In the News
A Strategic Foundation
November 2007
For CLOs who seek to achieve workforce engagement, one of the
first things they ought to do might sound counterintuitive.
“Don’t think about workforce engagement — that
phrase suggests you’re going to try and get the entire workforce
engaged, and even in a small to midsize company, that can be a nearly
impossible task,” said Leo Flanagan, Ph.D., president of Flanagan
Consultants. “The first thing is to change your view and say,
‘Which part of this workforce is pivotal to our success?’
in terms of getting it engaged. It’s about strategic engagement,
not about ‘Let’s get everyone engaged.’”
In addition to this change in mindset, Flanagan said organizations
must have a solid definition of engagement and, accordingly, a concrete
plan as to how learning can make strategic engagement a reality.
“Engagement is about dialogue, it’s about action, it’s
about creativity and it’s about reality. Having said that,
this means traditional classrooms aren’t your solution of
choice,” he said. “That means e-learning, if it’s
going to be part of your solution, really has to be high-quality
— it has to be engaging, it needs to tell a story, it needs
to immerse people in that story.”
More important than e-learning, however, is fostering a culture
in which learning thrives and has support from the organization’s
upper echelons.
“You’re looking more toward leader-led or manager-led
and true learning, not just rote scripts,” Flanagan said.
“I would challenge chief learning officers to not to think
about programs but the culture. And you don’t build culture
only through programs — you build cultures by coaching and
taking advantage of opportunities.”
Flanagan stressed business acumen as a means by which CLOs can
accomplish this.
“The CLO should be like any other good businessperson,”
he said. “If I’m in charge of manufacturing capacity,
then in some cases, I’m going to say, ‘You know what?
We need to build one new plant.’ In other cases, I’m
going to say, ‘We need to rebuild our manufacturing capacity.’
The CLO has to come to the table with that same kind of thought
process.
“Sometimes it’s, ‘You know what? If there is
one executive vice president who can get that person to change their
behavior, we’re going to get terrific results.’ In other
cases, it’s going to be some group of front-line workers who
really get engaged with senior leaders.”
Once a strategic segment of the workforce has been engaged, however,
neither the enterprise nor the CLO should sit back and relax. Rather,
the engagement must be sustained, and certain phenomena must be
monitored.
One element is turnover, both high and low.
“If I’m an employee who’s trying to figure out
where we’re going, what the rules are and getting engaged
in that, and the division president’s changed twice in a year
— and not for good reasons like getting a promotion —
that can be really troubling,” Flanagan said. “On the
other hand, if you have a very, very stable management team with
a ‘We built this business, and we know how it runs’
kind of mindset, that can really stifle creativity.”
Another thing CLOs must consider is how achieving strategic engagement
will affect learning delivery. Essentially, it’s a matter
of anticipating if or when an organization will “outgrow”
certain methods.
“If we’re a growing company, and if we’ve already
started being more strategic about engagement, what are going to
be the limits to growth?” Flanagan said. “When are we
going to get so big that this way of learning isn’t going
to work? When are we going to get so big that we’re going
to have to change systems?”
— Lisa Rummler, lrummler@clomedia.com
Lisa Rummler is the copy editor for Chief Learning Officer magazine.
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