Who's On First?

Who’s On First?
Learning, Performance, Human Capital, or Talent Management?

I recently spent three days in Boston attending the 2006 Saba/Centra Summit where I was invited to speak on the topic of Building Holistic Learning and Performance Strategy. My time-slot in the two-and-a-half day agenda was toward the end of the conference despite my desire to position the topic early in the conference as a “strategy roadmap.” To be perfectly honest, I think the “roadmap” value of the topic actually served a better purpose positioned later in the Summit. Given the overwhelming spectrum of technology options afforded by the new Saba Human Capital Management (HCM) Suite and the added collaboration opportunities afforded by their recent acquisition of Centra, more than a few participants had that “Where do we start?” look on their faces.

The audience obviously was filled with existing Saba and Centra users, but the mix of usership was largely based upon the learning discipline with only a sprinkling of performance module users. I expected more performance management integration, but that clearly was a future desire more so than a present reality. Research I have read postures that only a minority of businesses own comprehensive performance management strategies. Those findings were reflected accurately by those companies present. Minority status does not imply “bad idea”. Actually, it represents a potential future shift from mostly manual, paper-intensive, home-grown, or stand-alone performance systems to a streamlined integration of learning and performance.

Integrating Performance Management

Making that jump to integration places an immediate demand on aligning business strategy and mission-critical outcomes with complex changes and efficiencies offered by bringing these two disciplines together seamlessly. As Josh Bersin said in a webinar in August 2006:

“The biggest criterion of a successful performance management implementation is training managers not only how to use the tool, but how to be good managers.”

This does not only imply better management skills, but a plethora of procedural and hands-on changes that enable effective performance management activities like monitoring, assessing, evaluation, and competency development all year long. New continuous performance management capabilities go well beyond the current annual drills we endure at year-end to finish check-box employee appraisals and slam together individual development plans before HR’s deadline. When you consider integrating those changes it becomes apparent that plugging in the technology is the easy part.

Start with Assessing Readiness

Assessing learning and performance readiness; the precursory steps to developing holistic L&P Strategy offers an opportunity to better define the logical starting point when considering next technology steps. By the time my opportunity to speak rolled around, more than a few in the audience were primed to consider readiness seriously. Developing L&P strategy requires stepping back from impending technology decision to consider both cultural and methodology implications first. Important questions must be answered before investment is made in the right mix of technology:

• Are we ready as an organization to embrace a continuous approach to managing performance?
• Are we willing to invest resources to build the bridges between competencies and learning?
• Do we have the organizational synergies aligned between HR, Training and business stakeholders?
  
  ...just to name a few.

Start with a Foundation of Learning

The complexity around the question “Where do we start?” was exemplified when two thought-leaders appeared to contradict themselves in back-to-back keynotes on the morning of day two. The first emphasized the role of learning in the context of HCM; followed by the second keynote focused on talent management. The first executive referred to learning as the “mother-ship” and that performance management integration would follow; succession planning and talent management sequenced right on its heels. The very next keynote speaker contradicted the role of learning by saying it was “no longer the tip of the sword.” More than one participant noticed the contradiction.

At first glance, the differing views did seem a bit confusing. On closer inspection, they were both right; merely referenced from two different perspectives. One was a senior Saba executive referencing their HCM suite of products that has evolved to include a new Talent Management module from a foundation of learning management. The other speaker was a leading consultancy executive riding the crest of the wave called Talent Management. It truly is a matter of contextual perspective when the role of learning is addressed. All agreed Talent Management is a subset of HCM. The unspoken assumption of the second keynote was that effective HCM is built on the foundation of learning and performance management. Until competency management builds bridges between learning and performance, aspects of career development, succession planning, and even workforce planning tend to be extremely manual and paper-intensive; which, by the way, are the primary reasons no one is willing to tackle the task without seamless technology.

Learning Really Is On First

Trends were confirmed that configurations usually started with learning management with performance management integration as the next logical implementation. Next steps incorporate competency management, succession planning, and ultimately the talent menu. There were a few users who started with performance, but none present confessed to planning to deploy succession and/or talent before they deployed learning. I suspect those users who led with performance really did not lead with it; they simply had a different vendor’s learning management system in place, though no one confirmed my suspicions. That tells me learning is still the logical foundation and should be the cornerstone of your strategy mix. Learning and performance implementations should precede succession and talent because of the critical links to competency management that is embedded within performance. Truly leveraging talent implies that critical competencies are already in place and aligned with performance goals – and ultimately with specific learning by role.

Deciding which of the thought-leaders was most correct is a matter of perspective, but I feel the “Learning-is-the-mother-ship” perspective is more to my liking. That position does not downplay the significance of talent management, I simply do not think you should expect to manage talent effectively until it has been, or has the potential to be, developed via through aligned learning opportunities.

I must confess to being a performance consultant by nature. As such, I’m up to my hocks in my own biases toward the role learning plays. Count that as yet another perspective, but for now, I’ll stick by the order of a technology strategy that starts with learning and builds in a natural progression to include performance management before embracing mission-critical capabilities of succession and talent management.