What some employers wish they could say nowadays…
Andrew Jacobs (@AndrewJacobsLD) wrote a blog post 50 Big Ideas to Change Learning and Development this week.
Amusingly, about the same time as the Serious eLearning Manifesto was promoted.
Although I haven’t fully explored the latter as I need to view the YouTube Google Hangout, Andrew’s blog post really hit the spot for me. He asked us to choose one to comment on although I could easily have written about all of them. The one that resonated for me this week was:
29. Stop asking so much of your trainers and instructional designers
This week we had an OzLearn tweet chat. The topic was on “L&D and Business Alignment” and we wrote how we must align ourselves to the business needs in order to remain relevant. But the group all had different jobs. Some were instructional designers, others consultants and coaches but we were all thinking about our the question from our own perspectives. What was clear was that we all work differently – and our organisation has different expectations of what services we deliver.
I believe that within learning, we all have different roles to play and each one brings it own knowledge, skills and abilities. I also believe that we get wrapped up in the language, the medium or the technology that we’re even confusing ourselves and others.
In the tweet chat, Jane said:
Maybe that’s why there’s been a bit of banter online recently about the Serious eLearning Manifesto. Once again, we focus on one medium – one role – and not learning as a whole. There are many roles and media in learning – eLearning is just one of them.
In an effort to try to understand why there is so much confusion in our own profession around roles, I revisited Jane Hart’s blog post “Emerging New Roles for Learning and Development Professionals” and in this she outlines the myriad of roles we all play within the profession. She says,
“Clearly not all learning professionals will need to have all the skills in all the roles, and some may well not have any desire to get involved in some of the new activities, so I think that it may well now be time for people to think about specializing in areas of interest. This means that those who want to remain as classroom trainers or instructional designers, for instance, can continue to do so; but those who see their future in other areas can begin to focus on developing their skills for these new roles.”
In a world that is rapidly changing, I have lost count the number of organisational restructures that have impacted my role; I have been redundant four times in my working life and had countless role title changes from “Facilitator”, “Trainer”, “Instructional Designer” ,”Performance Consultant” and now “Capability Consultant”.
Sometimes, to amuse myself I go through my old business cards and look at my career progression. Years back my roles were specific. “Electrical Fundamentals Trainer” and “Leadership Instructor” or “Training Needs Analyst” or “Training Evaluator” but as the years went by and the workplace changed with cost reduction programs, streamlined processes, new technologies, automation, outsourced services, reduced team numbers, my job titles started to become generic and ‘all encompassing’ words such as “Analyst”, “Consultant” or “Manager”.
Similarly, my early job descriptions years ago were specific, detailed and bullet pointed. I knew my exact tasks, responsibilities and scope of my work but reading my recent job descriptions, they’re all vague and open for interpretation (so let’s not talk about remuneration here).
Sometimes even team members have different interpretations of what they think they should be doing in their role. A few times I was even told that being a specialist in your field in the corporate world meant that you were close-minded and wouldn’t want to learn anything new. “We want generalists!”, they exclaimed.
(Don’t get me started on that – yes, I know that a generalist does have advantages but in many instances I have seen definitions explain specialist as people who are “single minded and cannot predict variables” and that’s where I take issue with the definition. I have come across specialists who spend years questioning, learning, creating, experimenting, practicing and perfecting. Don’t mix up definitions of specialist and generalist with people open to learning and those who are not).
Some argue that these new open job descriptions are a great way to “create the job into something that you can mould, own and decide”.
I am not of that opinion.
I don’t believe there is any organisation out there where its own people determine their own roles and how they work together – yet.
If there’s a hierarchy and you’re not involved in the decision making process to design the structure of work – you do not have the flexibility in your role.
You just have to do what you have to do to survive the day. I get that. I’m sad that it has to be like this but I’m hopeful that this will change in the future.
For me, it all comes down to managing everyone’s expectations. In my current role these are the jobs that I do in no particular order:
- Learning & Development Consultant
- Instructional Designer & Developer
- Program Designer
- Program Manager
- Project Manager
- Change Manager
- Yammer Champ
- Sharepoint Website Administrator
- Videographer
- Subject Matter Expert
- IT & Sharepoint Help Support
- Team Coach
- Yammer Support
- Graphic Designer
So basically, I do what is required to get the job done for my internal clients.
I’m one of the lucky ones who has been in L&D for many years and have broad knowledge and skills across all areas. I have had many different roles within the learning field so I can put together a blended program for the client and work across from the consultation to the actual design and development. I also like to tinker around with various systems, apps and tools and experiment when I can. I cannot claim to be an expert in each and every learning software program, LMS or application we have at our disposal but I like to learn about them, try them out and see how they can be applied for different learning contexts.
However there are many others who have not had this opportunity. Others are starting out in the field and may feel overwhelmed at the choice of different roles. Many have the high expectations of their management on their shoulders who want to be experts in everything and anything – all at minimal cost and resources.
Also the skills in corporate communications and marketing that came from my Navy days as a Public Affairs Officer are now increasingly used as I see that more often than not, there is a blurring between the communications function and the learning function. The distinction is clear in my head but it’s not to others. If there is no communications person or team for assistance – guess who gets stuck with it…
And if you don’t have strong leadership, clear role expectations, you are measured against key performance indicators and there is one person to do the work when there used to be five specialists, no wonder people are disengaged, demotivated and stressed out in their workplaces.
So what am I saying?
I’m saying that our workplace has changed and there’s an expectation that we are everything to everyone.
They want generalists but what is the true cost to the organisation in the long term?
If Learning People Are Confused, Imagine Others!
I have lost count how many job interviews I have sat through but a few stick out in my mind.
Some years back I applied for a Learning and Development consultant role for a well-known company that sells major financial software and accounting packages.
The interview started well and she explained her company, its values and she talked about the learning team. In turn, I asked her some open ended questions and outlined my experience to date.
Then the formal part of the interview started.
She asked rapid fire questions honing in on specific skills and experience with the level of aggression rising as I didn’t respond to the manner that she was expecting.
She asked questions about:
- eLearning instructional design skills and expertise
- Learning and development consultancy skills
- Graphic design skills
- Multimedia web development (She wanted someone with programming experience)
- eLearning software design (she wanted advanced levels of all the eLearning packages in the market back then)
She was also asking questions about my business acumen and repeated this question a few times, “how have you made money for your organisation?” “Tell me what you have done to bring in revenue with your program” and finally, “you just haven’t demonstrated to me how you can make money for us.”
It was obvious that she was agitated and I became uncomfortable. I didn’t mention at the time that the current company I was employed with had started off as an eLearning courseware development team at a bank and through an entrepreneurial manager, turned it into a profit centre. By that stage, I had made up my mind that I didn’t want her as my manager.
To try and calm her down, I asked if I could ask some questions about the type of person she is looking for. I said that based on her questions, she may be looking to build an internal content development team. I asked if she had explored outsourcing the projects to an external content developer. I then explained that it’s unlikely to find someone who had all these skills in the one role for that one job she was advertising especially with the job ad title as “Learning and Development Consultant”.
I think I pushed a button at that point.
She stood up and exasperated manner put up her hands, shook her head repeatedly as if she didn’t want to hear what I was saying.
She walked to the door and opened it and said I “simply did not have all the skills of someone she is looking for” and that she “had been looking for someone to fit this role for a very long time” and that she wanted someone who “could make us some money” and that I “wasn’t obviously THAT person”.
I was dumbfounded. It was the first time I had been asked to leave a job interview mid way.
I stood up, remained calm and said that I hope that she would find what she was looking for and thanked her for not wasting each of our time but it was obvious that I wasn’t the right fit for her team.
I thought about this interview a lot this week. If Learning people are confused about their roles, just think of the confusion of the wider business all brought about from not doing a proper performance analysis in the first place to identify exactly what right skill sets they need to solve their own business problems.
Like Jane Hart, I also believe that it’s time for us to start honing two specific skill sets: our specialist or our ‘craft’ skills but also our networking skills. Remaining generalists will mean competing for fewer jobs in organisations filled by other generalists – we don’t stand out of the crowd in any way and it really ends up costing the organisation in the long term.
As organisations are become flatter, it will be the people with specialist skills who will offer true value of their knowledge, expertise and networks because they’ll get the work done in a shorter time possible.
Corollary to my story:
Some time afterwards I kept seeing the same job ad online. It was obvious that she hadn’t found the right person for that role. I deliberated whether I should tell our Business Development Manager at the company I was working for that there was a potential new client and business lead but I kept quiet as I didn’t want people to know I had been looking for other jobs. A few months later after my interview, this company had become a client of ours anyway and we ended up designing and developing their online courseware anyway. I politely declined to work for this client. To this day, she doesn’t know that her coursework was developed by us (and made money) for her company.
Photo Credit:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Do_you_want_to_lose_the_war%5E_Go_ahead_and_have_fun…_Hitler_wants_you_to_forget_about_your_job._-_NARA_-_534993.jpg
Hi Helen, thanks for linking to my post and picking one to develop. I agree with you; we are confuse ourselves with the language we use,. This is why I add number 37:
Push the language of learning – learners, pedagogy, etc – out of learning spaces completely
We use language which differentiates us and segregates us from the business and as long as we do that people will continue to struggle to recruit us!
Thanks for the reply Andrew. Yes let’s put 37 into this as well. Do you know that your list has now miraculously provided me with an opportunity to blog about 48 other things now. What an excellent prompt! Keep up the great work and enjoy the rest of the weekend!
Hi Helen. So much in this post sounded familiar to me, and specifically referenced some of my experiences last week too: Restructures, reduced resources, focus on doing more with less, confusion over roles (at all levels…). Often you evolve to do multiple roles as a result of resources being stripped away. Sometimes it can be a good learning experience to branch out into other areas – but the trend towards formalising this into generalist ‘do everything’ roles does potentially create issues and unrealistic expectations – as no single person will ever have expertise across all areas, as you’ve pointed out. Really interesting story about the job interview – and no doubt this is not uncommon.
That said, even if you are a specialist in a particular area, all specialists (trainers, IDs, elearning specialists etc) still need to be able view their work through the bigger picture ‘lens’ of L&D and/or performance consulting – ultimately this is the ‘end goal’ of what they’re doing.
I agree. You hit it in one. “View your work through a big picture lens of L&D and/or performance consulting”. I think what irks me is that you spend years honing your craft only to be told by your management and leadership that it’s not valued. The expectation is that you can do everything and anything for the business in an environment where they are not willing to spend any more money for additional resources or to bring the expertise in through vendor arrangements. The underlying message through all the change is the cost cutting and ‘doing more with less’ is possibly, the wrong focus to have.
Performance consulting is the lens I prefer, and I see this as a generalist kind of role. However this does not preclude the performance consultant concurrently being an L&D specialist, or further along the spectrum, an e-learning specialist (which I see myself). Neither does the existence of this role or these specialties preclude the demand for other roles and specialties (eg trainer, soft skills, LMS admin).
I too agree with Tanya’s point that we need to view our work through the bigger picture. My analogy for this is the medical profession – the GP makes the initial diagnosis, and depending on that analysis directs the patient to an endocrinologist or a dermatologist. All of them are medical professionals, and each one is doing his or her bit to improve the patient’s overall health.
I laughed out loud when you listed some of the jobs that you do. It reminded me of “What exactly does an E-Learning Manager do?” http://wp.me/pf1R0-28L which I posted about my own role a while ago. The ones that bite everytime is being viewed as the IT guy or the Excel expert… why oh why?!
And I too have seen those job advertisements that ask for superman (or superwoman). No one person can meet all those criteria, and I wonder whether they know that and are just dumping their “wishlist” onto the recruiter. (Although the interviewer whom you experienced obviously wasn’t doing that!)
I can vouch for the fact that being a specialist has saved my skin on numerous occasions – simply because specialists are so hard to replace. In the case of an an e-learning specialist, I’ve read (and even written myself) about the push to drop the “e” from “e-learning”; after all, it’s all learning, right? The inconvenient truth, though, is that the vast majority of organisations are still in the early stages of workscape evolution (cue Jane Hart again), and so the support of an e-learning specialist remains indispensable.
Not that I’m biased at all… :0P
Thanks for the post Ryan, yes, this is what I have been experiencing in a few organisations across different projects I’ve worked on. I can’t be everything to everyone on projects but I do expect that the organisation have management and arrangements in place to bring in that expertise to work on that part of the project. Too often, cost cutting is seen as a convenient excuse to have people improvise so much and to do work that is beyond their skill set with little or no support that it stresses out the person, delays the project and ends up costing the organisation in the long term. This is the angle that I was trying to come in from – yes, let’s have that wider view of understanding what needs to be done but also understand where our knowledge and skill gaps are and to bring in that expertise from somewhere – not to be forced to do it ourselves and then be held accountable by the results because we failed to deliver.
I completely agree with this post with my OD/L&D hat on, but I have heard the same argument made by the IT Dept. Finance Depart, Records, Strategy and Governance – basically any Corporate function you can name, as well as most service lines.
I have “benefited” from a generalist career under the guise of project and change management, basically whatever work I could get my hands on. Being a generalist is not just about having an inquisitive nature, but also recognising that same nature in others. For me, opportunities to develop and gain a title-worthy specialisation were blocked by seniority-based preferences. The woes of “the business doesn’t understand us” and “my job is to do this, not that”, and “give us more money” was always symptomatic of a corporate function that has matured beyond it’s usefulness. It generally came from those that were gripping on to their last career job to the bitter end, as was a sign to me that my career was better advantaged elsewhere (there sure weren’t any opportunities to go up).
I’ve always believed that a corporate career (and business generally), is about doing your job so well you become redundant. Yes, redundant. What you do should be so cheap and so ubiquitous that everyone’s job is better and easier. If it’s expensive and difficult, no one is going to stay interested in you for very long. Understandably, corporate areas often ask “what do we call ourselves”, “what label will turn the heads of the higher-ups”, the fact they’re calling you at all is the most important thing – just answer the call.
(This rant was prompted away from my twitter feed – where it probably belongs – by Ryan Tracey)
Thanks for the post Christoph and like I said, we’re all entitled to a rant. Actually, it was refreshing to see another point of view from your experience. I do agree with your post about doing a job well.
That is exactly what I’m saying in my post. I wrote my post from the point of view that people do want to do a good job but sometimes the organisational workscape (cultural behaviours, management systems and processes) sets them up for failure.
I want to do a good job for my client but sometimes the organisation puts some demands on me that make it impossible for me to deliver good work.
I have been in situations where I have been expected to deliver a project but there are components within that project that require specialist skills that I do not have and when asked to bring in those skills, the convenient excuse of no budget or resources available is provided. This necessitates me having to improvise so much and to use favours of other people or their networks around me (for free or just use their time when they also are quite busy), that it delays the project.
If I was brought in to do a piece of content development – and get paid to do content development – then when you change the scope and you expect me to act in roles (manage your change, promote to your business, train your staff, create your website) above and beyond the original scope of the project and then when I don’t deliver something on time or it doesn’t look as professional as something made from someone who has these skills, then I resent having my performance questioned.
I believe that we have knowledge, skills and expertise that can be used for a variety of projects across organisations. I’m all for seeing the bigger picture and having generalist skills – I see the need to improvise in many projects in business nowadays. But I also don’t believe that management has a right to expect their staff to do specific skill sets, jobs, roles, tasks that set them up for failure and then on top of it, not support (or even worse performance manage them) by providing adequate management systems, processes, external vendor arrangements or a peer-to-peer culture where sharing and learning is encouraged.
We can all empathise with the scourge of scope creep. A while ago I found myself in the unenviable position of being held responsible for something I had zero power over (and which I had flagged to the powers that be early on in the project), only for my performance rating to be downgraded when my prophecy was realised. Gee, thanks for that.
Helen, it’s pertinent that you should mention content development, as I believe that is what many employers (or prospective employers) often seek, but they either don’t know they do or they choose to dress it differently. I suspect this stems from the inability of the SME to produce the content (for whatever reason), leaving the misguided manager to overcome that challenge some other way. Just another example of roles blurring, goal posts shifting, and someone seemingly carrying the can for someone else.
Still, Christoph is right: we support service folk are just as guilty. I am astounded sometimes by my L&D peers’ refusal to upskill, cross-skill, experiment, stretch, learn and develop. How ironic.
I too adopt the mindset of trying to make myself redundant. However, I put to you that if you’re doing it right, it will probably never come to be. My rationale is that if your role is evolving as the world changes, the industry transforms and the organisation matures, then you will grow with it and so what you offer will always be in demand.
It wasn’t that long ago that I was developing online courses for clients in the business. But now I don’t. I have trained up others in the business to do this for themselves, consulted them on dealing with external vendors, and provided advice on insourcing contractors and recruiting new staff with the relevant skill sets. If “online course builder” was still my job, I’d be in a jolly pickle. But my role has evolved since then, and I see myself as making a different contribution that meets the new needs of today.
Thank you for your reply Ryan, I really have nothing else to add as you’ve hit the nail on the head. Everything you wrote are my exact feelings and experiences with my clients as well as some of my colleagues. I have been burned with scope creep so many times and then punished for it for having my performance managed or bonus affected (but trust me, it’s not about the money for me – it’s about the principle and the unfairness of being placed into a position of no control or influence). If our role is not seen as ‘business partner’ then these will continue to occur where the business just sees us to provide a service (any service that they want).
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