Organizational Learning Management
Role: Instructional Design SME
Company: Northern Trust, Bangalore • Duration: November 2011 to December 2013
Introduction
Northern Trust is a Chicago-based custodian bank, founded in 1889. Managing and building on a legacy of more than 125 years would not have been possible without the power of people. People had always been Northern Trust’s core assets. In 2011, our financial results did not meet the set expectations and our net income was down by 10% from 2010. As a result, Frederick H. Waddell, the Chairman and CEO, started several organization-wide initiatives around revenue enhancements, process optimization and technology efficiency, aiming to improve our pre-tax income by the end of 2013.
Driving Performance was one such global initiative, launched to better manage our most important asset, our People. The objective was to review our existing people policies, processes and systems, thereby delivering greater value to our clients and shareholders by improving our profitability and returns on capital. A team of experts was formed with representatives from the Leadership, Client Account Management, Change Management, Human Resources (HR), Finance, Global Learning and Development (GLAD) and the Media and Communications team, to:
Re-design an improved performance and productivity management system that could be easily trackable and measurable.
Create an implementation and review plan for the new systems and processes.
Create a contingency plan for any impact on the business and internal operations.
Design a process to capture the required data and calculate and compare the financial results at the end of the second year.
Present the final plan to the Executive team.
This was a multilayered project, spanning over a period of two years. During the initial stages, the entire team had come together to create a generic workplan. However, eventually, each of the teams had designated roles and responsibilities to achieve the bigger objective in parts.
Note: For the purpose of this portfolio, I will share an overview of only the parts that I had worked on.
As one of the representatives from the GLAD team and the only Instructional Designer on board, my role was to provide Learner Experience Design insights into how to create a seamless people experience throughout the change management process. However, my primary focus was to:
Create a learning plan to support the global employee base before, during and after the launch of the new systems and processes.
Design the eLearning solutions based on the plan and provide Subject Matter Expert (SME) support to the outsourced eLearning development teams.
Re-design the existing Learning Management System (LMS) in alignment with the improved systems and processes to make it easier to gather the required people data for review and presentation purposes.
Approach
Carol Kinsey Goman, President, Kinsey Consulting Services, had once said, “Organizations do not change, people do change…or not.”
Thus, in spite of all the planning, the success of this project depended on:
How well we could prepare our people for the change
How we could bring them up to speed so they could deliver the best to our clients
With people at the core, generating learner empathy and adopting a human-centered approach was critical to the success of this project. It was important to keep the people informed and engaged at every step of the process. This helped us build empathy both ways. It made them aware of what we were trying to achieve and how is that going to impact them, their teams, their Business Units (BUs), the organization as a whole and eventually the client.
We started by addressing the three main people areas separately, with the intent of tying them together through integrated systems and processes:
Performance
Here are some of the initiatives we took to streamline the performance management process:
At Northern Trust, employees were considered as Partners in providing exceptional services to our clients. Therefore, reviewing the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to align the business goals to individual objectives, re-instated their individual contribution to the business.
We used a journey analogy to depict an employees’ growth from the day they were onboarded. Their journey continued towards achieving their personal career objectives and milestones, which helped achieve the set business goals. This helped us maintain a continuity and consistent branding and user experience across all the people platforms.
We broke down the individual annual objectives into quarterly tasks to make the objectives simpler, achievable and measurable. Typically, a Task, included things:
To Do: This included tasks like, completing an assigned project or showcasing a skill or behavior.
To Learn: This included tasks like, completing a course, proposed by the Reporting Manager or learning a new skill. This section had a link to the LMS, where they could access the recommended courses and browse through other learning resources.
There was also an option to Ask. It included:
A Performance Management Manual, which was a set of best practices Job Aids and redirected them to the LMS, where they could find other learning materials on the new performance systems and processes
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
A Helpdesk contact
A list of Driving Performance Champions, who were the SMEs on the Driving Performance initiative
Productivity
To increase people productivity, it was important to identify the factors that motivated them. We used Frederick Herzberg’s Dual Factor Theory to address the factors of employee satisfaction and dissatisfaction. We involved multiple teams like HR, Finance, GLAD and Compensation and Benefit to:
Eliminate the factors of job dissatisfaction by addressing concerns around:
Compensation
Clarity of job description
Job security
Work culture and work-life harmony
Communication and transparency
Company policy
Create conditions for job satisfaction by:
Redefining the KPIs for the BUs, teams and individuals to align them with the business goals
Providing fair performance rating and timely rewards and recognition
Presenting opportunities for career growth
Providing learning support to develop more relevant competences and train them on the new productivity systems and processes
Learning
Learning was an integral part of both the Performance and Productivity verticals of the framework throughout the process, as we redesigned the LMS in alignment with the performance and productivity systems. We started by categorizing the learners into four groups, based on their years of experience and responsibilities in their current roles because the definition of productivity was different for each of them:
The Executive team
People Managers
Individual contributors with more than three years of experience
Individual contributors with less than three years of experience
In each of the groups there were the following types of organizational members with very different learning requirement:
Change Managers: Those who were required to manage the change, including the Driving Performance Champions and other senior leaders.
Users: Those who were required to use the new systems and follow the new processes of performance and productivity.
Thus, we created a Learning Map for each group with mandatory and optional training programs that comprised of the following types of learning solutions:
Technical Training: These learning solutions aimed at improving their technical skills on-the-job and training them on the new performance and productivity systems and processes.
Business Tools: We conducted surveys on all the existing investment, banking and client account management tools and technologies used by different BUs. It helped us find any redundancy in the software licenses that saved us a lot of money. For example, there were licenses that could be shared between teams or licenses that were not required any more.
Change Tools: We designed application simulations to train people on the new performance and productivity tools. This also included creating a Performance Management Manual that could be accessed from the Ask section of the Performance Management tool, which connected to the LMS. The manual was a set of best practices Job Aids that could be downloaded and printed.
Functional Training: These learning solutions aimed at enhancing their domain knowledge about Banking and Investment. We reviewed all the existing learning solutions to:
Identify the learning products that needed to be upgraded.
Design new ones to create a more relevant suite of learning products.
Introduce quarterly inter-team knowledge share sessions that created a culture of collaboration and mutual appreciation.
Soft skill Training: These learning solutions aimed at preparing them for the change, by strengthening their organizational and management skills like time management, prioritization, delegation and decision making.
Driving Performance People Framework
Challenge
Communicating, collaborating and negotiating with all the leaders and stakeholders
This was one of the most visible and impactful projects of my career. It was a great learning opportunity to be a part of a global team that worked so closely with the leaders and stakeholders and aimed to manage organizational change, effectively yet, seamlessly.
Given the expanse of the project, constant communication and collaboration was vital to the success of the project. Moreover, learning was a horizontal layer in the Driving Performance People Framework, spread across all the other areas. Therefore, as the SME, it was my responsibility to be suggestive, assertive or persuasive, at the right time, to reduce iterations and rework.
Initially, I was so in reverence of the senior members in the team that I had difficulties sharing my views when they differed. But at the same time, I did not want to behave in an obsequious manner and be looked upon as a sycophant. Fortunately, sooner rather than later, I realized that to deliver what was expected of me, I had to think of the People, by bringing a fresh perspective to the table. So here are the mantras that I followed during my tenure in this project that helped me communicate timely, negotiate effectively and collaborate productively:
Confidence: Realizing my value as one of the team members was essential to boosting my confidence. And Confidence helped me believe in my ideas and perspectives and gave me the courage to share. Over the span of two years that I worked on this project, I learnt more from my ideas that did not make it to the final plan because those were the ones that triggered a discussion that lead to the ideas that formed the basis of the final people framework.
Mutual respect: In a team, individual confidence is as important as mutual respect and admiration. When negotiating or collaborating, we acknowledged our and others' strengths as well as weaknesses. Thus, we could avoid being defensive and yet, leave room for growth and have realistic expectations. It resulted in a cohesive decision making.
Active listening and Questioning: Active listening was another way to be respectful towards others’ views and opinions. It showed that I was genuinely interested in knowing what they thought and believed. It was the basis of any constructive discussion that involved asking smart and open ended questions, agreements and disagreements. The idea was to have an integrative negotiation to agree on the best possible option for the organization. At the end of the day, we were all working to achieve the overarching objective of the project, which was to show results in the next annual earnings report.
Research & Transparency: Research and analysis had always been one of the most important and initial stages of any learning product design and development. Often, facts, figures and probable use cases were the outcome of such analysis. It helped us identify the real people problems and design customized solutions that prepared the targeted learner for the challenges that they faced. Given my past experiences, before presenting my case, I would always play the devil’s advocate to find the pros and cons of the same. Presenting any idea or point of view, juxtaposed with a transparent research data, with both the perspectives in place, instilled the team’s trust in me and made more sense to the stakeholders. It helped the team to take informed decisions and calculated risks.
Impact
Frederick H. Waddell, Chairman and CEO, Northern Trust had stated in the 2012 annual report:
"Driving Performance is helping Northern Trust fundamentally improve our productivity and profitability while enhancing our capacity to invest in growth in the coming years. Again, I am proud of our early results and believe our efforts have created a strong foundation for continued success. Thanks to the exceptional efforts of our partners and support from clients throughout the world, we executed our strategy well in 2012, increasing our productivity and deploying capital efficiently. We successfully executed on the Driving Performance initiatives, which contributed approximately $160 million in pre-tax profit improvements in 2012, surpassing the goal for the year.”
Recognition
The team was appreciated and applauded by everyone across the organization for the brilliant work and seamless execution. And I had received the HR Accountability Awards, 2012 for my contribution to the Driving Performance initiative.