Forward Momentum: Delivering Results

By Rob Zell

It’s soccer season again and I’m reminded how culture and fit impact performance. Your organization depends on both elements to be successful. If you ignore the impact of culture and fit, you are doomed to fail. In this post, I’ll be discussing a bit of both.

I was reminded of fit this evening after speaking to a parent who wants to pull her child from my team of eight year old soccer players. She has some very compelling arguments as to why he should no longer play, the main reason being that he has never played the sport. Imagine being dropped into the design and development space at Valve computer games directed to code the next great game and you have no experience coding! Granted, my boys’ team isn’t World Cup caliber, but they have played for a few years and at least know the basics. In recreational soccer, I don’t have the luxury of “Hiring for Fit”; I play the hand I get dealt and we do the best we can. At the same time, soccer is the beautiful game and a ripe ground for creating a space in which youngsters can learn some basic skills and then should be innovative and creative about using those skills to achieve a common objective, namely, scoring more goals.

In your organization you do have the luxury of hiring for fit. In fact, it should be a priority. There is plenty of research out there that says if you do it, it results in a happier, more productive work force. Your people will have a sense of belonging and that makes them more likely to be successful. If they don’t “fit” they will consistently struggle to perform the basic functions of the organization. Making sure a hire is a fit in the organization means defining the culture.

In a post I wrote some time ago, I reflected on how coaching soccer can be compared to creating a culture of learning and development. It involves a lot of trial and error, awareness of what works and what doesn’t and plenty of positive reinforcement. I started wondering if my team culture was driving that behavior or driving it to extinction. After a hard look in the mirror, I started questioning my performance as a leader of culture.

Culture can be defined a few different ways and has been in plenty of literature. You can start at Wikipedia and continue your research from there. I recently facilitated a workshop in which I presented several elements of culture, namely: Symbols, Stories, Relationships and Rituals. Without exposing too much information, let’s just say that after quick reflection, I don’t think I’m creating the best culture for brand new players to join my team! Luckily, I have the insight (from my recent workshop) to know what my options are. I can either:

1. Change the objectives. Kind of difficult. We do want to win games but I could take some emphasis off that point.
2. Change the culture. That’s a tough one. It means changing my behavior which will require tremendous effort.
3. Prepare to fail. Okay, #2 is looking more realistic. I don’t want to fail as a coach or leader of a team.

You can look at your organization in a similar light. If the culture clashes with the objectives of the organization, then the culture will undermine your efforts. It is usually easier to modify your goals to fit your culture than change the entire culture. I’m not proposing you abandon them. I am saying you tweak them to fit the culture. In my case, my goal might shift from “Win as many games as possible” to “Demonstrate learning the game of soccer every time we play”. I think I can live with this, since we all get trophies regardless of how we perform (that’s a post for another day). Furthermore, I can change the culture of my team by working on my behavior during practice and during games.

You have a choice in your organization – define your culture and leverage it to be successful or be ignorant of the impact on performance and muddle through as you always have. Culture can be defined at the level of the organization all the way down to the business unit or work team. First, take some time to examine your culture and the fit of the team. Second, develop a plan to adapt for maximum success.

I’d love to hear what you think. How is the culture of your organization driving your business results?

By Rob Zell

How do we increase the longevity of a learning solution? In Part 1 of this series, I challenged the learning organization to examine some basics in their processes and create more effective solutions. In Part 2 of this series I challenged the learner to take a more active role in the learning experience and to share the new found knowledge and skill with the team. However, an effective learning intervention relies on three elements: the solution, the learners and the environment to which the learners will return. In this post, Part 3 of 3, I’m going to examine the environment into which the learner returns and the person responsible for that environment: the manager.

1. Be Laser Focused

As a manager, your people are constantly looking for opportunities to learn and develop themselves. Whether they state it in their development plans (as mandated by HR) or keep it rolling in their subconscious we all want to be the best at something. Your job is to help them get there while being laser focused on the goals of the organization and how your team contributes to those goals. There is rarely warm, fuzzy time to send folks away to training when you have reports to create, products to manufacture, clients to satisfy and budgets to meet. It is critical, therefore, to do two things:

1. Be constantly aware of the goals of the organization and how your team contributes to meeting those goals.
2. Grow your people in ways that help contribute to those ends.

Tune in to the potential you see in your employees and their own goals and align their needs to the business. Look for ways to give them opportunities to be better and contribute in a way that makes your team and the organization better. Does this sound self-serving? It shouldn’t. Think about organizations that rely on employees to be highly focused, demand constant improvement and have high standards for how success is measured. How about NBA basketball teams? As I write this, the NBA finals are underway. Consider how those organizations view talent development, even in their star players.

2. Get Help From Experts

Your organization probably has a training team just waiting to help you be more successful. Granted they may feel understaffed and can’t offer all the classes you want or need. But they are experts in the field of learning and can probably offer you options for informal methods of helping your people grow without formal classes or courseware. They can probably help you set up mentoring sessions, job shadowing, special projects, provide learning resources and draft objectives and outcomes that you can use to demonstrate the power of learning and the impact on your work group.

Don’t be fooled in to thinking that learning only happens at a learning event. Some of the best learning comes from actually working at something new and different. It might mean you need some coaching on how to help your people process and get the most from the experience. That’s ok; you are a learner too.

3. You Don’t Have To Be The Expert

One of the hardest parts of moving up the management ladder is change. You were probably promoted because you were the fastest developer, the most accurate auditor, the most analytical financier, or the most profitable salesperson. Your promotion has taken you from those ranks, and now you process reports, communicate goals and track budgets. You’ve stopped doing the work and started leading the work. It was great when you were still the expert, but times change. New hires have better info, faster tools, new ideas and different perspectives.

Again, that’s ok.

Part of leading is knowing when to turn over decision making to the team. Let them be the experts. Be a learner yourself and have your people demonstrate what they know and what they’ve learned so you can be better at leading and showing off how great your team is. Work to understand what they bring to the table and they will continue to want to grow and develop to be better. When you create an environment in which employees have the confidence to stay informed and look for improvements all the time, you build a stronger, more effective team that gets results. The team that gets results looks good and makes you look like the leader you want to be.

When you create the right atmosphere for learning you foster a team that seeks constant improvement, that shares knowledge, and that strives for success. To be effective, learning can’t be something that is done to you, or to your employees. Learning must be something that teams embrace and leverage for competitive advantage. What do you think? How are you leveraging the art of learning in your work group? What do you do well to foster learning and what obstacles do you face that derail the process?

By Rob Zell

Note: This is Part 2 of 3. Read Part 1 here.

How do we increase the longevity of a learning solution? In Part 1 of this series, I challenged the learning organization to examine some basics in their processes and create more effective solutions. However, an effective learning intervention relies on three elements: the solution, the learners and the environment to which the learners will return.

In this post, part 2 of 3, I’m going to challenge all of us to rethink how we as learners should prepare for the learning and apply what we take from our learning experiences. I’m going to challenge you to think about your own behavior and re-invent yourself as a learner.

Prepare Yourself

As learners we have an obligation to show that the investment of time and resources has a payoff. That’s right, I said obligation. We also have to own our development plan and look for ways to incorporate what we learn into our daily activities.

1. One critical element is knowing how we best learn and apply information. Are you a visual learner? Be prepared to create mind maps and take notes as images of what you see. Learn best by listening? Maybe you want to record the session to listen to later. If you are a kinesthetic learner, keep a small squishy ball handy to fiddle with and be an active note taker. Armed with some basic knowledge regarding how you best process new information can help you plan ways to apply new information and get the most from the experience.
2. Learning is not an event, so quit thinking about it that way. As learners we owe some due diligence to the process. In your favorite journaling tool (notebook, binder, Outlook) jot down some thoughts on why you have enrolled in the learning experience, what you hope to gain, how it benefits your current work, and how it might improve your performance. What knowledge or experience do you have that relates to the topic? When you enter the learning with your own point of view you engage in the content as an active participant rather than a passive one.

Enjoy the Experience

Think about the learning experience as a chance to reinvent yourself. How often do you have the chance to try and fail without repercussions (not a good example if you are engaged in food or workplace safety training mind you)? A quality learning experience should give you the opportunity to explore the content, roll it around your mind and apply it to build skills in a safe environment.

Close the Loop on the Experience

Once the session is over, it’s time to start applying and sharing what you learned. Here are some things you can do to add permanence to your new knowledge.

1. Take your new knowledge and skills and purposefully apply them to the work. One basic tenet of adult learning is that we learn by applying our prior experiences to new information.
2. Blog about your experience or share it with the team over lunch.
3. Build a new process map and post it in your work space as a visual reminder.
4. Involve your manager or peer group.
5. Ask others for input. Ask others to respond to what you have learned and give them a chance to weigh in. When we broaden the experience pool by involving others we come to a more robust understanding of the content.
6. Plan your own follow-up. Most of use some type of software that allows us to plan to-do items and create checklists. Create some personal items and schedule them 30, 60 and 90 days out. Schedule time with yourself to check in on your progress. Think about what you recall and what you have used.
7. Consider previous challenges and obstacles. How could you have used your new found knowledge and skills to overcome them?

The learning activity itself is rarely the magic bullet that fixes everything. It can be a very powerful experience that adds to your productivity and effectiveness if you participate in the right activities and take an active role in your own experience.

What do you think? How are you owning your learning experiences and making them practical and powerful?

By Rob Zell
This is part 1 of a 3-part series. This article is aimed at learning organizations.

I’ve worked in several organizations supporting schools, restaurants and retailers, and in every one the question is always, “How do we make the learning stick?” In schools, the goal is to make sure students can remember the information to be prepared for college level work or at least to be productive members of society. In business, the goal is to be prepared for challenges in the work place. I’m going to tackle this topic over the next three blog posts: first, what should learning departments do to impart knowledge; second, what should learners do to enhance their retention; and finally, what should managers do to reinforce learning.

1. Build a Better Mousetrap

Learning organizations spend countless hours figuring out the best way for people to learn new knowledge and behaviors that will drive the success of the business. Unfortunately, many organizations get stuck in a rut and find it difficult to break out of their routine of delivering training the same way, time and time again. They produce job aids that look the same or more booklets in a series. The problem isn’t one of creating an internal brand; the problem is that given the available resources it is often easier to use an existing model than to branch out into new territory. For example, the job aid created to help new employees navigate the company intranet is not necessarily the best template to use for other skills.

2. Start With the End in Mind

It doesn’t matter if you are training project management or selling skills, the same set of rules apply to create highly effective training materials.

1. Identify the behavior that you desire and ask what the person needs to know to perform.
2. Design tools that present that information in a way that appeals to multiple learning styles.
3. Provide learners a chance to process the information and try it out through problem solving or experimentation.

This is a very high level look at the tasks of designing the right training tool and there are many steps in between.

3. Provide a Total Solution

You may have an elegant solution in mind but to really serve the organization you should look at the whole performance picture. What obstacles keep people from performing? Are their barriers in terms of time, technology, or other resources? Is the desired behavior currently being rewarded or is it unknowingly punished? For example, while working for a retailer we identified that employees rarely moved onto the sales floor to provide service or suggestively sell. The operations team came to us wanting more “Selling Skills” training. As part of our review of the performance we gave the operations team feedback that the highest priority in the store was placed on “reducing the wait time in line” and customers often became agitated if employees on the floor didn’t open a new register. So along with training materials we also recommended a dedicated floor person and staffing solutions that would keep them on the sales floor helping customers. We also recommended making a change to the Mystery Shopper questions such that on peak nights, the presence of a floor person was a critical success measurement.

4. Don’t Get Caught in a Rut

Learning organizations often go back to the well of ideas when presented with a new challenge. There is comfort and stability in using the tried and true methods: they are easy to use and modify; they are familiar to management and to the end users; and they have proven effectiveness. As long as you have sound success measures in place and you can prove the value of the training, there is no concern. But if you do find yourself in a rut and you seem to be training and retraining the same skills, you should consider challenging yourself and your learning team to develop some new ideas or exploring new spaces.

Reflect on the solutions you have provided your organization in recent months. Do they target the desired behavior or did other non-relevant info sneak in? Are there other factors contributing to poor performance besides lack of training? Are you delivering a hammer because in the past you created great hammers so you keep modifying the hammer design? You fix these things in your organization and in the next post I’ll look at how learners can enhance their own learning experience after they’ve received your elegant solutions.