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Power to the people
ABB’s Global Head of People Development Guillaume Delacour explains why the company’s approach to people development and learning is all about putting staff in charge of their own destiny.
Guillaume Delacour, Global Head of People Development at the Swiss technology company ABB, has spoken about the paradox faced by modern organizations in the face of external events such as climate change and economic uncertainty.
“At this moment, when we are in most need of time to reinvent ourselves as leaders, we have less time than ever to do so,” he said. “It is one of the biggest challenges that we all face – how to give leaders the space to learn, to connect to grow while being aware that the clock is ticking.”
Disruptive though these events undoubtedly are, Delacour argues that there are other factors driving the imperative. In this new world, organizations must also be prepared to give employees far more agency about how they learn and develop workplace skills. “The world that saw the emergence of ABB 130 years ago has drastically changed,” he explained. “We moved from a world characterized by an abundance of energy and stable temperatures to a world where energy is getting reduced, and temperatures are on the rise.
“It is really moving from a situation where everything was centrally decided on your behalf to a complete decentralized model, where ultimately you as an employee are in the driving seat of your career, of your learning – and ultimately of your growth.”
Getting this right will require further engagement, adaptation, and evolution of the company’s 100,000 employees. “They need to continue to write the future of themselves. Only if we manage to unleash the collective power of our employees will we be able to continue to support our industry and society.”
Learning on demand
To deliver that decentralized model, Delacour’s team won a mandate from ABB’s executive team to “completely rethink the way we are developing our people”. As a result, the company developed a new suite of content for its leaders, along with a new platform to enable learning on demand, which has now been operational for a year.
It’s an initiative that aims to incorporate both remote learning and in-person education to ensure people are able to access content at any time and from any place, but also to create opportunities to come together in more structured ways. The program also reflects ABB’s four key values – care, curiosity, collaboration, and courage – with content structured around these themes.
“The ‘learn, connect, and grow’ philosophy that sits behind the platform is the most important thing,” Delacour added. “We want people to learn on the platform itself, for example through webinars and articles, but also to connect and to reflect together as a peer group. The growth aspect is the pinnacle of everything we do; we want people to take what they have learned and use it to stretch themselves in their new roles – to take on new projects and responsibilities.”
One does not push one’s limits, one discovers them.- Jean-Louis Etienne
Examples of initiatives being delivered through the platform include a redesigned senior leadership program that ABB is delivering with support from IMD. Now called Impact, the program is delivered through a series of sessions with IMD during a week spent in person on campus in Lausanne, Switzerland, followed by several months of remote exploration and a final week in a different location – this year’s venue was Berlin. This meet-up is spent conducting company visits and culminates in those on the program making a presentation to members of IMD’s executive committee. The course is followed up with an online sustainment program.
Other content on the platform comes from partners such as Harvard Business Publishing, which provides both online material and the opportunity for participants to meet in person. ABB has also secured licenses with LinkedIn Learning Solutions, the Josh Bersin Academy, and the NeuroLeadership Institute. It has functional content aimed at specific job roles – including finance transformation and leadership programs from IMD – which provides an opportunity to work with industry experts and consultancies to expand the ecosystem even further.
The rethink of learning and development has also encompassed an overhaul of ABB’s three management courses, designed for first-time managers, middle managers and senior leaders respectively. In each case, course capacity has been doubled to ensure that more people can access the training. In addition, the training for ABB’s most senior leaders is now more modular, and takes in peer-to-peer coaching as well as supervision from professional training. “We want to substantially increase collaboration,” Delacour explained.
Securing buy-in
The early results from ABB’s shakeup of its learning and development program are encouraging. Over its first year, 50% of the company’s 12,000 managers and leaders have taken advantage of the platform, enrolling themselves for some form of session or experience.
The statistics speak to ABB’s ambitions for decentralization. “All the programs are self-registered,” Delacour said. “We want to get away from the time where a few people in Zurich were deciding on your destiny – your next piece of learning, where you should connect, and even your next position.”
Indeed, this move to increase individual agency includes career planning. ABB now has a talent marketplace known as Open Job Market, where all roles in the organization, no matter how senior, must be advertised and open to free and fair competition.
“It is one of the biggest challenges that we all face – how to give leaders the space to learn, to connect to grow while being aware that the clock is ticking.”- Guillaume Delacour, ABB's Global Head of People Development
The organization’s shift appears to be securing traction with staff. Delacour is particularly pleased with the very high levels of participation seen in China and India, where ABB has substantial teams. Leaders in both countries have been enthusiastic about the participation of marquee education providers such as Harvard and IMD, as well about the opportunity to participate in meaningful learning and development activities at a time and in a place of convenience.
Delacour is keen to learn lessons from the program’s success in these countries, particularly about how local leaders have taken ownership in making the case for participation. “Our Chinese and Indian colleagues have done a fantastic job explaining the possibilities of the platform,” he said. “It does require effort and communication, and the ability to articulate the value of taking part.”
The power of competition
ABB has also acknowledged the power of recognition and is exploring gamification strategies to encourage increased take up. Through a partnership with the training software company Credly, it is issuing badges to staff who attend a series of events and complete learning paths in ABB Leadership Learning Ecosystem, or to staff who enrol on and complete Harvard Manage Mentor courses. These badges can be then further shared on LinkedIn or other social media. These badges were very successfully leveraged during ABB’s recent Value Quarters and Pride Month events.
Equally, Delacour accepts that driving up participation may require him and his colleagues to tweak the offer – to identify the most in-demand content and to deliver it in ways that enable more people to consume. Live events appear to work better than recorded events, for example, so ABB is trying to work out how to do more of these – and to manage them across the multiple time zones in which it operates.
Similarly, the organization has to be conscious of time constraints. “For example, we already know that for someone working in a factory environment, an hour is too long to ask them to spend in front of their PC; it’s 30 minutes maximum,” Delacour says. Longer events simply won’t get buy-in from those colleagues.
Getting personal
Looking ahead, there will be opportunities to adjust content accordingly but also to drive participation through more targeted messaging and personalisation. ABB is working on systems to identify what individuals are looking for and how it can support their ambitions. “I want to know what you want to next in your career,” Delacour added. “Then I’m going to nudge you – I’m going to understand the best way to reach you and keep pushing you towards content that is relevant for you in the moment where you stand.”
Ultimately, that is how the success of ABB’s reforms will be judged. To what extent are usage rates increasing and how often are people returning to the platform? “That is the number one goal,” Delacour explained. “The second piece, which is always the gold standard, is the business impact.”
Measuring such impacts is notoriously difficult, but Delacour is convinced this work will cascade through the organization. “It’s about creating an ecosystem of players rather than depending only on professionals from people development,” he argued. “Ultimately, if every leader participates in learn, connect and grow, and organizes their own events or develops their own content, that is the endgame.”
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