24 April Social Responsibility (...intentions...)

[Paul Terlemezian]

If a company has intentions of doing good for society then it has the repsonsibility to stay in business.

 

Much like a parent that desires to be a good spouse and parent - they must not lose their health and ability to sustain their good work while doing so.

 

And just as the parent that is too focused on its own well being runs the risk of being a poor spouse or negligent parent the corporate training department has to be mindful of similar concerns.

 

The corporate training department is a business within a business and must run itself effectively so it can continue to provide its service to the benefit of its audiences.

 

What have you experienced as the most effective means for the corporate training department to function in a manner that provides for the learners while building the careers of the training department employees?

 

Is it running as a cost center? profit center? outsourced? insourced? some other model? If a blend - what are the important decision factors and ifluences?

[Paul Terlemezian]

A few years ago I spoke with several Chief Learning Officers who were helping their companies build cross-functional leadership development and talent management programs. One concern that was consistent was the resistance they were meeting related to "losing" talent to another internal function. It appeared that it would be easier for a rising star to leave the company for a cross-functional promotion than to gain that promotion internally because of the internal functional resistance.

 

I asked these CLO's if the corporate learning function was participating in this cross-functional leadership development program and each one said no for the same reason - their function was too small to participate.

 

Ironically each of those CLO's themselves left their company for a better position. What do you think?

 

1. Does it make sense to have a cross-functional talent management program to enable internal migration across functions?

 

2. If so, is any department (e.g. training) too small to participate in it? What are the business implications of your answer?

 

3. Is it just a fact of life that the only growth path for a CLO is to leave their company?

[Paul Terlemezian]

The responsibility of virtually every employee has cross-functional impact. It is ironic (and potentially a limiting factor) that most training is paid for and delivered functionally. We learn with our peers who will do the same work that we do but we do not learn with the people we will be working with (i,e, the other functions that we impact and that impact us.)

Would it make sense for all trainers (and training leaders) to have functional experience in at least two strategic functions before being part of the training organization? These strategic functions are Sales, Marketing, Operations, Product Development and Finance.