Corporate Learning
Strategies
Daniel R. Tobin,
Ph.D.
Take Responsibility for Your Own Learning
Copyright ©1998 Daniel R. Tobin
Managers
(and all employees) must take responsibility for their own learning. At one
time, many companies could promise a new employee lifelong employment and a
predictable career path. Today, very few if any companies can make that
promise. Even when your company has a formal training department and offers a
catalog full of courses for employees, no one knows better than the employee
and his or her manager what needs to be learned and how that learning can be
applied to the job to make a positive difference in individual, group, and
company business results. You must take responsibility for your own career
path, whether with your current employer or through a series of employers. And
the way to build your career is to keep learning throughout your career.
Many
companies promise that every employee will receive one week (and sometimes more
than one week) of training per year. But forward-looking managers know that one
week of training isn't enough to create better performance and new
opportunities for the future. They know that they and their employees must be
in a continuous learning mode -- learning every month, every week, every day.
How
do you plan for your own learning needs? Here is a method of planning for your
own learning that I call the "learning contract." The learning
contract is personalized for each employee and is negotiated by the employee
and his or her manager, for no one in the company knows better what the
employee needs to learn than the employee and his or her immediate manager.
The
learning contract starts with the company's business goals or, at the minimum,
the part of the company's business goals that are affected by the employee's
work. By beginning and, as we will see later, ending with these goals in mind,
we ensure that all learning activities are designed to make a positive
contribution to the achievement of both personal and company goals. But it is
often difficult for the individual employee to see a direct connection between
his or her work and the larger company goals. It is the job of the manager to
help the employee understand the company's goals and how those larger goals are
affected by the department's or function's work and by the work of the
individual employee.
Why
is it important for every employee to understand the company's overall business
goals, especially if the employee's work seems very distant from those goals?
The answer is simply this: if you don't understand the company's business
goals, how can you possibly work to help the company achieve those goals? Being
able to demonstrate how your work is helping the company achieve its goals will
be important when you seek your next raise or promotion. And even if you decide
to leave the company to seek work elsewhere, potential employers will look more
favorably on applicants who are able to tie their work experience to
achievement of the company's business goals.
Once
these goals are understood, the next question is: "How must I change my
work or my skills and knowledge to help the company achieve this goal?"
Too often, companies publish ambitious business goals, but no one bothers to
ask how those goals will be achieved or what changes will be necessary to
enable the company to meet those goals.
When
you understand the changes you must make to help achieve the goals, then you
must ask: "What do I need to learn in order to make those changes?"
You can't change without learning. Learning may involve greater knowledge of
customers and markets, building new skills in order to work differently, and so
forth.
The
next part of the learning contract deals with how the learning will take place:
Will I attend a company-sponsored training program, take a course at a local
college, read some books and articles, become an apprentice to someone who is a
master of the new skills -- the list of potential learning methods is very
large (and will be the subject of another article in this series). In planning
your learning, you need to specify in the learning contract the methods you
will use, where you will find the learning resources you need, and a schedule
for completion of the specified learning activities.
I
often recommend that employees, before undertaking any learning activity, find
someone inside or outside the company who has already mastered the new skills
or knowledge and who can act as a coach and answer the employee's questions as
they arise. Ideally, this is the employee's manager, but the manager does not
always have the needed expertise or the time to acquire it. If you cannot find
someone to act as a coach, then I recommend that you find someone else who is
learning the same skill or studying the same material to be your "learning
partner." By having a learning partner, you will have someone to exchange
questions and experiences with, and the two of you can help each other study
and discuss your experiences as you later try to apply your learning to your
jobs. If you cannot find a learning partner in your group or your company, look
for groups on the Internet who are interested in the subject. The Internet can
be a wonderful resource, and you can get assistance from people all over the
world, even if you do not know the person and will never actually meet that
person.
You
also need to specify in the contract how you will demonstrate that the learning
has taken place -- what will be the measure of your learning achievements? Will
you submit a report on what you have learned? Will you take tests before and
after the learning activities to show how much you have learned? Will you
demonstrate the skills for your manager?
Next,
the learning contract must include a section on how you will apply your
learning to your job. This is where most corporate training programs fail --
most of the learning that takes place in formal training programs never gets
applied to the students' jobs -- meaning that the company's investment in that
training is wasted. It is also the area where the employee needs the most
assistance from the manager. When you try out new skills, you will inevitably
make errors -- no one can be expected to try something totally new and succeed
the first and every time. The manager must provide the opportunity to make
errors and must reinforce the employee's learning with coaching and
reinforcement until the new skills are mastered. Without this assistance from
the manager, the employee will quickly revert back to the old way of doing
things when faced with a problem -- "Why should I risk making an error and
being penalized by my manager for trying the new methods when I can continue to
do things the old way -- the way I know and with which I am comfortable. The
old way may not be the best way, but I know it works."
Finally,
you must specify in the contract what difference in business results are
expected once you have applied your learning to your work. This
ties back to the first step in the learning contract, where you
specified the company business goals to which you contribute. By beginning with
the end in mind, all learning activities will be focused on specific,
measurable, achievable business results, for the individual, the
group/function/department, and the company as a whole.
Using
the learning contract can also yield another benefit: When you can demonstrate
the direct connection between your learning activities and the company's
business results, no one will ever question the value of the training programs
or other learning activities you undertake. You will never be asked to justify
the investment in your learning, because the justification is built into the
plan from the beginning.
Summary of the Learning Contract
1.
Specify the company's business goals and how your individual work contributes
to their achievement.
2.
Specify how you must change your work to help the company achieve its goals.
3.
Specify what you need to learn in order to make those changes.
4.
Develop a learning plan, including:
·
What you need to learn.
·
What learning resources you will
use.
·
A schedule of learning
activities.
5. Specify measures of learning achievement.
6.
Develop a plan for how you will apply your learning to your job.
7.
Specify what changes in business results are expected from the application of
your learning to the job.
Dan Tobin
welcomes your reactions to and comments on this article. To send him e-mail, click
here or send email to DanielTobin@att.net.