Corporate Learning in the World of Hypergrowth Companies

Last night I had the opportunity to host a panel of L&D (learning and development) leaders from some of the fastest growing companies in the San Francisco Bay Area (Zenefits, AdRoll, Gilead Sciences, Chegg, and Valin).  These are each hypergrowth companies (Zenefits hired almost 600 people in the last year) and these L&D leaders are dealing with some amazing challenges.

The sponsor of the program, Udemy for Business (an online learning marketplace), has published a video of the program - but while you wait to view it, I wanted to share a few of the amazing things which came up.

• Onboarding is a hugely important topic and big opportunity to add value. 
  
  As you can imagine, when your company is growing at 100%+ per year, you have a lot of onboarding to do.
  
  One of the panelists, Elizabeth Pierce from Zenefits, talked about the need to build a formal one week onboarding program, bringing together a lot of disparate program and materials to get people started. In their company the focus on data quality, client integrity, and process simplification is like religion - and she found that by building a strong, leader-led onboarding program (often having 30-40 people a week), she could build a strong culture of learning and tremendous improvement in productivity in the company.
  
  Julie Newhouse from AdRoll and Jo Chiti from Chegg (formerly with The Gap Inc.) agreed 100%.
• Online or Not?  The world is not all using online.
  
  While online learning is very popular with Millennials (at Zenefits they call it "micro-learning,"), the folks at Gilead Sciences have a very different culture.  Richard Morse, L&D Director for Gilead (which has more than doubled in the last few years), told us that at their company nobody has time for online learning!  In fact, the opposite is true - at Gilead people greatly value face-to-face learning and offsite events. So the company focuses heavily on high quality face-t0-face events, which give people to get away from work and really focus on learning, reflection, and meeting others.
  
  At Valin, a company that sells engineered solutions to a broad range of industry segments such as oil & gas, semiconductors and bio-pharma to mention a few, Sue Czeropski told us that she has built simulation based learning programs that teach people how to diagnose problems with valves, for example, and they have been so successful that they are going to be selling the training as a product.
  
  Everyone agreed that younger employees expect lots of learning to be available online and on-demand, but it's very cultural how it is used and all agreed that manager-led learning was critical to real impact.  This brings me to my next point:
• The Manager is the Lynch Pin in learning
  
  Something I learned long ago came up many times:  no matter how good the onboarding, training, or development program may be, if the managers don't buy in it wont stick.  All the panelists agreed that their biggest challenge (and opportunity) was to get line managers and execs to become a part of the training they provide.  
  
  Jo from Chegg reinforced how much management development work they did at The Gap and that this continues to be a major focus for her in her new role.  Every fast-growing company has a continuous challenge to train managers, so this is on the list of everyone in the fast-growing Bay Area economy.
• Mentoring (and coaching) is huge
  
  Believe it or not, these fast-growing companies all agreed that some of their most effective programs involve mentoring, not traditional training. A mentor, by the way, is the same as a coach (just not paid) - and they are not your line manager.  So a mentor can give you open, friendly, developmental feedback - in a completely positive and constructive way.  And a mentor can be either a senior person, a junior person (this is often called "reverse mentoring"), or even someone from outside your company.
  
  Richard Morse from Gilead told us stories of a mentoring program there that has been in place for 6 years that they are now seeking to further scale through the use of the Everwise online mentoring platform. Their mentoring program is used for performance coaching of leaders, executive development, and performance improvement at all levels.  Every one of the panelists agreed that "getting leaders and specialists to mentor others" was one of the most powerful things they had done.
  
  We did research on 62 different practice in talent management back in 2011 and found that the single practice most highly correlated with strong business outcomes was mentoring and coaching!  So this is powerful stuff.
  
  My message to readers is that you really should put mentoring (and coaching) on your list of learning tools. When you create a culture of mentoring (with appropriate reward systems that give mentors time to do this), you unleash the expertise of baby boomers and other gurus to help their peers. This not only creates great learning, it creates a fun culture and engages people.  
  
  Elizabeth (from Zenefits) and Julie (from AdRoll) noted that "people in their 60s and even 70s love to train others" and the younger employees love learning from them, because they're like parents or grandparent figures!  (I hate to say it but I'm reaching that age myself, so I can relate).
  
  Elizabeth also mentioned a particularly beloved mentor Bud, who's a celebrity in the office.  He is so well respected that the whole company celebrated his 70th birthday with a massive signed banner and cupcakes for everyone.
• Moving from Training to Performance Consulting
  
  There was a lot of discussion about training tools, content development, and program design - but what came out at the end was a good agreement that what Gilead is doing is very important.  At Gilead, as Richard shared, the company outsources much of its instructional design and delivery to expert providers, and puts its energy into performance consulting.  Performance consulting is the discipline of diagnosing performance problems and designing the "right" intervention, without assuming that "training is the solution to all problems."  (You can become certified in performance consulting through ISPI and other organizations.)
  
  Richard's team partners with HR business partners and gets involved in line-level performance issues.  Gilead Sciences is a larger company (8,000+ employees) so they have the staff to do this, but they are a hyper-growth business and it has been instrumental in their success. The smaller companies on the panel all took note that they have the same goals, and over time they plan to do the same.
• Globalization:  a big topic and more complex than you think
  
  The one final topic I'll mention is globalization.  One of the audience members asked about this and the answer was very clear.  Don't just "roll things out" around the world - we have to respect local customs, local examples, local language and currencies, and the way different cultures collaborate, communicate, and learn.  
  
  Richard reminded us that to take a US-based program and "roll it out globally" is almost irresponsible - who would expect people in other cultures to automatically like and bond with a program designed for Americans?  We discussed the fact that most great global programs are developed and delivered locally, leveraging the design elements and components done at corporate - not designed in one place and rolled out all over the world.

The whole evening was inspiring, educational, and exciting for everyone. The L&D marketplace is over $130 billion around the world and every company does some kind of learning (even if you don't have a formal L&D department).  

Fast-growing companies, like those here in the San Francisco area (and in India and other fast-growing economies), are putting high powered talent to work (the people I met last night were some of the brightest and most inspired in our industry).  These leaders understand that when we help people learn, we help them perform - and it is the culture of learning and collaboration that helps a fast-growing company stay healthy.

The message I'd leave is that L&D is not only a tool for large, well established companies - even if you're small and fast-growing you should make an investment in this area. Hire a professional and let them build some innovative solutions - it will pay off in many ways:  bringing people together, helping new staff get started fast, and helping leaders communicate strategically to the organization.

If you're small and growing fast you may now realize it, but innovative, business-focused L&D can be one of the most important parts of your company's strategy for success.

Thanks to all who participated and to Udemy for hosting this amazing event.

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About the Author: Josh Bersin is the founder and Principal of Bersin by Deloitte, Deloitte Consulting LLP, a leading research and advisory firm focused on corporate leadership, talent, learning, and the intersection between work and life. Josh is a published author on Forbes, a LinkedIn Influencer, and has appeared on Bloomberg, NPR, and the Wall Street Journal, and speaks at industry conferences and to corporate HR departments around the world. You can contact Josh on twitter at@josh_bersin and follow him athttp://www.linkedin.com/in/bersin . Josh's personal blog is at www.joshbersin.com .

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