Learning to Succeed, by Jason Wingard, PhD, explores therelationship between corporate strategy, operational planning, and humancapital development. Wingard is dean and professor of the School ofProfessional Studies (SPS) at Columbia University, and also president and CEOof The Education Board, Inc., a boutique management consulting firm. In thepast, he was chief learning officer at Goldman Sachs, and served as vice dean ofthe Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Somewhat academic intone and definitely written at the strategic level, Wingard’s book is clearlyintended for Chief Learning Officers (CLOs) and other members of corporateC-suites. In the Foreword, Indra Nooyi, Chairman and CEO PepsiCo, says, “Learning to Succeed is a guide forbusiness advantage through corporate learning and development, and itdemonstrates how to maximize continuous returns on investment.” The book willalso be of interest to management consultants and possibly to managers oftraining, although the latter group will likely lack the authority to autonomouslyimplement the process suggestions it makes.
Learning to Succeed is the result of four years of research Wingardconducted after the global financial crisis. It included:
- Interviews and focusgroups with global CEOs, CLOs, and other C-suite executives
- Surveys andquestionnaires from global division heads and business unit managers of largeand small companies
- Personal observations ofover 500 board and strategic planning meetings, learning and developmentsessions, and active work environments
- Discussions with globalacademics and thought leaders
Wingard makes his focusclear immediately in the introduction: today, learning is critical for fiscalsurvival and is the core catalyst for competitive advantage in the dynamicglobal marketplace. He says, “For the most successful companies, an ongoingcommitment to becoming a dynamic learning organization drives their ability toposition themselves ahead of the curve and remain competitive.” Learninginitiatives, he believes, configured and supervised by learning professionalswithin the organization, increase internal communication between segments ofthe organization, reinforce corporate culture and community, inspireinnovation, and increase productivity and profitability. No longer regarded as“soft investments,” corporate learning initiatives, training, and executiveeducation have become crucial elements in any company’s future growth,competitiveness, and profitability.
The intent of the bookis to lead senior managers to a fuller understanding of corporate learninginitiatives and how they can apply these initiatives. Initiatives can work mosteffectively when integrated into the overall corporate strategicdecision-making process. In the first chapter, Wingard provides an overview ofthe New Normal—the new business environment and the most powerful forces thatdrive it: global market shifts, business cycle variability, and focus on returnon investment. It’s an articulate and complete exploration of these matters.However, it seems to me that there’s really nothing in this overview that willbe news to anyone who has been in business leadership positions during the last25 years. The biggest changes in that time have been the impact of technologyon the speed of change, and the need for ever more precise and ever fasterexecution.
Wingard describes aprocess he refers to as continuous integration of learning and strategy (CILS) togive the learning organization the competitive edge in a tough marketplace. Thisis the heart of the book. He makes the case for why businesses need to focus onhuman capital management, strategy, and learning all at the same time throughthis process.
The CILS process definesthe relationship between strategic planning and corporate learning as fundamentalpartners. The office of the CLO handles administration and application of CILS todrive corporate learning, training, and executive education. Wingard providesexamples (vignettes and case studies) to demonstrate key points and toillustrate the application of such strategic approaches in organizationsrecently and why they’ve been successful. He also discusses organizations thathave chosen not to do so and how they are beginning to fail even if they havebeen successful for the last fifty years.
Much of Learning to Succeed is concerned withimplementation of the CILS process and the role of the CLO in the organization,including change management. Although Wingard says early on that he believes weare on the edge of “The Age of Learning” there is no discussion of what some referto as the modern approaches to learning—experiential, informal, or sociallearning—or of “components” of training (“traditional,” i.e., classroom instruction,eLearning, MOOCs, mentoring, coaching, etc.) All of the components are onlymentioned in passing in the course of a single paragraph.
While the discussion ofthe forces that are changing business and increasing the importance of learningto success will be of interest to practitioners who are new to businessleadership, or who have not seen such an analysis, my concern remains thedifficulty modern employees have “keeping up” with technology and change. Iwonder whether CILS is going to help very much with this, or if it will remaina high-level approach to traditional “formal” training programs, leadershipdevelopment, and corporate universities.
If you have an interestin a high-level treatment of strategic issues around corporate training, then Learning to Succeed is a complete andarticulate source written with a 21st-century point of view.
