Bruce Batten

Action is revolutionary. Too many people plan, and then they plan some more. They keep doing the same thing, just working harder. Those working in the learning industry tend to focus all their time on curriculum design, learning objectives, engaging classrooms and WBT, and assessments. Unfortunately, many L&D professionals spend very little time connecting to strategic initiatives and outcomes. But learning without action is just learning. Without the action, nothing changes. Enter opportunistic risk. When times were tough, you didn’t find Batman hiding in his Batcave. You found him fighting crime—daring to make a difference in Gotham City. As learning professionals, the learning event is our Batcave. Our organizations are Gotham City. It is time for you to get in your Batmobile and find out what matters most to your organization’s executive leaders. If you don’t already connect with your senior leaders, schedule time on their calendar and get to know what drives them. Only then can you help them succeed and add value to your organization. Riddle me this Batman was known as a great detective. This is an important factor because senior leaders may not be prepared to answer the question: How can the learning function assist in meeting the organization’s goals? So, if you can get 30 minutes of their time, act like a detective. Explore how you can help them reach success. Ask them what their goals are. Ask them why the goal is important. Ask them how they will know if they have reached their goal. It is important to note that you must speak their language, not yours. The Riddler, Batman’s archenemy, was perplexing because he always spoke in riddles.  Senior leaders are not going to take the time to decipher your language. It is wise to speak to them in business terms—not “learning-eze” or what appears as riddles to them. And respect their time by staying within your allotted meeting time. Next, thank them and let them know you will get back with them, armed with a plan to ensure performance success. This should at least pique their interest enough to review your plan.Batteries to power, turbines to speedOnce you have obtained information from your senior leaders, you can start imagining solutions. To reach strategic goals, what behaviors need to happen? Once you identify behaviors, ask what the gap is in knowledge and skills. Then, and only then, decide how to serve the learning. The next step is very important: Determine how you can best drive performance after learning has taken place. Our leaders want a comprehensive plan that focuses on results, not learning. They expect that you will supply great learning, but what they really want is performance outcomes that help them reach their goals. You must be creative on how to get things done in a way that is different from what you have done in the past. It is not likely you will get more resources, and you can’t just keep working harder and maintain your sanity. L&D professionals have to be innovative in how to get the job done in less time, with less resource, but with better results. Don’t fall into the trap that everything must be covered in the classroom. Statistics prove participants will only remember a fraction of what is presented. Today’s learners obtain information on the go. How do you reduce classroom time and increase informal learning and the availability of informal learning while obtaining the same if not better results? Can you cut some programs you currently offer that are not required by regulation or do not directly support your organization’s strategic initiatives? All programs are “good” but may not make you needed.Can you reduce content? What do learners really need to know? Are you confusing them by giving them too much content at once?Can you serve content in other ways? Learners want information at their fingertips. Can you provide content in a mobile app, in an online, just-in-time learning tool, job aids? This is a new way of thinking for L&D. We have focused on the learning event for so long. I am not only speaking to facilitators, but including curriculum designers and web developers as well. What really needs to be covered in the classroom or module? Truly examine that question. What can be made available in other ways? We have to stop designing learning and start designing the entire learning experience. Included in your design should be peri-learning. Peri-learning is those activities, learning opportunities, and behavior reinforcers that help learners succeed. This could include such things as: Information and activities that prepare students to participate in not only learning but in changes that produce performance outcomes. Let managers know their role in the learning outcomes. Use posters, pre-requisite on-line modules that set the stage for what they will be learning, presentations at staff meetings, articles in newsletters, etc.Post learning event follow-up such as reminders and reinforcement are crucial. It is a must to include post learning follow-up support that will reinforce the behaviors you are targeting that will produce results for your organization. Be creative in ways to drive performance. Can you utilize incentives, contests, manager reinforcement, peer reinforcement, job aids, facilitator rounding?Does this sound foreign, or even risky? If we keep doing things the same way we have in the past, we will not be needed. Not being needed is unnecessarily risky. Look at the opportunistic risk instead. Changing our actions to ensure outcomes is strategic opportunity. As you put your plan together remember to ask: “If I could do this any way I wanted to obtain the best outcomes, what would it look like?” Just because no one at your organization has done it that way before doesn’t mean it won’t work!Next, ask “Why not?” What is keeping you back? Is it the fear of risk? Remember, avoidance of risk creates risk.Next, ask, what is the worst thing that could happen? Can you live with that? Think through it. Plan for what might go wrong but work at making it go right.What is the best thing that could happen? Does it outweigh the outcome of doing nothing differently? Therein, you find your opportunisitic risk. Once you have a plan together that supports your company’s goals by addressing not only learning but driving performance, present that plan. Word of caution: your executives may not be receptive at first. This may feel foreign to them as well and they are not use to depending on you as a partner. You will have to earn this relationship. Calling all caped crusaders Now, if you are feeling a little outside your comfort zone, remember Batman had allies. Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce Wayne’s butler was one of only a few persons to know his secret identity. Alfred acted as father figure and mentor to Batman. Indeed, everyone needs a mentor—someone who knows your secret identity, grounds you, challenges you, someone that looks out for you, and helps you dream big. Who is your mentor? Is it your manager, another leader in your organization, someone trusted outside the organization, perhaps a consultant? If you do not have a mentor, get one that understands opportunistic risk. They give you the strength to don the cape (so to speak) and step out of your comfort zone. They are also there to guide you and supply a reassuring hand. Let’s explore another of Batman’s partners: Commissioner Gordon. The Commissioner was not always an advocate of Batman. As a matter of fact, he first saw Batman as a vigilante. In time, after Batman proved himself a worthy partner, Commissioner Gordon went to Batman at the first sign of need. Batman became his go-to person. Not because he left things to the way they were, but because he dared to step out. He took that opportunistic risk. And let’s not forget Batman’s trusty sidekick Robin. Who do you trust to carry out your work—to partner with you in your endeavors? Batman started out as a lone star, but he quickly added a fellow crime fighter. There is always more power in multiples. Gather your team around you to help you envision reaching performance. Gather those that will help reinforce learning and drive it to performance. This may be others in the learning arena but could also be middle managers, preceptors, or students who are early adopters. Bam! Kapow! Zlonk! Finally, it is time for you to present your plan to organizational leaders—pointing out what is different about approach. Let them know what you need from them. Highlight how you will measure your progress and document leading indicators that you are on target. Once you have presented your plan and received at least support for your plan, go for it! Put your plan in place and start working it. But be prepared that you won’t win every battle. You don’t have to win every time. Just act. When you prepared your plan, you started with the end in mind—your organization’s strategic initiatives. You uncovered the behaviors needed to ensure success. You created a solution that would ensure learning. You planned on reinforcing behavioral performance by partnering and following-up with learners. Now, you need to work your plan and measure your progress. Measure your results early and often, but don’t be afraid of the results! If you are not seeing the behaviors you expected, keep driving performance until you do. Remember, not doing anything creates risk. Driving performance, however, is opportunistic risk. Along the way, manage up your results to your senior leaders. If you haven’t quite hit the mark, be honest but have a plan to engage learning until the goal is met. If your leaders see your persistence and start to see results, they will likely give you the support you need. Holy learning, Batman! Our companies are looking for true partners that will help them reach their goals. Most of your peers are still hiding behind their classroom training programs or armed with WBT’s. What will make your plan different, gain the attention of your leaders and make you a strategic partner?Partner with your leaders. Seek to understand how to make them successful in their strategic endeavors. In other words, truly begin with the end in mind.Present a complete plan that includes peri-learning—activities before during and after the learning event that ensures success through driving performance to outcomes.Measure your progress and report your findings—good or bad. Then do something with the findings. Keep working your plan, regrouping where necessary, to reach your results. You only fail if you quit. If I have not yet convinced you to take opportunistic risk, let’s look at this in a different way. What if you choose to avoid the risk and stay in the Batcave? What if you just keep doing things they way you have always done them? Will you be perceived as valuable—or as adding value? Will you be recognized as a true partner? Will you be needed in another year? If you can’t answer yes to all of these questions, you can’t afford NOT to seek opportunistic risk. If Batman had not acted, the Joker, the Riddler, and Catwoman would surely have taken over Gotham City. Who is waiting to take over for you? Are you letting it happen because you are afraid to leave the Batcave? Without a doubt, leaving the Batcave involves some risk—but it is opportunisitic risk that focuses on outcomes, not just learning. So, what are you waiting for?

Opportunistic Risk: Signaling all L&D Professionals

One new team member can really shift the dynamic of a team. The prospect of a new person (let’s call her “Newby”) joining the team will set off a cascade of powerful reactions.  Beware of falling into the classic hiring manager’s error: Don’t fool yourself into thinking that the person you interviewed is going to line up exactly with the person who shows up at work and becomes part of your team. Don’t blame Newby when she turns out to NOT be the completely Self-Managing-Superhero-Answer-to-all-of-your-Problems (nobody is). No matter how great Newby may be, I promise you, she will need to be managed—more closely at first than you would probably guess, and for longer. Be prepared to spend a lot of time at the outset working closely with Newby. You can’t wait for her to ask. She might not realize how much on-boarding support and up-to-speed coaching she needs. Even if she does realize, she likely won’t ask for it. While some employers are better at this than others, most employers have only a minimal process for welcoming new employees and getting them on-board and up-to-speed. There’s usually even less support for an individual who is a current employee transferring internally to another department or team. At best, even in organizations with robust orientation and training programs, there is the inevitable hand-off to the hiring manager when the formal process is complete.  Unless you happen to work for the United States Armed Forces and your organization’s orientation program looks a lot like boot camp, then you should not count on the formal process. From the first day Newby joins your team, you need to take 100 percent responsibility for making sure she is welcomed properly and given the on-boarding support and up-to-speed coaching she will need to become a fully functioning member of the team. That does not mean delegating the responsibility to one of your lieutenants. So often, managers tell me: “Oh, I pay very close attention to getting new people on board and up to speed. Lieu handles all of that for me.” Clue: If someone/anyone “handles all that” for you, then you are not paying close enough attention to it. The onboarding of any new employee who will report directly to you should be “handled” by you. You can start by explaining that your modus operandi for managing is to build a regular ongoing structured one-on-one dialogue with every person who reports to you. Getting Started: One-on-One You will start by scheduling a lot of one-on-ones at the outset: maybe two per day initially, once at the beginning of the workday and again at the end of the day. But what will you talk about in your one-on-ones during the on-boarding process? You need to be prepared with a list of initial learning objectives:The organization, big picture: its vision, mission, values, and cultureWhere your team fits in the organization: the work of the teamBroad performance standards and workplace expectationsCompany systems, practices, and procedures. Some of this material may have been covered in the formal orientation process, but it is all well worth repeating in detail repeatedly. You need to have these conversations with your new employee yourself so that you can add your voice and your interpretation and your points of emphasis. After all, Newby is going to be answering to you. Moving to Learning Objectives Once you’ve hammered away at these fundamentals, shift your one-on-ones to helping the new employee really dig in and start to understand the context of the work she will be doing. That’s why the next set of learning objectives should be very job specific. First discuss the current projects, tasks and responsibilities being handled on the team. Then explain which projects, tasks and responsibilities Newby will be working on. For each, offer: examples of past work product and work in progressbackground materials, standard operating procedures, instructions, manuals, checklists, other job aids, and answers to frequently asked questionskey people inside and outside the team with whom the new employee will work·opportunities to practice, rehearse, shadow, dry run, scrimmage, or rough draftkey players inside and outside the team. Though this is the kind of information that the new employee would gather eventually on-the-job, it is much more effective to learn it systematically according to a clear agenda with learning resources provided along the way. Take special note: If Newby is going to be responsible for managing others, then in your one-on-ones, you need to make it clear immediately that you expect her to manage her direct reports in a strong, highly engaged manner. Explain what that means in detail.

Management Challenge #4: Adding a New Member to Your Existing Team

Facilitating Change is a World Class Sales Competency that needs attention! This subject is so COMPLEX and CHAOTIC that it is very difficult to explain, manage or measure. As a Trainer, it is critical now for you to be able to understand how change affects your company and is reflected in your training. Let's keep this SIMPLE! Your company is most likely affected by harder economic conditions today and will be driven to improve efficiency, productivity, and service quality. The training methods and outcomes you present to your employees will be a measuring stick for these improvement changes.Change happens CONSTANTLY and you must be able to ADAPT to it.Business Change - Sales TrainingIn Sales Training, be sensitive to teach your team about the size and scale of any management decision. - small to large - and how it affects operation, sector, location, history, and employee population. Change is about moving an organization from a current position to a future condition, for the purpose of marketplace strategy and employee workplace performance alignment.Evaluating sales and marketing change strategies can be done by looking at other company case studies and ROI analysis. But, beware! "Tested" sales strategies and implementations that have been tried before by other organizations may not be the best one for your company or for your team to experience!Also, be careful to look at the effects of bringing in other Subject Matter Experts or Consultants who have had successful outcomes using "tried and true" methodologies that have worked for them in the past. These too may not work in your particular organization. Make sure that the new change initiative is a process to be facilitated rather than a plan that can be dictated to the employeesThe People vs. YOU!Facilitating change through people is very TOUGH because people are TOUGH and generally RESISTANT to anything that is different than what they are used to - especially if they have created a habit or routine that seemingly makes their life easier. People are more reactive than proactive and changing anything in their world (personal or work environment) can be confusing to deal with! However, through honesty and being straightforward about your change strategy, you can break through any resistance that people give you. The TRUTH will always set you free, even in business where money seems to be king over the people. Nothing could be farther from the truth! You cannot run a business without the power of people. The love of people is the root of successful business in sales!If there is a change initiative approaching where people are involved, brace yourself for the resistance. You can guarantee that too many opinions will be involved! So, like the good Boy Scout or Brownie, "Be Prepared" to brace yourself emotionally and intellectually for the upcoming change challenges presented in front of you. People present problems all the time at the top, middle or bottom of any organization - that will need to be dealt with if the company is to succeed overall.Many organizational studies say that the best change efforts are better left to employee engagement and creative teams rather than top down leadership. Many change efforts have failed because the company demanded the change process to be handled and controlled by corporate policy and procedure with little or no creative thinking allowed.According to Hank Garber, CEO of National Risk Managers in Long Island, NY, (natlriskmgrsltd@aol.com), one way to engage employees in facilitating organizational change is to "make your employees your partners in the process of change". He also states that you can gain "greater and more effective communication- internal & external- by working to create a sales orientation that permeates every part of a business, leading to increased revenue, client retention, and loyalty by customers and employees.Make your employees stakeholders in the outcomes of changePromote the concept that ideas and solutions that come from withinPromote creativity and communicationRedirect focus on sales drivers, customer satisfaction and loyalty, not individual tasksProvide a proactive response to the need for fresh ideas and solutions to increase salesThe focus of change should be for the betterment of everyone in the organization as it relates to increase business results that sustain organizational growth.

Bruce Batten

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