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Transcript

Why Employee Enablement Doesn’t Work · Humanity Working

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, why aren't employees enabled after so much active enablement?
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's a lot of enablement you've got going on there.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's a big word today.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: It is a big word, and I guess uh let's let's start with what even people mean by that, because it you know, you know, is it that is it training, is it learning and development?
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: What exactly is it?
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: And and for most people, you can think of employee enablement as the as the sort of like overarching category of how employees um are able to perform their functions.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so some of that comes from experience, some of that comes from um, you know, from coaching and managing and so on, and some of it does come uh from learning and development.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: But regardless, um the term and the practice is actually really centered around uh a bunch of really, I would say, outdated functions.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um the enablement frameworks, they often come from the 80s and 90s.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: They their origins are in the military and in uh enterprise practices and management frameworks and all that kind of stuff that date back a long time.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a bunch of tradition that is uh that is associated with with how it's done.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that tradition uh is filters over into how learning and development programs are built, um, and how the teams that are responsible for enablement are structured.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so the lack of update to that, uh to those things, everything about how we work, as we've talked about so many times on this podcast, everything about how we work has changed massively since that period of the 80s and 90s.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: So it's kind of weird that we would use these old frameworks and these old methods when it comes to one of the most critical things, enabling your employees.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: And and it strikes me that it might still work for some things, but not for you know, modern knowledge worker in the modern era with the technology and the way things are, uh it and we've never really shifted it.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's really fascinating.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't think about that.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, that's yeah, you're you're right.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's a really good point you make there, actually.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: It might it it can work for some things.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll give you an I'll give you an example.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: So if you do a job where that job itself isn't really any different to what that job was five, maybe 10 years ago, 20 years ago, right?
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: And what you do on a day-to-day basis isn't really that different.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and even how you do it isn't really that different, um, then yeah, traditional forms of uh um of enablement work.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: But but most organizations aren't like that anymore, right?
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: Organizations are rapidly changing.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: They are unstructured, ambiguous environments that are continuously morphing, right?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so if that's happening, then you know, spending you know, X amount of time with employees getting them ready to do their job, if it takes if it takes too long, by the time, in quotes, they're ready, the job itself has changed.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: So what we need is something that deals with the reality of constant change.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I I it's interesting because if you put them in the position where the only enablement they're getting is actually not right-sized or correctly uh packaged to deliver, they're they're probably not going to perform very well anyway, despite the training and enablement.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just like, well, we you know, you we gave you the training course, remember?
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we gave you the training course, remember.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: I uh it's it reminds me, it's something you and I have talked about before, like this this whole idea of of when you try to really, really tightly define what it is that people do do, and then you try to build your training programs around that, then it can work great if you've got a really clear hold of what people do.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: But if you don't, and if the thing itself is changing, then building training around, in quotes, what exactly what people are supposed to do isn't going to be very helpful.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's fascinating.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's really fascinating.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: And and you you have studied so much of these different types of like learning techniques and what works and what doesn't.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's pretty clear that everybody kind of learns on a different in a different way in the spectrum in each one of those, too.
• 4:52
  unknown: Yeah.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: So the expectation that you could create one way to train a large group of people and that would work is sort of a failure from the get-go.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, certainly that's one, that that's one aspect of it.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: And really, Matt, it's one aspect of many.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think the other thing that we have to really consider is the fact that not only are the work environments uh changing, but also the nature of the ecosystem in which these things exist is also changing, right?
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: The old school, old school view of the world was you had companies, and then companies had customers, and maybe companies had partners.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so the way you got everybody in quotes ready was you'd start by training your employees.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: And once you trained your employees up, then you could use that as a means of training your partners.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: And once they were all skilled up, you could then like have a clear, really clear understanding of how you were going to communicate with your customers.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: And also, we were always thinking of like the company and the customer is almost adversarial, right?
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: We need to know more than our customers do because that information gap we can leverage to sell to them more effectively and things like that.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's been outdated for years.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: What you really need to do is you need to develop an overall view of the of the ecosystem that includes every aspect of your company, includes your partners, includes your customers, and give all of the aspects of the ecosystem a view of the big picture and their role in that big picture.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you need to do so in a way that makes every part of that ecosystem highly adaptable and highly resilient so that they can change as those environments change.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's a comp that's a huge shift.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's a it's an enormous shift.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it actually has massive ramifications, Matt.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think it changes the way in which the enablement function is structured inside our organizations.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: We need to move away from the idea of like, oh, it's inside learning and development, or it's inside a particular department, even, right?
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it needs to be fully, fully interconnected.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we actually make an argument in a paper that we've just written about this that there needs to be a new role called the chief readiness officer.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that chief readiness officer's does span that full ecosystem, not just inside uh, not just one part of one part of it.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: And you gotta do, you gotta come at it from both directions too, right?
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because uh both systems are kind of missing each other.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: And by that I mean the employees are used to getting enabled in this manner.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Some of them might kind of like like it.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like, where's the training for this?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Where's the paper I can read to know how to do this thing?
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, I I don't know what to do.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's how they've always been trained.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like, well, if I don't have that now I'm freewheeling, how are you gonna judge me?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: How are you going to rate me?
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if I can't check the boxes.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: And in some functions, most functions, uh that's it it's hard to really pin that down in in a lot of areas, right?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, this comes back to themes that we've been talking about a lot on this podcast, right?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, really, when it comes down to it, what you need is to develop a workforce when it comes to the workforce, but also your partners as well.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: You need to develop a workforce that is hugely adaptable, hugely resilient, and where they can take ownership, uh, they have the skills to take ownership of their development journey, right?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that means they've got that high level of adaptability and that high level of resilience, and they have the ability to be able to um understand ways in which they can learn.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes they're gonna be drawing on programming that you provide for them.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then oftentimes they're gonna be finding their own opportunity to learn experientially, um, to do or learn then do as we talk about it, but also then the learn from do, right?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: Where you but whereby it's a form of reflective learning.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: You're doing something, you're realizing where you screwed up, we did well, we did not so well, and you're using that to continue to grow.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's a mind shift share, uh mind shift change, and it is a um it's a shift in mindset and it's a shift in skill set as well, I would say.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: For the leaders and the employees.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely right, man.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Good stuff.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: All right, Paul.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: All right, see you next time.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: See ya.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Humanity Working is produced and edited for Billion Minds by Matt Neal.
• 9:35
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• 9:39
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• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to learn more about how Billion Minds gets companies ready for the future of work by building adaptable, resilient employees, look for them on LinkedIn or visit their website at billionminds.com.