According to Training Magazine, in 20 companies spent an average of $322,376 on training outsourcing—up from $197,519 in 2022. As organizations increasingly rely on outside vendors for everything from training delivery and strategy to technology, it’s becoming ever more crucial to evolve from “suppliers” into “partners.” 

Bridging the gap between client and vendor relationships can often be elusive in our industry. But the payoffs can be great in terms of increased partnership, performance improvement, revenue, and client satisfaction. I recently sat down with Kevin D. Wilde, GP Strategies’ Advisory Board Member, former CLO of General Mills, and co-author of “Power Up Your L&D Partnerships” to get his take on managing client vendor relations.  

Vendor vs. Customer: Best Practices for Collaboration

Steps to Transition from Vendor to Partner

Kevin, what’s the difference between a supplier and a partner? What characteristics differentiate the two? And how can a supplier evolve into a partner? 

A supplier or vendor relationship is primarily transactional—you reach out to each other as needed. A partnership, however, is more value added and moves you toward being part of strategizing and deliberating before, during, and after the transaction is needed. You build a relationship, a knowledge of each other’s working styles, and a natural cadence of communication that’s not based entirely on scheduled meeting times. When the client starts to reach out to you unplanned, recognize that this is a clue that you’re becoming more than a vendor. Alternately, there’s no reason why you can’t ask for more strategic involvement. 

It takes both sides to evolve into a partnership. But partnerships develop over time on a foundation of trust. Partners can share updates and concerns openly in a safe environment. They can ask for the why behind the work. When invited to the table for strategic planning, a partner will contribute, instead of sell. Partners work through challenges together. Both sides go above and beyond and are committed to each other’s success. All these things build trust, authenticity, and credibility. Sometimes trust starts with something small and builds from there. It takes time. And, I have to be honest—chemistry counts, too. But if you look at a client-vendor relationship, both sides assume risk. The client risks a loss of control by bringing someone in. The vendor is taking a risk by jumping in not knowing everything the client knows regarding the inner working of the company or situation. In that sense, they’re even. And a partnership arises when both sides are ready to say, “OK, let’s move beyond ‘even.’ ” 

Challenges in Vendor-Customer Dynamics 

You wrote, “Powerful partnerships are becoming increasingly critical as client organizations face continual disruption in the marketplace and search for new solutions.” As the speed of change continues to increase, how can suppliers help their clients prepare for the disruption and change, especially if the change relates to their core business? 

A few things come to mind. Inasmuch as we may be contracting to get a short-term piece of work done, let’s assume that not everything goes well, or things dramatically shift over time. How do we build that possibility in? How do we plan for more agility and more value? 

Second, I would ask the supplier to make it simple to work with them. As the rate of change continues to increase, being relevant and agile and all of that is great, but can we get the job done simply? Because so much energy is being spent on the client side by just getting the work done that we’ve contracted to do, being agile and intentional—and also simple—helps. 

I would also add to that is to see beyond the request. We may have a skirmish going on but aspire to get the sense of the whole battlefield. See how the whole thing is evolving. Then consider designing a solution that is relevant even if things change. 

Building Trust and Alignment

What is the responsibility on the supplier side for when they’re trying to help their partner see the disruption that’s coming, but the client is not recognizing it? What is the accountability on the supplier side? How aggressive should they be? 

It comes back to the principles of trust. If I trust the partner, I might be more willing to see their vision or view. If I don’t fully trust them, they may not be able to break through. There has to be a readiness to see disruption, too. If you trust and value your partner and they’re seeing things differently than you do, it would be very productive to have that conversation, in the right environment. So, asking the right question at the right time plays a role. Sometimes things are very busy, and they just don’t have the time to think. They may be thinking, “You may be right about this, but I just can’t think about it because I need to get this near-term thing done.” 

Continuous Improvement Strategies

Part of having a powerful partnership is helping the client not only with their strategies for today, but also for tomorrow. What are ways suppliers can be helping their client organizations prepare for the future of work? 

That is a hot topic, and there have been many things published on automation, machine learning, AI. There are pockets of that taking off, and there’s a sense that, at some point, we’re going to be at the tipping point of those things. And the smart orgs are preparing for that. So that’s an example of the right time to ask powerful questions or bring in samples of work other clients are doing. 

The other day we were talking about a 70:20:10 ratio, but it’s not the learning industry example you know. It’s the notion that leaders spend 70% of their time on current work, 20% on something needed 6 months or a year from now, and 10% of time spent on something beyond that. It would be interesting to apply that ratio to a partnership. Let’s spend 70% of our time getting current needs done, but let’s reserve some time for the 20 and the 10. Whatever the ratio, let’s reserve time to think further down the line and be glad we did. 

One way to approach this is to say, “Given the way your role is expected to evolve over the next year, what do you think you’ll be needing to learn?” When we asked that question at a conference of global learning leaders, one answer was that it was important to understand all the contemporary thinking on learning around hot topics like neuro research and stickiness and habits. They wanted to know if there was an easy way to come up to speed on these things. If you want to build a powerful relationship on both sides, consider helping each other grow as industry professionals. Chances are, you know the best articles, blogs, books, and conferences to help them grow and develop. Share those resources with them. You already have a pulse on innovation, and they would like to learn. As long as it doesn’t lead to your product all the time, it’s a good way to build trust and loyalty. 

Measuring and Maintaining Success

Kevin, we’ve talked about commitment, communication, collaboration, and the ability to evolve from a partner to a supplier. Could you share one more strategic approach you believe would help further the partnership between supplier and client? 

One idea comes to mind, who is responsible for results? And I think the difference between good and great comes from wrestling that question to the ground. In great partnerships, you don’t just get the job done. You’re fully invested in getting the job done. When things are tough, who is your go-to person, your go-to partner? These partners have a few attributes: 

• They help get really clear on the valued results. They help you work through the fuzziness of what you think needs to be done to what the real result is. And we do that, so that [fill in the blank]. What is the product of the product? 

• They do some really great planning. What are the milestones we need to reach? 

• Courage and energy. They bring some chemistry to it. That’s part of the magic of great partnerships, on both sides. Do you bring that extra thing—the magic that makes it all happen? 

From Transactional to Transformational

Evolving vendor relationships into strategic partnerships is crucial in today’s business environment. By focusing on trust, communication, and shared goals, vendors and clients can move from a strictly transactional relationship to a more transformational way of working. In this new relationship, both sides are committed to each other’s success. Clients provide vendors with greater access to their overall plans, which enables vendors to deliver better support, not only in meeting immediate needs, but also in preparing for future disruptions. Ultimately, powerful partnerships are characterized by a deep commitment to achieving meaningful, long-term results together. 

Looking for a partner that can help you transform your approach to learning? Find out more about our vendor management solutions, including our global network of specialists, certified facilitators, and producers.  

About the Authors

Keith Keating

With a career spanning over 20 years in learning & development, Keith Keating holds a Master’s Degree in Leadership and has experience in a myriad of areas ranging from Instructional Design, Leadership Coaching, Operations Management, and Process Transformation. More recently Keith has been leading clients on the development and execution of their global learning strategies. Regardless of the role, at the heart of everything Keith does centers around problem solving. He studied Design Thinking at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and found Design Thinking was a perfect tool to add to his problem solving "toolkit". Since then, Keith has been utilizing Design Thinking to help clients tap into understanding and resolving unmet customer needs.

This blog article was written prior to LEO Learning becoming part of GP Strategies.

For the SMCR stocktake, the FCA interviewed 45 people at 15 banks and industry bodies. The feedback from those interviews provides invaluable guidance on FCA’s views and future supervisory priorities.

For those involved in the implementation, it is pleasing to read that the regulator recognizes the “concerted effort” made by the banking sector and acknowledges that most firms have rejected a tick-box approach and are attempting to implement the spirit as well as the letter of the regime.

There are some important lessons for all firms, those already covered by the regime and those who will join it in December this year.

Could Do Better: 5 Areas for Improvement Flagged in the FCA’s ‘SMCR Stocktake’

• Conduct Rules training
• Measurement and evidence of culture change
• Fit & Proper assessments
• Regulatory References
• Responsibilities Maps and understanding the ‘reasonable steps’ test

1. Conduct Rules Training

One of the strongest criticisms expressed by the FCA is in relation to the quality of training on the Conduct Rules. The FCA gives a stern reminder to firms that they must notify all relevant persons of the Conduct Rules that apply to them and take reasonable steps to ensure that they understand how those rules apply to them. This includes suitable training.

Specifically, the FCA criticizes firms for:

• Not adequately tailoring training to job roles
• Using their own values to articulate and communicate the Conduct Rules without clearly mapping those values to the rules
• Being unable to explain with confidence what a Conduct Rule breach looks like in the context of their business
• Here, the regulator puts the industry on notice that they plan to increase their supervisory focus on the Conduct Rules. Now is therefore a good time to benchmark current training against these criticisms.

2. Measurement and Evidence of Culture Change

The interviewees fed back that work on changing their culture had begun before the implementation of the SMCR in response to other FCA initiatives. On a positive note, the FCA acknowledges that the SMCR has resulted in a stronger tone from the top, more clarity over expected behaviors and a clearer articulation of what good conduct looks like.

It notes, however, that firms are struggling to find appropriate ways of measuring and evidencing cultural change. This is a clear regulatory expectation and perhaps the next big challenge for the industry.

3. Fit & Proper Assessments

In general, the FCA is positive about how the Certification process has been implemented. The FCA notes, in particular, that it is pleased that behavior and conduct indicators, not solely technical skills, are being included in Fit & Proper assessments. It expresses concern, however, that firms are unable to evidence the effectiveness of their assessment approach and that assessments are overly subjective and potentially inconsistent. Again, the industry needs to find better metrics here.

The FCA also criticizes the way in which the Certification regime is being used to evaluate whether the managers of Certified Persons are competent managers. Firms are put on notice that the training and assessment of managers of Certified Persons needs more work. This is in line with FCA’s current focus on the importance of good leadership at all levels of a firm.

4. Regulatory References

The FCA notes that there is room for improvement in the quality and timeliness of references. Firms are therefore on notice to review their own processes and performance in this regard. The regulator also expresses concern over the inconsistency of how Conduct Rule breaches are recorded, linking back to their concern over the lack of clarity over what a Conduct Rule breach looks like (see above).

5. Responsibilities Maps and Understanding the “Reasonable Steps” Test

The FCA is broadly happy that Senior Managers understand what accountability means for them. It notes that some firms are extending the use of Responsibilities Maps beyond what is strictly required, but avoid any positive or negative comment on this trend.

Is this perhaps tangible evidence of Senior Managers taking steps to protect themselves? It will be interesting to see how this development plays out in any future enforcement actions and whether this voluntary extension results in a lack of clarity over accountability at the top of firms.

The FCA address the industry-wide concern over what ‘reasonable steps’ look like in practice. This topic was raised by the Senior Managers interviewed and the regulator takes the opportunity to send a clear signal to the industry that they will not be providing any further guidance in this area. Instead, they urge Senior Managers to decide for themselves what is appropriate for their firm and to think “more broadly”; beyond systems and controls at the steps needed in their firm to create an “environment where the risk of misconduct is minimized, for example through nurturing healthy cultures”.

GP Strategies has extensive experience of SMCR training and supporting organizations to implement it. To find out more about our off-the-shelf courses, custom solutions and face-to-face training options, get in touch.

About the Authors

Renato Hoxha

 “I wish…” Superusers are the glue that keeps an organization informed, knowledgeable, and ready to adopt new business processes. “Superuser” is a title that’s typically in addition to one’s regular job: What resources can we provide to superusers to ensure they have time to support users and not caught up in administrative tasks? My collaboration tools wish list includes:

1. A secure, intuitive shared workspace
2. Relevant, accessible content
3. Ways to engage by sending reminders, challenges, or links

Is that too much to ask?

Shared Workspace

Teams need efficient ways to organize content. Typically, content must be reviewed and approved by the broader enterprise before being deployed for use. Superuser networks can use a number of platforms to accomplish this. If your organization runs on Microsoft (MS), you’re probably aware of how MS SharePoint and MS Teams can be used to organize, share, and store files for access by multiple users. Teams also allows live conference calls with content sharing. Assuming effective administration is applied, SharePoint and Teams may meet your needs.

If you are wishing for something more turnkey, consider a platform such as Workfront, which is targeted to IT and Marketing buyers but can be used more broadly by anyone who seeks a platform to manage work more fully. Workfront allows users to enter requests for work, which can convert to funded projects, which are then assigned resources and timeframes. Workfront allows users to establish and manage review cycles. Workfront offers integration with SharePoint, Teams, Google Drive, Box, and other resources you may already use.

If your organization runs SAP SuccessFactors, are you familiar with Jam? Jam is marketed as a social learning/collaboration platform. But for teams and project-based efforts, Jam also offers version control, check-in/check-out, and online commenting.

As a superuser advocate, do you need to be convinced that your network should have a workspace that provides easy access to one version of the truth? Just say no to email attachments!

Relevant, Rapidly Deployable Content

Does your superuser network have a way to deploy in-app custom content to users on demand? If you use SAP Enable Now, uPerform by Ancile, WalkMe, or Whatfix, then you are familiar with the power and efficiency of such a robust solution. Your users no longer need to open up multiple windows to access online help when they need it most. We all know superusers are amazing multitaskers, but if your organization’s lack of a dedicated resource to champion a robust solution has been a deterrent in the past, consider GP WISE.

GP WISE, powered by SAP Enable Now, is a cloud-based workforce improvement solution for the enterprise. With GP WISE, GP Strategies licenses, manages, and administers an SAP Enable Now environment, drastically reducing your internal burden. Your key resources receive Enable Now training as part of GP WISE; however, you can rely on GP Strategies for the heavy lifting of Level 1/Level 2 help desk; branding, distribution, and publishing of content; and release management. Finally, with GP WISE you’ll unlock and be able to edit SAP’s standard library of Enable Now-created content for SuccessFactors and S/4HANA.

Chatbots That Engage, Remind, and Connect

You’ve probably encountered chatbots during an online customer service transaction. A window pops up and asks whether you, the customer, needs help. If the artificial intelligence (AI) is well-tuned to the situation, you’ll feel supported. In a similar fashion, corporate learning organizations are beginning to blend conversational chatbots into learning events to support their learners more fully.

Imagine if your superusers could leverage chatbots to engage and connect with learners before, during, and after live workshops. You can license chatbots for a defined timeframe and use them to deliver reminders, questions, challenges, or links to resources. Chatbots can communicate via multiple platforms, such as SMS/text, Facebook Messenger, and other direct messaging solutions.

Summary of Superuser Collaboration Tools

• Shared workspaces
• GP WISE: a solution for deploying relevant, custom content
• Chatbots

You know that your people, including superusers, are your most important assets. What will you do to align your employees’ skills and knowledge with the dynamic digital platforms they will need to adopt?

We hope you found this discussion on superuser tools helpful, and we invite you to join the conversation by leaving your comments below.

Meet with GP Strategies in person on September 19, 2019, at the annual SuperUser Experience Event (SEE2019) in Plano, TX, where we will address superuser collaboration tools in greater depth. Review SEE2019 event information and register here.

About the Authors

Ellen Kumar

Ms. Kumar is a Solution Architect with GP Strategies, and has served in roles ranging from Account Executive, to Operations Director, to Project Manager/Training Consultant. Prior to GP Strategies, she worked for University of Dayton Research Institute and GE Aircraft Engines (now GE Aerospace). She holds an M.S. in Materials Science & Engineering from University of Dayton.

Earlier this year, SAP and Kronos confirmed their new strategic partnership, announcing the new SAP Time Management solution by Kronos. Since then, we have been inundated with requests and questions from organizations curious about what this means for them and how this change fits into their existing human capital management (HCM) landscape. Many common questions are always being asked as we work with organizations that are considering an SAP time management solution.

The top three things people want to know are as follows: Why should we be looking at SuccessFactors Employee Central Time versus SAP Time Management by Kronos? How does SAP Time Management by Kronos integrate with SuccessFactors Employee Central? How will implementing this solution improve our business? In this blog, I will go through each question, and answer them based on our experience to date.

Why should we be looking at SuccessFactors Employee Central versus SAP Time Management by Kronos?

Simply put, SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Time is for organizations that need global absence management capabilities with basic support for time tracking and overtime calculations. If you have a more complex environment, SAP Time Management by Kronos supports workforce scheduling, time tracking for hourly workers, and advanced leave management capabilities.

The rule of thumb that we use is that if your employee population is primarily white collar or salaried with low complexity time requirements, then SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Time is usually the solution of choice. If your company has an employee population that includes blue collar or hourly paid workers with more complex time requirements (maybe you are a manufacturer with production facilities or a retailer with many stores), then SAP Time Management by Kronos is the recommended go-to solution.

If you operate under the jurisdiction of a union, workers council, or something similar that involves additional employee contract complexity, SAP Time Management by Kronos is also the go-to solution. Finally, if you have requirements around staff planning or a tool to assist you with the scheduling of your employees, then SAP Time Management by Kronos is the best solution due to its advanced and optimized scheduling modules. However, when we work with organizations during the evaluation process, we always recommend they carry out a basic discovery to understand what the best fit is for them.

How does SAP Time Management by Kronos integrate with SuccessFactors Employee Central?

The integration between SuccessFactors and SAP Time Management by Kronos is a hot topic for many of our customers and prospects. They always want to understand how the Time Management solution integrates as an end-to-end solution with HR and payroll modules, namely Employee Central and Employee Central Payroll. Organizations want to know if the processes between these modules will run smoothly and if additional resources will be needed to keep the system running properly, especially at key times such as the end of pay periods.

SAP Time Management by Kronos is built upon the Kronos D5 platform that leverages new industry best technologies to work seamlessly with organizations’ existing systems. Part of the D5 platform is a robust and extensible API layer that uses Dell Boomi tools to enable simplified integration to almost any third-party system. However, one of the big benefits with SAP Time Management by Kronos is that it comes with out-of-the-box template integrations to many common solutions, including SuccessFactors modules. Employee Central seamlessly integrates using packaged, direct API integration, or you could take a pre-built flat file template approach, still leveraging the D5 API layer, which many of our customers are currently doing.

There is also the benefit of pre-packaged scheduled integration for payroll data via file transfer from SAP Time Management by Kronos to Employee Central Payroll. Again, this is a popular choice for our customers. Whichever approach you take, rest assured these integrations are automated and feel seamless. They should not require any high maintenance when implemented. You can switch them on and let them go. Finally, one other element to consider is the unified interface that gives visibility to SAP Time Management by Kronos information within the SuccessFactors user interface. This allows time data to be displayed in user tiles when accessing SuccessFactors, without having to go into the time module.

How will implementing SAP Time Management by Kronos improve our business?

Implementing SAP Time Management by Kronos brings a whole heap of benefits to an organization, including the ability to control labor costs through reducing overtime, decreasing absences, eliminating non-productive time, and using improved timekeeping processes. There is also the drive to improve productivity and minimize compliance risks.

All of these are benefits that we see SAP Time Management by Kronos helping organizations achieve in abundance. However, the solution also brings so much more to the party. It has been designed from the ground up with user experience and employee engagement in mind. In this new era of workforce management and a multigenerational workforce, companies who see the competitive advantage this system brings are able to retain top talent and keep employees engaged so they are ambassadors for the company.

SAP Time Management by Kronos has been developed to work in a responsive way—this means that whatever device it is used on, it will always look and feel similar to the end user. And this familiarity across devices has the added benefit of reducing training time and costs. It enables employees to work how they want to and wherever they are—whether at home on their tablet, on a bus using their mobile device, or in their work location on their desktop.

Users now have the ability to carry out work tasks such as requesting vacation, requesting to swap shifts with a colleague, or viewing accrual balances wherever they are, without any feature loss. Managers can get in on the act too. Whether the user is a retail store manager who is walking the store floor helping customers or a manufacturing supervisor who is at the production line coaching employees, the solution allows managers to react to information quicker, spend more time working on strategic tasks, and not be locked away behind a desk in a backroom.

Another benefit of the solution is that it comes built with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technology. This means that the solution can help you prevent errors and anticipate problems before they occur. SAP Time Management by Kronos recommend the best schedules to create and when to approve or not approve time off. In fact, if you want it to, it can auto-approve employee requests based on your business rules, taking away time-consuming administrative tasks from your managers. Instead, managers can now get access to real-time data that helps them make proactive decisions that improve the business.

In addition to common questions, organizations want to know many other things regarding functionality, usability, and the implementation process as they start to look at SAP Time Management by Kronos. Many other valuable features come standard with the solution, so we always recommend that organizations meet with us to analyze the solution and demonstrate how it can meet specific challenges unique to their organizations. This approach gives organizations the opportunity to see for themselves the benefits that SAP Time Management by Kronos can bring.

To learn more about how GP Strategies can assist you on your journey to Kronos, contact us.

About the Authors

Marcus Woodhouse

The Importance of Quick Decision-Making

Impact of Leadership Decisions

Some sources indicate that the average person makes 35,000 decisions a day.* This means that the ability to make decisions quickly is hardwired into our brains. From what to wear, to what to eat, we make decisions, often unconsciously, that impact the smallest details (How do you take your coffee?) and the overall trajectory of our lives (Will you marry me?).  

While those personal decisions affect our own lives, the decisions you make as a leader impact the individuals with whom you work, the teams you lead, and the organization or enterprise of which you are a part. We spend at least eight hours a day at work, and the decisions we make there determine the path of our career, govern our work relationships, and define our ability to drive results on our team. All of these decisions have an impact on the success of the overall organization. 

Leaders in life-saving positions, such as military personnel or emergency room doctors, chose jobs where rapid decision-making is clearly critical. But in the age of digital disruption, faster decision-making is also an expectation of other roles. Leaders across a wide range of industries are being asked to speed up the pace of the choices they make without compromising the quality of their decision-making. 

Expectations of Faster Decision-Making

Digital Disruption Implications

Digital disruption has several implications for the speed of problem-solving and decision-making. 

Data Availability

Data is becoming available much faster and becoming more transparent. No longer do leaders need to wait for weekly reports on client satisfaction—a quick scan of customer reviews can give them a pulse on what’s going well and where dissatisfaction with a product or service may be an issue. External sites such as Glassdoor and internal sites like Yammer provide a window into employee successes and challenges. Greater transparency with data means colleagues and team members are now privy to data once reserved for leaders alone. With more and more information at their fingertips, leaders must find creative ways to incorporate data into their decision-making process. 

Dealing with Noise

With massive, unfiltered data, leaders encounter a great deal of white noise: extraneous information that may or may not need to be factored into a leader’s decision-making process. Being able to discern critical data from erroneous information is a necessary skill of digital leaders. 

Fierce Competition

Access to information and technology allows new competitors and new startups to emerge more quickly. Leaders no longer have the luxury of a ramp-up time to determine how to outmaneuver a potential competitor. Staying ahead by making faster decisions is key. 

Immediate Gratification

Because technology allows for speedier communication, faster decision-making is expected. Leaders, and the teams they lead, can text or use online collaboration platforms to send and receive real-time responses. The expectation of an immediate response or decision intensifies because technology exists that enables that decision to be made and communicated expeditiously. 

Eight Ways to Speed Up Decisions

For the reasons stated above, leaders need to make decisions faster. To become successful, organization must overcome the analysis paralysis that often grips leaders and their teams. The bottom line is that faster decisions are better than no decisions. No one has ever left a meeting saying or thinking, “I hope we come out of this meeting with another meeting to think about these issues.” 

But does quicker decision-making differ greatly from the more plodding decision-making best practices of the past? Yes and no. We can apply the best practices of decision-making in a nimbler way to meet the swift pace of today’s workplace. Speed doesn’t mean sacrificing a thoughtful and deliberate approach. An agile decision-maker can still be an accurate decision-maker. The key to faster decision-making is using shortcuts. Here are a few decision-making hacks you can use to avoid the tedious pitfalls of the past.  

1. Flex Frameworks

While an extensive fishbone diagram or decision-making protocol may not be practical in the moment, you can flex simple frameworks to help you think through your best choice. A basic pro/con analysis or a simplified decision matrix allows leaders to quickly make sense of the tradeoffs of their choice. 

2. Chunk Decisions

Making a decision doesn’t imply you have to solve the entire problem. If you cannot address the larger challenge at hand, make a smaller decision, or series of smaller decisions, to create momentum and progress. 

3. Anticipate Challenges 

Notice patterns and increase your ability to anticipate a challenge that will require a solution. Recognizing patterns enables you to make a faster decision when faced with a similar challenge. 

4. Leverage Support

Don’t be afraid to seek the input of others—even when speed is of the essence. Consulting with and bouncing ideas off of trusted colleagues can give you the outside perspective you may be lacking if you are making a decision in isolation. 

5. Keep Priorities in Mind

Consider a quick check-in with yourself to ask whether or not the decision you are about to make is consistent with your values. Focus on what really matters and on the decisions that will have the most appreciable impact on the success of the team and the larger organization. 

6. Go Slow to Go Fast

There is great benefit to taking a deep breath to think through your decision, ask for more information, or treat a team member kindly even when a speedy response is required. By slowing down just a beat, maintaining trust, and communicating clearly, you will increase the confidence of your team members and colleagues. Taking the time to build up this relationship credit during non-peak times will serve you well when you need to move quickly. Having earned the confidence of your people, you can count on them to support you on a speedy choice. 

7. Recognize Biases

Be aware of and understand how confirmation bias, groupthink, and other cognitive traps can negatively affect your ability to make good decisions. Just being able to name these biases helps you to identify when you see them in play. 

8. Adopt a Growth Mindset

Recognize that if you make a decision and it doesn’t work out, you can benefit greatly from failing fast: You can test your assumptions, learn from your mistakes, and try again. When you make decisions with a growth mindset, you recognize that even failures and obstacles are opportunities for growth. Look at failed decisions as opportunities to learn and grow. 

Use Hacks to Become a More Decisive Leader

Digital disruption will continue to test leaders and those they lead to take in more information, process it quickly, respond, and execute decisions with speed. Developing habits that support quick decision-making just makes sense. The 35,000 decisions you make in a day create many opportunities to practice increasing the speed of your choices, while maintaining accuracy. This faster decision-making approach will not only cultivate your credibility with your employees, but also grow the success of your organization. 

Are you interested in becoming a more decisive leader? Our Digital Leadership Suite offers digitally enabled programs for leaders at every level. 

* Wansink, Brian and Jeffery Sobal (2007). Mindless eating: The 200 daily food decisions we overlook. Environment and Behavior, 39:1, 106-123.

About the Authors

Leah Clark

Leah Clark is the Leadership Practice Lead at GP Strategies, as well as an author and the founder of LeaderConnect. With over 28 years of experience in her field, Leah brings a unique perspective on the mindsets and skillset that are critical to leadership success to her coaching and consulting. Her clients benefit from her collaborative approach to crafting a well-connected and thoughtful leadership development strategy. Leah holds a Master of Arts; Organizational Psychology, Columbia University and a Bachelor of Arts; English and Sociology, Boston College.

SAP SuccessFactors customers: SAP has announced that you can sign up to be part of an Early Adopter program (SAP S-ID required) for People Analytics, embedded edition. Should you apply for this? Read along to learn more details, including my own experience as an early adopter customer.

What is SAP SuccessFactors People Analytics? 

The graphic below shows what SAP SuccessFactors People Analytics includes:

The Early Adopter program is only for SuccessFactors People Analytics, embedded edition. People Analytics, embedded edition will replace existing Operational Reporting tools, including Canvas/ORD, Table/AdHoc, and Tile-based Dashboards. People Analytics, embedded edition is included with your existing SuccessFactors modules with no additional license fee.

In my mind, the key features of the embedded edition are:

• Simplified reporting with a single data model across all SAP SuccessFactors modules
• Modern visualization tools from SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC)

The planned General Availability (GA) launch of People Analytics, embedded edition is Q4 2019. Note that Learning, Payroll, and Recruiting Marketing will not initially be part of the embedded edition until sometime in the future.

What are the benefits of this Early Adopter program?

I see three key benefits of this Early Adopter program:

• Selected customers will be able to create reports and visualizations with People Analytics, embedded edition in preview and production environments prior to the GA launch.
• Selected customers will have the opportunity to interact with and learn from SAP Product Managers and other Early Adopter customers.
• Selected customers will potentially be able to influence the People Analytics, embedded edition roadmap.

Do you want to be an Early Adopter for People Analytics?

Think about your team and their tendencies while you consider the following questions:

• Are you excited about learning new technologies and willing to explore new software without a lot of guidance?
• Have you been struggling with building certain reports and/or dashboards with the existing reporting tools?
• Are you willing to budget extra time for your team members to explore the tool while utilizing time from their day-to-day tasks?
• Are you eager to provide constructive feedback to SAP?

If you answered yes to any of these, you may be a good candidate for the program.

My Experience With Early Adoption

When SAP SuccessFactors launched Advanced Reporting for Employee Central several years back, my employer at the time was one of the first beta customers of the tool.

We used the then-new Advanced Reporting to recreate our reports that were created in AdHoc Report Builder. It was great to try out many new features that were not available in AdHoc and really push the limits of what we could deliver to our internal customers. That said, being an early adopter was a significant time commitment. It takes extra time and effort to learn new a new tool, and there was not a lot of documentation in those early days. We also ran into several bugs along the way; we spent many hours carefully documenting our issue reports and waiting for fixes from the engineering team.

Eventually we rolled out these new reports globally and enabled our HR teams across the enterprise to support their local customers. With our expertise gained as a beta customer, our depth of understanding of the tool and its capabilities became very strong. In the long term, our extra efforts during the beta period paid off nicely.

My Recommendation 

Joining this Early Adopter program can be a great opportunity to build expertise and gain additional value from your HR data. Perhaps you have the opportunity to get a “quick win” with a report or an analysis that is difficult or not possible to do with today’s reporting tools. If anything, you’ll have a head start in transitioning to the new platform.

Be mindful that participating in the Early Adopter program will take some extra time while other deliverables and tasks could lag. Be sure to set proper expectations, and you can positively move your SuccessFactors People Analytics program forward.

The Details

Program Details (SAP S-ID required): https://community.successfactors.com/t5/Reporting-Analytics-and/SAP-SuccessFactors-People-Analytics-Embedded-Edition-Early/ba-p/233982

Application Link (SAP S-ID required): https://influence.sap.com/sap/ino/#campaign/1972

Remember that the deadline to join the program is August 31, 2019.

Good luck!  Reach out with any questions or leave a comment below, and I will respond directly to you.

About the Authors

GP Strategies Corporation

GP Strategies is a global performance improvement solutions provider of sales and technical training, e-Learning solutions, management consulting and engineering services. GP Strategies' solutions improve the effectiveness of organizations by delivering innovative and superior training, consulting and business improvement services, customized to meet the specific needs of its clients. Clients include Fortune 500 companies, manufacturing, process and energy industries, and other commercial and government customers.

Once upon a time, I was sure I’d grow up to work in a vending machine. (That’s right; I thought there were people inside.) I loved the idea of translating keypad codes into icy beverages and crackling bags of snacks.

For L&D professionals, the idea of taking orders doesn’t feel quite so magical. We’re supposed to be trusted advisors, but too often, we find ourselves developing learning reactively, under pressure of product launches, quarterly compliance requirements, and other crunches. How can we reset when we get stuck in this cycle? How can we become a trusted advisor again?

Start by considering the following questions:

What am I ultimately selling?

Is it a product, such as an app or platform? Or is it intangible, such as consulting services or recommendations?

If what you’re selling is your expertise, you have the luxury—and the challenge—of being a comparison shopper. You can use your knowledge of your client’s business to make agnostic recommendations independent of a single brand or platform. You have the liberty to recommend an ecosystem of tools and approaches, and the responsibility to weigh the potential drawbacks of each.

If you’re selling a product, your incentive is to recruit licensees and add users. That’s an honest motivation, too! There’s nothing wrong with having something to sell—and selling it to the right people, for the right use case. Your value lies in asking the questions to determine how your product can help deliver results that matter to the client. Your ability to be frank when it’s not a good fit will earn you credibility: Think of yourself as a matchmaker, not a vendor.

Once you’ve made a good match, ask yourself:

Am I selling a panacea?

The correct answer is always no. There are a lot of interesting tools, but too many are labeled “AI-enabled” or “LX platform” based upon a couple of tenuous characteristics. Too many vendors, ingenuously or otherwise, overstate the ranges and use cases of their solutions. To use a cliché, there are a lot of hammer purveyors trying to convince prospects that their problems are nails.

It’s exciting to discover ways your product or expertise intersects with client needs and interests. But even the most expertly designed learning path or tool with the most exquisite UI isn’t for everyone and everything. Overpromising may win the contract in the short term, but it sets us up for failure down the line when business results don’t follow.

If there’s a certain segment or client you haven’t been able to sell but would like to pursue, change the conversation to a fact-finding one rather than a sales pitch. You might uncover some user needs that will inspire an entirely new tool or approach.

After your reality check is complete, ask:

How can I simplify my recommendations?

Rather than starting with the shiniest object and designing your program around it, find the simplest way to offer learners the learning content. Some of the most profound learning takes place in settings with nearly zero technology. For example, observing a high-performing peer is one of the most effective onboarding practices—and the only resource it requires is another person.

That’s not to say that high-tech solutions are never called for. But balance the rosy vision of the problems solved by the technology with a thorough exploration of the new problems it might create. A client who wishes to bring the benefits of peer coaching to a geographically disparate team might want to use a video-coaching platform. Though the platform remedies the distance problem, it exponentially increases file-storage needs—and, potentially, personnel hours—to ensure that learners receive prompt feedback and responses. That’s not to say that you should necessarily advise against the platform; it may well be worth the investment. But ensure that it’s the simplest solution before advocating for it.

As you develop your recommendations, think about learners’ work environments and how to reach them there. If you can’t visualize the learners or their spaces, ask the client for permission to interview some of their learners. These interviews don’t need to become a full-fledged design-thinking initiative—unless your client is open to it—but listening to learners talk about their needs, in their own spaces, is incredibly powerful, and helps you along the way to becoming a trusted advisor again.

Above all, begin with the minimally invasive. Learning and performance support solutions shouldn’t require lots of different apps to be downloaded and systems to be logged into. It’s healthier for learners to select from a simple menu of staples than load up on isolated single servings. A very real part of our value as professionals lies in steering our clients away from shiny objects—and empty calories.

About the Authors

Tiffany Vojnovski

The idea that school could be different first came to me—as did most risky ideas—through fiction, specifically Notes on the Hauter Experiment, a futuristic novel set in an automated boarding school. Screens replaced teachers, and flashing lights cued students to move to their next class. Those who disobeyed were punished with grating alarms and foul odors. Whether the author, Bernice Grohskopf, had a background in instructional design or simply excelled at reimagining the boarding-school bildungsroman, one thing was clear: school was ripe for an LX intervention. I didn’t revisit the idea until I joined the New York City Teaching Fellows program; but this time, I was the teacher instead of the reader. Via a fast track to certification, I was charged with teaching in one of the highest-needs schools in the country. My challenge was to boost students’ achievement by several grade levels while adding rigor and interest to the high-school English curriculum. After a lot of trial, error, and reflection, I learned how to help my students succeed. However, I never felt comfortable enforcing the poorly thought-out procedures and meaningless paperwork our school leadership imposed upon students. I believed in the value of knowledge, and to organizations devoted to learning and exploration. What I wasn’t sure I believed in were the virtues of going through the system in a single “right” way. If anything positive came out of my complicity with the school’s—and district’s—lamentable LX, it was the empathy I developed for my students. If their job was to learn and follow the rules, my job was to make it as easy as possible for them to do so. Any procedure that caused confusion about what to do when they entered class, where to find learning resources, or how to turn in completed work needed to be redesigned. When students arrived in a classroom designed for professional learning, they acted—surprise!—like professional learners. My commitment to LX has been the link between my teaching and instructional design practices. Rather than despair that learners aren’t who we want them to be—more literate, more professional, more successful in whatever way we value—we should design learning tools that make these ends accessible. Learners themselves can teach us how: thanks to the design thinking model, we have a series of steps for engaging learners in empathy interviews and quickly prototyping solutions that might help them. It’s easy to view the learner as a faceless cipher sitting at the other end of an eLearning module. However, once you meet someone face to face, you can’t help but care about their experience. Not every learner is skilled in metacognition or speaks the language of academia, but all learners can tell us, in their own idiom, about the obstacles and fears that trouble them—and the interventions that would improve their lives. Learning is more than a system of rewards, punishments, and behavioral cues meted out by machines. My commitment is to maintain an open mind and to treat every learner as a sympathetic character.

The Q3 release is here and full of new features and functionality! We have broken down the updates in a series of 10-15 minute On Demand webinars for you to quickly learn what to expect in your updated SuccessFactors environment.

• Sap Successfactors Employee Platform Q3 Release
• Sap Successfactors Recruiting Q3 Release
• Sap Successfactors Employee Central Q3 Release
• Sap Successfactors People Analytics Reporting Q3
• Sap Successfactors Compensation Variable Pay Q3
• Sap Successfactors Learning Onboarding Q3

About the Authors

GP Strategies Corporation

GP Strategies is a global performance improvement solutions provider of sales and technical training, e-Learning solutions, management consulting and engineering services. GP Strategies' solutions improve the effectiveness of organizations by delivering innovative and superior training, consulting and business improvement services, customized to meet the specific needs of its clients. Clients include Fortune 500 companies, manufacturing, process and energy industries, and other commercial and government customers.

We spend a lot of time focusing on the workforce of the future and our needs as a business to transfer knowledge and adapt our solutions to the next generations coming in. In these conversations, I picture our organizations watching the existing employees file out the door to retirement as these new recruits walk in, passing the virtual baton of knowledge. However, that is rarely the case; hopefully, there is overlap where both populations are present.

During this time, it’s critical that you also honor these existing employees, as they are still critical to your future. Consider these tips for managing a multigenerational workforce:

• Create Mentor Roles: Create formal roles to allow these individuals to function as mentors to the new teams. This should be seen as an important role; provide these individuals the needed support throughout the mentoring process. This may mean freeing up time during the day to mentor and providing additional compensation.
• Provide Alternatives to Retirement: Many individuals are ready to retire but nervous about no longer working every day. Consider moving these individuals to a part-time status, allowing them to continue mentoring, acting as a subject matter expert for training, or providing other degrees of support during the transition process.
• Develop Multiple Modalities of Training: We focus so much on this future workforce that we often forget about training needs and that we have legacy learners as well. Consider providing training in two different formats until you have completely made the transition to all next generation learners so as not to disenfranchise your existing employees.
• Consider Next Generation Training for Non-Next Gen: While your new employees may find technology adoption natural, some of your existing employees might not. Consider offering training on new pieces of technology so that your existing employees can be comfortable as well. Technology that may seem simple, like using mobile devices, generating QR codes, and even connecting to Wi-Fi, may be a challenge to your existing population.
• Include In-Person Social Learning: In a world of social learning, blogs, and communities, you may be unintentionally leaving out your non-digital population. Consider having in-person communities as well for your learners who prefer in-person interactions.

These are just a few examples of modifications you may need to try while managing a multigenerational workforce. If you don’t honor these individuals and the work they provided in the past, you run the risk of them leaving before you can complete the knowledge transfer process.

One last reminder: Change is hard. Change is hard for the organization and all the people within. Be considerate in how you communicate change and embrace change. Sometimes over-communicating and allowing 1:1 time for discussion can be critical to having a stable organization.

About the Authors

Sheri Weppel

Sheri Weppel started her career as an art teacher covered in finger paint, clearly teaching people about out-of-the-box thinking (or at least off-the-construction-paper thinking). While working on her master’s degree in Instructional Design and Development at Lehigh University, she realized that we could learn a lot from the public-school classroom. Concepts like micro-learning, learning styles, gaming, and training on demand were common in grade school, but were considered new concepts in the corporate sector. Because one degree is never enough, Sheri continued her studies at Lehigh with a focus on Gaming for Instruction. In her spare time, she spent her evenings losing to her husband in Scrabble and wanting to throw the letter Q across the room, making her realize the emotional attachments we can have to games. If we could harness that desire to succeed, compete, or win to a learning environment, what impact could we have on learner motivation? Countless games of Scrabble later, Sheri started at GP Strategies as an Instructional Designer and was able to inject those concepts into solutions for her customers. This is often a challenge for customers that want to use gaming but often don’t believe they have the time or budget required to successfully launch into the gaming space. Sheri is driven to help these clients find a balance in embedding gaming elements into instruction in a practical manner. In the past nine years, Sheri has held many roles within the organization, from instructional designer to sales lead for blended learning, and is now focusing on the off-the-shelf product GPiLEARN+, growing the product into a true blended learning solution. Regardless of her role, Sheri is always focused on working with customers to help build impactful training solutions that focus on the needs of all populations. She helps clients determine specifically when to incorporate gaming versus using hands-on, traditional approaches. When she is not working, Sheri enjoys having adventures with her dog Olivia, attending barre classes, and learning new three-letter words that begin with the letter Q.

L&D professionals are often still order-takers. Employees don’t know how to do something, so organizations use training as a Band-Aid to fix it all. Training solutions offered are often eLearning modules that don’t consider what happens before and after taking the course and don’t provide performance support that would allow the learner to retrieve content at the moment of need. L&D creates a world that doesn’t resemble learners’ everyday lives.

Meaning, if we want to learn something new, we often use YouTube. Let’s say you want to learn how to change the tube in your bicycle tire. We watch a video on YouTube; we try it out. We fail initially because we missed a step. We watch another video, or read up on the topic to see the step-by-step instructions. We try again. We improved our performance but are still not 100% able to finish the job.

We watch another video, pause, and rewind and hit play again for the parts that are a bit tougher to master. And voila, we are able to change the tube in our tire. When we have to repeat this task a couple months down the road, there is a pretty good chance we will have to look up the steps again, because we’ve only mastered this once and haven’t had a chance to repeat the task for a longer period of time.

Our learners are in the exact same boat. Unless they do a task every day, they need learning experiences that they can draw from to improve their performances. Here’s how to create learning experiences that mimic how people teach themselves in real life.

Map out a learner journey.

Instead of building out eLearning courses that learners access once, focus on the learner experience and map out what the learner journey looks like. Think of an onboarding program, for example; the journey doesn’t start the day new hires enter through your front door. It starts the moment they apply for a job. What knowledge can you transfer early on about your organization that will make a difference once new hires are sitting at their desk? Think along the lines of culture and values. You wouldn’t create an eLearning module to tell your applicants about who you are as a company.

Instead, interweave your culture and your values into the overall process through a short video message, email writing, or telephone greetings. Once candidates are hired, you might reiterate your values through a fun exercise such as speed dating (getting a chance to talk to one person from every department in a span of 60 minutes) or an arts and crafts activity (building something that represents the organization’s values). Creating learning experiences that stick helps ensure your values will be remembered more easily.

Create a learning experience for complex topics.

For topics that go deeper, such as the software that your staff is using, leverage different resources that learners can access at the moment of need. Instead of simply giving learners five simulations in which they can practice certain steps in a safe environment, create multiple resources. You could use a short video to explain certain steps at a high level.

Then, learners watch their buddy go through the same steps when they are on the phone with a client. Next, they use a flowchart to follow the steps in a sandbox before they use the software for the first time on a live call. And, of course, they always have the flowchart available, should they need it. On top of that, learners will start creating their own resources by simply asking their peers, writing down notes, and sharing tips and tricks. Try to capture these valuable inputs in a central location such as your intranet or Slack or Microsoft Teams channels.

L&D has to move away from the traditional course mindset toward experiences. Before starting a new project, take the time to think through the touchpoints the learner has with a particular topic and tie it into the workflow instead of taking them away from work and the task at hand.

About the Authors

Bianca Baumann