CIM Shape The Agenda Paper

In 'Learning 2.0: Marketers and the responsibility of personal development', the CIM discusses the future of jobs in marketing, now that the 'job for life' no longer exists.

The concept of the 'job for life', still prevalent in business just a few decades ago, no longer exists.

This places pressure on the individual employee, who is faced with further pressures as the pace of business life increases and knowledge becomes quickly outmoded and supplanted by new information.

As a consequence, organisations are beginning to re-evaluate the way they look at training and developing their employees.

At the same time employees need to take more personal responsibility for the learning they take away from training programmes.

For organisations, there is a need to align their choice of training with the strategic objectives of the organisation.

Without a more rigorous identification of what is expected from the training, there is no longer any guarantee that the training will translate into business success.

There is also the need to identify 'training' as part of a wider system of 'learning', as the current narrow definition of 'training' does not do justice to the wide array of new skills and perspectives that individuals can develop and bring to the company.

For the employee, there is a need to take more individual responsibility for how they learn, and a need to be more focused on the organisation's strategic objectives in order to extract the right outcomes from the training they complete.

A Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programme is the logical framework to ensure this takes place effectively for each individual - if they are willing to commit to it in a way that is appropriate both for them and for their organisation.

In order to develop learning experiences that will maximise value for both the individual's own personal and professional development, and to meet their organisation's strategic requirements, there will be a shift in learning towards constructivist theory.

This holds that all knowledge is essentially personal knowledge - the learner is at the centre of the process, not the classroom, the lecturer, or the material they are learning from.

In the future, training can no longer be merely a valuable thing to do for its own sake.

It must directly benefit the organisation, improve the specific skills of the individual, and create effective transferable skills for the individual - as their next career step is as likely to be with a different organisation as with their current one.

Our destiny in our hands.

"Only a certain kind of human can prosper in unstable, fragmentary social conditions," states sociologist Richard Sennett in the introduction to the essays that make up his book 'The culture of the new capitalism'.

Sennett's contention is that as the nature of our society changes so too, inevitably, does the nature of the organisations within it and, as a result, we as people must change too.

Sennett highlights three principal challenges that individuals must meet, arising from specific changes.

Firstly, the way in which we view our careers has changed.

Even a relatively short time ago it was possible to think in terms of enjoying a long career with a single employer, building presence and status over a long period of time.

The roles within such organisations were relatively clearly defined and the nature of the work would be consistent.

This is no longer the case, and the marketing profession illustrates this more clearly than most.

Organisations tend not to take a holistic, whole career approach to their marketing workforce nowadays.

Indeed, why should they - particularly when the average tenure in all marketing jobs at all levels is significantly less than four years on the client side and even less on the agency side? The tendency has been - except at the graduate recruitment end of the spectrum - to buy in the talent/skills as fully formed as possible, training up only where necessary for a strictly defined need.

In all but a few of the more enlightened organisations, developing a broader career management perspective has been neglected when set against the assumption that marketers will inevitably move on and take whatever has been invested in their ongoing development with them when they go.

The impact of this is that the individual has to learn how to manage short-term relationships whilst moving from task to task and organisation to organisation.

Sennett argues that as organisations seldom, if ever, provide individuals with a long-term career time frame, the individual has to construct their own career or life narrative.

The second issue is addressing the challenge of developing new skills and uncovering potential abilities as skills decay increasingly rapidly over time.

A skill can no longer be viewed as being a skill for life, an enduring presence that will ensure one's continuing security in the corporate world as once it might have done.

Longer-serving employees were once respected for the hard-won experience they had acquired; they built up valuable knowledge, competencies and skills over time.

These skills were durable and had value.

Now, due to the pace of change, there is less advantage in holding such skills.

'Skills extinction' has become one of the characteristics of modern corporate life.

Adaptability has taken its place.

According to Sennett, technological advances mean workers need to retrain every eight years on average.

The notion of a single set of skills that will last an individual their entire working life is as redundant as the pitheads that once dotted the industrial landscape.

The third challenge Sennett puts forward is the ability to let go of the past; to accept that no one owns their place in an organisation, and that past services do not guarantee a future with the same employer.

The future for any individual is more about potential than experience - what you can do in the future rather than what you have done in the past.

This clearly puts a great deal of individual responsibility on each of us: if our time with a given organisation is short and our employer has little or no interest in developing us beyond the needs of the immediate task in hand, we must seize the initiative for our ongoing development ourselves.

Organisations undeniably are at the leading edge of change.

In 'Going global: key questions for the 21st century', Moynagh and Worsley, when considering what successful organisations will be like as the century unfolds, point to seven identifiable trends that support Sennett's views.

1 People's lives have been getting more and more organised.

2 An ABC of recent changes would start with automation.

3 A blurring of boundaries has occurred within organisations.

4 Collaborative networks have become commonplace.

5 The dis-aggregation and re-aggregation of organisations has proceeded apace.

6 The elimination of management layers may be approaching a limit.

7 Flexibility is increasingly prized by organisations.

We would argue that this series of changes highlights two needs.

Firstly, there is the need for individuals to assume sole responsibility for their personal development, and to plan their acquisition of skills and the building of new competencies on an ongoing basis.

Sometimes, this will be entirely independent of the organisations for which they currently work.

Secondly, it is time to recognise that learning is not simply something that takes place as a formal process in a classroom or in front of a computer screen.

We must recognise the need to incorporate a wider range of activities in the typical learning mix.

Everyone, in effect, must become the master of their own learning destiny.

Learning is a continuous process that takes place throughout our lives and is not anchored by age.

We do, however, pass through a number of distinct phases in the course of our working lives, and our development needs will inevitably be influenced by the stage we are at any given time.

In another era, Charlotte Buhler identified five phases of working life that still retain their resonance today.

Age 17-28 years old; Exploratory Phase; Examining the possibilities work presents.

Age 28-43 years old; Selective Phase; The individual adopts a sustenance-driven perspective and focuses on establishing their place in professional life.

Age 43-49 years old; Re-Assessment Phase; The individual assesses his or her career to date and re-evaluates prospects for future success.

Age 49-64 years old; Indulgency Phase; The individual focuses more on self-actualisation.

Age 64 years and older; Completion; The individual looks back at past achievements.

To Buhler, working life constitutes a journey, with clearly definable stages and needs that vary over time and with age.

Each stage is characterised by a discrete set of attitudes and behaviours on the part of the people within it, and as individuals we need to learn to recognise each of these life stages - not only in terms of what we need to do to keep our skills current and retain their value and relevance, but also in terms of what we can offer the organisations we work for in differing ways at each stage.

For example, a 22-year-old who is still in the Exploratory phase of working life faces different challenges to a 50-year-old in the Indulgency phase.

The career management issues faced by each of these individuals need approaching in a totally different way.

If we are to assume this degree of personal responsibility for our own ongoing development, what does it mean? It means, first of all, understanding the basics of how we learn, and identifying the activities we will need to engage in to develop ourselves effectively and continuously over time.

As we take control of our own ongoing development we may need to start thinking in ways that are new to us, and not accept old definitions and ways of doing things.

Training, development, education or learning? What is the difference between education and training? Or learning and development? Does it matter anyway? These are not areas that the average marketer thinks too much about - but we believe it's time they did.

If, as is often said, the knowledge locked up in an organisation's workforce is one of the biggest single factors that determines the competitiveness of a business, then those who do not pay enough attention to helping their people learn may be compromising overall performance.

Too often, however, the words above are used interchangeably and in an inexact way.

People using any of them in daily practice tend to base their use on popular understandings of the respective terms, and not on precise and tested definitions.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) might be expected to give a lead in this area, but a glance at the jobs section of its own journal simply illuminates how confusing the situation actually is.

Within 20 pages of the copy we looked at were advertisements for Global Training Manager, HR Manager (Development and Training), Training Officer, Management Development Adviser, Management Trainer, Career Development Officer, Learning and Development Adviser and - most confusing of all - Learning and Development Trainer.

The body text of the advertisements provides few indications as to how each role differs in scope.

Some headline job titles could be transferred to descriptions of entirely different jobs which, by a strict interpretation of the relevant words, should simply not be possible.

When sector specialists cannot agree on a precise definition of the process they manage it's perhaps not so surprising that line managers and professionals in other disciplines have a tendency to take a back seat.

So, how do the terms actually differ? In simple terms, education provides a knowledge base that underpins any other activities the individual may engage in at a later stage, whereas training has a narrower focus, usually focusing specifically on skills development.

'Development' allows both activities to be integrated.

It has been described as "the general enhancement and growth of an individual's skills and abilities through conscious and unconscious learning" .

Development therefore encompasses both education and training, as well as a range of other activities such as counselling, coaching, looking, listening, internalising and mentoring.

'Learning' is the outcome of both the training-led and the education-led approaches to development, yet learning is a subtle, complex process.

It is far more than a shifting of knowledge or information from the educator/trainer to the learner.

We believe that the relatively narrow scope of 'training' is no longer sufficient to describe the array of activities commonly utilised in the development of staff.

It will increasingly be the case that organisations that fail to consider the various options available to them in developing their people risk being out-performed by their competitors.

From our perspective as individuals, this has a tremendously liberating effect and opens up a significant range of possibilities for us to learn, to acquire new skills, and to shape those behaviours that will over time power our careers.

Once we open our eyes to the need to learn, and the many ways in which that learning can happen, we are in a position to assume personal responsibility and put our own long-term needs alongside the immediate needs of the organisation for which we work.

Learning orientation.

We need first of all to think about ourselves as learners.

Learners come in all shapes and sizes and have radically different attributes and expectations.

Technology has radically impacted upon the way in which people acquire and assimilate learning, and, if anything, the trend is accelerating.

Different times demand different approaches.

Consider the way you learned at school or at university.

Those in the Selective phase and beyond of their working lives will have gone through their formal education with a set of distinctive techniques for building their learning.

For most people reading this, the system in which they learned will have been heavily built around the teacher/pupil relationship.

A teacher, with greater knowledge or learning than the individual, guided students through the materials and concepts and, in effect, passed on the knowledge to the group.

Now things are changing.

The internet in schools, universities and homes has been a reality for a decade, and its influence is apparent in the changing expectations of learners.

The internet puts the user in complete control of the information they need.

They have the luxury of choice and can pick and choose which sources best suit their needs.

With this breadth of information they no longer need to compensate by learning deeply, as was needed in the past when information had to be gleaned from drilling into sources that couldn't be summarised or highlighted at the touch of a button.

The problem of finding the information has been replaced by the problem of managing the complexity, number and veracity of resources that are now available.

What has taken place is a rapid switch from the behaviourist model of learning, where the teacher or 'expert' was the focus, and from the cognitivist model of learning, where it was the material itself that was at the core of the process, towards what is termed a constructivist perspective, where it is the learners themselves who are the heart of the learning process.

These learners are free to choose from a world of seemingly endless possibilities.

This constructivist model is characterised by Reynolds, Caley and Mason in 'How do people learn' as "learning as knowledge construction".

One can see instantly from the terminology they use that this is a more active form of learning and far from the passive process for the learner, which is frequently the case with more formal, classroom (behaviorist) and reading (cognitivist) modes of learning.

Reynolds et al describe the model as being concerned predominantly with social activity; learning is believed to occur in dynamic interaction between the individual and their environment.

Social context is crucial in this view of learning, since individual thinking is shaped by active participation in real situations.

Constructivist theory is therefore primarily a social theory of learning, which stands it in direct contrast to the more person-centred psychological theories of learning, such as cognitivism and behaviourism.

Each of the theories gives rise to a range of potential learning activities, which Reynolds et al express in a series of four matrices: Yet, despite the changes taking place in the formative educational experiences of young people, when these people enter the world of work they may find that relatively little seems to have changed.

Too many organisations continue to take a 'one size fits all' approach to developing marketers, which ignores the fact that different people learn in different ways.

The time-honoured classroom sessions led by trainers are still the norm in many organisations, with minimal tailoring taking place to suit the individual learning needs of employees and, more pertinently, of the organisation itself.

With teacher/pupil models fast becoming obsolete, organisations need to be adaptive in the way they and the people who work within them learn; to understand what is going on in their business environment and be able to think about what it means for them, both immediately and in the future.

Organisations that are adaptive in their learning will achieve competitive advantage.

There is a danger, however, in proclaiming that traditional classroom-based training activities are practically obsolete.

The demise of this method has been confidently predicted by progressive elements within the training establishment for most of the past decade, yet it has not happened and we do not believe that it will happen.

What is clear, however, is that a step-change is underway - and the key driver of this change is the emergence of the individual learner at the heart of the learning process.

The needs of this new breed should be met with a blend of learning activities that accommodate the individual learning styles of those coming into the profession, playing to their strengths and ensuring they will learn effectively.

For those involved in the development of employees, the issue is one of recognising that people who have fundamentally different instincts are unlikely (or unable) to be successful when limited to activities that are not compatible with the learning situation.

Learning won't work if the learner is presented with a process to which they are (or believe themselves to be) unsuited.

For this reason we all need to be sufficiently aware of our own personal learning style.

'Learning style' is fundamentally a set of attitudes and behaviours that both reflect and later determine the way(s) in which each of us as individuals prefer to learn.

This is a complex area, and recently, driven in large part by the introduction of new learning technologies, a substantial amount of work has been done to assess the implications for organisations and for the learners themselves.

In lay person's terms what this means is that the way we learn best is determined by our personality, and this will influence the way we handle and assimilate the information we acquire through the learning process.

It will also dictate to some extent how we prefer to acquire that learning in the first place.

Technology and the growing understanding within organisations of the redundancy of a 'one size fits all' approach has empowered individuals to explore their own learning in ways that would not have been feasible a few years ago.

The widespread adoption of performance management processes, such as formal annual appraisals, has also ensured that the voice of the individual is heard far more within the organisation than was previously the case, and there has been a clear move on the part of organisations towards the view that more effective results are achieved when the individual can make direct inputs into the assessment of their own learning needs.

However, merely completing an appraisal does not automatically translate into improved business - a framework is needed to ensure the results of the appraisal feed directly into improved business success.

Different strokes.

Reynolds et al refer to the 'conventional' model of increasing human capital through training programmes "designed to boost quality, efficiency or marketing success, to increase technical skills or contribute to professional or managerial development" .

This was achieved primarily through programmes delivered to employees via courses, reading material or other types of event, with the purpose of covering gaps in the organisation's capabilities.

They went on to state that this long-established, familiar model is now showing signs of being unsatisfactory and unproductive for many organisations.

A recent CIPD Training and Development Survey supports the view that training in itself is only a small part of the full picture, with 98 per cent of respondents from a sample of 531 UK human resources development professionals agreeing with the statement that "people learn in all manner of ways, including training".

In that same survey 24 per cent of respondents also stated that "training is not particularly good at promoting learning".

Reynolds et al pointed to two significant trends.

The first is influenced by the advent of new learning technologies that are placing the learner at the centre of the learning process, and the second is the growing awareness that informal learning within a social context can, in the longer term, have a greater impact than formal, classroom-based modes of learning.

To put this in terms of learning theory, this indicates a shift away from the behaviourist model, where, typically, the instructor is at the heart of the process, and moves to beyond cognitivist models, which place the material being taught at the centre of the process, towards the constructivist model we described earlier.

When the individual has a degree of control over their own learning, the entire process is enriched, but it is essential that they understand how they can gain maximum benefit from any learning activities they undertake.

The psychologist Howard Gardner, in 'Frames of mind: the theory of multiple intelligences', argues that each person has seven discrete areas of intelligence: visual/spatial; body/kinaesthetic; interpersonal; intrapersonal; music/rhythmic; verbal/linguistic; logical/mathematical.

An individual will have strengths and weaknesses to different degrees across this spectrum of 'ways of thinking'.

To ensure that training is of value to the organisation and the individual, these differences need to be borne in mind.

Consequently, that might mean offering different learning models to match the individual's thought processes.

This, more than anything else, will put control of the learning process into the hands of the learner, but in doing so, a range of practical problems are created.

With the widespread adoption of appraisal systems it is possible to build in this kind of flexibility.

Organisations can improve the results of their appraisal systems in future by using the above framework to inform how the appraisals feed back into organisational change.

However, it is never wise for the individual to assume that his or her own individual developmental needs will be uppermost in the mind of their employer, or that they will be on the receiving end of a bespoke approach.

One of the attractions of classroom-based learning is that it does allow for economies of scale.

If everyone is subject to the same experience, with only the bare minimum of tailoring at a superficial level, then costs can be controlled.

If everyone taking part in the learning process is offered a bespoke service, costs can rise and this becomes a consideration for most organisations.

In a later work, 'Five minds for the future', Gardner highlights one of the threats that lies down the path of developing everyone along the same lines: if everyone learns the same way, without any attention being paid to developing experiences that play to individual strengths and personal interests and proclivities, the spectrum of talent within an organisation will reduce to a series of shades of grey.

"We live in a time where our most talented minds know more and more about increasingly narrow spheres.

"And there is no reason to expect that the drive toward specialisation will be stemmed".

Aligning the organisation and the individual.

Humans are an intensely social species, as evidenced by the way the lines are blurring between work and social life - we are on demand more than in the past, and there is generally less time for any kind of formal training.

This does not mean the need for learning and new knowledge has gone away, however.

It simply means that we have to be flexible as individuals and within the organisations we work for in identifying and exploiting learning opportunities.

We need to make the transition away from considering work-related and work-applicable skills as something we only do within a range of narrow applications in a working context, and switch instead to considering learning for work, learning at work and learning through work.

In this way, we will develop the necessary skills to equip us to deal with the challenges we meet, whatever stage of Buhler's life stages model we happen to be in at a given time.

In other words, learning is a personal construction of meaning arising from experience.

That experience can be gained from social interactions, from personal experience in the workplace, from the personal choice of reading and from social activities, as well as from the classroom.

"Successful learning tends to happen when an individual reacts to opportunities," according to Reynolds et al.

"The result depends upon the individual's capacity and readiness to learn, and hence upon the task and setting.

"The more novel the task, the greater the understanding required and the more challenging the range of solutions".

For companies, therefore, training is no longer a simple set of courses to send employees on.

It is more of an organic process with greater interaction between the company, the individual and the learning provider.

It doesn't matter how good the training is if the individual is not prepared and willing to learn from it.

Equally, it doesn't matter how willing the individual is if the learning experience is not stimulating and challenging enough for them to learn optimally from it.

Finally, once the right learning method and the right learner have been aligned, the organisation needs to devise its own system of measurement and evaluation.

In practice, the way to do this is to integrate the needs of the individual with the strategic desires of the company.

Once these needs have been identified, it is more viable to find the right method of learning for the learner in a way that maximises value for the organisation as well as facilitating personal development.

These changes in the way we train marketers will themselves develop and mutate as technology continues to develop at a fast rate of change.

As a result, learning will not merely be seen as a useful adjunct to building an individual's career, or as something to do that is important for its own sake.

Learning will be seen in its rightful context as a strategic investment - something that creates competitive advantage for the company and leads directly to growth and profit.

Indeed, it is arguable that in today's over-commoditised world, learning could be the key differentiator between success and failure for companies in the future.

Most people have a desire for learning that is self-directed in nature, and there are a number of ways in which each of us, as learners, can influence the learning processes we encounter in our working and personal lives.

By following the nine phases of the learning process indicated in the sidebar, the individual can influence the process of their own learning and develop a unique, personalised approach.

CPD is a personal responsibility.

The logical vehicle for ongoing learning that will help the individual meet the challenges set out at the beginning of this paper and nurture an approach of constant re-skilling and up-skilling is a Continuing Professional Development process, which requires personal commitment, but rewards it with a distinct portfolio of advanced skills.

There is an acceptance now that learning is not simply something that takes place in formalised, classroom-based situations and that learning is no longer a passive activity.

Learning, as the Reynolds et al matrices demonstrate, is a process that is not necessarily context specific and which covers a wide spectrum of different approaches.

It is consequently alive with possibilities for the learner.

However, this variety of opportunities needs to be engaged with.

Personal responsibility means that individuals assume ownership for their thoughts and actions.

It does not necessarily mean that individuals always have control over their environment or personal circumstances, but it does mean that they have control over how they respond to these elements.

What an effective CPD process means is that for the future, our academic, past-based model of learning will be expanded and advanced by present- and future-based 'learning by doing' - being constantly receptive to whichever learning opportunities present themselves.

This is especially relevant for a fast-moving profession like marketing, where information quickly becomes out of date and knowledge is shaped and modified by practitioners on a frequent basis.

To become better marketers, we need to understand the most effective ways to learn from peers, from other practitioners, and from other people learning and doing in real time.

This will be complemented and reinforced by training, which will remain relevant, up to date and dynamic.

No longer can an individual rely on their employer to keep them up to date or to develop skills in a new direction.

Nor can individuals rely on the skills they already have to sustain them and keep them in meaningful employment for the rest of their careers.

However, if you want to claim your place in the world of work of the future, there really is no better time than the present to embark on your continuous personal and professional learning journey.

The key is to remember that the individual is at the centre of the learning process - and how you as an individual react can create a strategic difference to your future success at work.

Nine steps to learning.

Needs identification - work with your line managers and any external advisers to identify those developmental areas that are important to you, not only for your immediate needs, but also with regard to your long-term professional development.

Build a plan of where you are going and why.

Content area and purpose - the particular topics and the purpose behind the learning should be controlled by you.

A learning plan or contract can be a useful tool, and a facilitator or adviser can assist with any refinement activities as needed or desired throughout the learning.

Expected outcomes - the nature of desired or expected outcomes should be controlled by you.

Such outcomes typically relate to needs and purposes.

Evaluation and validation - you should select those evaluation or validation methods that suit your personal learning style and preferences.

Methods of documentation - you should choose those methods for documenting and demonstrating accomplishments that have long-term uses, such as logs, journals, scholarly papers or physical products.

A CPD log is particularly appropriate in these circumstances.

Appropriateness of learning experiences - you should select those learning experiences best suited for your own individual situations or needs, though taking guidance from external appraisal systems and processes where appropriate.

Variety of learning resources - a variety of potential learning resources and contexts permits you to choose as evolving need and interests dictate.

Adequateness of learning environment - you should select those components of the learning environment that best meet your needs.

Your aim is to create for yourself an environment that will foster excitement, intellectual curiosity and involvement.

Pace of learning - select an individual pace of learning best suited to your particular needs or life situations.

You may, where possible, need to negotiate a pace or completion date for more formal learning activities.

Adapted from Hiemstra.

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