A seat at the table: in a slight departure from the usual E-Learning column, the subject is Speaking the Language of Executives—one of the biggest skill gaps in the learning profession. As for that seat at the table, technology can help get you there

T+D, Feb, 2004 by Kevin Oakes

"Pedagogy? He kept talking about pedagogy," one senior executive recently scoffed to me, describing his dinner with a career learning and development professional. "I mean, I have my MBA from one of the top schools in the country, and I'd never heard the word pedagogy. I had no idea what the heck he was talking about the entire evening."

I could sympathize. To me, the word pedagogy sums up everything that's wrong with the profession. It sometimes appears that training and development professionals work hard to have their own language, seemingly bent on creating "semantic chaos," as Pat Galagan, ASTD's managing director of content, reported recently. The goal might be to sound smart when rather they should convey ideas in simple, easy-to-comprehend language. * "The Future of the Profession Fromerly Known as Training," by Pat Galagan (December 2003 T D).

Kevin Kruse, a self-professed "e-learning guru," recently admonished people for buying a book he wrote a few years ago, recommending that they buy another professional's new book on the same subject, written in a more straightforward manner. Says Kruse, "I was a young pup when I wrote mine so I did the 'oh so serious,' trying-to-sound-smart style and the classic ISD stuff. Boring!"

Bored and confused. That's a pretty good summary of the way most senior executives feel upon immersing themselves in our world. While experts in the profession debate whether their industry should be called training or performance or human process engineering and debate the gap between humanistic versus behaviorist approaches, senior executives are rolling their eyes as soon as they walk out of the room. What executives want to hear are good ideas to improve the business, simply explained, not someone intentionally speaking over their heads and daring them to keep up.

Speaking the language of executives is one of the biggest skill gaps in the learning profession.

Many t&d professionals lament that they don't have "a seat at the table." Personally I dislike that phrase because it's so misused and misunderstood--mainly because it's used to describe what some people feel is an entitlement rather than something that's earned through demonstrable ability.

"The whole notion of a seat at the table is strange to me since I believe you have to be invited to the party before you can actually have a seat," Tamar Elkeles, Qualcomm's CLO, recently told me. "Most people who complain about not getting invited to the party are frustrated because they aren't perceived as adding value to the business. If you're adding value, you're at the party."

"The people whom I've seen get a place at the top executive table had a couple of distinctive qualities that differentiated them from other HR people," observes Joe DiStefano, professor of organizational behavior and international business at the International Institute for Management in Lausanne, Switzerland. "First, they were confidants of the senior business leaders who were just below the CEO and his or her direct reports. They knew this set of people very well because they were trusted by those people. They demonstrated an ability to talk straight to them.

"Secondly, they not only had the language to speak in terms of the key needs of the business, but they also thought that way. While they wore an HR hat and represented that function's interests, they didn't just put those interests in business terms, but always thought in business terms."

DiStefano makes a key distinction here. Many times, this magazine and other publications have written about "alignment" of learning initiatives with business goals. That alignment is typically passive. Most executives I know don't get excited by employees who constantly ask, "What is your vision?" What execs want to hear is, "I have a great idea, and I've done the research to back it up."

"I take exception to the notion that training has to be aligned with the company's business objectives," says Pat Crull, CLO of Toys "R" Us. "We're doing ourselves a disservice by viewing our job as being reactive. We need to be proactive, helping to drive solutions. Every executive I know respects those that take action."

"If you want to make a real change in an organization, you must be heard and understood by the senior stakeholders," says Andy Snider, a performance change consultant. "That requires acting even when there's perceived risk. If one is afraid to take risks, then one is really afraid to effect change."

Corporate learning is a dichotic phrase, because too many people on the learning side would rather engage in academic discussions instead of what it will take to improve the business. These folks have ceased to realize why they exist to begin with: to increase revenue, cut expenses, or reduce cycle time to competency.

Recently, a noted expert in the field suggested in T D that knowledge specialists should be in the room when corporate strategies are being developed. If that happened, she believes there would be fewer failures in strategy implementation.