Reporting Relationships and Organization Structure

The decision of who the CLO should report to is a struggle for many organizations. Independent of the management structure, however, it is essential that the CLO will regularly meet with all senior leaders of the company and participate actively in strategic planning sessions. To be effective, every strategic initiative should:

• Have an associated learning strategy with input and participation from the CLO
• The CLO must work closely with HR on areas where processes integrate, such as recruiting and succession planning

CEO and CLO

The CLO must understand the language and thinking of the CEO, particularly where the CEO is focused on several areas such as:

• Strategy
• Value creation
• Major deals
• Governance
• Operational excellence

In order to help the CEO understand business solutions from a performance improvement perspective, the CLO must become an expert at framing the critical skill requirements of the workforce as part of a strategy for connecting learning with business objectives. The CEO and CLO should be partners in developing a high performing workplace, each relying on one another for input, guidance, support, and feedback in a way that makes it clear to the organization that developing human capital is important.

CLO and other C-level Executives

Having the CEO commit the financial resources to execute the plan for commitment of time and budget is not enough; the CEO and governing board must also be presented the learning strategy plan that is developed by the CLO. The CEO and other leaders must commit to becoming champions of learning through participation in performance and leadership development, which serves as a demonstration to the rest of the company of where the leadership team places their priorities.

The L&D Scorecard

Every CEO knows that at some point, their job boils down to creating shareholder value through sustained profitability. As an objective way to measure the outcome of human capital development strategies, the CLO should develop the L&D scorecard. It is critical for the CLO to gain agreement from senior executives on the key measures and outcomes desired for the L&D function.

Senior executives are familiar with the balanced scorecard approach to measurement. In a Harvard Business Review article, business measurement and strategy experts note, “what you measure is what you get. Senior executives understand that their organization’s measurement system strongly affects the behavior of managers and employees.” They also note that top leadership rarely thinks of measurement as an essential part of their strategy, and as a result the metrics that end up in a balanced scorecard are often those that are useful to senior level executives. Therefore, the L&D scorecard must be both easy for executives to understand, and completely integrated with the organization-wide scorecard. The result will provide a framework for ongoing communications with the CEO and other executives.

Building Credibility Across a Global Enterprise

It is important for the CLO and learning function to have credibility across the organization. Some organizations believe their training department is a large waste of money due to the perception that many programs don’t make a difference in the organization. The saying ‘those who can do, and those who can’t, teach’ is an example of the pejorative regularly placed on the training department. Because learning has traditionally been difficult to measure, budget cuts and second-guessing of investments is an all too frequent occurrence. To successfully address these issues and build credibility across the organization, the CLO must:

• Align L&D budgets with critical business priorities
• Create a team that acts as performance consultants to senior management
• Provide metrics and scorecards to measure learning value
• Build strong business cases for future budget requests

As organizations increasingly view learning as a driver of enterprise value, enterprise-learning governance has become more strategic and important to an organization’s ability to thrive in a dynamic business environment. With this in mind, the learning organization should make every effort to move into a leadership position that will influence organizational priorities, resource allocation, and strategic planning. In order to achieve and maintain this level of status, the CLO must focus on identifying and proposing solutions to support the most mission-critical business requirements currently faced by their company.

Written by Alan Todd, Chairman, Corporate University Xchange For the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania