Green Learning

HR product vendors have attempted to convince HR buyers that simply deploying e-learning packages will transform their training and development courses into green learning. This argument is specious at best because no concept of green learning is offered by which the effects of e-learning can be judged and the argument assumes that all e-learning packages are structured and administered in a similar manner. New training and development companies such as StreamingStrategies are offering green learning that reduces the corporate carbon footprint while maintaining instructor-led authentic learning methodologies.

 The green learning concept is based on three principles: sustainability, renewability, and a positive impact on the environment. Sustainability has two major aspects: objective and subjective. Objective sustainability is the resource demand required to formulate and deliver the learning. Subjective sustainability is the endurance of learning in the learner.

 The resource demand to formulate a learning package must include the manufacture of computers, networks, studio equipment, and distribution media. The resource demand to deliver a learning package must include the demands of the physical facility and the required infrastructure to present, administer, tabulate and report the learning experience. Together, these constitute the aggregate resource demand (ARD) of the package. Casual observers may be tempted to equate “carbon footprint” with ARD because society is willing to accept gross estimations of the pejorative “carbon footprint”, such a scale is merely an indicator, not a measure, of ARD.

 Subjective sustainability (SS) is increased when the learner sustains the new knowledge. When knowledge is closely related to the real-world situation of the learner, the learner sustains that knowledge longer and more deeply. This is the basic tenet of authentic learning. The total sustainability factor (Y) of a green learning package for (L) number of learners can be expressed as:

                        Y = ARD / (L x SS).

 Training can be made renewable by supplying a blueprint within the learning materials so that the learning can be applied to similar problems by utilizing the blueprint. The blueprint should include a logical model of the learned principles, a logical model of the application of the learned principles and a representative set of data descriptions for the problem statement and the derived solution. Such a blueprint in effect makes the learning renewable to new learners and renewable to new problems of a similar nature. The effect of the blueprint on the fundamental knowledge benefit (KB) conferred by the training is to make each learner a trainer for other learners and a solver for new problems. The blueprint factor (B) of a green learning package, which measures the renewability of that package, may be expressed as:

                        B = KB x L².

 The green value (G) of a learning package, which measures its positive impact on the environment, is thus expressed as:

                        G = Y + B.

This formula should be easy to remember, for as we all know:

                         Green = Yellow + Blue.

 Although the basic formula for green learning, G = Y + B, is not an expression of quantities, it is an expression of forces. As such, it is able to guide scientists who can derive suitable quantities for the variables; and course designers who can apply content and delivery factors in beneficial alignment with the fundamental forces; as well as HR buyers who can assign benefit to each force to determine the greatest value of the training programs they purchase.

HR professionals currently have a golden opportunity to permanently record their strategic importance in the leadership of American corporations. Our current financial crisis has less to do with Wall Street, big banks, derivatives or sub-prime mortgages than with the fact that executive education has been failing our business leaders since 1975.

The global competitive environment changed fundamentally in 1975 and became a 21^st century competitive environment before the new century actually arrived. The primary characteristic of the new century was that, for the first time in the modern age, America faced industrial competition. American executives needed to understand the dynamics of structural competitive strategy, but American business schools failed to notice the sea change in the global economic landscape. They continued, and continue still, to teach outmoded concepts of business and strategy.

Executive education has not prepared our business leaders to grow their companies in the face of fierce global competition. Unfortunately, foreign competitors are only part of the problem for American business. The greater threat is the major premise of business education that I call Whartonism. Whartonism is the belief that the essence of business is financial, therefore business executives should be financial managers. Unfortunately, this fundamental concept, upon which corporate America relies for its economic survival is mistaken. Business is not inherently financial. Business is essentially commercial–it exists to exchange value. A business is an organization that satisfies detected needs with products and services considered valuable and obtainable by those with the particular need.

A business must see what is needed and deliver it in a valuable and obtainable form. The ability to see what is needed in the marketplace is not a financial ability. Neither is the capacity to see what is needed within the corporation to deliver valuable and obtainable goods.

Whartonism, because it arises in business schools, substitutes financial analysis, which can be taught, for the true executive requirement, detection, which cannot be taught. To detect is to see what others do not, even though it is logically before them. Successful executives must continually see what is needed in the marketplace and see how to deliver it in a valuable and obtainable form. Detectors are not visionaries. Visionary executives routinely lead businesses to failure. Detectors see just a tiny bit of a thing and know what the whole thing is. They see a ravenous polar bear in tracks that are simply imprinted too deeply in the snow.

Bill Gates did not see tracks in the snow, he saw the polar bear. At the moment software buyers ceased to be programmers and became business managers, Gates detected a multi-billion dollar opportunity. Because these new software buyers could not measure the success of products they bought, Gates realized that software no longer had to actually solve problems. It only had to deliver a perceived margin of success. Gates understood that managers bought technical margins of success that they presented to their non-technical bosses as business solutions. He knew that as long as he redefined the margin of success with each version, he could resell products that had changed very little internally. And he could make a bundle. If Gates had tried to sell into NASA, rather than IBM, he would never have made a dime. NASA was run by brilliant detectors.

Detection is also the primary ability needed for creating effective corporate strategy in the 21^stcentury competitive environment. Whartonism teaches that strategy is simply the projection of financial objectives onto the marketplace. In the 21^st century, this postulate is dead wrong. Corporate strategy now must be the detection of strategic interests throughout the competitive environment and the promotion and defense of those interests in pursuit of actionable opportunities.

The failure of Whartonism in the realm of corporate strategy is most clearly seen in the American response to low-cost producers. American executives failed to detect their strategic interest in protecting the distribution and market presentation layers of the commerce stack. Low-cost producers have been allowed to expand into these lucrative sectors by launching powerful branding campaigns against unprepared American businesses. Had American executives been able to detect the their strategic interests in the global commerce stack, they could have contained low-cost producers at the production layer. Since the need for containment was not detected, the once thriving furniture and textile industries of the South have been lost and the ranks of American manufacturers have been devastated.

Whartonism will continue to threaten American strategic success unless HR professionals insist on executive education that recognizes the primary importance of detection in strategy, management and operations. Executive education must insist that financial managers serve executive management and refrain from becoming executives themselves.

HR professionals can reverse this continuing disaster, but they must seek, acquire and deliver to their executives strategic training that matches the conditions of the 21^st century competitive environment. If HR fails to take this golden opportunity to prove its strategic worth, the great American Age in business will pass, undetected, except on the ledgers of foreign competitors.