Last week the manager of a plant involved in a major organizational change project claimed that the return-on-training of his classroom training courses was disappointingly low. Over the past weeks they have been switching over to SAP, by far the most popular platform in the segment of so-called ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software.

We have been preparing the users of his plant by means of extensive classroom trainings, both on process knowledge and systems skills. From his gut feeling he told me that his people demonstrated at best 10 to 15 percent return (i.e.: what they effectively remember and use in their jobs).

Training is the smallest part of Learning

I will not argue about the percentages. The point is that I obviously did not create the right expectations: he should be looking for the return-on-learning instead of the return-on-training! On this same blog I already announced the end of teaching and I also proclaimed that teaching is placebo. I even painted a picture about it in order to demonstrate what this means for SAP implementations specifically.

In retrospect the 10 to 15 percent reported by the plant manager is fairly high compared to what I always have been saying: 99% of what ‘Learning’ really is occurs outside of the classroom. The bottom-line is that training alone is not enough in order to make an organizational change happen. Increasing the quality of your training sessions will not leverage the return-on-training to the same extent. At the very best it is a starting point. From there on you will need to coach your way to the future state. The drawing below is taken from John Seely Brown (again!) and clearly depicts how learning really occurs

Now back to the return-on-training question. What could be the best way to increase that return? The answer is simple: this return can only increase if workplace learning has already occurred BEFORE the training session (in action, action through participation, participation with the world, participation with the problem and participation with other people, i.e., practices). Involvement, participation and ownership are key. 

The concept of Time-to-task is another way to look at it. Normally we use that term to describe that the training should occur as closely as possible to the task at hand. The only way return-on-training can increase is when time-to-task is negative. In plain English this means: people will get more out of a classroom training when they have been frustrated by real-life problems form the task at hand; they will posses an enormous learning pull and they will ask for and absorb every detail that is needed for the job at hand.

Here is a quote from David Maister to support that view:
"A good test for the timing of training would be as follows. If the training was entirely optional and elective, and only available in a remote village accessible only by a mule, but people still came to the training because they were saying to themselves, “I have got to learn this – it’s going to be critical for my future,” then, and ONLY then, you will know you have timed your training well. Anything less than that, and you are doing the training too soon."

Rethinking Knowledge Management

Participation, involvement and enculturation (i.e.: "belonging to") lies at the heart of learning. It also lies at the heart of knowing. Knowing has as much to do with picking up the genres of that particular sub-profession as it does with its conceptual framework. For example, how do you recognize whether a problem is an important problem, or a solution an elegant solution, or even what constitutes a solution in the first place?

Jerome Bruner made a brilliant observation some time ago when he said that we can teach people about a subject matter, for example, physics. That is, we can teach them the concepts, conceptual frameworks and facts of physics – the explicit knowledge of physics. But that does not make the student a physicist. To be a physicist he must also learn the practices of this profession. As he continues:
"We teach a subject not to produce little living libraries on that subject, but rather to get a student to think mathematically for himself, to consider matters as an historian does, to take part in the process of knowledge-getting."

So here we are. Now what? All the evidence tells us that learning is a social thing. It exists in action, participation with the world, participation with the problem and participation with other people, i.e., practices. A lot of the knowledge comes into being through the practices of the people and the environment you’re working in. The return-on-learning question reveals the challenge we face today for rethinking knowledge management:

1. shift our mindset from "pushing knowledge to people" (authority based and explicit) to "supporting people to participate in their productive inquiry" (situational based and on-the-fly)

2. Shift from tools to increase the individual knowledge stock to tools which support relationships and interaction. 

3. Shift rigid structures from managing an academy (where knowledge gathers dust) to facilitating an ecology of different communities-of-practice (where knowledge lives and evolves).

4. Do everything we possibly can in order to introduce Web 2.0 thinking in the boardroom. Think: collaboration and moments of truth instead of teaching!

Talking about organizational change management… there is work to do!

The organizational Change Portfolio stands the test of McKinsey. That’s what I found out as I was scanning the latest articles on organizational change management. Some time ago introduced the organizational change portfolio in the article “Wellness My Ass“. Now, looking at the results of the latest McKinsey survey (*), I feel less insecure and I can leave the power-talk behind.

The first and most significant finding of this survey is that the goals of an organizational change program are often poorly defined, and that this poor definition seems to be highly correlated with the success of the organizational change effort. What’s more, the most successful programs have goals that represent a clear stretch in performance compared to the current state of performance.

To me this underscores the need for the work stream “performance”, which starts with the business case, the feasibility study and most of all, the definition of unambiguous benefits.

Another finding is that the involvement of all staff as early as possible in the program lifecycle is a significant success factor. Although the CEO and the top team need to have a clear exposure of their engagement; they cannot do the job alone. This underscores the importance of engaging a broad network of ambassadors during the program and avoiding project cocooning. Freeing up the time of process owners, key users, team leaders and domain leaders is a tough job which involves a lot of discussions during the program; but it is an investment with high returns.

When it comes to the communication-part I was relieved to find out that redundancy of communication channels – a topic that I regularly preach about – is an important factor. Indeed, as the survey shows, successful companies used more than three times several different tactics for engaging the organization than their unsuccessful counterparts.

Overall, the organizational change management portfolio succeeds the test, so I would label it ‘McKinsey’ proof.
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(*) Creating organizational Transformations – The McKinsey Quarterly – August 2008

In this week’s article I’d like to address evidence of McKinsey to prove the point I made in one of my latest posts on HR (As you know: if a tiny consultant from Belgium tells you so, you can forget about it. But when ‘the’ McKinsey proves his point with worldwide survey results, well…) The chart below uncovers the declining influence of the human-resources function. According to McKinsey, only HR can translate a company’s business strategy into a detailed talent strategy. As they continue: "HR professionals should assert their influence and provide credible and proactive business counsel and support for individual business units." Well said McKinsey, and thanks for supporting my point! (Click on the chart to enlarge)   The bottom line of this chart is that HR has a major problem with regards to managing the expectations of both the business and themselves. Mind you: ‘Talent Management’ is just the new word for anything that was previously known as ‘competence management’. Same thing – different package. However, changing the name will not improve the conditions for HR. The so-called ‘talent management’ is nothing more than ’step 2′ of the approach that I presented earlier on. And regular readers of this blog know that it is now time for HR to cut the crap and start to be serious about their own processes before ‘talent management’ can become a reality. Just my humble opinion of course – a bit more convincing this time thanks to McKinsey _________________ Source: The McKinsey Quarterly Chart Focus Newsletter, August 2008

Yes that’s right. And if you don’t know what Web 2.0 (*) means this is your wake-up call. Last week McKinsey Quarterly published its global survey results on the use of Web 2.0 tools and technologies.

Four important observations come to the surface and all four of them are extremely important in the face of organizational change management.

#1: The top-4 reasons to use Web 2.0 technologies are at the core of Organizational Change

Mckinsey reports about 17 reasons why organizations use Web 2.0 technologies. The first four reasons are the following:

- Managing Knowledge
- Fostering collaboration across company
- Enhancing company culture
- Training

This top four roughly contains more than half of the objectives that we want to achieve with organizational change management. 

#2: Web 2.0 changes the way a company is managed and organized

McKinsey asked the respondents to score their satisfaction with Web 2.0 tools and asked whether it changed something in their organization. Among the respondents with a high level of satisfaction the most significant changes that were noted are:

- It has created major new roles or functions in our organization
- It has changed the way our organization is structured

People who are familiar with ERP implementations such as SAP, Oracle or Peoplesoft will note that the level of change reported by these respondents is largely the same as what they have experienced once the ERP is in place. That is exactly why I always declare a company’s intranet as the backbone of communication during an ERP implementation. Through Web 2.0 technologies one can manage the tremendous requirements for collaboration that are necessary during the project lifecycle.

#3: The bottleneck is at the TOP!

In the same survey, McKinsey asked "What are the top three barriers, if any, to the further success of your web 2.0 tools?"  The way I see it, the responses are sadly – but not surprisingly – pointing out a gap between older generations at the top and younger generations in the middle and lower rankings of today’s organizations. Here is the top three of all answers:

- My company doesn’t understand the potential financial return from the use of Web 2.0 tools, technologies
- My company’s culture doesn’t encourage the use of Web 2.0
- My company doesn’t provide sufficient incentives to adopt or experiment with Web 2.0 technologies

It is no secret that the bottleneck is always at the top of the bottle and in this case – just like ERP implementations – leaders at the top need a nudge.

#4: Web 2.0 is a business initiative, not an IT initiative

I saved the best part for the last: McKinsey also asked how organizations have deployed their Web 2.0 initiatives. According to the results, satisfied respondents say that, in large measure, business units rather than IT departments are driving the selection of Web 2.0 technologies. Dissatisfied respondents report the reverse: IT units take the lead, choosing the tools and then delivering them to business.

Here as well, the parallel with ERP implementations is pretty clear: a devastating effect if IT takes the lead. Just like ERP implementations, Web 2.0 initiatives should be owned by the business in order to be successful.

If all this terminology sounds weird and far-fetched to you, just remember: Web 2.0 may be a buzzword for now but it surely is the best way to support your organizational change initiatives now and in the future.

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(*) Web 2.0 refers to all web-applications and technologies such as wikis, blogs, social-networking, open-source, open-content, file-sharing, peer-production, etc. All of these applications and technologies thrive on  user created data, an architecture of participation and high usability. In their book Wikinomics, Tapscott and Williams argue that the economy of "the new web" depends on this kind of mass collaboration.

Another Must-Know Insight from Marketing
Time and again I have underscored that organizational change management experts can learn heaps from the marketing department next door. If only we are willing enough to discover the parallels between a marketer and his customer segments one the one hand and an organizational change program manager and his stakeholders on the other hand. No need to reinvent the wheel… here comes another one that you can apply to your organizational change program; provided that you are willing to give it a little twist: the Moments of Truth in Customer Interactions.

The added value of this concept in terms of revenue increase or cost savings lies in improved interactions and more profitable relationships with customers and stakeholders. Building further on Goleman’s insights, you should know that managing moments of truth requires your attention to be split over 4 dimensions:

A recent survey conducted by the McKinsey Quarterly (2006) among 1536 executives of publicly and privately held businesses across a full range of industries reveals the importance of emotions in the success of an organizational change. The respondents who experienced a performance transformation over the past 5 years were asked to rate it on a scale ranging from completely successful to completely unsuccessful.Those who rated their transformation as Completely / Mostly Successful and Completely / Mostly Unsuccessful were asked what characterized the mood in the organization during the transformation. The graphic shows the responses to that question for both successful and unsuccessful organizations.

McKinsey concludes that negative and positive moods are reported in roughly equal proportions, with anxiety as the most common emotion, ahead of confusion, frustration, fatigue and resistance. Among the positive moods, a sense of focus, enthusiasm, and feelings of momentum occur roughly equally. Finally more of the top performers report positive moods, especially focus and enthusiasm.

Two points of attention here:

1. This research confirms that you will be confronted with emotions, regardles of whether the change is positive or negative.
2. You can channel these emotions to the benefit of your change in order to obtain more clarity and less confusion.

Now the real question is: how do we channel these emotions so they can fuel your project instead of blocking it?