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

If that happened, I believe it would be labeled as a flat-out miracle. It's that kind of thinking that shows most experts in our field have rarely spent any time "at the table." The naivety is sometimes startling.

"Executive teams can't operate with a huge retinue of observers, all of whom would benefit from bearing witness to their discussions," says John Cone, interim CEO of ASTD and former CLO of Dell Computer. "Nor is it effective for them to try to cover all bases at the onset of every key decision. As a CEO, you have to move fast, so you involve the most critical few people. You typically don't think about how inclusive you could be, but about how you can get the decision made quickly and who you trust to carry it out effectively. Precious few people in our profession have earned the trust to be one of those critical people, because they usually haven't demonstrated the business acumen and results."

"Executives shouldn't have to put up with a trainer's academic mindset," Crull says. "Being an expert in our field is a necessary but insufficient reason for corporations to employ learning professionals. You need to be an expert in the business of the organization and have the business acumen to apply your expertise to improve business performance."

Senior executives love mathematical and financial formulas. If you were to create a formula representing the "sum total" ([sigma]) of organizational performance improvement, it would likely look like this:

[sigma] = (R-E)/T

Increasing revenues (R), reducing expenses (E), and reducing cycle time (T) are the three things senior executives worry about and talk about most. In order to gain a seat at the table, learning professionals must be able to connect their work to one or more of those desired outcomes.

"Learning professionals who have the ear of senior management come to the table to talk about business results, not learning pedagogy," adds Cone. "They understand the drivers of the business, how the executives think, and the metrics that mean the most to them. They talk about business outcomes, not learning enablers. And they talk about their business using real business language and real data. They talk about revenue, expense, productivity, customer satisfaction, and other quantifiable stuff that business-people care about. They've learned that every conversation had better include information about money or time saved, revenue or new business generated, or customer problems solved."

Crull relays a telling story of a presentation she gave at an industry conference that highlights the "disconnect" between learning professionals and senior executives.

"During my presentation, I stated that as a CLO, I see myself as an officer of the corporation. I worry about improving shareowner value. If it doesn't make a difference to the bottom line, then my work has little or no value." At that point, a woman in the audience got up from her seat and left the room.

"Later, during the Q&A section of our presentation," Crull continues, "someone who was sitting next to the woman who had left stood up and said, 'Do you know what she said right before she exited? That she didn't get into the training and development field to worry about the bottom line.' I was stunned. To me, that summed up the biggest problem in our profession today."