All 128 Division I college football teams are just wrapping up spring training. The senior players are only memories. The incoming class hasn’t yet arrived. And hopes for a successful season are as plentiful as flower blossoms and tree buds.

This flow of players through college football teams is a microcosm of the flow of people and talent through corporations today. The promise of thirty-year employment has long vanished, and with the arrival of the millennial workforce, corporations are struggling with the reality of a “learn-and-leave” mindset. The importance of continuously recruiting new players for college football programs and modern corporations alike has become paramount.

The notion of recruiting has always fascinated us. The most common mantra heard in the hallways of companies today is “hire only the best.” At first blush, this seems to make perfect sense. The implication is that hiring only the best will result in top performance. How true is this assertion? As examining this premise across corporations proves difficult, let’s take a look through the world of college football.

The 2015 college football season ended with Alabama regaining its throne after a convincing victory over Clemson in the title game. Using the final season rankings as our measure of performance, let’s examine the performance ranking of all 128 Division I teams. What influence did recruiting have on this ultimate result?

Every year around this time, each college football program is ranked on the number and quality of its incoming recruits. We’ve compared these two sets of rankings in the chart below. The final standing is based on the 2015 win–loss records. The recruiting rankings are from 2013. We picked this year as the very best players in the college game only stay around for two of the four years they are eligible to play.

Last year’s recruiting headlines might read:

Alabama #1 in Both Recruiting and Final Standings

As you can see, Alabama has a perfect correlation. The team was ranked number one in recruiting and number one in performance. This result, of course, gives credence to the adage, “hire only the best.”

But another significant headline regarding recruiting might read

Navy Finishes the Season at #17 despite Ranking 112th in Recruiting

Navy’s program provides a strong counterargument to the adage that recruiting is the number one priority. Not only does this ranking indicate that factors exist beyond recruiting, Navy’s particular story demonstrates that there are ways to succeed that do not rely on recruiting. When we look at the full spectrum of 128 schools, we can clearly see that while success can be positively impacted by recruiting, it is dependent on more than simply hiring the best.

Let’s look closer:

• Three top twenty-five schools had a strong correlation between their recruiting and their final rankings: Alabama, Ohio State, and Notre Dame
• Of the top twenty-five recruiting schools, nine (or 36 percent) finished the season within +/- 10 percent of their recruiting ranking
• This breakdown holds for all 128 teams:
  • 34 percent fell within the +/- correlated recruiting range
  • 32 percent outperformed their recruiting expectations
  • 34 percent underperformed their recruiting expectations
• Four schools in addition to Navy significantly outperformed their recruiting rankings
  • Houston (7th in performance/76th in recruiting)
  • Utah (18th in performance/67th in recruiting)
  • Iowa (8th in performance/59th in recruiting)
  • TCU (9th in performance/43rd in recruiting)
• Five schools had some clear issues and significantly underperformed their recruiting rankings
  • Auburn (60th in performance/6th in recruiting)
  • Texas A&M (45th in performance/5th in recruiting)
  • Texas (74th in performance/16th in recruiting)
  • South Carolina (95th in performance/19th in recruiting)
  • Kentucky (83rd in performance/22nd in recruiting)

The story painted by this data indicates that while top talent is important, what happens to these potentially high performers when they arrive is equally important: How strong is the program they enter? Does it continue to develop top performers? Is leadership aligned around a clear strategy?

Questions to ponder:

• How would you rate your recruiting program?
• What does your development program look like for your critical roles?
• Are your leaders aligned around your strategy?

Originally published on Outcomes Thinking Blog

Don’t look now, but the digital transformation ship may have left you on the docks. So, what is a digital transformation? As you might guess, there are more than a few definitions floating out there, but here’s a good one that I found in a Forbes article by Jason Bloomberg:

“The realignment of, or new investment in, technology and business models to more effectively engage digital customers at every touchpoint in the customer experience lifecycle.” 

Many companies have already embarked on the digital transformation journey, and inevitably, most will follow. According to Gartner, “by 2020, 75% of businesses will be a digital business or will be preparing to become one.”

My colleague Linda Lamppert is writing a blog series on when “everything old is new again” that focuses on learning. Reading her blog made me think about the recent conversations we’ve been having with our customers on digital transformation. I worry that inevitably there will be those who will invest too much on the technology hype and forget to place the right focus on what is arguably the most important variable—people—just as many did for most of the age of ERP.

Naturally, customers are an important focus of this investment, but where is the mention of the other people, the people whose worthy efforts day in and day out are the foundation of any successful business? Failing to elevate the frontline workforce that supports digital initiatives to the appropriate level of importance will place a costly drag on that initiative and put the overall strategy in serious jeopardy.

We are really in exciting times when in-memory, real-time data access is at our fingertips and where mobile, social, the Internet of Things, the cloud, and other technologies of digital transformation promise to take us to previously unheard of levels of competitiveness. Some even talk of a place where we can leverage these capabilities so that we need have no more fears about our competition disrupting our business and surpassing us. Could it be possible that we will be able to disrupt our own business to create never before imagined success? Imagine the possibilities.

Yet at the same time, although the role and impact of technology in business may help enable incredible success, some basic things remain the same. Yes, what is old is new again! To be successful, humans have to occupy a central focus. The technology is only as good as the worker’s ability to assimilate that data; make quick, insightful decisions; and produce value that will impact the business in a positive way.

Some suggestions as you consider your people strategy:

If you’re looking for a differentiated customer experience and competitive business agility, you should know that a digital platform alone will not deliver that to you. The ability to drive unprecedented value happens on the business front lines. So, if critical roles in your organization do not know what value they must produce at the right time and place in the process, your digital transformation strategy will toil needlessly at sea or it will be doomed to sink.

If you’re interested in reading more about creating programs that are focused on driving this kind of performance, check out this award-winning book The New Game Changers by Butler Newman and Greg Long, two of my colleagues, and get your initiatives to smooth sailing by having the right people in your organization focused on doing the right things.

What are some of your tips for smoother sailing?

The first step is to identify the top performers. All too often, leaders assume that top performers are the most senior, typically either those who have been in their roles the longest or, worse yet, performed so well that they were promoted into management roles. More on that group in a minute.

First of all, what about the idea that the most senior, usually also the longest tenured, are also the top performers? We would answer with a definite maybe. The problem with that assumption is just that: it’s an assumption. But it’s based on the wrong criteria. In many organizations, promotion to senior status within a role comes from tenure more often than competence. Organizations have a strong tendency to elevate people simply because they have persisted and stuck it out longer than others. But that may not correlate with sustained superior performance, which is the only criteria we should be using when identifying top performers.

So what are the hallmarks of sustained superior performance? Depending on the type of role, there are various indicators. In many roles, such as in call-center or sales organizations, data can be analyzed based on the organization’s business goals. If customer loyalty is a primary goal, then which representatives have the highest satisfaction scores or the best Net Promoter Scores? If the goal is customer expansion, who generates and closes the most new leads? If the goal is customer growth, who garners the largest share of the budget? Note that we didn’t simply ask who generates the most revenue. We’ve found that to be a rather poor indicator of top performance. Revenue is, of course, critical. But it’s usually a level or two removed from what performers can really deliver. Revenue is a result, a way to keep score, but it may not be the best indicator of front line performance.

What about those former performers who are now managers? Well, they aren’t in those roles any longer. That presents two reasons not to select them. First, they were selected (we hope) because of their potential to excel in a different role from the one they were in. There are innumerable stories in every organization about promoting the best sales representative who then turned out to be a mediocre sales manager. Or just the opposite: sometimes a mediocre sales representative who possesses exceptional leadership and management skills turns out to be a great sales manager.

Second, but related to the first reason, these managers are no longer performing the job. Therefore, they can no longer demonstrate through observation those nuances that mark an unconsciously competent top performer.

Question to ponder: For your critical roles, who are the top performers? On what basis do you know?

A quick survey of the impact of technology in the global workplace over the last 25 years easily points to dramatic changes throughout global corporations.  Many aspects of the specific impact on corporate people strategies are readily apparent. There is one impact, however, that has largely gone unnoticed and it is leading to repercussions up and down the corporate structure.

In a recent 20-minute webinar, Butler Newman and I shared insights on:

• Relevant technology trends impacting the HCM market
• A new approach for your human capital strategy
• What people value in a modern workplace
• How to leverage the Design Point

You can download the full session here. But if you’re looking for the abbreviated version, I wanted to offer a quick look at some of the key takeaways from the webinar:

• Context is still critical. Particularly, what specific role an individual is filling and what the organization’s definition of success in that role is.
• Top Performers balance both purposeful execution and skillful human interactions. Both are essential for success. Gone are the days when simply focusing on tasks was sufficient for success.
• It is not necessary to hire only the very best A players. With a deliberate process, good performers can produce great results. Focusing on outcomes, understanding the context and equipping people with both task and human interaction skills will produce the results businesses need.

During the session, a number of questions came up, and while we were able to address most of them, we weren’t able to get to all of them due to time. Below are those questions and our best answers. This is an ongoing conversation, so Butler and I encourage you to keep the questions coming in via the comments section at the bottom of this page.

Q: Do all jobs have human interaction skills, or are there some with just task completion?

A: Not 100%, but certainly all the critical ones in today’s complex work environment.

Q: How should learning organizations use this information?  What actions do you recommend?

A: We recommend a 3 step approach:

1. For any given role, assess the outcomes necessary to produce excellent results
2. Analyze each outcome for both task execution and human interaction components
3. Evaluate existing equipping programs for gaps in preparing individuals to produce the desired outcomes

Q: ­How do you move people from a task environment to a human interaction environment­?

A: First identify the skills needed for both task and human interaction axes. Then assess people’s readiness to perform along both axes and then develop a personal equipping plan to close any identified gaps.

As we enter the New Year, I keep having the feeling that all the shiny, brand new objects in the learning world are just today’s reinterpretation of all the right stuff that we’ve been doing all along. A cynic would say that somebody else is getting all kinds of credit for inventing something that really isn’t new, but in the spirit of the New Year, I think I’ll choose to be excited that I can bring so much existing life experience to these “brand new” trends.

Like many training professionals, a lot of my work has to do with the implementation of new business processes and systems. My first SAP implementation was back in 1994, more than 20 years ago, and in between I’ve created end user training for every flavor of ERP system as well as a wide range of custom software solutions. And while you may think the crazy challenges of this type of work would be getting old by now, I think, in fact, this might just be the most exciting time ever for the kind of work I do.

Over these 20 years, the tools and technology available for learning have evolved tremendously, and in some ways, so have the needs of our learners. Most of them have multiple systems they use to do their jobs on any given day, and these systems are constantly evolving—especially the “cloud” varieties. So while basic learning needs in some ways remain the same—“Tell me what I need to do to do my job, show me how to do it, let me practice, and help me when I get stuck”—employees need agile and effective ways of learning now more than ever.

One of the biggest challenges with this type of training has always been how to provide learners with realistic, hands-on practice on the systems they will use. For many years, our recommendation was to provide a training database with realistic custom data for use in classroom training. Nothing can beat getting in and playing around with the system in a safe practice environment with support from an instructor.

Some years ago, however, the availability of various simulation tools convinced many organizations to switch from live system exercises to system simulations. The argument for using simulations makes sense on a number of levels: Simulations eliminate the need for creation of massive amounts of data, the mechanics of training delivery are greatly simplified, and there is no need to maintain the training database over time. Easy peasy, right?

But I’ve been noticing a funny thing happening over the last six months or so. Organizations are starting to realize that simulations aren’t the silver bullet they once appeared to be. They are realizing that live system exercises offer a lot more value than they thought. Simulations are, in most cases, just a pale imitation of the system employees will be using. Even simulations built with great foresight don’t teach complex transactions well. And most importantly, simulations don’t allow us to experience failure or learn how to recover from it. Yes, there are some pretty sophisticated simulation tools out there, but it takes a lot of effort to create and maintain those simulations, and you still don’t get the richness of a real training database.

So is it time to go back to live system exercises? As always, the answer is a resounding, “It depends.” It depends on the learners. It depends on the processes and systems. It depends on your organization’s learning culture. And most likely, if you are dealing with a broad ERP implementation or a range of systems, you will find a different answer for each learning need. So as you try to figure out the right solution for your specific situation, I would encourage you to consider the following questions:

• Should instructor-led training (ILT) be a part of your learning solution? These days, many topics can be covered in eLearning or just-in-time video microlearning. For highly conceptual process training or simple task training, you may not need ILT. But for teaching employees complex tasks in a new system, I would still argue that the best approach is traditional ILT.
• If ILT is the preferred solution, is the learning audience centralized or distributed (so as to require virtual ILT [VILT])? If you need to conduct VILT, facilitating hands-on exercises in a training database can be a real challenge. Make sure your instructors are fully trained on how to conduct exercises using your VILT technology and be sure to have a fallback plan if they start getting in trouble. That plan could include local help resources, the use of simulations as a backup, the ability to take over a learner’s laptop, or even switching to “demo only” mode.
• Is hands-on practice required for each system task? Often, it is possible to simplify training database requirements by saving hands-on exercises for the most complex tasks. Simple tasks can then be taught through instructor demonstrations, job aids, or simple simulations. The added benefit of this approach is that you may find you can segregate your content to allow some of the ILT to be taught as eLearning, with smaller, more focused ILT classes for the complex content.
• Will the exercise solution you have in mind be sustainable over time (and does that matter)? Truth be told, this isn’t just a question related to exercises. It’s a question for your entire learning solution. If you decide to use live exercises, you will need to consider how your training database will be kept in sync with the production system. But equally important (and often forgotten), if you are going to use simulations, how will they be maintained as the system and business processes evolve? (Especially with cloud solutions!) And what are the mechanics for how new employees will use the learning solution to get up to speed? Will classes be taught? Will super users work with them one on one? Think through the future before committing to a solution.

These are just a few of the questions you should be thinking about, but they will get you started. Best of luck in applying this “new” learning trend in 2016!

As we enter the New Year, I keep having the feeling that all the shiny, brand new objects in the learning world are just today’s reinterpretation of all the right stuff that we’ve been doing all along. A cynic would say that somebody else is getting all kinds of credit for inventing something that really isn’t new, but in the spirit of the New Year, I think I’ll choose to be excited that I can bring so much existing life experience to these “brand new” trends.

There’s been a lot of buzz lately about applying the principles of Agile software development to the creation of training. For those of us who are new to this, the Agile movement began some 15 years ago in the form of an Agile Manifesto based on four values:

• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Responding to change over following a plan

The manifesto then went on to outline 12 principles for the creation of software that support these four values. Although these principles are focused on software development, they have a lot of relevance, and those of us who have worked with clients over the years will recognize many of these principles come out of good consulting practices:

…the highest priority is to satisfy the customer early with valuable deliverables…
business people and developers must work together…
build projects around motivated individuals…
continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility…
simplicity is essential…

If we are good at what we do as performance improvement and training professionals, these principles are built into our standard approach. We include analysis and design deliverables to provide the customer with an early vision of our proposed solutions. We get business input in solution design and approval to ensure we positively impact the business. We engage stakeholders and team members around a vision for success and motivate and equip them to effectively do their jobs. We use prototypes, documentation standards, and a QA process so content is technically accurate and well-designed from the onset. And most importantly, we identify outcomes of value for the business and then design our solutions to produce those outcomes in the simplest, most effective, and most cost-effective way possible.

But other Agile principles aren’t as evident in the training world. “Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.” Personally, I struggle the most with this one. How do you deliver a solution on time and on budget when welcoming changes late in development? I think the solution here is to align early and often and to plan development around possible changing requirements. For example, we often work with clients to develop training on new business processes and systems that are being implemented. In planning development of these solutions, we align early in the project on which elements are the most “baked” and which ones are still being figured out. Then we start development on the baked areas and save the unbaked ones for later. Equally important, we try to maintain flexibility when changing requirements come up, and by having a detailed development schedule and understanding our development metrics, we are almost always able to incorporate the changes without negatively impacting our budget and final delivery schedule. And of course, when in doubt, we always refer back to Agile value number one: customer collaboration over contract negotiation. Keep that in mind and everything has a way of working out.

As we enter the New Year, I keep having the feeling that all the shiny, brand new objects in the learning world are just today’s reinterpretation of all the right stuff that we’ve been doing all along. A cynic would say that somebody else is getting all kinds of credit for inventing something that really isn’t new, but in the spirit of the New Year, I think I’ll choose to be excited that I can bring so much existing life experience to these “brand new” trends.

There’s an article in this month’s CLO magazine about the buzz around “flipped” classrooms. Author Bob Mosher rightly points out that classrooms aren’t going away any time soon and they need help. He discusses three ways to flip classroom learning: before, during, and after the classroom experience. What amuses me is the third way: flipping after the classroom experience. Mosher explains that this most misunderstood approach “uses the classroom to teach only the critical skills needed to survive, and tools such as performance support, along with methods such as coaching and mentoring.” And guess what? It works! How do I know? We’ve been using this approach for 20 years to significantly reduce classroom training time while increasing learners’ ability to produce critical job outcomes. Nice to know it now has a name!

So what have I learned over 20 years about making this misunderstood flipping approach work?

• An effective approach to prioritizing content is key. The assumption with the flipped approach is that much of the learning will occur back on the job or as learners complete a blended learning journey following class. But just how do you decide what should be covered in the classroom? We use a structured approach to prioritize content based on required job outcomes and the nature of the tasks performed to complete those outcomes. How complex are they, how critical are they, what happens if they are done wrong, and how different is this from how things were done before? We also make sure that from an instructional design perspective, our classroom training enables learners to be successful with critical tasks on day one while providing them with a structured approach for learning more back on the job. This concept of a learning journey is an important element of the flipped approach.
• Design of the solution must support sustainment. Many organizations invest significant funds in developing learning and performance support content that is good for “go live” but then gathers dust on the shelf. How many of us know that there is help out on the network somewhere, but have no idea how to get to it and whether it is up to date? For the flipped classroom, or any learning solution, to work, it must be sustainable: easily accessed, maintained, and used by new learners. This long-term usage must be taken into account from initial design.
• If you don’t introduce and use performance support in the classroom, it won’t be used on the job. An important aspect of a flipped classroom is the use of performance support (help) back on the job to continue learning. One of my first lessons about performance support is that if you don’t introduce it in the classroom and help learners see how useful it is, they will never access it back on the job. If you are trying to teach learners to fish, you must show them how to use the fishing rod. You would be surprised how often this simple rule is ignored.
• Nothing can replace hands-on practice in a safe environment—especially when you are talking about learning new processes and systems. Much of the work I do is related to teaching people to use new technology, and many of my clients are very keen to replace live system exercises with system simulations. While simulations make things much easier from a technical perspective (no need for a training database), very few provide a rich experience to learners. Part of learning is learning how to fail and recover, and simulations give a false sense of security about that. Hands-on practice with support from an instructor is one of the very best ways to use classroom time.
• Follow-up discussion and support are critical. Because so much learning in this flipped approach occurs back on the job, it is critical to provide a means for learners to get questions answered as they learn. There are many ways of providing this support—formal coaching and mentoring, an online community of practice, informal follow up sessions, or super user programs—but the key is that communication between the learner and those teaching must be two-way. Adoption will not happen if learners become frustrated.

Best of luck in applying this “new” learning trend and Happy New Year!

How can you find out what outcomes your top performers focus on? The first, and perhaps most obvious, approach is to ask them. Interviewing is a key technique and is usually the starting point for our discovery process.

Top performer interviews differ from other common interviews we usually conduct. For most of us, our interviewing experience is mostly based on interviewing candidates for a position to select the best candidate. In that case, we are attempting to determine whether someone is qualified and, if so, which of the candidates is most qualified.

When interviewing top performers, we are trying to learn what they already know. That requires developing a great deal of rapport and trust during the interview so the performers will open up and frankly discuss how they think about their work.

The most common technique we use is called a framing session. We call it that because we are trying to frame up in our minds the broad outlines of the job through the eyes of the top performer. We commonly ask this person to walk us through a day (or shift or week or month or whatever other time frame makes sense) in his or her life.

As top performers discuss their perspectives on that day, we probe for answers to the following questions:

• What did they do (tasks)?
• What did they produce as a result of those tasks (outcomes)?
• Why did they do a particular task (stimulus)?
• How did they know when they were done with a thing (success criteria)?
• What either helps or hinders them (facilitators or barriers)?
• Who did they collaborate with (team)?

At this early stage, we aren’t focused on getting every detail of every outcome. We just want to get a rough outline of the work so we can identify places to drill into later.

Questions to ponder:

• How would you describe your job in terms of the bullet points above? Could you?

Imagine how your organization would benefit if everyone in critical roles operated at the same level as the top performers in those roles. Leading companies in today’s market are changing their core mindset about learning & equipping their employees to produce only the outcomes that will drive real impact to their business. These game changers understand the impact of everyone performing at the top of their game and are equipping their performers to achieve that level of excellence by focusing only on what matters. Conventional approaches to training just won’t cut it any longer. Greg Long, Vice President and Performance Consultant at GP Strategies, describes how our “Outcomes Thinking” approach keeps you relevant and competitive in today’s complex business environment.