◗ Draw the right lessons
◗ Reduce the cost of learning
◗ Cultivate corporateness
Draw the Right Lessons Paradoxically, the place to start training in futures tense is to stop training in past tense. Unfortunately, training pro- grams are notoriously hard to change, in part because of organizational resistance. As the old joke goes, changing curricula is like moving the bones in a graveyard—you don’t know who owns the bones until you start digging.
The voluminous literature on how the U.S. won the 1991 Gulf War is a case in point. In the rush to judgment that followed the 100-hour bat- tle, many analysts drew the wrong lessons about success. Some argued that the Air Force had made the difference, celebrating the F-117 stealth fighter for its role in the campaign; others pointed to the logistics effort, noting that the U.S. moved more material by air to the Gulf in five weeks than it had moved in all 56 weeks of the 1948-1949 Berlin airlift; and still others emphasized the impact of electronic warfare, which crippled the Iraqi com- munication system. But as RAND’s William Lambeth argued in 1993, there is a key distinction between the littlelessons learned about how the war was fought and the biglessons that might shape future preparation.
Worried that the main lessons learned from the war might be limited to the need for better bomb fuses, Lambeth argued that the U.S. was “phe- nomenally lucky” in the days leading up to war. “For one thing, we had five and a half months to plan, build up forces, and train in theater to make this
story come true,” he writes. “This was definitely nota come-as-you-are war.
We used every minute of time we had available to good effect. We could probably have used even more.”
In addition, the U.S. benefited greatly from Saddam Hussein’s deci- sion not to invade Saudi Arabia, which could have created an entirely dif- ferent outcome. “Whatever the Saudi reaction might have been, there is no way a few squadrons of American F-15s and F-16s could have prevented a determined Iraqi advance on the ground.” As a result, the U.S. had the luxury of starting the war at a time of its own choosing.
Finally, the U.S. had Saddam Hussein as its adversary, a point discussed below. As Lambeth writes, Hussein misjudged how the U.S. would respond to the Kuwait invasion, and just about everything that followed: “About whether the United States would respond beyond words; about American staying power and domestic support once committed; about the cohesion of the allied coalition; about his former Soviet friends; about the effects of mod- ern air power; about his defensive fortifications in and around Kuwait; and about the ‘mother of all battles’ and his prospect of sucking the United States into a bleeding war of attrition that would run up high American casualties before it ended.”
Without discounting the role of diplomacy, preparation, 15 years of realistic flight training for fighter aircrews, a chain of command that worked, and the piles and piles of material shipped to the Gulf, Lambeth predicted that there would be a strong push from “some quarters,” likely contractors and high-technology aficionados, to make technology the hero of the war. Although technology did make a difference, the U.S. succeeded in large measure because it had the right people in the right place at the right time with the right plan, not because of technology, smart bombs, or stealth. “We would have fought the war less brilliantly without them, and we would have paid a far higher price for our success. But with the leader- ship, the training, the quality of personnel, and the morale that we also commanded, it would have been for naught.”
It is a lesson well worth remembering in designing any training cur- riculum. Helping employees master the revolutions in materials and man- ufacturing, information, and global commerce involves more than the latest gadget. It also involves the thinking skills discussed above and a deliber- ate effort to cull for lessons learned. RAND’s own search for knowledge led to this book, for example, and underpins its general commitment to rigorous analysis.
This commitment also underpins a number of recent RAND recom- mendations for organizational improvement, including RAND’s strategy
for making the Los Angeles Police Department more professional. “Main- taining professional expertise is a continual process,” R AND’s research team concludes. “A profession will stagnate, lapse in its expertise, or other- wise fail in its service to society if it does not constantly update the knowl- edge of its members.” Unfortunately, most police forces leave the learning to chance—officers learn on the job or in the wake of major controversies, such as the Los Angeles riots.
As RAND’s researchers report, the LAPD is hardly the only organi- zation that learns by accident. Having long suffered from similar problems during both war and peace, the Army created a discrete learning platform called the Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL) in 1985. As RAND describes the center, “CALL collects lessons, observations, insights, and suggestions from the Army’s major combat training centers.… The orga- nization also allows any soldier, anywhere, anytime, to provide his or her observations on how the army might better prepare for conflict.”
Organizations do not necessarily need a special unit to generate for- mal reports. What they do need is some device for collecting knowledge, sorting it, and disseminating it. There are thousands of lessons learned out there. The challenge is to pick the right ones for the situation at hand.
As for the Army’s Center, its lessons learned became a little too pub- lic for the military’s taste in October 2003, when a report on intelligence problems in Iraq surfaced in The Washington Post.12According to the report, U.S. intelligence was weak at best and useless at worst. The unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which had had been the tool of choice for collecting infor- mation during the early phase of the war, were so slow that they were rarely close enough to an attack to be of value, while Army operators were often so poorly trained that they could not analyze the information collected. As a result, the “daily mortar and rocket attacks on bases and convoys became virtually undetectable to the UAVs.”
Reduce the Cost of Learning New training programs are useless without the opportunity to learn. Unfortunately, many organizations con- tinue to rely upon training methods that are anything but agile.
The problem is not so much a lack of investment, however, but a lack of access and strategy. According to the study of international organizations cited earlier in this chapter, most career development activities are self-ini- tiated, ad hoc, and poorly linked to overall strategy. Moreover, as RAND concluded, the most widely used approaches (e.g., courses) are those least likely to yield the desired learning (e.g., integration of substantive and man- agerial skills).
These organizations face two challenges in helping employees learn.
First, they must make it easier to say yesto learning, whether through direct assistance or new training technologies. Second, they must make sure the training programs are worth taking.
United Parcel Service (UPS) has made significant progress on the first challenge through its Earn and Learn program, which serves as both a recruitment and training tool. Launched in 1999, the program has paid out more than $47 million in tuition assistance in helping 30,000 employees attend college, boosting both productivity and loyalty. Available in 51 loca- tions by 2004, the program provides $3000 per year in tuition for its part- time frontline employees and $4000 per year for part-time managers up to a lifetime maximum of $15,000 and $20,000 respectively.
In addition, part-time night-shift workers at the UPS Louisville hub receive free tuition at Metropolitan College, a virtual university created in partnership with the University of Louisville, Jefferson Community Col- lege, and Kentucky Technical College. The program has made the differ- ence in recruiting employees to a difficult, but essential shift, while boosting productivity along the way.
Other organizations such as Marriott have made learning easier by exploiting Internet and computer technology to create the Mouse Touch/
Human Touchsystem used across its hotels, while requiring all employees to promote common understandings of the organization’s mission, values, and business objectives. Still other organizations are investing heavily in the development of CD-ROM packages, distance learning models, and micro- world simulatorsthat enable employees to practice decisions and maneuvers just as pilots do with aircraft simulators.
Such simulators have shown particular value in the Army logistics process, which relies on reservists to handle the top jobs in most deploy- ments. As RAND’s studies show, reserve training is especially difficult given personnel turnover, the geographic dispersion of units, and the need to refresh the knowledge base with new lessons learned. Not only is training infrequent, it often focuses on decisions that occur after deployment occurs.
In addition, most training occurs over a few days, and cannot, therefore, simulate the intensity of real-world events.
Although the term microworldhas been around for the better part of 30 years and was featured in Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook as one of many tools for encouraging learning, there has been little research on how such simulators might actually work in developing needed skills.13 Hence, RAND’s efforts to both build and test an actual microworld simu- lation of supply distribution on the Japanese island of Hokaido. Designed
to show the evolution of a distribution network over a 24-day period, the simulation consisted of 92 discrete points in time, each one requiring a real- world decision such as how to move jet fuel from a petroleum tank farm located at Bihiro to divisional forces at Shiranuka.
R AND’s experiment with the Hokaido microworld suggests that reservists not only learned important skills about distribution from the three-hour simulation, but also gained new skills in finding trends in data, identifying the impacts of those trends, and making proactive decisions in response. Although expensive to develop and program, microworlds are inexpensive to deploy and use, especially for employees with limited train- ing time.
As suggested above, microworlds are useless unless the knowledge they convey is relevant. It hardly makes sense to train reservists how to transport fuel in trucks when fuel is usually transported by ships, for exam- ple. Thus, agility also resides in helping employees develop the right skills.
As RAND’s study of the 75 international organizations suggests, it is not enough just to spend money on training. The training must lead to higher performance.
Hence, R AND’s recommendation that organizations embrace the concept of portfolio careers that would allow employees to develop greater leadership skills through job rotations, stretch assignments, and movement across their organizations. Designed to emphasize competencies needed for future success, such careers would allow individuals to break free of the generic, one-size-fits-all nature of most training programs. Toward that end, human resource units must become strategic partners with senior lead- ership in shaping career-development programs, while working more closely with line managers in taking more risk with employee assignments.
Cultivate Corporateness Even as they adapt to the changing labor market by increasing employee agility, organizations must instill a sense of corporateness among their employees. This is certainly the goal at Mar- riott, where the Associates First program is designed to reinforce common goals, and at UPS where the Earn and Learn program is designed to pro- mote employee loyalty.
It is also the focus of the environmental management programs that have evolved with increased government regulation and customer demand.
In 1993, for example, AT&T joined with Intel to benchmark pollution prevention efforts at five firms considered among the best in the world in going greenas part of ordinary business: Dow, DuPont, H.B. Fuller, 3M, and Xerox. According to Frank Camm, who authored one of R AND’s
studies on proactive environmental management, a successful pollution prevention program depends on high-level commitment and constant communication about the need for action. It also depends on careful meas- urement, formal goals and procedures, and employee motivation tied to compensation and performance appraisal.14
Given the organizational inertia against change, Camm believes that
“the leadership must be clear from the start about the mission, goals, policies, and procedures associated with the new program. The pollution-prevention program must then communicate this information throughout the organiza- tion and secure the buy-in of the line managers of the relevant business units and plants.” Much as early success depends on senior leadership, full adop- tion requires a broader motivational effort to remind, retrain, and reward employees for specific progress, all of which takes time.
At Procter & Gamble and Walt Disney World Resorts, for example, successful pollution control started with specific environmental goals stated in simple terms, followed by decentralization to promote innovation and agility, and continuous learning to promote adoption. According to RAND, Procter & Gamble’s Mehoopany plant in northeast Pennsylvania uses a range of formal and informal devices to teach employees about environmental man- agement, including teams, newsletters, e-mail, training classes, and an inter- nal home page, while Walt Disney World Resorts uses cross-functional teams to spread the word about the need for improvement, as well as a monthly column on Environmentalityin its monthly newspaper, Eyes and Ears.
Both organizations also use cross-functional task forces to address specific environmental problems. Cross-functional teams at Mehoopany developed the basic approaches that led to reductions in nitrogen oxides and chlorine, reduced its solid waste flow, and developed an aggressive envi- ronmental improvement plan. The Solid Waste Utilization Task Force also made sure that waste revenues and costs are tracked back to the appropri- ate business unit, which further reinforces the corporation’s general envi- ronmental strategy.
Both organizations then proceeded to train their employee through a range of tools. At Mehoopany, for example, all new employees attend a 90- minute orientation built around the company’s environmental goals, includ- ing the notion that nature is a Procter & Gamble customer. These goals are further reinforced by incentives for environmental stewardship, both through cash and noncash rewards linked to clear measures of performance.
According to Camm, Mehoopany is especially effective at using busi- ness cost methods to motivate environmental performance. All environ- mental costs are placed in well-defined pools; simple rules and supporting
practices allocate each pool to a product; and the financial system provides accurate information on just how pollution prevention, or the lack thereof, is affecting costs. The plant tracks all waste streams, for example, and either charges business units for waste disposal or credits them for revenues gen- erated through recycling. “To allocate the cost of all material passing through,” RAND writes of solid waste disposal, “Mehoopany simply weighs each container coming from a product module to the transport point and allocates the cost proportionally. While this method is not absolutely pre- cise, it is close enough to allocate costs.”
The fact that all employees own Procter & Gamble stock is also part of the training program. Employees are shown exactly how environmental management affects company earnings, and can see the impact of their effort on the bottom line.