansionof agent population. The cost oftraining ran above prior years in theinaugural cycle, then dipped belowhistorical levels—and stayed there.

Zone 2: XeroxEarly in this decade, Xerox, whichwas determined to hang onto its next-generation executive talent, wanted torevise its methods of developingemerging leaders. Like many corpora-tions, Xerox found value in deployingtalented junior executives to tackle ahost of internal issues. Operationssupporting customer-facing groupswere included in the problem-solvingagenda. In pursuit of better efficien-cies and longer reach for the action-learning model, Xerox brought in alongtime leadership developmentpartner, CCL, to help out. CCL joinedXerox in taking a firm step intocyberspace. CCL recast the classic

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action-learning model as a blend oflearning modalities. In-person interac-tions are now reserved for problemselection, team building, on-lineworkspace practice, presentations, andproposals. On-line work is sand-wiched between face-to-face sessions.Self-assessment tools have beenrepurposed for desktop use, and mostof the project work is performed online by the geographically dispersedteams.

By orchestrating the modules formutual support and providing coachesand tutorial help, the new model isachieving efficiencies. A six-monthprogram replaced an earlier two-yearversion, and delivery and tuition costshave been reduced by 60 percent.

Zone 3: S. C. Johnson

Few consumer product companiescan rival the brand and product pro-duction records of S. C. Johnson. Yetcompany insiders can tell you that thebusiness of developing fresh ideasinto popular products—much lessdoing so while servicing the tastesand customs of consumers in morethan fifty countries—is a tall task.Scientists, marketers, country man-agers, financial analysts, and a host ofothers must fulfill individual roleswhile pursuing, in cooperation withothers, a fierce desire to innovate forthe worldwide market.

The first step in the process ofmoving learning and work closertogether was to rethink the coordina-tion of separate groups as a designproblem, with creation of customervalue as the end product and a smallteam representing the specialistgroups as the operating engine. Thecompany elicited help from outsideexperts who could blend knowledgeof product development processeswith expertise in group dynamics.Time was spent selecting design-teamleaders who had knowledge of the

company and its processes yet couldbring an off-mainstream perspec-tive—a European executive has beenplaced in charge of a U.S. team, forexample. In turn, leaders of all designgroups are receiving special supportin their roles and meet as peers to sortout issues. Meanwhile, the designteam members receive crash coursesin one another’s specialties, to lowerfences between various professionalperspectives. A policy of slowingdown to gain speed has been put intoplace, meaning members are pre-vented from making group decisionsuntil considerable front-end learninghas been completed. Finally, theteams use rigorous decision-makingand resource commitment processes.

One lesson from this example isthat certain irreducible learning fea-tures tend to come together in Zone3: the conception of the small workteam as a performing unit, the dual-track attention to content and process,the practice of sharing expert infor-mation (in place of exchanging expertopinions), and the role of the leaderas an objective broker all play a partin the ongoing quest.

Zone 4: AmerenThe work of top executives has notbeen exempt from the trend towardsimultaneous knowing and doing.Think, for example, of the fingertipaccess today’s executives have to dataand news from inside and outside thecompany. There is no doubt thatglobalization and the relentlessprogress of consolidation in marketand product families have conspiredto make new learning more time sen-sitive and more connected to topicswhere decisions are pending.

A concrete example of placingnew learning tools in the hands ofexecutives is provided by energyholding company Ameren, whichworked with visual-learning consul-tants Root Learning and managementconsulting firm Towers Perrin to

place learning directly in the path ofdecision making. Using specially cre-ated simulations and visual modelsdeployed at the desktop, business unitexecutives are able to calculate thecash flow impact of specific decisionsthey are considering. Supporting toolsprovide insights about the broadereconomics of the business, preservingthe larger context of individual deci-sions. This example offers only aglimpse of the coming changes in thedaily lives of executives. Technologyadvancements are playing a large rolein the new linkage between work andlearning at senior levels.

OUT WITH THE OLDOnce you have carefully consideredthe total possible strategic field ofplay for learning and have looked at afew examples of learning as it affectsdifferent zones of the enterprise, youcan make deliberate choices aboutyour location and degree of involve-ment. The overall message: put asideconventional ideas about where themost important learning work takesplace. The old hierarchical modelposes an implicit division of labor inwhich corporate learning functionsare preoccupied with senior training.This may not be right for your com-pany. A good learning strategy is tohold a firm opinion about the locationof critical work in all four zones andto lay claim to certain hot spotswhere learning can best be put to use.Although your work will emphati-cally include senior management, itmust address other zones as well.

The future will bring intense com-petition as companies race to knockdown barriers separating learning fromits immediate application to the workof the moment. Staking out new learn-ing territory across the four zones willprovide a good start to setting new pri-orities that place your managers andleaders on the long-neglected path ofapplied learning.

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