COMBATING INFORMATION OVERLOAD FOR YOUR DEVELOPING LEADERS

{ perspectives } LEARNING DESIGN & DELIVERY

© 2014 Harvard Business School Publishing. All rights reserved. Harvard Business Publishing is an affiliate of Harvard Business School.

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H A R VA R D B U S I N E S S P U B L I S H I N G C O R P O R AT E L E A R N I N G { 1 }

COMBATING INFORMATION OVERLOAD FOR YOUR DEVELOPING LEADERSIntense information overload poses a severe threat to the productivity of today’s workforce. Learning teams must break through the noise to reach time-pressed leaders in the midst of competing priorities. Here are proven techniques to help leaders zero in on timely, relevant content —despite the many demands on their time and attention.

BY ELISA FRIEDMAN AND GWEN GULICK

Breaking through to graB a learner’s attention in today’s information-rich environment is an intense challenge. From the beginning of time until 2003, we generated 5 billion gigabytes of data (Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler). Today we produce and capture more than that each day. A recent study from tech-nology market research firm The Radicati Group found that people send more than 144.8 billion email messages a day. At least 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube each minute. And the rate of content creation is only increasing as mobile devices and social media platforms make it so easy to share content. As managers are being barraged with more infor-mation, they also are being asked to take on more tasks than ever before. This reduces opportunities to do anything outside the scope of the daily routine, including developing their leadership capabilities—formally or informally.

To successfully develop leaders at your organization, you must cut through the information clutter so you can highlight only the content that is important to each learner. You must present relevant content to learners in a variety of formats, and time its delivery to support them at their moments of need. Finally—and most important for your organi-zation’s bottom line—you must ensure relevancy by aligning learning content with your business strategy.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

PROFESSIONALS ACT AS THE FILTER—TO HELP

LEADERS FIND WHAT’S MOST RELEVANT

combating information overload for your developing leaders{ 2 }

How We Got HereTechnological developments in the early 1990s enabled organizations to provide managers with con-tent on demand via corporate portals, intranets, and learning management systems. While the ability to access vast quantities of information has allowed learning professionals to deliver more resources, often it has led to an overabundance of content. As a result, many managers have simply given up on finding the best leadership development content on their corpo-rate sites, searching for it instead on the Web.

Leadership development professionals can act as the filter and guide learners through the vast maze of con-tent to the specific assets that support both learners’ individual needs and the goals of the organization.

What’s Important to Your Organization and Its Leaders?It’s helpful to start by assessing the current busi-ness landscape at your company, and how—and whether—the content in your leadership develop-ment program supports organizational goals. Ask yourself these questions:

oo How much has your organization changed in the past two to five years?

oo What is your organization’s current strategy?

oo What skills and competencies must employees have to help drive the strategy?

oo How does your learning content map to competencies?

oo How does your learning content support your organization’s processes, goals, and strategy?

oo What capabilities and concepts are essential to your organization’s leadership culture and values?

oo Which content enhances your core leadership development programs while reflecting current corporate goals and strategies?

Once you have examined your organization’s current goals and strategy—and how your existing leader-ship development content does or does not support them—it’s time to clean house! Focus on the most relevant content and jettison the rest.

This process may seem daunting if you consider the vast amount of content in your “leadership library.” However, by both understanding a learner’s motiva-tion and implementing some proven techniques, you can make this process easier. And the results can be dramatic:

oo �Learners will connect directly to the right content at the optimal time.

oo �Learning�and�development�teams can demonstrate that the learning organization is strategic and “plugged in” to the needs of the business.

oo �Organizations will realize a greater return on their investments in leadership development.

VARY YOUR CONTENT FOR THE BEST OUTCOMESNot all content is created equal, and there is value in many different types of content. Use this continuum as a guide to help you consider content through multiple lenses. This approach will help you determine where content fits and will help you vary the types of content you deliver so you can better capture the attention of learners.

Static Active

Minutes Hours

Informal Formal

User-Identified Organizationally Prescribed

Personal Skill Development Organizational Competencies

H A R VA R D B U S I N E S S P U B L I S H I N G C O R P O R AT E L E A R N I N G { 3 }

What specifically can you do to deliver information with impact? The rest of this paper provides proven techniques for filtering and disseminating the most useful content when and how learners need it most.

Proven Tactics for Combating Information Overload

OFFER ONLY THE HIGHEST-QUALITY CONTENTBefore you even think about delivery methods, focus on the content itself. Yes, there’s a lot out there, but how much of it is high quality? How much of it is rel-evant to the current needs of your organization and its leaders? Determine what is worthwhile, and offer up only that content.

Many Harvard Business Publishing clients, for exam-ple, report that they use our content because it draws from the research of Harvard Business School faculty and other leading experts from around the world.

ORGANIZE AND PRESENT CONTENT IN CONTEXTHelp learners understand how the content can help them excel in their roles. You can do this by person-alizing content for individual learners (for example, speaking directly to a particular person and refer-encing his or her job function and projects within the content), and for specific groups within the organization.

A large U.S. insurer has taken this approach to serv-ing up content to its management population. The learning team understood that their offering needed to reflect how people learn in the real world. The team organized their portal with specific “paths” to content: mapping content to common workplace challenges, reinforcing formal programs with links to related online content, and presenting content

timed to support key corporate initiatives (e.g., a change effort).

ALIGN CONTENT WITH THE BUSINESSLearning professionals must show the link between a leader’s individual role and the organization’s business objectives. In addition, they must be able to identify content that will help them contribute directly to the business.

Don’t be afraid to eliminate content if it doesn’t clearly map to your organization’s needs. Developing streamlined, tailored paths will eliminate the clutter for your leaders, speeding them to the most relevant content at their times of need.

USE A VARIETY OF MEDIA TYPES TO REACH THE BROADEST AUDIENCEIndividuals differ in their learning styles, as Harvard Business School professor Jay Conger and others have shown, so offering multiple learning methods is essential to “increase the likelihood that at least one, if not several, methods will be compatible with an individual participant’s style.” Use all the resources at your disposal—case studies, expert videos, audio clips, articles, tools, worksheets, elearning modules, simulations, etc.—within a consistent management framework to improve results and promote a culture of learning across the organization.

TIMING AND FREQUENCY ARE CRITICALAs you know from your own experiences as a con-sumer, receiving information at the time when you need it is what most determines whether you ignore that information. You may have driven by a car deal-ership’s billboard hundreds of times, but you only see it when you want to buy a new vehicle. Similarly, you must make sure the right information is available at your learners’ moments of need. Do this by:

oo Ensuring�that�you�serve�up�content�at�relevant�times. A global financial services firm, for

GET STARTED

Map out a day in the life of your organization to ensure that you are looking through the right lens. You may think you know what Bob from accounting needs in order to take the next step up the management ladder—but actually walking through his workday could open your eyes to the information Bob really needs, when he needs it, and how best to deliver that information to him.

GET STARTED

Survey your end users to find frequently faced management challenges, and create a tool kit based on their responses. A “Top 10 frequently faced management challenges at our company” document is likely to benefit managers throughout your organization.

combating information overload for your developing leaders{ 4 }

example, sends monthly emails highlighting rel-evant content and tools associated with its corpo-rate calendar. Managers are provided with tips and resources for delivering performance feedback in the month when performance reviews take place. They are offered links to budgeting content when it’s time to develop budgets. They receive relevant information at their times of need and, as a result, usage has increased nearly 40% year-over-year.

oo Understanding�the�lenses�through�which�people�access�information�on�any�given�day.�People

do not wake up and say “I want to learn today”; rather, they say “I want to get this done today.” Give them the tools they need to work through their to-do lists.

oo �Presenting�content�multiple�times,�using�vari-ous�methods. Learner teams can play the role of museum curators by anticipating upcoming needs and interests, rotating and showcasing content at specific points in time, and creating demand for content where demand currently doesn’t exist.

Benefit from the Best Information To combat information overload at your organization, you, as a learning professional, must identify relevant and high-quality content, apply the appropriate con-tent filters, and implement the most timely delivery methods for your leadership development content. Doing so will maximize your organization’s invest-ment in this area by dynamically supporting and driving competencies. It will bolster your business’s bottom line by aligning leadership development pro-grams with organizational needs and strategies. And it will help your leaders become more focused, pro-ductive, and innovative: a win-win for your people and for your organization.

TAILOR THE CONTENT YOU DELIVER FOR OPTIMAL LEARNING OUTCOMES

CONTEXT POTENTIAL LEARNING CONTENT

Performance reviews are coming up, and you know many managers could enhance their coaching skills.

Push out a link to a communications simulation to allow managers to practice coaching in a safe environment.

A manager has a coaching opportunity and needs a quick coaching refresher.

Send an email pointing her to a tip sheet or quick coaching reminders available online.

A leader who is preparing to give coaching feed-back wants to know what tools are available to plan for the session.

Provide a handout or tool to help him prepare. Suggest that he reach out to a colleague to role-play.

You hear that a manager is honing his coaching skills. Suggest a program or course that will help build and refine that person’s skill.

Good communication is a corporate competency, and you need to make sure all managers are up to speed.

Provide multiple types of hand-selected content to employees around a topic area, using different media formats.

GET STARTED

Create a calendar of your organization’s annual business processes (e.g., goal setting, performance review, budgeting) and map appropriate content types to these processes to support them. This will help you pinpoint opportunities to help developing leaders complete tasks on their to-do lists using your organization’s existing online learning offering. For example, if you know that managers will be having conversations about organizational goals with their teams next week, “push” the appropriate content to those managers to help them prepare.

ELISA FRIEDMAN is a senior content strategist in Harvard

Business Publishing’s Corporate Learning group, where she

creates and manages content for leadership solutions. Elisa has

more than 15 years of experience in online product design and

development. Email her at efriedman@harvardbusiness.org.

GWEN GULICK is associate director, communications and

thought leadership. She leads content strategy and development

for Harvard Business Publishing’s Corporate Learning marketing

group and is responsible for branding, internal communications,

and awareness activities. Gwen brings nearly 20 years of public

relations and communications experience to her current role.

Contact her at ggulick@harvardbusiness.org.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

© 2014 Harvard Business School Publishing. All rights reserved.

Harvard Business Publishing is an affiliate of Harvard Business School. MC185090414

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