Clear paths to business performance can be hard to find in a landscape that never stops shifting. In Paths to Performance, Clearpath founder Jenn Kammerdiener talks with early mentor Guy Wallace to explore what it really takes to enable true performance in people, teams, and organizations. From the roots of Clearpath’s approach to what it means to plan performance-forward projects, this series of focused sound::bites shares stories, lessons, and proven strategies from decades of work in the field.
Episode List
Ep. 1: The Premise of Performance
As L&D professionals we bear a responsibility to make sure that the words we use are clear. Our first episode discusses the importance of true performance and what that really means.
Ep. 2: Guides, plus Adopt and Adapt
Our guest, Guy W. Wallace, is a well-known performance analyst and instructional architect. He’s also a friend and early mentor to Clearpath. In this episode we discuss the best ways to use others’ methods in performance-led L&D.
Ep. 3: It’s Not Learning, It’s Performance
In this episode, Jenn Kammerdiener and Guy W. Wallace discuss the concept of learning versus performance. They are not the same.
Ep. 4: Performance-Based vs. Content-Based
When we focus on content we generate material that has face validity but may not have performance validity. Jenn Kammerdiener and Guy W. Wallace talk about the importance of understanding performance expectations.
Ep. 5: Short but Long
In this final episode of our series on Guides, Jenn Kammerdiener and early mentor Guy W. Wallace discuss the importance of learning from those who have walked before us.
Ep. 6: Lean-ISD
L&D professionals must move at the speed of business. In this episode, Jenn Kammerdiener speaks with Guy W. Wallace about a topic he really did write the book on: lean-ISD.
Ep. 7: Plan Your Project
In this episode, Jenn Kammerdiener and Guy W. Wallace discuss the consequences of good and poor planning. Hint: if you planned it, you’re going to manage it. So plan accordingly.
Ep. 8: Many Mentors
In this final episode of our series on Guides, Jenn Kammerdiener and early mentor Guy W. Wallace discuss the importance of learning from those who have walked before us.
While recording an episode for Clearpath’s upcoming L&D podcast, I had the always-welcome opportunity to talk with Guy Wallace, an important mentor of mine and the first to introduce me to his ideas around Master Performers. In the workplace, these are the high achievers who take ownership of their roles in an organization. They embrace learning, communication, and company vision. It’s easy to find them. They regularly step forward.
Master Performers teach L&D professionals what we need to know to do our job, simply by doing theirs.
These individuals best understand the inner workings of a business. They hold keys to doors of all kinds.
Guy’s lessons have always resonated. This particular one hit home in an unexpected way. Turns out I’d been tracking the premise since the age of eight.
I was sitting in the third grade at my small elementary school. We were getting ready to receive some non-English-speaking families from another country. My teacher at the time was paying attention to how to integrate and teach them from within our already English-speaking classroom.
She chose a bold new approach. My clever teacher looked around, pointed to a few of us, and said ‘I would like you, you, and you to stay after school and meet with me’. Perhaps I would have volunteered without a bribe, but she offered us chocolate. I would do anything for a candy bar in those days. So, I stayed behind that afternoon and joined her special little committee.
As she explained what she was doing, we began to realize that we’d been selected because we were ‘masters’ of the English language within her classroom. The plan was to have us decide and determine how these children could learn to speak like third-graders. In retrospect, I find this fascinating and so very smart.
I think about that all the time when I consider the importance of identifying and utilizing master performers as an L&D professional. I actually experienced it from the other side, as a child in a classroom. My teacher chose to take good advantage of our third-grade enthusiasm and command of the English language appropriate for a young person. We would help her help them. Our new classmates would learn our language by reading and speaking with us.
As L&D practitioners, we engage master performers to simulate all the inputs, the outputs, the expected outcomes, and so forth. It’s how we work.
When we start asking questions of a client and of their business, we should ask to speak with their master performers.
These eager individuals have found ways and means to excel. They understand the inner workings of a process we must get to understand ourselves. This is one of the fastest ways to gather essential data.
Start with those who hold the answers and the insight. Always start there. Always start with performance.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jenn Kammerdiener, Founder and CEO, Clearpath Learning Group
Jenn is a Global Learning & Performance Architect with more than 20 years of business strategy and executive consulting experience. She’s led vital initiatives for Fortune 1000 to 100 organizations across industries with a systematic approach to org design, change management, and learning path objectives. In 2009, Jenn launched Clearpath to provide world-class performance solutions and services with a team approach. Under her leadership, Clearpath’s reach has grown to extend beyond 250,000 learners globally.
Organizational Design, Change Management, and Learning & Development
By Clearpath Learning Group
The areas of Organizational Design, Change Management, and Learning and Development support business performance in different, yet complementary, ways. Organizations that grow despite the odds and thrive amongst change understand the importance of paying attention to all three strategic areas of focus.
Seasoned L&D professionals know that these strategies often intersect. If placed in a Venn Diagram, the powerhouse of performance would be found at the point where all three converge.
Let’s consider an analogy…
We realize and accept that it takes effort in different areas to keep our cars humming. Businesses require similar attention to perform at their finest.
Organizational Design
To maximize our car’s efficiency, we periodically check the alignment. There are generally small adjustments to be made that greatly improve performance and prevent unnecessary wear and tear. Identifying hidden points of failure reduces operating costs and the price of significant repairs down the road.
Organizational Design Provides Realignment
Organizational Design aims to identify those often-hidden inefficiencies, redundancies, and knowledge gaps that prevent a business from running smoothly and with maximum efficacy. It realigns business goals to the actuality of the vehicle driving them.
With regard to L&D, it relates to the realignment of business goals to an organization’s people and leadership. It looks at how best to integrate people with the processes, technology, and systems they use. Org design fine-tunes for productivity and makes small fixes to the machine to prevent larger problems.
Change Management
When we set out on a road trip we generally prepare, making sure we have a jack, some road flares, and a spare tire. It’s not that we anticipate needing these things, but there’s a chance. If we live in certain climates, we put snow tires on our cars ahead of winter weather. We don’t know how much snow there will be, but it is inevitable.
Change Management Provides Preparation
At Clearpath we call this Change Effectiveness, a strategy that prepares businesses for the unknown and any number of possible and likely hurdles.
Some disruptions are unpredictable, but some are those that businesses must come to expect and embrace. There will always be new competitors, changing technology, and economic shifts. These create new expectations, requirements, and processes. Change Effectiveness strategy means identifying changes, communicating them, and getting ahead of any resistance.
Preparation helps businesses move forward smoothly amid change. In the case of market-wide shifts, it provides them the opportunity to get ahead of the competition that might not be ready.
Learning and Development
Checking the alignment and preparing for our trip won’t get us far if we don’t keep the tank filled. No matter what condition our car is in when we leave the shop, or how stocked our trunk is, it needs gas. When it runs out, it will need more. And the better the fuel we put in, the smoother things run.
Learning and Development Provides Power
L&D provides the training organizations give employees to improve their skills, knowledge, and competencies. It also refers to how that information is delivered and to what end.
Whether onboarding, leadership development, compliance training, talent strategy, or other training—L&D sets out to provide learning so that people can do their best work. The most successful businesses use L&D opportunities to engage and excite their people in the process. Clear and meaningful learner journeys empower a workforce.
Alignment, Preparation, and Power
Three mighty strategies steer businesses toward optimal performance. Organizational Design creates smooth-running organizations. Change Management keeps companies performing well amid transforming conditions. Learning and Development provides tools and insight to a workforce so that they can drive carefully structured businesses forward.
Skilled L&D professionals map maintenance, correct problems, and suggest the best ways to keep your business running well. It’s our job to see you safely to your destination. And we’d like you to enjoy the ride, too.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Clearpath is an award-winning learning strategy and design company specializing in world-class training solutions that connect the dots between individual capability and organizational performance. Known for its discovery-driven approach, Clearpath uncovers authentic business goals, performance needs, and contextual nuances to create learning that aligns with strategic intent. In a field where human potential is the most valuable asset, that’s where Clearpath begins—with solutions shaped by insight, guided by purpose, and designed to sustain meaning and momentum across the organization.
Design Thinking has become a leading innovation process that seeks to deeply understand users—in other words, people. As L&D professionals, people are at the core of all we do.
The methodology works by breaking down preconditioned responses and assumptions. It deconstructs and redefines problems, guiding us toward those pioneering solutions we wished we’d ‘thought of first’. It is non-linear and iterative. And as practice, it can generate a great deal of enthusiasm.
It is the focus on understanding human needs and delivering solutions via human-centric means that sets the method apart. Let’s break that down.
Design thinking puts human emotion first. This is a bold contradiction to the adage that it’s just business, don’t take it personally. Here, we approach solutions to problems by focusing on and involving the human perspective.
Learning and Development initiatives empower a business’s people. Understanding their point of view is a necessary starting point. Tethering to this truth is a Clearpath tenet and Design Thinking is naturally one of our most widely used methodologies.
There are five basic steps. Some say seven. But you’ve got things to do, so let’s talk about five.
Step One.
Design thinking starts with empathy.
We know—how novel! It asks that we always begin here. All steps forward must be taken from the perspective of an organization’s users—its people.
A decade or so ago a reality TV show Undercover Boss followed executives on “undercover missions to examine the inner workings of their companies.” What reality TV does best (or worst, depending on perspective) is to shine a pleasant white light on human achievement and a blinding fluorescent light on human strife. You can guess the endings of every episode before they begin. After a week in the trenches, the boss came away with a new understanding and perspective. He or she came away with empathy.
What would happen if our industry professionals all took a beat and actively got to understand, and not just know, our clients and their people? And what if this all happened before we entertained offering suggestions and strategic paths forward? Insight. Insight would happen.
It seems obvious. But it’s a step too often skipped. We owe it to our clients to discover the hidden complications and inefficiencies that they most need to solve. These are generally not those that our clients, or even we, think are the problems.
Businesses often ask for a resource when what’s really needed is analysis and a solution for a business problem.
This means we must ask a lot of questions. It means focused observation. And it means setting aside everything that we ‘think’ we know for a bit.
Step Two.
Once we understand the problem, we need to define it.
If we frame a problem with a tangible question, we articulate the answer we’re trying to find. Once the question becomes part of an equation, we start to think of that problem as solvable. And when an answer is positioned as a sum of the parts it becomes a reasonable and accessible exercise. We know what we need to do.
Further, still, if we define the problem from the user’s—the people’s—point of view we boost our empathy. And that’s the name of the game. This is where we start if we’re to motivate, and subsequently empower, our people.
Step Three.
Since our equations are filled with variables, here’s where we ideate.
If you’re requesting a type of guide let’s first look at where you’re looking to go.
We have, as a whole, become preconditioned to look for fast paths. And sometimes the ready path is the best. But more often than not—it’s not. This is where ideation wakes us up.
It’s the energizing point in the process where design thinking asks—with a glint in its eye—that we step back and rethink. It asks us to throw out old ideas in favor of new ways forward. And it reminds us that trodden paths are flat for a reason.
If we pause to determine with certainty what solution is indeed the best solution it might likely be a short moment spent on a complete shift in outcome.
Step Four.
Fresh thinking requires fresh form and so—we prototype.
Creating quick, preliminary devices to apply our ideation lets us test our ideas. If all goes according to plan, we’re assured that we are indeed headed in the right direction early on and without a large investment in time and money. An efficient L&D professional will be able to easily identify good (and bad) signs along the road as ideas become tangible.
This is when we dip our toes in the water. It’s that cautious, initial step forward before we dive in. And still, we must remember to base our findings on what works for others. We’re building for them.
Step Five.
Finally—we test.
It’s not the type of test we all recall from school. This step, too, is iterative.
We gather feedback from the client and their people. We adjust. And we refine. Here’s where we start to see it all make perfect sense. If we’ve put in the work, we’ll have arrived at the best answer, design, and solution.
What began as a journey to understand people ends by proving we do.
Design Thinking is a multi-functional instrument in the L&D toolbox and one we at Clearpath use often. There are, of course, many methods. But each, if used well, promotes one common goal: We help organizations succeed by setting their people up for success.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jenn Kammerdiener, Founder and CEO, Clearpath Learning Group
Jenn is a Global Learning & Performance Architect with more than 20 years of business strategy and executive consulting experience. She’s led vital initiatives for Fortune 1000 to 100 organizations across industries with a systematic approach to org design, change management, and learning path objectives. In 2009, Jenn launched Clearpath to provide world-class performance solutions and services with a team approach. Under her leadership, Clearpath’s reach has grown to extend beyond 250,000 learners globally.
