the convergence of strategy and learning

© 2006-2010 Roland Deiser CLO Symposium – Sep 27-29, 2010

The Convergence of Strategy and

Corporate Learning

Roland Deiser Founder & Chairman, European Corporate Learning Forum (ECLF)

Senior Fellow, Center for the Digital Future, USC Annenberg

[email protected]

Fall 2010 CLO Symposium

September 27-29, 2010 Laguna Niguel, California/USA


Rethinking the Paradigm of Learning


Massive Change and Disruption

Knowledge Based Competition

Global Horizontal Networks

New Role of the Periphery

New Strategic Importance of

Learning

Learning is Gaining Strategic Importance – for the Sustainability of Societies and Corporations


Redifining the Paradigm of Learning


A 5-Level Model of Corporate Learning Interventions...


A Comprehensive Learning Architecture Needs to Tap into a Variety of Tools and Interventions

Some Examples…


Redefining the Paradigm of Learning has an Impact on the Identity and Scope of the Learning Function

Functional Responsibility

Organizational Challenge

Strategic Challenge

Learning and Development Department

All relevant stakeholders of the

organization

Customers Suppliers Alliances

Competitors Regulators

Human Resource Function

Enterprise

Enlarged Value Chain

1 + 2

3 + 4

5

Low

Medium

High

Impact on Business System

Perception of „Learning“

Key Players Within Learning Architecture

Reference System Stage

external organizational barriers

internal organizational barriers


Under the New Paradigm, Learning Becomes Embedded as a Leadership Practice

Happens primarily in hierarchical expert-student relationship

Happens primarily in horizontal peer-to-peer relationship

Transfers existing knowledge, trains prescribed behavior

Puts existing perspectives and behavior into question

Focus on qualification for future application requires learning transfer

Focus on ongoing innovation, change and transformation transfer is not an issue

Happens remote from practice Is embedded in practice

Restricted Paradigm Comprehensive Paradigm

Learning as People Development Learning as Strategic and Organizational Process

Focus primarily on cognitive competences

includes social, political, and ethical competences

Learning as Educational Practice Learning as Leadership Practice


The Strategy Challenge


A New View of Strategy is Emerging

Emerging View Traditional View

Strategy as extrapolating the past

Strategy as an analytical exercise

Strategy as top management activity

Strategy as positioning in an existing Industry Space

Strategy as fit with resources

Strategy as creating the future

Strategy as an analytical and organizational exercise

Strategy as comprehensive organizational process

Strategy as creating new industry space

Strategy as stretch and leverage


From Strategic Planning to Strategic Management

  Numbers

  Pieces of Paper

  Committees and Reports

  Once a Year Exercise

  Planning Department/Staff

  Secret Process Known Only to CEO and Top Management

Strategic Management Is Not

  Qualitative Rationale for Focus and Action Taking Throughout the Organization

  Organizational Foundation plus Behavior = Results

  Informal, "Natural", Dynamic Process

  Continuous Action/Learning/Change Process

  Led and Enacted by Senior and Middle Management

Strategic Management Is


Ambidexterity Revisited: Linking Strategy, Innovation, and Learning

Agenda for a Strategic Learning Architecture

Win the Present Create the Future

Agenda for Performance Improvement

Agenda for Sustaining/Renewing Strategic

Leadership

Agenda for Industry and Company Transformation

•  What game are we playing today?

•  What are the Key Success Factors?

•  How do we compare against our toughest competitors on key industry drivers?

•  What is our position in key segments?

•  How well are we utilizing our assets and capabilities?

How can we leverage our product, technology, and people capabilities

to re-define value creation for key

customer/market segments?

•  What game will we play in the future?

•  How can we accelerate industry and company transformation in ways that benefit us?

•  What is the appropriate business model for that?

•  What related capabilities will the company require?

+ + Understand Potential Discontinuities


  What is the company‘s point of view about its future?

  What is its business model for creating and capturing value?

  What unique capabilities support the business model?

  What new capabilities will have to be acquired and how will they be embedded?

  What capabilities can be developed internally, what requires partnering, what acquisitions?

  How can the company stay alert to inflection points that will re-define value in its business?

  What is the company‘s migration path? Actions that will help it win in the present while creating the future?

  What type of leadership culture needs to be developed to make the necessary change happen?

Strategic Agenda of a Typical Corporation


A Learning Architecture Needs to Impact the Domains That Are Critical for Ongoing Strategic Innovation

Relationship to the External World

M&A, Corporate venturing, open innovation, customer

centricity

Organizational Design foster cross boundary processes,

knowledge brokerage; create heavy teams

Organizational Culture Allow and design for difference

and diversity, commit to managing ambidexterity

People Develop Leadership

competencies - managing creative talent, risk taking,

entrepreneurship

Strategy and Business Rationale

Understand and critically reflect business models

Arenas for Corporate Learning

Interventions


Learning and the Strategy Process: A Simple Framework


3 Distinctive Elements of the Strategy Process

Strategy Generation

Strategy Formulation

Strategy Execution

The strategy process is not a sequence of clearly separated steps (traditional planning paradigm),

It is rather an iterative and circular process that leads to organizational learning and the development of strategic competence


Strategy Generation

  Is about understanding environmental forces and organizational capabilities

 Can be intuitive or analytical

 Happens throughout the entire organization

 Can be planned/ organized through mechanisms and processes, or it happens coincidental, “anarchical”

  “Designed Irritation” is an important source for seeing differently

 Seeing differently is an important source for creating novel strategies that redefine existing business models

Dominant Logic: “Ask” - “Listen”


Strategy Formulation

  Is about dealing with risks and opportunities

 Sets directions that also include exclusion of alternative opportunities

 Makes choices explicit

 Usually a very political process, including multiple stakeholders

 Has impact on allocation of resources

  Is only partly rational

  Is rooted in existing mindsets and cognitive frameworks

  Is a function of power dynamics

Dominant Logic: “Decide” - “Choose”


Strategy Execution

 Requires political strategy and tactics

 Micro politics are important

 Cascading Training efforts may be required to build new capabilities and/or establish new routines

  Interventions for conscious unlearning may be required

 Project Management is key (establishing processes, milestone planning, prioritizing of actions, controlling etc)

 Execution is source of learning in terms of experiences that loop back to Generation

 Challenge to cope with variety of situations

Dominant Logic: “Tell” - “Know”


The Three Elements Of The Strategy Process Follow Fundamentally Different Rationales

All levels within relevant network cluster Center, top level Periphery + all levels,

also external constituencies

Organizational level involved

Convincing, explaining Reasoning, arguing Investigating, understanding Dialogue

Culture

Organizational inertia, Power issues (vertical)

Different assumptions, perceptions; Power issues (horizontal)

Ignorance towards the unknown Conflicts

Cascading Workshops, Townhall Meetings,

Organizational alignment

Top Executive Forum Workshops Learning Expeditions,

Customer visits Activities

Create learning designs for “telling” Enable constructive

discourse Create learning designs for “listening” Role of

Learning

Employees, Customers, Strategic Partners Senior Executives,

Board of Directors Customers, Competitors, Employees

Stakeholders

Complying, accepting Experimenting,

exploiting

Fighting, struggling, reasoning, competing

Inquiry, curiosity, open to new perspectives, learning, exploring

(Socio) Dynamics

Generation Formulation Execution


How Do Your Current Activities and Projects Fit With These Conceptual Frameworks?


More Details in My New Book That Also Features Ten Case Studies From Global Corporations

Featuring cases from •  ABB•  BASF•  USArmy

•  EADS•  UniCredit•  PricewaterhouseCoopers•  Novar=s •  Siemens

•  EnBW

•  DeutschePostDHL


Please Do not Hesitate to Being in Touch

More material at www.rolanddeiser.com

Contact me at [email protected]


Not Used


What is learning anyway?

Knowledge Transfer is only a very small part of the equation

The Cartesian paradigm: Mechanistic, restricted to the cognitive, one way street


negotiating meaning to create a shared understanding of the world

The Essence of Learning

The participative paradigm: Dynamic, social, tapping into the mutual expertise of learners


Well Designed, a Corporate Learning Architecture Impacts the Culture, Structure, and Strategy of the Firm

  Help identify key strategic Issues   Facilitate strategic decision making   Help implement strategic initiatives   Help build the right capabilities

  Work across organizational boundaries   Help improve managerial systems and

mechanisms   Build flexibility and responsiveness into

the organization

  Help create shared vision   Help create leadership culture   Integrate and socialize members   Encourage discourse and collaboration   Help create openness, trust

Capability Portfolio

Business Model

Strategy

Structure Culture


Key Questions for a Strategic Learning Architecture

  What institutional structures and systems exist within the firm and between its relevant external partners as a managed framework for developing and nurturing strategic competence (learning architecture)?

  What is the specific business model driving this framework? How is it linked to the operational core of the firm? How does it work as a competence and business developing "engine"?

  What are organizational cornerstones of the framework?

  Which practices does the framework contain, and how are they interrelated?

  Which players are actively and intentionally included within the framework? How are they managed?

the convergence of strategy and learning

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paradigm of learning

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educational practice

learning transfer focus

strategy challenge

future strategy

people development learning

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