LEADERSHIP PRIORITIES

How can leadership be leveraged to improve learning?

The improvement of learning across an organization starts at the top with a CEO who is committed to a learning strategy and has the appropriate funds and staffing to proceed. The CEO can demonstrate commitment to learning by annually investing a percentage of payroll on training and/or creating a corporate university.

According to studies, there are over 2,000 corporate universities globally and the number is increasing yearly. Benefits from the creation and promotion of a corporate university include building employee morale and improving recruiting efforts, since this activity demonstrates the company’s commitment to developing its people. Another way a CEO’s commitment to learning is often seen is when CEO’s refer to their corporate university through several means of communication including:

• Annual reports
• Speeches
• Press releases

Launching a Corporate University

A large petrochemical manufacturing company launched their first official corporate university in December 2006. The launch was in response to increased competition and globalization, and the CEO delivered numerous speeches to demonstrate his commitment. Additionally, he referenced the corporate university in the annual report and the press release that announced year-end financial results.

Promoting a Corporate University

In responding to rapid changes that were occurring in the medical device industry, a global medical products company found it necessary to launch a corporate university. The CEO performed the following actions:

• Appointed a CLO
• Supported and funded a corporate university
• Gave speeches across the company
• Spoke to industry trade press
• Agreed to teach training courses

CEOs who publicly take a strategic approach to human capital are seen by their employees as demonstrating a firm understanding of the importance of workplace learning. This type of behavior is critical to the buy-in of the workforce, and the overall success of any corporate university strategy.

Leaders as Teachers

CEOs can further demonstrate commitment by teaching classes on company strategy, culture, and leadership values. Jack Welch, retired CEO of GE, described his commitment to learning by regularly traveling to the company’s leadership center – commonly known as Crotonville – to teach new managers what it means to lead at GE (Welch, 2001). According to GE CLO Bob Corcoran, Welch and current CEO Jeffrey Immelt have spoken at 329 of the last 330 executive-level courses at the facility. During an interview in December of 2006, Corcoran described the commitment senior executives display for teaching by noting when ‘business executives or CEOS are asked to come to Crotonville to teach, they accept 100% of the time. The commitment starts at the top and it is considered a privilege to be asked to teach at Crotonville.’

Acting as a teacher, the CEO is able to create a two-way dialogue between themselves and leaders throughout the company; it also signifies that developing talent is each individual’s job. Ed Ludwig, Chairman and CEO of Becton Dickinson, was quoted in an interview for T+D as saying, ‘In my teaching role, I answer a lot of questions, and that has helped me clarify my own ideas about where the company should be going. I learn from teaching and I think it has made me a better communicator of our strategies. Frankly, I don’t think the role of teacher is optional for a CEO in today’s complex, multifunctional, multinational, technology organization. It’s part of the job, and it’s a fun part.’

Organizations that manage human capital strategically leverage the learning function to drive major business change. In 2005, a large, global manufacturing company embarked on a new enterprise strategy designed to propel the company into the top position of every market they share. It was developed with an updated version of the company’s worldwide code of conduct as its foundation, but the real challenge was getting every employee quickly on board.

Under direction from the CEO, the CLO and his team created partnerships with key organizational groups to deploy the updated code’s new enterprise strategy. A critical component of this rollout was the idea of ‘leaders as teachers’.

In less than 3 months, the CLO and his team had all of the resources, materials, and support structures in place, and began deployment by having the CEO and top five executives teaching 600 leaders in six global locations, over a two day period. Those leaders then taught other leaders, who in turn taught their employees resulting in new, mission-critical learning successfully being spread throughout the organization.

Alan Todd, CorpU Chairman of the Board