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This is the third in a series of conversations with PDG Managing Partner David Manning where he shares his perspectives on emerging top trends in the business of learning. In this installment, David shares his observations on the trend of globalization.

Q: What is a recent trend you have experienced in the learning field?

DM: Most of the clients we work with are large, global organizations. Many of these organizations are focused on optimizing their programs for delivery on a global scale. But very few organizations are globalizing their learning capability effectively. Global organizations need to have a way of rapidly creating and deploying content on a global scale.

Q: What are some of the challenges of implementing global learning?

DM: It can take a huge number of resources to create content for global learning, especially if you are a large organization with hundreds of thousands of employees worldwide. You need to understand the nuances of each local market and know how best to deliver learning to that specific audience.

Organizations need to deliver learning on a global scale in a way that is cost effective, timely, and relevant to each local market. Many organizations are struggling with where to start and how to execute their plans. I think there will be a greater need for more organizations to deliver global learning, as even small organizations now are operating on a global scale.

Q: What do you think has changed in the marketplace to make these trends necessary?

DM: Globalization isn’t a new issue, just one that continues to be a challenge. Years ago, US-based organizations would create learning programs in the US and send them to multiple countries where they would be translated and delivered to the local staff. There was never a global view of what needed to be done, how things needed to be structured, and how the learning program needed to be delivered. Each region would localize the learning; it wasn’t very organized, and many times the content wasn’t relevant to local markets. They lacked a plan.

Eventually, organizations started bringing a more global perspective into how learning had to be created, and set up. But they struggled in the execution of global learning. Many of their learning and development staff did not have the correct skills to run a global function, or they didn’t have the resources to do it. They also didn’t have an overarching strategy to accomplish fully the globalization of learning, other than doing a better job of distributing content and making it relevant.

Currently, learning and development is viewed as a global capability. Companies are starting to develop global learning strategies that allow them to align content rapidly with global business needs. Their plans include the global creation and distribution of content as well as maintenance and assessment of the impact. A number of our customers in regulated industries are growing at a rapid pace, but as missteps happen, huge fines are being levied, because people are not executing properly within that environment. Learning and Development can play a large role in reducing compliance risks with strategic global learning.

Learn more about global learning by reading the following resources:

1. Global Learning – Accelerate Your Time To Global 
   
   
2. Training the World, Using Archetypes to Create a Practical Global Learning Strategy: A PDG White Paper
   
   
3. Accelerating Time to Global, Effective Global Learning Design Using Archetypes, A PDG Case Study
   
   
4. Driving Global Marketing Success: A PDG Case Study
   

David Manning is the Founder and Managing Partner of Performance Development Group (PDG). David has over 20 years in the management consulting and learning outsourcing space, and has successfully led the growth of global organizations and start-up ventures. David formed PDG after serving as the Chief Operating Officer for a global training consultancy. 

I’ve seen lot of “big ideas” come and go over the years.   While “Global Archetypes” may sound like a catchphrase, our experience tells us that, when it comes to learning, what works in the U.S. may not have the same impact across the globe.

As a learning Solution Architect, my role is similar to an architect creating a blueprint for a new building.  If the building’s foundation is wrong, the whole building could come down. Similarly, in learning we start with the foundation, a solid underlying structure on which skills and knowledge are built.  If the foundational concept is wrong, the whole curriculum could be wrong, impacting the careers of the learners and the business success of the organization.  The foundation is no place for a “flavor of the month” approach to training.  The most effective designers always consider the characteristics of the global audience as a part of the learning design process.

 
Can a Global Archetypes approach make learning more effective?

The first time I learned about Global Learning Archetypes I thought the idea was great. Almost all of my clients had challenges rolling out learning to a global audience, and the archetypes addressed the big issues: time, cost, and complexity. But anybody can say “better, cheaper, faster;” did these tools really work?

The short answer: Yes.  The slightly longer answer: the system is deep enough to apply to a lot of different situations, but flexible enough to be adaptable to a specific client’s needs.  

My client, a major global life sciences organization, was implementing a new curriculum. The content needed to be delivered to 85 different countries. The pressure was really on: new content, new approach, and worldwide rollout. The client was understandably concerned. How could the team get all of this done rapidly, economically, and at a high level of quality?

Historically, my client had differing levels of success in different countries. Learning was centrally developed in the U.S., and they found that what worked in the U.S. didn’t work across the globe.  Instructional preferences clearly differed by geography, including how the content was designed, developed, and implemented. We wanted to determine the “common core”— to reach the highest number of learners with the minimum amount of regional customization.

Based on my experience, Global Learning Archetypes help in five ways:

• A solid strategic foundation promotes design consistency
  Multiple workstreams, dozens of team members, tight schedules, overlapping timelines, and of course, unexpected changes; how do you keep everybody focused?  The Global Learning Archetypes were our “one way;” our common language, so no matter where in the world you were, or what workstream you were working on, we were all aligned.

• A pragmatic approach aligns to what we do already
  The Global Learning Archetype approach focuses on the steps we actually take when we build learning interactions. It isn’t some high-minded concept that you can’t actually implement. The 11 Dimensions of Learning really are the key decision points we need to focus on when creating learning designs. And the cultural preference models really do address the needs of different geographies. In fact, the various country managers we worked with were surprised at how closely the archetypes tracked to their own experiences customizing training for local audiences.

• A flexible structure considers that one size rarely fits all
  Sometimes a formal process will leave you scratching your head, when part of the process just doesn’t fit what you’re trying to do. Like any process, not every part of the archetype process was a perfect fit for this initiative. Fortunately, the archetypes were built to be customized. After we did our initial assessment, we adapted the archetype process to fit the needs we uncovered, a fairly painless process.

• Communication alignment hit all stakeholders
  In an initiative of this size, there are a lot of stakeholders, and they all want to understand what you are doing. To further complicate things, the Subject Matter Experts for this initiative were primarily third-party consultants who did not work for the client. You can imagine the differing perspectives, opinions, approaches, and work styles. So how do you keep all of those people on the same page? The Global Learning Archetypes allowed us to have one single way of getting things done, regardless of content, SME, target audience, or geography. Frankly, if the archetypes had accomplished nothing but that, I think my client would have been pretty happy! 

• Scalability remained, even when faced with change management
  When we started this initiative, the target audience was primarily emerging markets, a fairly small subset of the client’s global presence. As the initiative progressed, however, leadership made a decision to roll it out to all locations. This could have been a show-stopper; however, using the standardized processes of the archetypes, we were able to scale delivery up without blowing up the project.

As learning strategists, our goal is to impact performance. When you’re doing global learning, you can’t sit eyeball to eyeball with every learner. The Global Learning Archetypes allow you to use strategies and techniques that are applicable across the globe—which allows you to actually make a difference in how people do their jobs.

Want more information on Global Learning Archetypes? Click here!

Stacie Comolli is Director, Solution Architecture at Performance Development Group

Think about it: why does designing learning for a global audience need to be any harder than designing for a local audience?

Part of it, of course, is audience analysis; with such a diverse audience around the globe, we assume we must design for all different cultural preferences. Or, sometimes, we go in the exact opposite direction, designing a single version of learning for all global audience. Sometimes I call this the Pray Method; send courseware out into the world and pray somebody learns something.

Part of the problem is that we focus so much on differences that we forget to focus on commonalities. When we design global learning, we’re usually trying to get a common message out to a diverse audience. So how can we address cultural differences without muddling the message?

At PDG, we’ve developed a global design strategy called Global Learning Archetypes. The Archetypes utilize established and well-vetted cultural preference data to create a design approach that allows content to be designed for multiple audiences simultaneously. And by focusing on the similarities as well as the differences, the Archetypes simplify the process, saving time, money, and headaches.

The Archetypes integrate the cultural preferences data with a comprehensive learning model called the PDG Dimensions of Learning to synthesize a design methodology that focuses on how different cultures absorb new information.

The goal of archetypes is to simplify and streamline the process of creating learning for a global audience, allowing content to be created more quickly and for lower cost.  The characteristics of effective Global Archetypes are:

• Simple:
  The goal of the archetypes is to create less work, not more. The archetypes need to be easy to understand and have clear applicability.
• Practical:
  Global Archetypes will ultimately be utilized by learning teams who have limited budget, resources, and time. The archetypes need to be usable within the constraints learning teams typically face.
• Actionable:
  No strategy or approach is useful if it sits on a shelf, unused, Global Archetypes need to have clear process steps and toolsets, so they can be used easily, consistently, and with a minimum of preparation.

For more information on Global Learning Archetypes, you can read our white paper, Training the World: Using Archetypes to Create a Practical Global Learning Strategy or a case study of the Archetypes in action, Accelerating Time to Global: Effective Global Learning Design Using Archetypes or visit our web page on Global Learning.

Rich Mesch is Senior Director, Customer Engagement at Performance Development Group.