Excerpt from Culturiffic! -

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Creating Your Corporate University

Corporate Universities are the buzzwords of the HR world. If management can have its buzzwords like empowerment, right-sizing and reengineering (or regenerating as Prahalad, author of “Competing for the Future,” calls it), then, by golly, so should the training world. It’s important to note that for many companies, creating a corporate university is a fad or trend. Read the next section very carefully to understand what a corporate university was designed to be.

In analyzing what’s going on out there, we have discovered that there are four types of corporate universities in place today. They are the Moniker University, the Salaried University, the Building University and the Learning University. These types really could be defined as stages as most companies will pass through all of them on their journey to the perfect corporate university. Let’s define each type.

Type I - The Moniker University

This is the most common type in use today. It is also the easiest one to create. Our friends at the American Heritage Dictionary define moniker as “nickname” and, basically, that is all this type of corporate university is. The Moniker University requires some creative artwork and new letterhead. The training and development department of your company creates a new logo and pronounces themselves at a ribbon cutting ceremony as a corporate university. They probably even have some clever name for it like Teach U. The error and ineffectiveness in this first type is that no fundamental changes in the way of doing business or in their methods or approaches to training are made. The company is simply trending on the bandwagon trying not to be outdone. These types of universities hurt the furthering of the corporate university concept. If you are currently a Moniker, stop it!

Type II - The Salaried University

This type of university completes step one from above by pronouncing itself a university and creating a new logo with sweatshirts and the like. The company may even take it one step further and change some of its ways of doing things to incorporate a few traditional university methods. This type is even on record for producing a catalogue or phrasing all courses as “101s.” The difference between the Salaried University and the others is where they focus their time. The Salaried University, as its name leads you to surmise, focuses on management or the salaried individuals running the company. They tend to ignore the hourly people, except of course for the 1.5 hour orientation slide show, everyone is required to attend, including black and white photos of the founder and the first whatever you make. A presentation like this certainly says, “you have come to some place special.” (By the way, that is sarcasm.) Orientations like this one described violate one of the three reasons training is not successful – this training is not motivated!

How can you build a service culture if the only people your training services is the top line? The front line is where your identity as a top service provider is created. The hourly people, not the salaried people, are the ones who will determine if you have a service culture. A side note to companies with this type of university is they tend to have the highest turnover for two reasons:

1.       The front line people get frustrated and tired of feeling stupid (unappreciated) because they are not being trained or developed.

2.       The salaried people get great training and then move onto the next job. They get tired of hearing the hourly people complain about how bad it is!

Question. How much time does your management spend servicing the customer? Another question. How much time does the hourly staff spend servicing your customer? Then why would you invest your training dollars at the salaried level? Oh, because you are training your managers to train their people? Yeah! Right! That is a dream world and we all know it.

Type III - The Building University

The most expensive of all of the corporate universities, the Building University picks up where the Salaried left off and provides a beautiful state-of-the-art structure to fly people in from all over the country or even from around the world to attend school. I attended a presentation at a conference where two companies, the Bank of Montreal and Motorola, were proudly displaying the pictures of their corporate universities. Although Motorola does one of the better jobs with the corporate university concept, how many of us have companies that can afford to build $30,000,000 buildings? Can you imagine? How much training could you do at the front lines where it is needed with $30 million? The last thing you want to do is invest your money in glitzy, state-of-the-art buildings. You want to put your money into making sure the training is motivated. A glamorous trip to headquarters for training is impressive, but if the student leaves without a change in behavior, then it doesn’t matter what cool stuff they did while they were there. McDonald’s Hamburger University (one of the country’s first) is a classic example of this type. They also qualify for the Type II as well, because the only people who are allowed to attend the training are the managers.

Type IV - The Learning University

Okay, maybe calling the fourth type the Learning University is a little self –serving, but if you are set on the journey to culture change and building a Culturrific! service team, then you need this fourth type. And, if you build any other it will not be successful. Yes, if you build it they will come, but don’t forget the definition of learning – a change in behavior. If you can accomplish this change without building large structures of steel and concrete are you not better served?

The majority of you reading this book work for companies that have multiple locations or regions. You need to build a training process that will work in this environment. The Type IV University does this. But it doesn’t just dress itself up like a traditional university.

The successful corporate university models itself after a traditional university. The whole university. How so? Well, there are five things that all traditional universities have that make them successful. And these five things must be present in your corporate university as well.

And the five are:

1.       Degree Plans

2.       Course Numbering

3.       Structure

4.       Marketing

5.       Campus Life

Degree Plans

All traditional universities group their courses or curriculum into degree plans. These degree plans help the student and the teacher to know what subjects they must complete in order to be able to go into the real world and say they are smart. As we noted earlier, just because a person has a degree from a university does not mean you are learned. The degree simply means the person has the potential to excel and do well when put in an environment that allows him to use this teaching.

The people of the business-training world will call these topics core competencies. What does that mean? Well, like all great associations and organizations, the ability to create new and wieldy terms with words from Jeopardy is their reason for existence. In a nutshell, though, core competencies are the skills that one needs in order to do his or her job effectively and efficiently. As a matter of fact, our friends at the American Heritage Dictionary define competency as “a specific range of skill, knowledge or ability.” The core competencies are the specific skills, knowledge or abilities broken down by position.

What the professional trainers (or your HR directors) are saying makes sense and it fits in with the service culture theme. In order to be effective, the employees need to have the skills, knowledge, and ability for their specific job assignments. In order for you to create degree plans for your company, you must first decide what core competencies are needed for each position – that’s right – EVERY position. We have a strong theme in this book that says, “There are no small parts, only small actors.”

But how do you know what the core competencies should be for the degree plans? You ask the people who work for you! After all, they are the ones who know best what it takes to do their jobs well. If you’re lucky, many may have already been accomplished by the HR or Training teams.  Great! Use them. The research for this has four steps – the written, the interview, the analysis, and the competencies.