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Kathy White, MS, Executive Director of Learning and Performance for Amgen’s worldwide Operations and manufacturing facilities. Kathy has worked at Fortune 100 Pharmaceutical and Bio-pharmaceutical industries for 28 years in manufacturing, quality, strategic planning, and training. Kathy and the Amgen Learning & Performance team have been on a multi-year transition from traditional training to becoming a human performance based group. This was recently recognized when the team received the 2012 ISPI Award of Excellence.

Kathy White

The following is a Q&A with Ben Bisbee and Kathy Wisniewski, the authors of The Unashamed Guide to Virtual Management, an ATD book about how to address the unanswered and critical questions that arise when managing virtual teams.What, from your own virtual management experiences, prompted you to write this book?Ben: We were experiencing a variety of daily challenges and frustrations in our own virtual management efforts. We both started in the virtual management landscape in 2009 and were shocked by how little information you could find when it came to typical daily management issues and how they should be or could be best experienced in the virtual workplace. At one point, I was asked to provide employee engagement and team building opportunities for more than 80 virtual employees to help repair morale and build community. With no funding and just a few weeks’ notice, this felt like an impossible task. Another time, Kathy was trying to figure out how to build a strong new virtual volunteer orientation model that didn’t rely solely on written web documents or phone conversations. We weren’t even that deeply interested in innovation; we were just craving some best practices to do our jobs in that moment and could not find resources on Google or Amazon.Kathy: The tools and resources addressing real daily issues did not exist. Discussions were focused on the possibility and costs of virtual workplaces and on how to move offices online. There wasn’t a community of virtual managers talking about daily, classic experiences and solutions. Best practices did not exist—nothing anyone could point to, anyway. And, so we started developing ideas and found them to be successful. We knew we needed to share them with others who found themselves in the same position.Where is virtual employment in 2019?Ben: Virtual employment is one of the fastest-growing professional areas in just about every white-collar industry. We needed to move past the idea of virtual management being novel. It’s 2019. People need real tools about real topics to help them be the best they can be as managers behind a computer, leading one or more people to success.What were some of the challenges you were facing as you started to manage virtually, and how did those struggles lead you to write this book?Kathy: When we began managing virtually, we did not realize that communicating virtually could be such a challenge. We assumed that email and telephone would be fine mediums for communicating with remote employees. We quickly discovered that email has limits and shortfalls. It is a terrible medium to talk one-on-one about heavy issues. And there were better mediums than the phone as well. We realized we had to get comfortable with new technology— namely, the medium of virtual video for complex or difficult meetings. In fact, video meetings are essential because these meetings need a “human touch,” requiring some eye contact and face-to-face interaction.Ben: Knowing how to leverage a variety of technologies is critical. Elements of that realization absolutely made it to the book in a wide variety of ways. We wanted to explain that tech needs to aid you, not allow you to evade important management moments.What answers were you looking for that you could not find out there?Ben: Most of them, honestly. It was often like trying to convert a recipe from U.S. measurements to metric measurements. We found standard day-to-day management struggles, successes, answers, and policies but nothing that helped us figure out how to convert those strategies and successes to the virtual landscape. Topics like hiring and firing may sometimes discuss about virtual models, but they often would start with suggestions like, “If you can fly them out to your offices, we recommend you do . . .” And in many cases, there wasn’t some model of “headquarters” and everyone else. It was all just everyone, everywhere.Kathy: Or when we wanted to try to learn more about topics like managing effectively across multiple time zones—not just trying to schedule an occasional or standing meeting but truly managing people across a variety of time zones with different ideas of a workday or bandwidth. There are a ton of topics and issues that are unique to the virtual workplace that were literally impossible to find information on. For example, how to tackle online happy hours; how to handle digital awkwardness in text, print, or on camera; how to handle random power outages; what to do when you know someone is taking a meeting from the bathroom. These were issues related to personal, cultural norms or issues for which we did not find anything to support our daily needs.What seems to be the hardest issue to address with virtual employees or the greatest challenge in managing virtually?Kathy: This is less of a universal thing and wildly varied based on the employees or manager at the center of it. For more introverted virtual folks, the hardest issue may be teambuilding or work parties. For the extroverts, their challenging issue may be building the landscape for equitable meetings where it’s not just the same three people talking over each other on a conference call. For managers, perhaps the challenge is getting comfortable on camera or having to fire someone thousands of miles away.Ben: In many ways, the hardest issue is knowing how to leverage the technology or tech-driven process based on whatever is already feeling burdensome as a manager or for the employee at hand. It’s about gaining a virtual management intuition as much as it’s about knowing the rules or most effective process. That takes time and experience. Even if you grew up as a digital native, there are still the skills and experiences necessary to blend classic management effort to the virtual workplace.How do diversity and inclusion factor into virtual management?Ben: Diversity and inclusion factors into virtual management powerfully and dynamically if done correctly. In the virtual workplace, talent isn’t held to a specific geography, worldview, background, or ethnicity. On the one hand, the virtual workplace can quickly level the playing field when it comes to new, diverse, inclusive hires. On the other hand, it can also “wire-wash” the idea of diversity and inclusion, which means we almost disvalue (or devalue) the need for diversity and inclusion because we start to look for only individuals with the privileges, background, and experiences of virtual employment—an area that is still highly white and middle class given its requirements for modern technology and environmental temperament.Kathy: The note here for virtual managers is that smart, equitable technologies afford a wealth of advantages to help level the playing field for employees of all backgrounds, types, and experiences. They can create a way to address issues such as workplace inclusion and diversity with a fresh set of tools and approaches.What is something that every virtual manager must adjust to or do to be successful?Kathy: To be a successful virtual manager, you do have to be tech savvy. This doesn’t mean you need to be the tech expert; it just means you need to be comfortable enough for both advancements and daily tech struggles.Ben: Your virtual staff will come to you often with questions or problems—like they would for any workplace issue—and your technology knowledge and comfort will give you a stronger sense of virtual workplace empathy when things are broken or confusing.Is there something within virtual management that we will never get right? If so, what is it and why is it problematic or elusive?Ben: This is all in the eye of the beholder. Do you love the smell of someone else’s burnt popcorn on the breakroom? Do you miss being able to walk down to an employee’s cubicle to talk quickly one-on-one about something pressing? Do you miss having to physically gather everyone into one room for a meeting? In many ways, just about every management and workplace experience can be virtually replicated successfully.Kathy: Virtual management will not be experienced or felt the same way by every person. For some, that will be refreshing, maybe even the new normal. And for others, they may be forlorn or frustrated by this new reality. It just depends on their expectations. On the other hand, virtual employment may not be for everyone. And that’s OK.Does it cost more (or less) to manage virtually?Ben: No matter how you lay it out, running a virtual office is far less expensive than running a stationary office. In virtual management, there are no expenses for leasing or buying office space, building supplies, utilities, or office and breakroom equipment. There is no need for security staff, cleaning, or administrative or office management.Kathy: There is the cost of the technology itself and upgrades when necessary, but those costs are still likely going to be present in a stationary workplace. The overall costs for virtual offices are far less than the costs of a stationary work environment.What about the future? Will managing virtually get easier? Or, with more of our workforce working remotely, will there be even greater challenges?Ben: We believe that managing virtually will get far easier. There are innovative, cool, wild technologies coming out to help us work better together no matter where we are in the world. With stronger, hands-on collaboration tools, in-real-time language translation tools, the daily advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR), this is an exciting time to be in virtual management.Kathy: It’s already fairly easy for a good manager to be a great virtual manager with the right instincts and efforts, even with slightly outdated and limited technology. It’s about blending classic management skills to match existing technologies to make virtual management successful. As more and more digital natives join the workforce, working and managing remotely will become the norm and become second nature.The Unashamed Guide to Virtual ManagementISBN: 978-1-949036-55-8 | 248 pages | Paperbackhttps://www.td.org/product/book--the-unashamed-guide-to-virtual-management/111911To order books from ATD Press, call 800.628.2783.To schedule an interview with Ben Bisbee or Kathy Wisniewski about their book, please contact Kay Hechler, ATD Press senior marketing manager, at [khechler@td.org](mailto: khechler@td.org).

Q&A the Authors of The Unashamed Guide to Virtual Management

In Lessons From Leaders, Sam Shriver and co-authors spoke with 15 leaders from every walk of life. While each was unquestionably unique, there were also some noticeable commonalities.

The Characteristics of Effective Leaders

October 2015 - The Public Manager

When leaders teach employees, it works. When the teaching practice is formalized, it's even more effective. Yet only 17 percent of organizations have formal leaders-as-teachers programs, and 39 percent report having informal leaders-as-teachers programs. Those were among the findings of the Association for Talent Development (ATD) and Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) study, Leaders as Teachers: Engaging Employees in High-Performance Learning. The respondents to the study, sponsored by The Training Associates, came from the public, private, and nonprofit sectors.Year after year, ATD and i4cp research finds that high-performance organizations are higher performers in learning, and the current survey confirms this trend. Sixty-two percent of high-performance organizations say that their "learning function helps meet our learning and development goals," while only 28 percent of low-performance organizations say that is the case. Further, 60 percent of the high performers respond that their learning function helps meet their organization's business goals, compared with 26 percent of low performers. Fifty-one percent of high-performance organizations report that they deliver learning very efficiently compared with 30 percent of low-performance organizations.Leaders serving as teachers don't necessarily need to present in-depth content. Leaders' teaching roles most often involve speaking about their own personal experiences. So it stands to reason that training is generally minimal for leaders. Thirty-one percent of the initiatives involve leaders in crafting content to be taught, 30 percent hold planning meetings to clarify roles and expectations, and 27 percent involve leaders in determining needs and planning solutions to address them.Challenges to leaders as teachers include leaders' schedule, inability to tie leaders' teaching to individual performance goals, and leaders' teaching not viewed as an important development opportunity. The research highlights some best practices that agencies can tap into to garner valuable results.For instance, the State of Florida's Department of Transportation (FDOT) District Four performance and training office serves the learning needs of approximately 800 employees and managers. FDOT is responsible for planning and developing a safe transportation system statewide. According to Kathy Shurte, manager of the office, FDOT has a program called Step Up in place, which calls for employees to take the initiative in terms of making positive change in and contributing to their workplace. The performance and training office has implemented a more informal leaders-as-teachers program that grew out of the department's Step Up program. Through it, managers and other leaders stop by training and management classes and contribute, selecting a topic they feel comfortable talking about.And at Providence Health & Services, where leaders as teachers also plays out on an informal basis, senior leaders encourage and enable learners to take risks and do things a bit differently. Across the organization, senior leaders facilitate meetings, classes, and retreats—sharing company history and linking it to the organization's mission and vision for the future.Tricia Rhine, senior organizational development consultant, says about the leaders-as-teachers program, "It not only engages the people who are the recipients of the message, it truly engages the senior leaders who, for the first time in some cases, are being heard by the people they influence."The study was conducted in May 2015, and consisted of more than 1,300 learning and business professionals. It also reported on budgets, evaluation methods of leaders as teachers, learning methods, and additional best practices for achieving success.ATD ResourcesLeaders as Teachers (ATD book)Leaders as Teachers Action Guide (ATD book)Leaders Open Doors (ATD book)

ATD Research Examines Leaders as Teachers

Kathi Edwards is an independent consultant, writer, and facilitator specializing in creating more effective learning environments and strategies. She supports clients in developing learning strategies, designing learning opportunities, and ensuring subject-matter experts (SMEs) have the knowledge and skills they need to facilitate learning. Ultimately, everything she does is focused on those who matter most: the learners.Kathi’s unique expertise in transforming the effectiveness of subject-matter experts who lead learning opportunities is frequently sought by national and international organizations in a variety of fields. In demand as an engaging speaker and facilitator in both corporate and not-for-profit settings, she is a frequent content leader on topics related to learning, learning strategy, and working with and coaching subject-matter experts. In addition to facilitating ATD’s Training Certificate Program, she developed and facilitates, several times per year, the popular three-part webinar series “Essentials of Coaching SMEs to Facilitate Learning,” part of ATD's ongoing “Essentials of...” webinar series.Kathi speaks and writes extensively on learning practice and strategies. She is co-editor and a chapter author for the book “Core Competencies in Association Professional Development, 2nd edition” (ASAE, 2011), and contributed 22 of the ideas in the book “199 Ideas for Enhancing Learning Experiences” (ASAE, 2011). She also served as executive editor of “CAE Study Guide 2015” (ASAE), a comprehensive study resource for those seeking the Certified Association Executive (CAE) credential.As part of her ongoing commitment to effective learning regardless of the setting, Kathi is a qualified lead assessor for the American National Standards Institute's (ANSI) Certificate Accreditation Program. The program is based on ASTM E2659-09, Standard Practice for Certificate Programs, which is an American National Standard.Prior to launching her consulting business, Kathi spent 25 years working in a variety of capacities for five distinctly different trade and professional associations. For a majority of that time she was responsible for development, implementation, and evaluation of professional development programs.

Kathleen M. Edwards

Kathi Edwards is an independent consultant, writer, and facilitator specializing in creating effective learning environments and strategies. She is passionate about all aspects of learning, from developing and implementing high-level strategy to ensuring SMEs have the knowledge and skills they need to facilitate learning effectively in all modalities. Everything she does is focused on those who matter most: the learners.Kathi's unique expertise in transforming the effectiveness of SMEs who lead learning opportunities is sought internationally in a variety of fields. In demand as an engaging speaker and facilitator, she has been a frequent content leader for ASAE: The Center for Association Leadership and the Association for Talent Development (ATD) on topics related to effective learning and working with and coaching SMEs. Currently facilitating ATD’s Training & Facilitation Certificate program, she also developed and facilitated the three-part webinar Essentials of Coaching SMEs to Facilitate Learning, part of ATD’s ongoing Essentials of.... webinar series.As part of her ongoing commitment to effective learning regardless of the setting, Kathi is a qualified lead assessor for the ANSI National Accreditation Board’s Certificate Accreditation Program. Kathi speaks and writes extensively about learning practice and strategies. She is co-editor and a chapter author for the book Core Competencies in Association Professional Development, 2nd edition, and contributed 22 of the ideas in the book 199 Ideas for Enhancing Learning Experiences. She also served as executive editor of CAE Study Guide 2020, a comprehensive study resource for those seeking the Certified Association Executive credential.Prior to launching her consulting business in 2003, Kathi spent 25 years working in various capacities. For most of that time, she was responsible for development, implementation, and evaluation of professional development programs.

Kathleen Edwards

One of the most critical questions talent and learning professionals need to answer to close an identified performance gap is whether to build or to buy the expertise needed to design, develop, and deliver the most effective learning experience. This is not just an either-or decision. There are many variations, ranging from completely outsourcing to partnering with an external source for just some of the components. The decision not only affects the solution, but also the budget, personnel, support efforts, time involved, the results for the employees and ultimately the success of the organization. What do you need to know before the conversations start? What research do you need to do? What questions do you ask? Where do you start?Situations like this are a common part of the talent leader’s portfolio. Your starting point might be different depending on your industry, your size, your market position, the maturity of your learning function, and other factors. However, if you are part of a benchmarking consortium, such as the ATD Forum, there is a known pathway–ask your peers!Forum members have a variety of methods to gain information from a diverse group of peers, including sending a simple member-to-member survey, asking others at a small group cohort meeting, hosting a virtual roundtable for members to share and ask questions, and holding deep dives at interactive labs.At the 2023 Spring Lab in San Diego, members focused on the build-or-buy conundrum and took it a step further to collectively develop ideas, checklists, and questions to enable a perfect fit between a provider and customer, regardless of whether the provider is internal or external. Context was provided by a member and its external strategic partner sharing a case study. This included an overview of the challenge, the case they developed for using an external supplier, and the many techniques employed over the years to work together to enable success for the real customers—the employees.Using this scenario, the collective peer group of talent leaders from 19 companies developed a list of reasons for using external versus internal suppliers, used the Value Proposition Canvas tool to dive deeper into clarifying needs, heard from an expert on using burden rate (the cost to an organization of hiring and maintaining an employee beyond their wages) when cost is a primary factor, and, finally, developed a list of elements to consider when selecting an external provider.Reasons for considering an external supplier:Diversity of thought and known expertise related to solving the challenge lends credibility on the issue that might be missing internally.A partnership can expand the company’s network for ideas, people, and solutions; this might include mentorships.Time to market can be much faster.Processes established to easily show metrics and ROI if the supplier has a model or tool designed for that purpose.Content maintenance capability is a huge factor, and the supplier may have a dedicated team.Reasons for not using an external supplier:An external person or group not understanding the context of the organization, the need, or similar factorsChallenge of getting executive buy-inCost, especially when burden rate is considered a sunk costRisk factors if internal leadership changes, the vendor gets acquired by another company, or other unforeseen circumstancesInitial time investment to set up the contract, especially if it involves legal, compliance, contracts, IT, or other departmentsLack of specificity based on industry—for example, experience from banking not applicable to constructionThe group then developed a list of elements to consider when selecting an external supplier. As the small groups reported their ideas, there was large group discussion and experiences shared from the rest of the peer group. The host team with the case study, along with the strategic partner, supplemented the conversation by providing real-life examples.With this list of elements clarified and expanded, the teams brainstormed how to determine whether these elements were present. A sampling of the elements and response includes:Element: How might we know if the supplier’s offering will really meet our need?Suggestions generated:Ensuring internal clarity on the problem and need by using a tool like the Value Proposition Canvas or Cathy Moore's action mapping prior to engaging with themRequesting demos and asking for a pilot or examplesAsking what they would change from their standard format for your organizationAssessing how they engage and ask questions of you as a client (Do they probe to dive deeper?)Element: How do you know if the external supplier can serve as a thought partner within your context?Suggestions generated:Asking for a list of other clients the supplier has worked with and interviewing themWorking through a scenario you provide and seeing how the supplier respondsAsking broad, open-ended, what-if type questions and focusing on what is referenced, especially noting other thought leaders and researchAsking, “What in our relationship, as you understand it now, might incur extra work and therefore additional fees?”Asking for examples of times when the supplier has provided thought leadership and the results garnered (Is there a regular cadence for sharing experience and current thought leadership? For example, does the supplier have a regular web conference or blog or gathering of clients to share forward-thinking ideas?)Asking for a list of the books, articles, whitepapers, or blogs the supplier has published for the industry at large and a list of conferences or other venues where they have shared experiencesThe build-or-buy decision is huge. However, if the decision is to buy, it takes continued effort from both parties—the customer and the supplier—to build an ongoing strategic partnership that results in a perfect fit which in turn makes an impact on the organization. Connecting, collaborating, and sharing with industry peers is an excellent start.

Build Versus Buy: Lessons From Peers

Cathy Fyock, CSP, SPHR, SHRM-SCP, is “the Business Book Strategist” and works with professionals and thought leaders who want to write a book as a business development strategy. She is author of 10 books, including On Your Mark: From First Word to First Draft in Six Weeks; Blog2Book: Repurposing Content to Discover the Book You’ve Already Written; and with coauthor Lois Creamer, The Speaker Author: Sell More Books and Book More Speeches. Her most recent book is Authority, which is an anthology about the power of authorship.Since beginning her business in 2014, Fyock has helped more than 200 professionals become published authors. She believes that we all have a purpose, and that our stories are the way in that we share our truth with others. She is certain that authors can and do change the world, one word at a time.

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