Environment - The CLO's Role: Balancing the Learning Mix in Outsourced Environments

With the evolving development of the information-based economy and the increasing need for high-performance employees, intellectual capital is becoming the most critical resource in the corporation. This means that those companies that do the best job of empowering their workers through education and training are most likely to enjoy the highest levels of economic success.

The chief learning officer (CLO) leads the initiative to transform the corporation into a learning organization. The CLO must not only balance all the roles he plays in relation to the issues he serves, but he must also find the right mixture and presentation of outsourced, educational tools to achieve his ends. This article takes a look at the roles, issues and learning tools that the CLO utilizes to create and grow a learning organization that is vital and competitive, and therefore able to serve its markets, customers, employees and community well.

"The CLO needs to look at the gauges and decide which ones need tweaking at what time," said Rick O'Coin, head of the Learning Resource Network and director of IT education for Unum Provident Insurance. "If the environment is competitive, we need to look at learning as a benefit. I have to look at the radar screen and decide what topics management needs because we're really here to support them."

Change Agent

In today's business world, companies that are better able to manage constant change, internalize it and translate it back into customer value will be more successful. The CLO's role is to be a force for change, but change without threat.

"Change agentry might be the alternative way of defining the CLO's role," said Rick Daly, executive vice president and CLO of AmeriCredit Corp. "The CLO has to be someone who is willing to say what he sees and then help you figure out what you want to do about it."

Daly is taking change management a step further. For the next 12 to 18 months, AmeriCredit's executive team is reformatting the organization to "get everybody involved in everybody else's business." Daly explained, "We're thinking that if we don't know the business model as well as we ought to, we can't contribute to the next series of strategic business discussions. So, I may find myself learning finance. Our treasurer, who excels at finance, may find himself in a discussion on how to move the leadership competency model forward."