THE NEXT BIG THINGS FOR THE FORTUNE 500?

A report from

Productivity Training Change

lessonly.com

While recently reading the writings of several Fortune 500 CEOs, I had one simple, yet profound realization: Their businesses, brands, and teams are dealing with the same challenges that smaller companies are.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Training thousands of retail associates is far more difficult than onboarding a few new salespeople. Driving greater productivity across 100,000 employees is harder than doing so for 10. And changing direction at a global enterprise is infinitely more complicated than at a startup.

But, regardless of organizational scale, the core challenges remain unchanged. Training will always be important, productivity can always improve, and managing change will always be difficult. In order to lead an organization that influences industries, markets, and even the globe, leaders must meet these challenges head-on.

I wholeheartedly believe that companies who invest in employee development will see radical returns in the market. Will you be one of them? We’d love to partner with you.

—MaxCEO and Co-founder, Lessonly

When the Fortune 500 thrives, so does the

global economy. According to Fortune, the

500 “represent two-thirds of the U.S. GDP with

$12 trillion in revenues, $890 billion in profits,

$19 trillion in market value, and employ 28.2

million people worldwide.” As consumers,

we continuously experience and interact with

these companies every day: When we open

our computers, wash our clothes, purchase

food, or drive our cars—and the list goes on.

But despite the aura of excellence that

surrounds the Fortune 500, they aren’t

perfect. They’re complex organizations

with thousands (sometimes hundreds of

thousands) of stakeholders—from employees

to execs to investors. It only takes a quick look

at an annual report to see the complexity of

a global enterprise. Alongside cash flows,

balance sheets, and legal disclaimers—you’ll

often find a letter from the CEO (Warren

Buffett is notable for having perfected the

art of the shareholder letter) addressing

successes, challenges, and plans for the

company’s future.

A survey of this year’s Fortune 500 annual

letters revealed three recurring focal points for

the coming year: productivity, training, and

change management. These three ideas touch

on questions of employee development that

plague any business: How do organizations

get the most out of employees? How can a

company prepare new hires to do their best

work? How do managers move disparate teams

quickly in the same direction?

These questions are the heartbeat of the greatest teams, and the

greatest companies.

INTRODUCTION

We’ll be focused on increasing productivity...This will provide capacity to make investments in our future and increase our return to shareholders.”

— David A. Ricks, CEO, Eli Lilly

Without productive employees, organizations

begin to bloat—particularly at the scale of the

Fortune 500. Leaders across a wide range of

industries and markets are seeking ways to

help their employees do more work, faster.

Those that do so will see leaner, more fiscally

responsible organizations that break new

ground and deliver remarkable shareholder

value in the process.

Annual Report 2016

PRODUCTIVITYPRODUCTIVITY

Google views its radically popular G-Suite

as a productivity tool—one that improves

how people work, and Lessonly was founded

with a similar mission in mind. The ever-

quickening pace of technology has made

business productivity software the bread and

butter of team improvement. But, it will take

more than just tools to create sustained team

productivity. Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos noted

in his annual letter, that Amazon seeks to,

“...have the scope and capabilities of a large

company and the spirit and heart of a small

one. But we have to choose it.” That balance

between scope and heart is exactly why the

Fortune 500 is trending toward productivity—

and why they need help getting there.

“As we look to our long-term investments in our productivity tools supported by our machine learning and artificial intelligence efforts, we see huge opportunities to dramatically improve how people work.”

— Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google

“The mentality of doing fewer things, but doing them more effectively, will be spread throughout the [Coca-Cola] enterprise. It’s clear that we need to be faster, more agile, and act with a greater sense of urgency.”

— James Quincey, CEO, The Coca-Cola Company

Founder’s Letter 2016

Shareholder Letter 2017

“As the pace of technological change accelerates, our people are adapting as never before. We’re using innovative training and building profiles of future job requirements to help our employees pivot their skills…”

— Randall Stephenson, President, CEO, & Chairman, AT&T

Letter to Shareholders 2016

TRAINING

80% of L&D professionals note that training is

top-of-mind for their executive team. The best

leaders understand that front-line employees

are an essential cog in the organization

wheel; they interact directly with consumers,

and their behavior can make—or break—a

customer’s experience with the brand.

Josh Bersin, founder and principal at Bersin

by Deloitte, notes that, “The single biggest

driver of business impact is the strength of

an organization’s learning culture.” Perhaps

that’s why Fortune 500 CEOs continue to

mention training as an essential focus for

their companies.

Across the Fortune 500, many companies

still use antiquated training techniques,

materials, and processes that create sub-

optimal experiences for employees and

sub-optimal bottom line results. Among the

greatest benefits of recent tech innovation

is the ability to create, share, and apply

information at scale. The rampant popularity

of the app economy and social media prove

this fact. And yet, so many companies have

been slow to apply this same logic to training

their employees. Forward-thinking companies

are doing just that—moving from in-person

training with huge binders of material to

blended or remote training using online

training platforms. They get better results,

and save hundreds of thousands of dollars

along the way.

“[Our associates] are the face of our company, and we equip them with the training and knowledge to provide customers with an outstanding wireless experience…This focus also is a powerful factor in attracting and retaining outstanding associates.”

— Kenneth R. Meyers,

President, Chairman,

CEO, U.S. Cellular

“At Walmart, we’re harnessing the power of technology and the investments in our associates to create new ways of serving customers and provide associates with more opportunities to grow their careers.”

— Doug McMillon, CEO, Walmart

Annual Report 2016

Annual Letter 2017

“Recognize true misalignment issues early and escalate them immediately. Sometimes teams have different objectives and fundamentally different views. They are not aligned.”

— Jeff Bezos, Chairman and CEO, Amazon.com Annual Report 2017

CHANGE MANAGEMENT

It’s a fact—aligning a large organization is

significantly harder than getting a small

team on the same page. And when the team

involves thousands of employees across tens,

or even hundreds, of locations, changing

directions can seem impossible. Shifting

people, processes, and methodologies to meet

new goals requires visionary, intentional

leadership. And executive teams need

powerful, yet simple tools to help them

implement and coordinate change at scale.

Changing the direction of a giant like GE

takes significant investment. The tension of

applying resources to drive results today while

planning for tomorrow is omnipresent in the

C-suite. And whether designing jet engines—or

flipping hamburgers—continuous change is a

reality, and an imperative. But the leaders who

are forward-thinking enough to invest time,

money, and energy into a healthy, proactive

change management strategy will go down in

organizational history as innovators.

They just need the right change management

tools to help them get the job done.

“Positioning GE to win has required change… We refocused the company to be in businesses where we can lead while investing in new capability to capture future growth...The challenge for any company is to invest in the future while delivering results.”

— Jeffery R Immelt, Chairman and CEO, GE

“...I stepped into the CEO role with one mandate: Turn around the business. We committed to moving faster, pushing harder and taking smarter risks—and in doing so, fundamentally changed the course of our business….We’re concentrating on our biggest opportunities—and stopping what doesn’t add to our bottom line.”

— Steve Easterbrook, President and CEO, McDonald's

Annual Report 2016

Letter to Shareholders 2017

Lessonly Helps Fortune 500 Companies Learn, Practice, and Perform

Training. Productivity. Change Management.

These ideas can seem big, unwieldy, and

complicated.

That’s why we built Lessonly.

We’ve spent the last 5 years developing our

learning software for just these purposes—

to aid organizations as they seek greater

productivity, better training for their

employees, and a platform to drive change

at scale. We exist to help the world’s greatest

companies do better and we’re already helping

some of them, with radical success.

The Lessonly Model

LearnCapture and share essential work knowledge that helps

your team succeed.

PracticeImprove and reinforce skills and best practices to keep your team

on the path to high-performance.

PerformDeliver and measure quicker ramp times, increased productivity, happier customers, and more closed deals.

CONCLUSION

How can we help you?Take a Tour of Lessonly Today.

407 Fulton St., #302,Indianapolis, IN 46202

(317) 469-9194

IL

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