This morning Clark Quinn and I orchestrated a discussion at DevLearn 08 in San Jose on how to weather the financial crisis. I’ll use that as a jumping-off point to offer some advice you didn’t ask for.
First off, be aware that the magnitude of the financial meltdown is almost beyond comprehension. This is more than fiscal irresponsibility in the highest reaches of American government and a chief executive who, when the people needed reassurance, announced that “this sucker may go down.” We are witnessing the final meltdown of the industrial economy.
As in other tough economic times, training budgets will be cut. That’s a given. But I can foresee training departments being eliminated almost entirely. And I fully expect a third of more of the corporations in our audience today will be re-engineered, chopped up, overtaken, and dismembered beyond recognition by this time next year.
Famously, networks subvert hierarchy. Up next: networks obsolete authoritarian, fixed-asset based, rigid, closed models of doing business. Sayonara. There’s a better way.
Given the coming cataclysm, what’s a learning professional to do?
Take action. This week. Survivors must write new agendas while they still have a desks to write on. Use the downturn to your advantage. Propose lean-and-mean approaches such as peer learning and performance support.
Be a business person. Don’t wait for the ax to fall. Figure out what’s inefficient or has a low payback and propose that it be cut. Better that it’s your informed choice than someone else’s across-the-board cuts. Be decisive.
Propose and implement better ways to get the job done. Formal learning tends to be expensive; informal cuts costs because it’s learner-driven. When feasible, replace formal learning experiences with bottom-up experiential networks. Consider replacing some instructor-led training with self-service learning.
Stop talking about training. Forever. Talk business metrics. Redefine your job as increasing revenue, strengthening relationships with customers and partners, making things happen faster, saving money, encouraging innovation, and keeping your company alive.
Change your job title from training director to Director of Sales Readiness or Manager of Capability Enhancement or Innovation Czar.
In our session, Pat Galaghan said the winners have the ear of the CEO and talk business strategy, not training. Unfortunately, less than one in twenty-five companies is in that situation. It’s great if you can get there; this is a real tough time to make the journey. Don’t place all your bets on converting harried executives to your cause.
Expand your personal repertoire. Become the go-to person for social networks, informal learning, and podcasts. Don’t be like the lumberjack who is too busy chopping down trees to sharpen his ax. Make yourself valuable — in your own organization or someone else’s.
Empower communities of practice and project teams. Plant the seeds of social network initiatives with them. The more communities you start, the better the odds some good ones will survive. Web 2.0 betas are dirt cheap; start up lots of them.
Vocabulary lessons from the Learnscaping book
To get your wheels turning, here’s a list of more than fifty business problems informal learning can help solve.
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Great post Jay. Interesting that all of those millions of dollars spent on regulatory and compliance training didn’t actually have any real effect on the behaviour of those in the financial sector. Similarly, all of that Leadership training has done nothing but produce maniacs who have led us all to the brink of disaster. Maybe this will also get rid of all of the bullshit stand-up stuff that has been weighing us down for years,
It strikes me that we seem to need a financial meltdown to start to ‘think business’ and ‘cut inefficiency’. Anyway, in these times creativity is indeed stimulated. For companies that want to have a head start when the economic growth picks-up it will be key to keep learning and development high on their agenda’s. Talent shortages remain in a lot of industry sectors and organizations that cut their learning budgets will lose their competitive edga anyway. I agree that creativity in approaches and business awareness are essential for learning professionals. Not only now, but always to improve the image of our field with senior management and to avoid learning budgets to be the first to be eliminated in the future.
Well, Jay dont you think by adopting such an apporach we are basically degrading the company standards, rather than this approach of cost cutting, I would prefer going to cheaper IT investements(which count for 15-20% of a companies expenditure)like adopting the cloud computing technologies eg: SaaS, PaaS.