This is the second in a new AOK series featuring the known practices of knowledge champions who are not consultants or gurus, but quiet, unassuming knowledge professionals who are "just doing it" for their organizations. The first Leading Lights are being selected from among the 45 breakout speakers who presented at the March 13-15 AOK/Delphi Group Enterprise Learning and Knowledge Exchange Summit in Palm Springs, California, U.S.

An interview with Jeff Davis
E-Learning Manager & Sales Professional
Black & Decker University

Sales Professionals Become Short-Term Educators,
Connecting Expert Thinking to Frontline Context

By Carol Tucker
AOK Leading Lights Reporter

When you think about Black & Decker, especially in the North American market, you think screwdrivers and hand-held electric drills. Black & Decker is a global manufacturer and marketer of home power tools, electric lawn and garden equipment, and home improvement products in over 100 countries, employing well over 23,000 people. The company underwent some restructuring back in 1998, shedding some peripheral divisions and streamlined itself to concentrate on its strengths. A company that big, with a brand that strong, needs a strong corporate culture and a commitment not only to their customers, but also to their own people.

On the corporate website, the company states:

"The keys to success for Black & Decker employees consists of planning effectively, doing the right things, taking initiative, having strong business management skills, and knowing the marketplace. Employees are given the training to develop product, selling, and marketing skills that prepare them for a variety of career opportunities.

A Black & Decker employee is an independent thinker who leads by example and is able to excel as both an individual and within a team environment."

And meeting that commitment that the company makes to their associates is what Jeff Davis, E-Learning Manager of Black & Decker University, spends his time doing!

AOK: Thank you for taking time out of your schedule to talk with us, Jeff! I'm really curious about this corporate university.

JD: Actually, it is not a "corporate university" so to speak -- we report to the sales and marketing area, not to Human Resources. There is another facility that handles training for other functions -- we are very much focused on the sales, marketing and leadership aspects of our business.

• How to make an effective presentation
• Knowing your product
• Developing people
• Management and leadership

What we are trying to do is bridge the gap between what is in some experts' heads and capture the right content, in the right context, so that what the SME [subject matter expert] knows is available to everyone to utilize. Some of this stuff is written down, some is not, and we try to capture the real essence of the words so that they can be shared.

In an organization like this one, we each live or die by how much we know about our products and services. The sales team has to understand what it is that they are selling -- and that goes for products and services. Training is not a luxury -- it is a necessity!

AOK: So, how did you end up here in the university?

JD: None of us are professional trainers or educators -- all of the people rotate in and out from our sales force on 18 months rotations. This means we get a fresh infusion of insights and new ideas quite often -- and that keeps us open to internal feedback and benchmarking. Me? I have been with Black & Decker for 12 years, and I came into the university back in November of 1999 from the sales force. It was an exciting time to join up! About three years ago, Matt DeFeo -- who is the Vice President in charge of the University -- came in and took over the leadership of the program. In addition, we had out-grown our facilities at the main headquarters and were relocating to a new building. All of this tied in with an opportunity to make a change with our internal customers -- a conscious decision to re-brand our training program.

AOK: When you talk about "re-branding" in a corporation like Black & Decker, a corporation that lives and dies by its' ability to create a successful brand with the public, that is an extremely powerful statement.

JD: Matt was one of the active agents of that change; things were pretty far along when I got here. Black & Decker is about brand, a name that you are proud of and proud to have your name associated with. About quality and personal commitment to excellence. About being able to be accountable for what I deliver. We have spent a lot of time benchmarking against other companies and associating ourselves strategically with the likes of the Ken Blanchard Companies.

AOK: One-Minute Manager? Who Moved My Cheese?

JD: Yes -- that's the one. We utilize the Situational Leadership model and work with our people to reinforce their skill sets.

What we do here is try to effectively utilize the resources of the Internet to bring our training programs into the 21st century. You can't be successful tomorrow if you only have yesterday's skills! We are really pioneering here -- I often tell the students to climb aboard and hang on -- I am not exactly sure what the wagon train will hit next.

AOK: Are you the pioneer type then? Can you describe, "Jeff Davis" to me?

JD: One of the courses we offer is called "Social Styles", which are basically profiles for communicating. There are four categories: Analytical, Driver, Expressive and Amiable. I think I tend to get put in the "analytical/driver" spectrum -- although I am not sure that is how I would describe myself. But I do have a tendency to think things all the way through. I keep in mind what the mission is, and what we are trying to accomplish. You don't just do things because they look good at the time, you have to look at what the needs of the business are and design your classes to meet those needs. And you have to think about what metrics you can put into place.

You see, I want to know what the score is. We are very focused here on finding out how we can measure what it is that we are accomplishing. It isn't enough to have a gut feeling that we have had an impact -- we want to measure that impact, define it. I want to know that we are making a difference and I want to be able to show what exactly that difference is.

AOK: Show me the ROI.

JD: Well, yes. Across the entire university, we use the Six Sigma method: Take a concept, define, measure, analyze, improve and control. Every thing that we do, we look at through the lens of accomplishments -- what we wanted to do, what we have done, what could be done better. We have black belts here who help us keep on track.

When we are designing a course, we use an instructional design module, the ROPES model. Dr. Jim Moshinskie, Doctor of Performance Technologies at Baylor University, introduced us to this model: Review, Overview, Present, Exercise, Summarize. (More information)

AOK: So, how do you "sharpen the saw", how do you improve?

JD: Is that a jigsaw or a reciprocating saw? I always liked the "seventh habit" of Covey's.

Because none of us are professional trainers or educators, and because the staff is rotating in and out about every 18 months [except for a core], we are really open to internal feedback. And, we spend a lot of time making sure that we are up-to-date -- we read, attend conferences like the one that I will see you at in March (AOK/Delphi Enterprise Learning and Knowledge Exchange Summit) and take the opportunity to do networking to see what other people's experiences have been. We benchmark -- we choose who we consider to be innovative leaders and go to visit their shops and see how they are doing things.

AOK: Whom do you benchmark against?

JD: Companies that upper management and we consider to be at the forefront when it comes to internal communication and training: GE, Microsoft, and Toyota, just to name a few.

We go, look over their operations, share our stories and come back with new ideas. One of the most gratifying experiences for me was to start getting calls from those companies asking if they could come and visit with us.

We also work very closely with the local colleges and universities, especially with the University of Maryland and specifically their Business School. We actively recruit from the graduates, so it is a win/win situation -- they get to know us and we get to know them. In fact, I came to the Black & Decker sales team as a graduate of the University of Maryland Business School twelve years ago! We have embarked on several projects using students and graduates to study different processes, for example. The students have designed and participated in focus groups and helped us evaluate vendors. They have been pretty heavily involved with my project -- e-learning.

AOK: You are the e-learning guru for Black & Decker?

JD: Yes. E-learning here is a homegrown product. We defined what our needs were, carved out the strategic direction we wanted, and set up an evaluation model [with the students] to assess what was available out there. It was a yearlong process, very intense.

At the end of the planning, we determined that we would rely on Vuepoint Corporation to provide our platform. It is an interactive experience and we have an authoring tool that permits us to customize the final product to meet our needs. For third party content, and a learning management system, we went with the Ninth House, a company we became familiar with through the Ken Blanchard Companies alliance I mentioned earlier. Ninth House has a rich, media experience, but because they have a hybrid of both CD and Internet, it is not too difficult to access.

AOK: What role do you see e-learning filling in the training?

JD: About 80-90 percent of our university courses are instructor-led because we are so highly dependent on product knowledge and development. Most of our courses are a full one to two weeks of face time -- which is a real investment for the company. The e-learning portion will enable two things:

• The attendees can gain some background, do some pre-work before coming into the classroom.
• After the classroom, students and instructors can follow-up with questions and more information.

We are not trying to replace the face-to-face component of our learning, but to enhance it by preparing before and reinforcing afterwards. A lot of planning went into how to meld the online and offline: integration of the current systems, transcripts, content.

The website just went live on January 14th; you can get a sneak preview. The online courses will include the basic business courses and selling skills courses. The e-learning center will provide an introduction and a foundation to the entire university offerings -- an alternative to sitting in the classroom and viewing PowerPoint presentations! Almost every course will have mandatory ehours to be logged and the students can access the information at work, at home, wherever they can get online.

AOK: The introduction looks a little heavy on the graphics.

JD: We were pretty sensitive to loading issues -- not everyone is going to have a T-1 line and be able to support streaming media -- so we made sure that it would load using a 28,800 connection with little of no delay. (AOK note: I am on a dial-up connection at home, and the site loaded without problems.)

AOK: Who will have access?

JD: This is actually part of our intranet, so it will not be public access. Students, administrators and instructors will be able to get in, of course. And employees -- we are encouraging people to log in and see what is being offered. Eventually we would like to give vendors, suppliers and customers access to non-proprietary portions of the site.

AOK: You mentioned using the site for follow-up after the classroom experience. Are you looking at community formation?

JD: That is something that has been discussed -- the value of the "water cooler" was pretty well established by the Xerox case study. We are looking at different platforms now -- WebX and Caliber just to name two. My challenge with that is twofold:

1. Asynchronous communication is still the exception not the norm. As an organization, we are still in the course of migrating from voice mail to email, so there is not a high comfort level right now with community participation.
2. Keeping our focus -- we have been challenged by senior management in terms of keeping the community that we build consistent with corporate culture -- not getting too far out in front of our core audience.

It is definitely something that we will be looking into implementing in the future.

AOK: thank you again, for your time, Jeff!

Jeff Davis is not a knowledge manager, a trainer or a theoretician; he is a sales person who is creating the tools that his sales force and his company need to be successful not just today, but tomorrow. His goal never wavers: to bring Black & Decker into the 21st century.

Jeff and Matt DeFeo will be sharing their experiences on how to fit e-learning into an organization at Delphi Group's Enterprise Learning and Knowledge Exchange Summit on March 14th. In their session, you can learn how Black & Decker identified their e-learning goals, created the criteria that was set for the vendor, and constructed the selection process. Your take-away? A better understanding of the e-learning market and an ability to assess their company's particular Elearning needs.

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