February 2007
Executive Summaries
Finding the Right Talent for Critical Jobs
By Tony Bingham and Pat Galagan
Edwards Lifesciences is in the business of saving lives. Employing more than 5,300 people in more than 100 countries, the California-based company is the number one heart valve manufacturer in the world in sales and a leader in products for the treatment of advanced heart disease.
Last year the company’s sales grew to $998 million, and the demand for its products shows no signs of slowing down: Heart disease affects 22 million people—1 in 12 adults—in the United States.
With the world of medicine evolving fast, Edwards focuses on driving more innovation and applying new technology to unmet patient needs. An essential part of this effort is to find the top talent for the most essential jobs within the company.
T+D discussed the challenges of talent management with Michael Mussallem, CEO and chairman of Edwards Lifesciences, and Rob Reindl, corporate vice president.
“To keep doing what worked in the past is potentially a formula for disaster for us. So our ability to recognize new patterns and adapt quickly, to take advantage of situations as they occur, and to respond to them better than others becomes more important all the time,” Mussallem says.
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Growing Talent at Edwards Lifesciences
By Rob Reindl
Edwards Lifesciences, formerly the cardiovascular division of Baxter Healthcare, became an independent corporation in 2000. Incorporating the lessons learned at Baxter with new management strategies, the California-based heart valve company set out to take stock of its talent, assess the corporate structure, and begin to build a culture that prized innovation, risk taking, and development.
A new set of aspirations was developed—a short group of statements that focused on growth rate, profitability, customer loyalty, new product introductions, employee engagement, and shareholder value. This new approach was promoted as the organization’s performance culture.
At the heart of the new strategy was the identification of the most critical jobs in the corporation. Those crucial positions are not found only at the top of the organization, but include a variety of roles, such as jobs in engineering, manufacturing, accounting, sales, and marketing.
Once the job is identified as critical, Edwards’s HR department ensures that there is “A” talent in the position and creates a pool of potential successors.
This approach requires the development of high-potential and key talent employees through a variety of training programs. Effective talent management is a priority that encompasses all levels of Edwards Lifesciences.
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The Need for Speed
By Michael Laff
Ask an employer and an employee how they prefer to receive training, and most likely neither will demand that they spend all day in a seminar or hours taking an online course. Businesses want cost-effective training; employees want methods that help them in a time of need. The wishes of both parties contribute to the demand of what is the latest buzzword in training: rapid learning.
Just as video made its entry into training in the 1980s, digital technology is now changing workplace learning and making it possible to deliver training faster than ever before. While traditional courseware development timelines can be measured in terms of months, rapid e-learning timelines are measured in terms of days and weeks.
However, faster does not always mean better. At its worst, rapid learning is just re-packaged training manuals presented in an online format. But with tools such as the PDA used by the U.S. Coast Guard to answer on-the-job questions, rapid learning can train employees in a consistent and cost-efficient format.
No matter what their feelings are on the new and accelerating methods of training, professional trainers need to be aware of the changing needs of the next generation that was bred on the Internet, IPods, and other portable devices. The old methods of training—preparing material for consumption all at once—will no longer be acceptable, according to John Higgins, an executive with Accenture Learning in Dallas.
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Leveling the Levels
By Alison Rossett
In the past, the word training conjured up visions of a room with students and an instructor. Variety came from the number of students and the configuration of the seating.
Now, meet the fresh, new face of the field: technology-enabled learning.
Technology is making its way everywhere, even into the unlikeliest of locations, such as the dugouts of America’s favorite pastime. Sitting on the bench between innings at a baseball game, pitchers can review video podcasts for the batters due up in the next inning. In Germany, corporate executives are able to train their English oration skills with a Boston-based presentation coach—all via podcasts, chats, and email.
As technology changes the how, when, and where of learning, traditional methods of learning evaluation are proving to be archaic. The popular standard—Donald Kirkpatrick’s four-level method of reaction, knowledge, behavior, and results—is losing its resonance as technology closes the chasm between learning and work.
It is time to move forward, using this moment and these technologies to rethink the ways we plan and measure learning.
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Is Performance Management as Simple as ABC?
By Alice Gresham Walker
A review of the performance management literature confirms that performance management is the single largest contributor to organizational effectiveness.
It takes innovative thinking and courageous actions to quell a performance crisis that is generated by underperforming, poorly managed employees, but it may be the most important action you perform as a manager.
Diversity is alive and well in employees’ personalities, skills, abilities, interests, and levels of motivation and disengagement. Therefore, the traditional one-size-fits-all performance management thinking is obsolete in today’s business environment.
Effective performance management on both ends of the performance spectrum is critical. You can count on A players to raise the organization’s performance bar just as much as you can count on C players to lower it.
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Don't Cross the Line
By Nancy G. Schreiber
Coaching is an inconsistent and unregulated business led by practitioners from a wide variety of professional backgrounds.
As a result, the guidelines for defining the coaching relationship often are ambiguous.
This lack of standardization gives rise to a myriad of ethical dilemmas that can tarnish the coaching’s effectiveness as well as lead to potential legal exposure for both the coach and the organization.
The possible ethical dilemmas include such issues as the inappropriate use of coaching as a panacea for whatever ails the organization, lack of professional competence, reporting data that can be misinterpreted, and failing to set clear boundaries for the coaching relationship.
While ethical dilemmas occur frequently in the coaching profession, it is possible to recognize and avoid these issues with the help of pre-emptive measures such as an informed consent document.
These measures can serve as an ethical compass that guides the coaching process toward ethical practices and ultimately a much more effective coaching experience for all. The key to establishing an ethical coaching relationship is addressing the dilemmas early and directly.
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The Long and Short of Learning
By Peter Orton, David Beymer, and Daniel Russell
Books, newspapers, and magazines have lines of text no more than five or six inches wide. The rationale behind the line lengths is simple: The shorter the line, the easier it is to read.
A recent IBM study has expanded upon that finding, revealing that shorter line lengths also make information easier to retain.
IBM Learning partnered with scientists at IBM’s Almaden Research Center in San José, California, to study the physiological effects of line lengths, paragraph depth, font size, and line spacing on computer screen readability. In this experiment, IBM used a tiny camera to track the eye-gazes of users to study reading behavior using wide and narrow paragraphs. The web page material in this experiment contained identical text; the only difference was width of the paragraphs.
Their findings may come in handy when designing training materials. Learning is, after all, about how well one remembers content. If line length impacts a reader’s ability to retain the material read, trainers will need to change the way they design their material, especially their e-learning programs.
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