the next big things for the fortune 500? - lessonly€¦ · while recently reading the writings of...
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THE NEXT BIG THINGS FOR THE FORTUNE 500?
A report from
Productivity Training Change
lessonly.com
While recently reading the writings of several Fortune 500 CEOs, I had one simple, yet profound realization: Their businesses, brands, and teams are dealing with the same challenges that smaller companies are.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Training thousands of retail associates is far more difficult than onboarding a few new salespeople. Driving greater productivity across 100,000 employees is harder than doing so for 10. And changing direction at a global enterprise is infinitely more complicated than at a startup.
But, regardless of organizational scale, the core challenges remain unchanged. Training will always be important, productivity can always improve, and managing change will always be difficult. In order to lead an organization that influences industries, markets, and even the globe, leaders must meet these challenges head-on.
I wholeheartedly believe that companies who invest in employee development will see radical returns in the market. Will you be one of them? We’d love to partner with you.
—MaxCEO and Co-founder, Lessonly
When the Fortune 500 thrives, so does the
global economy. According to Fortune, the
500 “represent two-thirds of the U.S. GDP with
$12 trillion in revenues, $890 billion in profits,
$19 trillion in market value, and employ 28.2
million people worldwide.” As consumers,
we continuously experience and interact with
these companies every day: When we open
our computers, wash our clothes, purchase
food, or drive our cars—and the list goes on.
But despite the aura of excellence that
surrounds the Fortune 500, they aren’t
perfect. They’re complex organizations
with thousands (sometimes hundreds of
thousands) of stakeholders—from employees
to execs to investors. It only takes a quick look
at an annual report to see the complexity of
a global enterprise. Alongside cash flows,
balance sheets, and legal disclaimers—you’ll
often find a letter from the CEO (Warren
Buffett is notable for having perfected the
art of the shareholder letter) addressing
successes, challenges, and plans for the
company’s future.
A survey of this year’s Fortune 500 annual
letters revealed three recurring focal points for
the coming year: productivity, training, and
change management. These three ideas touch
on questions of employee development that
plague any business: How do organizations
get the most out of employees? How can a
company prepare new hires to do their best
work? How do managers move disparate teams
quickly in the same direction?
These questions are the heartbeat of the greatest teams, and the
greatest companies.
INTRODUCTION
We’ll be focused on increasing productivity...This will provide capacity to make investments in our future and increase our return to shareholders.”
— David A. Ricks, CEO, Eli Lilly
Without productive employees, organizations
begin to bloat—particularly at the scale of the
Fortune 500. Leaders across a wide range of
industries and markets are seeking ways to
help their employees do more work, faster.
Those that do so will see leaner, more fiscally
responsible organizations that break new
ground and deliver remarkable shareholder
value in the process.
Annual Report 2016
PRODUCTIVITYPRODUCTIVITY
Google views its radically popular G-Suite
as a productivity tool—one that improves
how people work, and Lessonly was founded
with a similar mission in mind. The ever-
quickening pace of technology has made
business productivity software the bread and
butter of team improvement. But, it will take
more than just tools to create sustained team
productivity. Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos noted
in his annual letter, that Amazon seeks to,
“...have the scope and capabilities of a large
company and the spirit and heart of a small
one. But we have to choose it.” That balance
between scope and heart is exactly why the
Fortune 500 is trending toward productivity—
and why they need help getting there.
“As we look to our long-term investments in our productivity tools supported by our machine learning and artificial intelligence efforts, we see huge opportunities to dramatically improve how people work.”
— Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google
“The mentality of doing fewer things, but doing them more effectively, will be spread throughout the [Coca-Cola] enterprise. It’s clear that we need to be faster, more agile, and act with a greater sense of urgency.”
— James Quincey, CEO, The Coca-Cola Company
Founder’s Letter 2016
Shareholder Letter 2017
“As the pace of technological change accelerates, our people are adapting as never before. We’re using innovative training and building profiles of future job requirements to help our employees pivot their skills…”
— Randall Stephenson, President, CEO, & Chairman, AT&T
Letter to Shareholders 2016
TRAINING
80% of L&D professionals note that training is
top-of-mind for their executive team. The best
leaders understand that front-line employees
are an essential cog in the organization
wheel; they interact directly with consumers,
and their behavior can make—or break—a
customer’s experience with the brand.
Josh Bersin, founder and principal at Bersin
by Deloitte, notes that, “The single biggest
driver of business impact is the strength of
an organization’s learning culture.” Perhaps
that’s why Fortune 500 CEOs continue to
mention training as an essential focus for
their companies.
Across the Fortune 500, many companies
still use antiquated training techniques,
materials, and processes that create sub-
optimal experiences for employees and
sub-optimal bottom line results. Among the
greatest benefits of recent tech innovation
is the ability to create, share, and apply
information at scale. The rampant popularity
of the app economy and social media prove
this fact. And yet, so many companies have
been slow to apply this same logic to training
their employees. Forward-thinking companies
are doing just that—moving from in-person
training with huge binders of material to
blended or remote training using online
training platforms. They get better results,
and save hundreds of thousands of dollars
along the way.
“[Our associates] are the face of our company, and we equip them with the training and knowledge to provide customers with an outstanding wireless experience…This focus also is a powerful factor in attracting and retaining outstanding associates.”
— Kenneth R. Meyers,
President, Chairman,
CEO, U.S. Cellular
“At Walmart, we’re harnessing the power of technology and the investments in our associates to create new ways of serving customers and provide associates with more opportunities to grow their careers.”
— Doug McMillon, CEO, Walmart
Annual Report 2016
Annual Letter 2017
“Recognize true misalignment issues early and escalate them immediately. Sometimes teams have different objectives and fundamentally different views. They are not aligned.”
— Jeff Bezos, Chairman and CEO, Amazon.com Annual Report 2017
CHANGE MANAGEMENT
It’s a fact—aligning a large organization is
significantly harder than getting a small
team on the same page. And when the team
involves thousands of employees across tens,
or even hundreds, of locations, changing
directions can seem impossible. Shifting
people, processes, and methodologies to meet
new goals requires visionary, intentional
leadership. And executive teams need
powerful, yet simple tools to help them
implement and coordinate change at scale.
Changing the direction of a giant like GE
takes significant investment. The tension of
applying resources to drive results today while
planning for tomorrow is omnipresent in the
C-suite. And whether designing jet engines—or
flipping hamburgers—continuous change is a
reality, and an imperative. But the leaders who
are forward-thinking enough to invest time,
money, and energy into a healthy, proactive
change management strategy will go down in
organizational history as innovators.
They just need the right change management
tools to help them get the job done.
“Positioning GE to win has required change… We refocused the company to be in businesses where we can lead while investing in new capability to capture future growth...The challenge for any company is to invest in the future while delivering results.”
— Jeffery R Immelt, Chairman and CEO, GE
“...I stepped into the CEO role with one mandate: Turn around the business. We committed to moving faster, pushing harder and taking smarter risks—and in doing so, fundamentally changed the course of our business….We’re concentrating on our biggest opportunities—and stopping what doesn’t add to our bottom line.”
— Steve Easterbrook, President and CEO, McDonald's
Annual Report 2016
Letter to Shareholders 2017
Lessonly Helps Fortune 500 Companies Learn, Practice, and Perform
Training. Productivity. Change Management.
These ideas can seem big, unwieldy, and
complicated.
That’s why we built Lessonly.
We’ve spent the last 5 years developing our
learning software for just these purposes—
to aid organizations as they seek greater
productivity, better training for their
employees, and a platform to drive change
at scale. We exist to help the world’s greatest
companies do better and we’re already helping
some of them, with radical success.
The Lessonly Model
LearnCapture and share essential work knowledge that helps
your team succeed.
PracticeImprove and reinforce skills and best practices to keep your team
on the path to high-performance.
PerformDeliver and measure quicker ramp times, increased productivity, happier customers, and more closed deals.
CONCLUSION
How can we help you?Take a Tour of Lessonly Today.
407 Fulton St., #302,Indianapolis, IN 46202
(317) 469-9194
IL
lessonly.com