Gooooooo Dawgs! ....Building Season.

I am a proud University of Georgia alumnus and support the Red and Black year in and year out. This has been a frustrating season as our results on the football field have been lackluster (though other programs are doing very well). Back in my college days when the team went through a rough patch here and there my friends and I joked that it was “building season.”

This year I initially complained that this was Mark Richt’s fault. Obviously he didn’t develop a successor for Matthew Stafford. Hasn’t he ever heard of bench strength? Where’s the succession planning? I realize that often these phrases are used in a corporate context but doesn’t it still apply?

I am not a college football expert. Frankly, I have no idea what I’m talking about regarding Richt’s decisions. Overall, I like him as a coach and a leader and I hope he stays a long time. I do know a thing or two about training and bench planning. Regardless of your stand on Georgia football, the context can help us think about planning in your organization.

1. It isn’t enough to coach and develop current leaders. Candidates need time and opportunity to experience real life situations. Once you identify the back-up quarterback, this up and coming leader needs a chance to get on the field. It isn’t enough to put them in when you’re up by 30; future leaders need the chance to experience the normal pressure of the role. This is easier to do in the office than on the football field…or is it?
2. Play to the strength of the successor. Don’t expect that a successor will be exactly like your current leader. The current leader leveraged a set of skills and leadership characteristics to be successful. The successor may have the experience to do the job tasks and have different leadership characteristics that can impact how the job gets done.
3. Never stop developing bench strength. Just because you have a replacement lined up doesn’t mean you can’t prepare a second replacement or start cross-training leaders across functions. This is critical to building a well-rounded, engaged team.
4. Give up and coming leaders the opportunity to actually lead the team not just be the voice of the team. Being the go-to person while you are on vacation is a nice pat-on-the-back for your successor. Unless you empower your stand-in the right way, it hardly puts them in a position to be a decision-maker or to hold the team and other leaders accountable to organizational goals.
   

The challenge is to make all these things happen within a learning culture and to build formal and informal systems that will support old and new leaders. Some ideas include:

• Classroom experiences - Great for best practice sharing and leader networking.
• Wikis and blogs - Useful for capturing ideas that team leaders and managers can search later.
• Just-in-time tools: Provide questions that any leader could access to help them facilitate a book or article review, meeting agendas, short instructional videos, podcasts, audiobooks, etc.
• E-learning – Distribute training that communicates the leadership platform provides consistency across the organization and the opportunity to learn at one’s own pace.
• Mentoring programs – These should be learning opportunities for mentors and mentees so be ready to help both sides prepare for the relationship.
• Blended programs – Well sure, why would you only choose one way when multiple means have the best chance of ensuring execution?
  

My Dawgs will come out of their slump (soon I hope) and at least we beat Georgia Tech. Your business has the chance to avoid dips in performance by making sure leaders are in the wings and engaged in the business rather than feeling ignored and constantly put off. By continuing to develop future leaders and keep them engaged in the growth of the organization, you can keep your business growing and thriving.

Getting Started in a Collaborative World

Today I embark on my own adventure in learning - blogging. Web 2.0, a topic all the rage for some time now, has huge impact on learning. Many learning professionals, myself included, are guilty of attending webinars and conferences to gather information on this phenomenon only to return to our "real lives" and continue our normal routines. Sometimes we become inspired, and we write business cases and story boards for the way our organizations could start using this technology. We become very excited at the prospect of blogs and wikis and forums (oh my!). Finally, proposal in hand we are asked by the business owner, "How will this increase profits? How will you know they've learned anything? Will they be certified in anything? What's the ROI on all this technology?" Deflated we return to our work spaces and wonder, how do you convince the business that informal learning is a sound investment, especially in times like these?


For those interested, I have a few thoughts on the way you begin to convince your clients, the business owners, that the collaborative tools of this generation are more effective, more cost-efficient, and easier to use and implement.


1. People already have the knowledge you need. There are already people in the organization performing at a high level. Learning Managers must document how high performers create success and develop ways to package them into consumable/deliverable chunks. Whenever possible, involve the experts: it lends credibility to the outcome. Find out what they know and, more important, what they need to know to be successful. Often there is a large gap between what they know and what they need to know to be successful. Help the experts hone down the knowledge and required skills to reach maximum performance. The icing on the cake: once the experts are identified you have a learning advisory board, the beginnings of a succession plan and a collection of mentors for new people in the organization.


2. You probably already have the resources in-house. Most organizations have some type of intranet that supports document sharing and communication. Everyone these days has a network and at least one or two "IT guys" keeping the wheels on the tech of the organization. For a bit of web server space you can set up a wiki or a blog (like this one). Chances are, your tech people can even build a web page that you can edit yourself to create learning news of the week and keep track of discussion threads on various business topics. If you've never heard of a wiki, check out wikipedia.org. The idea is simple, everyone who views the page can add content or edit it. Blogs can be powerful tools to have leaders in the organization communicate with the lines of business. Not only that, the lines of business can communicate back up the chain and provide feedback.


3. You have to get over the idea that you have all the answers. In short, see #1. Wikis, blogs, discussion threads and all the other ways to post user generated content, are designed to be iterative. Will bad info make its way onto your boards? Probably. The role of the Learning Manager becomes even more critical in filtering out the distracting information and educating people on how to use the tools to greatest advantage. The Learning Manager should partner with the business experts to validate the best practices shared in the wiki. She should make sure that forum topics are appropriately placed and screened. She should make sure that blog posts are well archived and searcheable. She must communicate to the organization the wealth of information that exists and how users obtain it.


In our current economy, we need the best people, doing the best work, with the best information, and the best tools. We have to set aside our fear that "someone else may know how to do the job better than me" and start sharing information and making it available, all the time. Competition is too fierce to wait for a class, online or instructor-led. By providing the information in easy to use chunks, easily read from a computer, or better yet, a mobile device, users can access learning all the time. And once they get a taste of learning in that way, they'll want it more and more.