The triple mission of the chief learning officer

"Twenty years ago, almost anyone could predict how training technology would change, but no one could predict the emergence of the title and function of the Chief Learning Officer, when the word didn't exist , there is no such concept."

This is the sigh of Jeff Oberlin, chief learning officer of the Chicago Rehabilitation Center. Today, executives with the C prefix with the same title have been widely distributed in multinational companies such as IBM, GE, and Goldman Sachs, as well as in emerging Chinese companies such as Luyuan Electric Vehicle.

However, it is still difficult for the industry to come to a conclusion on the job description of a "chief learning officer", and even its Chinese name has not yet been determined, ranging from chief education officer, chief training officer to chief learning officer. Its acronym CLO is also often considered to be the Chief Logistic Officer or Chief Law Officer. Rather than concluding with this new and unfamiliar position, take a look at how real-life CLOs practice these three letters.

C = Change + Culture

Learning means the possibility of change. Whether it is Goldman Sachs' Pine Street Leadership Project or Luyuan's "Learning from Haier to Innovate Luyuan", every refresh of corporate culture is the highlight of the chief learning officer.

In May 2001, Henry Paulson, the current U.S. Treasury Secretary, was still CEO of Goldman Sachs, and he hired the first CLO for the 130-year-old investment bank, Steve Kerr ( Steve Kerr). After taking office, Cole's first fire was on the "bureaucracy" within the company, and he formulated a training project named after the company's founding place, "Pine Street". “I want to create a system within Goldman Sachs, where employees around the world make decisions together, so that this global company can maintain the flexibility that comes naturally when it is not listed, and institutionalize the random communication of the past, but Don't get bogged down in bureaucracy."

As Cole did when he was GE's chief learning officer. At the time, Welch was trying to push "borderless management" within GE, replacing dangerous bureaucratic habits with unhierarchical knowledge sharing. As chief learning officer, Cole was duty-bound to lead what he called "an embarrassing operation in an awkward place." In the end, a full-staff internal training system allowed employees to form a new way of working.

The means and goals of change also lie in learning. The mission of the chief learning officer is not only to cope with the changes of the enterprise through "brainwashing" all-staff learning, but also to establish a learning culture of continuous improvement, otherwise the chief learning officer is just a training officer.

Cole defines his CLO role this way, "Like the human body, when it comes to transplanting a new organ, the body's immunity tends to resist its entry. My job is to change the mechanics within the company so that it can innovate, Accept the change." Almost at the same time, the founder and chairman of Luyuan Electric Vehicle Company in Jinhua, Zhejiang Province, Ni Jie, self-proclaimed the same title as Kohl's, intending to solve the seven-year itch of his own business.

Ni Jie, who is about to enter the seventh year of his business, deeply feels that the "man-to-man" management is no longer applicable in the growing enterprise. He chose a new corporate culture with "self-learning" as the core, And go to the forefront of enterprise reengineering as the chief learning officer. In his words, it is to make every employee "both a follower of the system and a killer of the system". By advocating the formation of their own "subcultures" in various departments of the enterprise, the multiculturalism of harmony and difference can stimulate the innovative spirit of employees.

“You can never say in the perfect tense that we are already a learning organization,” Peter Senge’s famous quote points to a near-infinite scope for chief learning officers. What Kerr and Ni Jie are doing is to internalize learning from "sports" into culture, and make lifelong learning and continuous improvement a habit of every employee.

L = Link + Leadership

The chief learning officer at the same level as the CEO is no longer the training manager of the human resources department. They need to look beyond the training and focus on the corporate strategy "Connect" to employee learning.

In order to make training more in line with the company's strategic goals, the medical device manufacturer Jia Teng Group decided to set up a vice president responsible for employee development, whose responsibilities are equivalent to the chief learning officer. The first step for first-time Susan Norton was to communicate as vice president with the vice presidents of other departments to identify the challenges the business was facing. This frank exchange culminated in a three-day study. Managers spread across the globe have the first opportunity to hear from the top leadership on leadership and deepen their understanding of their functions in informal interactions across departments.

Whether the low investment and good effect of training can achieve both, the key is to identify the needs of the enterprise. The chief learning officer of Jiateng Group realized that the problems at the current stage were focused on the departmental collaboration in overseas expansion, and started Jiateng's cultural reshaping in the process of globalization with a short training. This is consistent with a survey by the US "Training and Development" magazine: the main job of most chief learning officers is to participate in corporate strategic development and planning, and to communicate with company executives and front-line business units.

Thinking about employee learning like a CEO requires not only the chief learning officer's ability to "connect" to the big picture of the enterprise, but also leadership, because they will directly influence the minds of every employee and even shape the company's future leaders.

Warren G. Bennis, known as a "leadership mentor," believes that leadership is fundamentally about changing the mind-set of others, and that's not easy: "The best of us When most people think they’re listening to others, they’re actually listening to themselves.” One or two trainings alone don’t give employees leadership. To this end, another role of the chief learning officer is the "leadership mentor".

“My day job includes running global leadership programs to develop leaders for GE today and tomorrow,” said Bob Corcoran, GE's current Chief Learning Officer. Similar to his successor, Cole's main job at Goldman was "developing and executing executive training programs." The original intention of the "Pine Street Leadership Program" is to shape a new generation of Goldman Sachs successors with a new culture.

In short, in the face of the future of the enterprise, the chief learning officer needs to be more actively involved, from the back to the front, to influence the strategy of the enterprise with the strategy of learning.

O = Orientation + Organization

Because of corporate culture and leadership, it is the first time that the training director is so close to the decision-making level of the company. However, growing up as chief learning officers, they still need to return to their original roles from time to time to prove the value of each training and learning to the company and employees.

In the words of IBM Chief Learning Officer Ted Hoff, "All learning must be premised on improving the strategy and goals of the enterprise, and the investment in learning should focus on how to generate the benefits of the enterprise". On the CLO's schedule, the first item is to discuss succession development with the CEO, and the next item may be to listen to the feedback of trainees at the scene of a training. Training is an investment. From demand research to effect quantification, it tests the professional ability of the chief learning officer.

As a result, most of the current few CLOs have years of experience in human resources, organizational development, and especially training. Cole, who became the first chief learning officer at GE and Goldman Sachs, was a professor of management before. Beyond the broader perspective, the chief learning officer must have a keen insight into employee learning. Of course, they also need to improve their positioning while sticking to it, and point out the substantive significance of each learning for job performance and company strategy in the "language of executives".

Because of the positioning of their own responsibilities, another major job of the Chief Learning Officer is the specific organization of the learning program. This requires not only their basic skills in training management, but also their ability to understand the overall situation of the company.

Hoff launched a training program at IBM called "Learning Labs", which rehired CEOs and CFOs who had retired from the company, let them teach marketers, and instruct them in front of senior executives of client companies. Communication and Marketing. This not only directly improves the combat effectiveness of relevant departments, but also provides a channel for knowledge reuse for retired executives. Undoubtedly, this is a win-win project, and Hoff also considers how to deal with the impact of aging on the enterprise through this training.

Similarly, orchestration is the mission of GE's Chief Learning Officer. Every employee begins a lifelong learning process from the first day they enter GE. Jeffrey C. Barnes, the first chief learning officer of GE China, said, "We provide the right training to the right people. For different people, according to their current position, including the position and the stage of the business level. , tailor-made different training courses." New employees who have just graduated from college, middle managers and senior executives with certain experience, three types of employees can find suitable learning programs for themselves.

As a newly born position, the power boundary of the chief learning officer is still being explored, but the changes brought to the enterprise have long exceeded the original intention of the CLO.

Before your company appoints a chief learning officer, listen to Sijie Bai's point of view, "We attach great importance to training, so we provide such a position with more functions, which is based on the current business needs and is designed for this stage. At this stage, if the focus of corporate strategy is not employee learning, chief learning officer is just a title.

The author is an associate editor of the CEConline website.