Rédaction Blog, Author at Coorpacademy

How to perpetuate agility rituals remotely? The feedback example

Our content partner Numa organized a webinar on Friday 27th 2020 with Coorpacademy, as the first episode of the webinar series Learn @ Home. Claudio Vandi, Head of Learning at Numa, told us about how to perpetuate agility rituals remotely and how feedback can help to maintain the social link with your coworkers during those unprecedented times.

Learn @ Home is a webinar series launched by Coorpacademy which will give you tips to make the confinement period an efficient one.

In this article, you will find a recap of the webinar.

Why feedback, and why using feedback remotely?

Giving feedback is not a new concept. But why are we talking about it so much nowadays? Gallup, the research institute on management and future of work which publishes studies on a regular basis, recently came up with a book called It’s the Manager, written by Jim Clifton and Jim Harter. The book contains the following:

“Leaders’ priority must be to help their managers becoming coaches: by doing regular one-to-one meetings (quick meetings, individually, weekly meetings with each and every one member of your team) and give feedback regularly.”

This is part of the manager’s toolbox – not a new way of management. There are cases where being direct is more useful, by providing guidelines or by helping. This being said, creating these regular feedback moments is becoming more and more important, especially in the new agile ways of working. Knowing how fast our businesses, our products, our services, our jobs are transforming, an annual performance review is not enough anymore. If we want to improve, to upskill in this fast-paced environment, feedback is a very efficient way to do so.

In these unprecedented times of remote working – for most people – there are a few risks. At least 3.

A feeling of looseness, of disengagement, a “I’m home” feeling. In the long term, this feeling can grow.
Losing contact with your team, with your company, a feeling of isolation. As you don’t see your team or your company materially speaking, a feeling of isolation can grow. Even if you exchange with colleagues on corporate social networks, it is not as informal and as frequent as it can be in the office, around the coffee machine for example.
Losing informal contacts with coworkers. We don’t see in real life people we are used to working with, and we keep our contacts to the technical aspects of the job, of what is being done, of what needs to be done. There’s a risk of losing the engaging informal conversations with colleagues.

To limit those risks, the manager has options.

Making contact moments a ritual. If you are already doing so, it is even more important when everyone is working remotely (check-ins, weekly or even daily one-to-ones, team meetings to start or finish off the week). These don’t have to be long, they can be 10-minute long just to check if the other person’s ok. It also adds some pace to the work week and helps maintaining coworkers’ engagement.
Humanizing contacts. You can introduce emotions, humor, energy in conversations. Even more than in real life, you need to overact: emotions will be mitigated through the screen, because of distance.
Give feedback regularly to maintain engagement and performance. That’s what we’ll be talking about in this article.

That being said, why don’t we give more feedback?

It is extremely important, so why is it not natural to give feedback everyday, all the time, to your coworkers or managers?

Let’s dive into the book The Feedback Imperative from Anna Caroll, which indicates that there are 4 profiles of people who are biased. Those bias prevent these types of people from giving feedback regularly to their teams.

The Analytical profile: they believe in data and see feedback like an intrusion of emotions in the corporate world. We are here to work and not to talk about emotions of others, I’ve got all the data I need to manage my team and I won’t improve my management by exchanging with everyone.
The Empathetic profile: fostering and helpful, they see feedback as painful for the ones receiving them. My team are already putting a lot of efforts in their work, it will be painful for them to review what they have done wrong. They see feedback as negative feedback.
The Efficient profile: they like rapidity, are results-oriented, and see feedback as a waste of time. People won’t change, if they didn’t understand now they won’t in the future, there’s no point in wasting time in explaining to them.
The Visionary profile: inspiring, visionary, they choose to interact with their teams rather than with individuals. They’re very skilled in engaging people with impactful speeches, but it’s more natural for them to exchange ideas with their teams rather than with individuals.

4 biased profiles not giving feedback, and 3 types of different feedback.

The Positive (Recognition) feedback: “Thank you, I wanted to thank you for your work…” With this feedback, you want to thank someone after an action or a project accomplished. You can give this feedback on the spot (right after the action) or after reflexion (which will give more impact to the fact that you have noticed the action). You can do it privately (in one-to-one) or in public (when you praise someone in front of a team to give an exemplary impact to your words, to inspire others for example). It’s the more frequent feedback, the one you should use at any given time.
The Corrective (Development) feedback: “you could improve on this, you’re already doing that well but there’s room for improvement on that other thing…” You don’t give this feedback on the spot right after the action, and you should allow yourself some reflexion beforehand. Not too much time either, you don’t want to give this feedback two months after the action. You’ll also always give this feedback privately, never in public.
The Negative (Realignment) feedback: “This is not at all what I wanted, I want to understand why…” Never in public! It can be used either for a repeated error, or for a big mistake, in order to understand why the person acted in such a way but also to make this person know that it is unacceptable. This feedback is given just after the observed action but with some preparation beforehand.

You can use one single method, easy to remember, before giving any of the feedback up above, to structure it: the COIN method.

Context – Observation – Impact – Next steps

This is an effective method to structure feedback, for the messages to get through efficiently. First, you need to remember the precise context in which the action occurred, a precise moment you’ve observed: its needs to be factual, precise. You wouldn’t say: “I had the feeling that… I think you’ve done that because…” but instead: “I’ve observed this, I share it to you, I’d like your opinion on this.” It’s also important to explain the impacts: how this precise action has had any positive or negative impact on the team, the person, the company. And it’s always very important to conclude on next steps, to go further, to correct, to improve or to insist on something that’s already going great.

Let’s take a few examples:

For context, would you choose:

A – “Every time you present a project…”

B – “During last Tuesday’s presentation…”

Answer A is vague when B is precise. You need to precise context. The answer A can make a person feel attacked. It is possible to give general advice, but you need to always precise the context or to give factual examples: “Often, when you present a project, like last Tuesday for example…”

Observation VS interpretation

A – “Your answers lacked clarity”

B – “You were stressed”

Answer B is a personal accusation, it is to be avoided.

Answer A is an opinion, even though slightly more adapted. It isn’t factual though and could spark a debate.

A factual and irrefutable observation would be: “At the end of the meeting, participants told me they didn’t know what we were expecting from them.”

Probably because the messages weren’t clear. You will then discuss how to improve this, because this is not an opinion.

Examples of impacts, consequences

For a Corrective feedback (Development), it could be: “I’ve observed that people didn’t understand what we were expecting from them. You will have to organize another meeting, and you know that they take up to 2 weeks to be organized… I give you this feedback because it has an impact on the timeline of the project.”

For a Positive feedback (Recognition): “Bravo, thanks to your action, we reached the partnership agreement we were discussing for the past couple of months. This is why I congratulate you and thank you!” Even when giving positive feedback, you need to be as factual as possible. This also needs to be objective, you don’t want it to sound fake or like sterile motivation.

Examples of next steps

For a Positive feedback (Recognition): “Would you agree to share your experience to the rest of the team ? Because I think it is exemplary and the team should get inspired from the way you handled this project.”

For a Corrective feedback (Development): “How can I help next time? Do you see ways you could improve on that matter?”

For a Negative feedback (Realignement): “How can we do for this not to happen ever again?”

Before going through the specificities of giving feedback remotely, here are 2 pieces of advice that could be useful when it comes to giving feedback.

Avoiding the sandwich (1 slice of positive feedback, 1 slice of negative feedback, 1 slide of positive feedback). Even if it sounds simpler, it drowns the message and it loses its sense and impact.
Don’t wait for people to request feedback. “87 % of Millennials consider the opportunities of personal development as important in the workplace but only 15% of them will request regular feedback” according to Gallup’s How Millennials Want to Work and Live study. A good practice is actually to solicit feedback: it is usually well perceived and puts you in the spotlight as someone wanting to improve and to upskill, open to advice and criticism.

Now that we’ve said all this, how do we put this into practice in a remote work environment?

Everything that’s been said before about feedback is still valuable. However, there are differences due to the fact that we’re not together in the same space and that we don’t interact with each other on a daily basis.

The first risk being to lose human contact. You won’t see how the other reacts after giving that person feedback. When you usually give feedback, you want to observe immediately after how the person reacts towards another coworker, another client, you want to see if your praising or your advice have been taken into account and if any behavior has been modified accordingly.

It’s also harder to decipher the non-verbal communication (posture, tension…) but also to communicate non-verbal signals. By giving feedback remotely, you won’t get all these clues that would allow you to adjust your messages.

You can also be tempted to use communication channels that sounds easier to you, but that are not necessarily the most appropriate ones. By email, for example, but was it the most appropriate communication channel for the other person? What’s practical to you might not be as useful for the other.

Despite these risks, there also are opportunities.

You won’t feel intimidated by the other’s presence, as you won’t share the same space. You won’t feel “locked” in a room, especially during a negative feedback that could be taken badly: doing it remotely protects you.

You can also be creative on the communication channels to use: videoconference, call, mail, corporate social network. It’s an opportunity to be creative.

Remote Corrective feedback: some advice.

We would strongly recommend to give this feedback via videoconference, to see the other’s reaction.

Please use as little as possible asynchronous tools, such as corporate social networks or mail, which won’t allow any interaction – unless you already have a great relationship with the coworker. Otherwise, you can privilege tools allowing you to interact.

Third advice would be to use mails and corporate social networks for post-feedback messages. Messages which would include what came out of the feedback, the main messages but also constructive next steps. This is useful in order to anchor your speech and to remind the other person of the following steps.

Remote Negative feedback: some advice.

This feedback must absolutely be given via synchronous tools. It is important that you speak, that the other person hears your words, your tone, that the message is perceived as paramount.

You also need to announce, at the very beginning, that this is going to be a tough discussion. You can start by: “We are going to have an important and tough conversation, I chose to do it now rather than waiting for the confinement to be over because I think this can’t wait.” This will free you in a way and release tension while allowing the other to get ready to listen to what you are going to say.

You also need to be very clear on the next steps for the discussion not to end in some kind of embarrassing situation that will be amplified by distance. If you give a negative feedback without any leads for after, that will create a bad atmosphere between you two and the other could be feeling left alone.

Remote Positive feedback: some advice.

For this kind of feedback, you have a lot of possibilities in terms of communication channels you can use – according to the message. Videoconference is always good, but you can use others.

You can use written communication to highlight a particular effort, a success. Written communication can be read and read again, for motivation purposes for example. You can do it on Teams, on Slack, on WhatsApp for example.

Calling is also a good way to do it, in a more improvised manner: “I just saw what you did on this project and I wanted to thank you for it vocally.” Using voice gives a lot more importance to the message you want to convey – even if it is not mandatory.

Be creative! You can also play on timings, and distance favor this.

You can give positive feedback in the morning or in the evening when the person is feeling overwhelmed to motivate this person. You can use key moments, like at the end of a project or just before the person goes on holidays.

If you want to learn more about agility within your organization, discover Numa’s course, Agility in action.

If you want to watch the replay of the webinar (in French), it’s here.

Coronavirus: online training courses for hospital staff dedicated to the management of patients with severe respiratory impairment related to COVID-19

The AP-HP, Assistance Publique – Hôpitaux de Paris (Public Assistance – Paris Hospitals) turned to us to develop urgently with their teams and the Université Paris-Est Créteil (UPEC), online training courses for hospital staff dedicated to the management of patients with severe respiratory impairment related to SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19).

In the current epidemiological context and in view of the large influx of patients with severe respiratory impairment related to CoV-2 SARS (COVID-19), there is a need for accelerated training tools for the management of respiratory failure in these patients in order to make a maximum number of healthcare professionals operational.

In this context, an online training course has been created, consisting of training courses dedicated to the management of patients with severe respiratory impairment related to SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19).

Currently, five training courses are offered:

‘B.A-BA of ventilation’
‘COVID-19 in resuscitation’
‘COVID-19 patients: hygiene recommendations’
‘Training Medical Students’
‘COVID-19 and pregnancy’

The pedagogical content of this training will evolve according to the proposals of the expert/recommendation centres and may be subject to modifications/updates.

More than 20,000 healthcare professionals have already signed up to these courses.

If you know healthcare professionals around you, do not hesitate to share these online training courses rapidly and massively. It is available on computer and mobile, open to all of obviously free of charge.

We hope these modules will be helpful to all staff facing the pandemic: thank you for your work in these unprecedented times.

http://www.formationcovid19.fr

To share massively!

Some feedback we have received on the platform:

Theory is explained and questioned. Then knowledge is assessed by questions corrected in real time. A scenario is proposed allowing a visualization of the care and a better projection of the learner in the care situation. Bravo and thank you!

Odile

Pedagogical, ergonomic, clearly one of the best strategies to transmit good practices.

Stuart

Courses are very well done, very clear and this is a great tool to learn, to reskill – especially in present circumstances where I ended up conducting ‘COVID rescuscitation’ after 21 years of surgery.

Marc

Everybody: stay at home, work remotely, we will help you!

How to be efficient remotely? Facing the global Covid-19 outbreak, most companies are making their employees work remotely. Unprecedented times, unprecedented measures. But organizations and employees are not at the same level when it comes to working remotely.

This is why we unveiled on all our learning platforms a special playlist, “Remote Working”, including all you will need to be efficient at work remotely and to be agile!

Tools to work remotely like a boss

Communicate at all times with instant messaging or videoconferences.

Slack is an instant messaging platform (text, call and video) which regroup people by channels and gather all the information you need to work. Slack can interface itself with numerous services and applications already implemented, such as Salesforce, Google Drive…
Microsoft Teams is a similar platform where you can chat with your coworkers, invite them to meetings, call them or collaborate with them in a dedicated online place, wherever you are.
For videoconferencing, let’s not forget Skype, Zoom and others (Google Hangouts Meet, appear.in, join.me)… Participating in meetings in video, remotely, has never been this easy!

Virtual collaboration for work in real life!

With tools such as Dropbox, Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive, you can upload all your files online and allow instant consultation and/or modification, in real time, to several coworkers on documents such as word documents, spreadsheets or slides.

Manage your projets remotely and plan your meetings smartly.

One of the most famous tools, Trello, will allow you to organize your projects and to prioritize tasks in an agile, fun and enriching way thanks to its boards, lists and carts.
For agendas, you can use your virtual calendars such as Google Calendar. You can also associate this tool to Virtual Assistants such as Clockwise or Julie Desk which will help you plan in a seamless manner: by doing this, you will avoid confusing back and forth discussions to set up times for a meeting.

Good tools make a great worker, yes, but “men are social beings” (Aristotle).

Remote working implies using these tools efficiently for communication to be as seamless and efficient as possible. The main objective is to remain performant but also to limit the risks of bad comprehension, loneliness and induced stress. The way of managing your teams and handling your emotions are paramount, and these are skills for which anyone can learn, upskill and improve.

The online learning playlist “Remote Working” includes courses on new agile management methods and on stress and emotions management. Every details need to be taken into account, even simple 5 minute breathing exercises to relax.

Our team of instructional designers has aggregated for our learners the most adapted courses to face the unprecedented situation we are currently living. This aims at improving everyone’s efficiency in a very concrete way. Whether it is about personal organization, project management or the remote management of a team, discover in this new playlist:

methods to structure one’s workload and manage allocated time and priorities,
online tools to collaborate and communicate as a team,
new agile work techniques,
but also – and this is important – simple methods to stay zen and relax, to manage one’s emotions and others’.

Try this new playlist out!

6 hours of learning content, whether you do it as complete courses – between 30 and 45 minutes – or in short microlearning learning nuggets.

Stay safe, take care of yourself and others, and happy remote working!

If you want to go further, discover these management advises on HBR.

From ‘have to learn’ to ‘want to learn’ at PwC France

Murielle Navarre, Head of Talent & Development, at PwC France, explains in this article published in The People Space how a new training resource gives employees more control and enjoyment as they upskill.

To read it in its original form, it’s here!

As one of the major branches of the global PwC network, PwC France needs to be fluent in the evolving language of 21st century business. Whether B2B clients want to talk about digital transformation, or advances in data analytics, our teams need to be well versed in the latest terminology and ahead of upcoming trends.

That’s true for everyone in the company, not just its front line business and technology consultants. With around 5,000 people working for PwC France, that’s a lot of people to keep up to speed.

An added challenge for us: our employees spend a lot of time out in the field, on-site, on-project, in meetings or at industry networking events, so the opportunities for formal classroom-based training are limited. We also firmly believe PwC has a responsibility to practise what it preaches – which, in the context of learning and development, means keeping content, channels and formats modern and relevant so people engage with and get the most from them.

PwC has a responsibility to practise what it preaches – which, in the context of learning and development, means keeping content, channels and formats modern and relevant so people engage with and get the most from them

All-you-can-eat learning

All these factors led us to rethink the way we approach employee learning and development. Specifically, we wanted to get away from old-fashioned, top-down approach of mandatory training imposed from above. Therefore, the workplace learning we wanted to offer had to be in the form of e-learning that was smart, consumer-like and properly integrated into the flow of everyday work, so as to encourage learners to develop all their skills to their full potential and to future-proof their careers.

So clearly, we needed to move away from making training something formal and mandatory, and make it more inviting and fun. It was important to make the experience more engaging and accessible, so people would become more active in their own development, always choosing the content they want to consume to upskill themselves.

At a global level, we have launched a worldwide initiative to raise people’s digital knowledge, so that anyone in the company can talk authoritatively about everything from blockchain to machine learning. So rather than create a one-size-fits-all L&D programme we launched a Digital Fitness application, specifically designed to identify gaps in people’s knowledge which they could address at their own pace, via a menu of different resources.

Feeling that some of the proposed content was not going to engage (as it relied on team members reading PDF-based documents, for example), we decided to create a more modern, self-guided L&D experience for our employees, with richer content and learning pathways adapted to individual needs.

In essence, rather than push people through something they ‘had’ to do, we wanted to offer them something they would enjoy, which they would benefit from personally, and which was easy and convenient for them to engage with.

Evidence-based success

PwC France found its ideal partner in education technology supplier, Coorpacademy. What we liked particularly about Coorpacademy’s approach is that it’s based on real evidence about the way people learn most effectively. Plus, it allows for people learning in different ways. This really stood out for us, along with some impressive success statistics.

As stated, our people are already extremely busy, so we wanted to make the content very compelling as well as easy to digest in small chunks as and when they have time. That could be between meetings, or while travelling. Post-implementation, the good news is that all these targets are, one-by-one, all being achieved. PwC learners particularly appreciate the fact that they are asked questions before any teaching takes place, meaning they only ever get offered the lessons they need. People also feel very proud when they’re able to answer the different questions, which spurs them on.

Global search: customised L&D content on demand

The whole PwC network is looking to transform training – to make it more of a ‘Netflix’-type experience, where users can create and share a ‘playlist’, like or dislike content, and so on. We’ll embed the platform within this environment, aligning competencies with keywords so when people search they can find our content very easily.

Ultimately, all of this work is also being seen by the PwC France L&D team as the foundation of a move towards adaptive learning, in which content and teaching frameworks are customised to the individual.

That’s because we want to provide more adaptive learning based on people’s current level of knowledge. The aim is to give our employees a greater sense of responsibility and control over their own learning and development. And so far, we seem to be striking the right chord – people like the way they can understand and follow something whether they have 5 minutes to spare or 20, and can skip straight to the content that will help them, for example.

We know it’s vital that we continuously update people’s skills given the pace of change today, and the Coorpacademy learning platform helps us do that, as it’s the perfect delivery vehicle for providing engaging, tailored and easily accessible high-quality content which people can consume quickly and enjoyably, whenever and wherever they can or need to.

Murielle Navarre is Head of Talent & Development at PwC France

Read the article in The People Space!

Coorpacademy, in 1 minute

Facing the uncertainties of the future, only one thing is certain: the need to train and to learn continuously. And with yesterday’s legacy tools it’s simply impossible to do so.

The solution? A digital learning tool suiting our everyday professional lives. With its learner-centric platform and its +1,500 course catalog, Coorpacademy is the solution to train on soft skills, the skills which will allow learners to learn tomorrow’s skills.

For a better impact, the Coorpacademy platform is constantly adapting to the way people learn thanks to its behavioral analytics and Machine Learning algorithms.

In addition to the included course catalog, Coorpacademy also allows companies to create their own tailored courses and to push them live in a few clicks on their personalized branded platforms.

What makes Coorpacademy’s learning experience different from others? A unique pedagogical method with the flipped pedagogy: it allows learners to start with the questions before accessing the course material if he/she already knows the topic.

The Battle mode and the ranking allow the learners to challenge their peers on topics.

The platform’s flexibility allows learners to start a course at the office and to complete it in the subway, and the certifications are there to validate learners’ skills.

This is why more than 100 companies chose Coorpacademy and that 800,000 learners in the world train daily on Coorpacademy with an engagement rate up to 90%. Make your company a learning organization with Coorpacademy!

Now you know.

Why it is paramount to assess your skills and to continuously learn

“Education must be universal, that is, extended to all citizens. […] It must, in its various degrees, embrace the entire system of human knowledge, and ensure that men, at all ages, can keep their knowledge and acquire new knowledge.

By thus continuing education throughout life, we will prevent the knowledge acquired in schools from being erased too quickly from memory, we will maintain in our minds a useful activity; the people will be taught new laws, […] economic methods which it is important not to ignore. We can finally show people the art of learning for and by themselves […]. These means of learning, which in a wider education one acquires by habit alone, must be directly taught in an instruction limited to a shorter time, and to a small number of lessons.”

“L’instruction doit être universelle, c’est-à-dire s’étendre à tous les citoyens. […] Elle doit, dans ses divers degrés, embrasser le système tout entier des connaissances humaines, et assurer aux hommes, dans tous les âges de la vie, la facilité de conserver leurs connaissances et d’en acquérir de nouvelles.

These sentences, which advocate lifelong learning, the need to always train, test yourself and learn new things, were neither spoken by the visionary CEO of an innovative digital learning company, nor by an enlightened philosopher theorizing the new management methods of the 21st century. They are the work of Nicolas de Condorcet, a French mathematician, philosopher, writer and politician. This happened in April 1792, in a report presented to the Legislative Assembly.

More than 200 years later, things have changed, but lifelong learning has grown even more. Rooted in this 4th industrial revolution, which is led by speed, lifelong learning seems to be the only way to tackle the skills revolution as seamlessly as possible. In a report published in 2020, the World Economic Forum even says it’s an “emergency”.

“The world is facing a reskilling emergency.

More than 1 billion jobs, almost one-third of all jobs worldwide, are likely to be transformed by technology in the next decade, according to OECD estimates. By just 2022, the World Economic Forum estimates 133 million new jobs in major economies will be created to meet the demands of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

How can we ensure people around the world are not left behind? We must come together – governments, businesses and society – to provide education, skills and jobs for at least 1 billion people by 2030.

And, as a sign of the transformations to come and the need to continually challenge one’s skills to face the uncertainties of the future, Alvin Toffler, American writer, sociologist and futurologist, told us that: “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

This picture of lifelong learning that began to take shape over 200 years ago is now more tangible than ever. Continuous learning, where everyone is in control of their employability and their actions, in order to face the uncertainties of the future, becomes necessary. And above all, learning does not stop at school, but must continue during our professional lives.

There’s an emergency – but we lack time

A Josh Bersin study for Deloitte had described today’s corporate learner. Overwhelmed by his workload: 2/3 of respondents complaining that they did not have time to do their work. Impatient too, spending no more than 4 minutes on a video, with an attention span on a website between 5 and 10 seconds. Finally, today’s learners are distracted, unlocking their smartphones up to 9 times an hour or connecting online an average of 27 times a day. The study also shows that employees are likely to be interrupted by external sources, whether they are virtual, real interactions or their own interruptions, when they start devoting themselves fully to a task. Sometimes every 5 minutes. A short period of time.

Do we really have time in our professional daily lives to engage in long training sessions, where knowledge is transmitted from top to bottom, between the trainer, the one who knows, who transmits, and the learner, the one who records the knowledge?

To find this time, digital training, through its principles of massification, ubiquity, speed of diffusion, can help. Another advantage: digital training puts the learner in an active learning position. Learners become the ones who decide to learn, who decide of their own training pathways, no longer confined to a passive way of learning.

It seems to be getting harder to argue with every day: learning how to learn, unlearn and relearn – and above all to do it by yourself, through digital training for example – has become necessary to face the uncertainties of tomorrow. But how, then, do we get started?

Test yourself!

Why not by starting to evaluate your level on the skills identified by the World Economic Forum as crucial for the next decade?

To see what is your level, what is to be improved, what there is to explore. To build your own individualized learning path. And finally, to focus your efforts on complementary and essential skills that will make you avoid the trap of the “illiteracy of the 21st century”, according to Alvin Toffler.

Our instructional designers team have has put together a 40 question test on the Coorpacademy platform, assessing your level on 20 essential skills divided into 4 families: Digital; Leadership & Management; Creativity & Agility; Communication.

In 12 minutes, you will assess your level on those skills, including digital risks awareness, active listening, public speaking, creativity, innovation, agility, time management or even conflict management. And the list goes on.

By the way, we have noticed that all learners who have taken at least one assessment become more studious. The duration of their learning sessions is 36 minutes against 20 minutes on average, which represent 80% more time!

So, before getting started, evaluate your level!

At the end of the test, you will get qualitative feedback on what you have mastered and what remains to be improved. But you’ll also be certain that you will be defining your own individualized self-training pathway that will best prepare you for the uncertainties of the decade to come!

This is not a MacGuffin… Or is it?

What is there in common with movies such as Pulp Fiction, The 39 Steps or Casablanca? All three of them are perfect examples of scenarios built on the use of a MacGuffin. A new sandwich from the one famous fast food brand? A Scottish peated single malt whisky producer? None of that. Besides, the name of MacGuffin means… nothing. But its importance in movies and narrative arts is paramount. Are you now desperate to know what is a MacGuffin? Fortunate coincidence: one of the MacGuffin function is to grab the viewers’ attention. Without further ado, let’s dive in…

“It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men on a train. One man says, ‘What’s that package up there in the baggage rack?’ And the other answers, ‘Oh, that’s a MacGuffin’. The first one asks, ‘What’s a MacGuffin?’ ‘Well,’ the other man says, ‘it’s an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.’ The first man says, ‘But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands,’ and the other one answers, ‘Well then, that’s no MacGuffin!’ So you see that a MacGuffin is actually nothing at all.”

Alfred Hitchcock

The MacGuffin is a very simple storyline concept, defined by Alfred Hitchcock in a 1939 lecture at Columbia University in New York City: it’s an object – tangible or intangible – which pretexts the development of a storyline, of a story. Coveted by one or numerous main characters, the MacGuffin doesn’t have a lot of interest for the viewer but to spark curiosity. The characters’ quest and their adventures only will matter. This is how Hitchcock sees the MacGuffin: as the cornerstone of several thrillers, spy or adventure movies. The MacGuffin, either a diamond, a secret formula, a statuette or a military secret, must be forgotten once the stake is set up. Its nature can in some cases reinforce the mystery around the story, but that’s it.

Since Hitchcock theorized the MacGuffin, its definition has evolved due to directors’, authors and critics largesses, so that today, any object – or even character – that’s used to launch a story can be called a MacGuffin. According to theories, Indiana Jones movies artefacts, the Rosebud word in Citizen Kane or even the colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now would be MacGuffins. These objects, concepts or characters, are indeed used as launch pads for the story to start but they’re clearly distinguished from Hitchcock’s original concept. Because they’re paramount for the story and its solving. Nothing is very different in the end from the concept of quest, essential for the story until the very last minutes of the movie.

The interest of the MacGuffin lies into its pretext function: paramount in its form, but not that important in its substance. This narrative process reveals itself to be very useful when we build here at Coorpacademy “Be the hero of your own learning adventure” courses (pedagogical and narrative modules in which the story, like in the “Choose your own adventure” books, branches out in several pathways). This pedagogical process allows the learners to put themselves in the shoes of characters by making choices leading them to different pathways – ideal to place users in concrete situations and test their abilities to act.

Like in movies, “Be the hero of your own learning adventure” courses don’t all have an urgent need for a MacGuffin. Some stories work without any screenplay artifice: countering a cyberattack, executing first aid techniques, etc. However, some other stories necessitate a narrative nudge to exist. In other words, the MacGuffin is used as a background to make the story more lively, immersive and ludic.

At Coorpacademy, we used this narrative tool to create a course on Design Thinking in co-edition with Fabernovel Insitute. The goal was for the learners to test their abilities in reproducing Design Thinking techniques. Previously, learners did a classic course on Design Thinking, learning the methodology – in this second course, they could apply them in concrete examples. In order to do so, we needed a pretext, un product or a service to rethink, for the learner to use Design Thinking methods in the shoes of a product manufacturer. We chose the umbrella – even if very useful as it is, this product can be improved. Here was a perfect MacGuffin: pretext to our story, interchangeable (Design Thinking methods stay the same whatever the frame is) and very forgettable as soon as we move forward into the learning twists and adventures.

As soon as we start working on conceiving a new “Be the hero of your own learning adventure” courses, we start thinking about a MacGuffin. For each new project, we collect empirical evidence helping us to sharpen the concept and make it more learning-friendly. We now know that a MacGuffin must incorporate 5 elements: tangible, universal, discrete and limited to a pretext role, non-technical and used daily. Choosing an object known of all, easy to apprehend, allows us to tackle any kind of topics, simple or complex, by rooting them in reality.

What about you? If you had one story to tell, a “Course in which you’re the hero” to create, what would be your MacGuffin?

Laurence is Learning Engagement Manager at Coorpacademy. She joined Coorpacademy more than 5 years ago and is now in charge of pedagogical innovation in the formats Coorpacademy proposes. What she likes the most in her job is to use creativity to innovate and to look for the most entertaining and engaging learning formats. For 2020, Coorpacademy is looking to create new forms of learning where entertainment is intertwined with pedagogy. That being said, we hope you liked the presentation of those “Be the hero of your own learning adventure” courses.

Frédérick Bénichou, co-founder of Coorpacademy, interviewed by Alexia Borg and Fanny Berthon at Learning Technologies Paris 2020

Frédérick Bénichou, co-founder of Coorpacademy, was interviewed by Alexia Borg, CEO of DLM News, and by Fanny Berthon, journalist at BFM Business, at Learning Technologies Paris 2020.

Discover his interview (in French, the transcript in English can be found just below the video) on companies’ transformations – plural transformations that can be digital, organizational, structural, cultural.

Alexia Borg (DLM News): We’re live at Learning Technologies Paris 2020, and I’m with Frédérick Bénichou, co-founder of Coorpacademy. We’re going to talk about transformations. Hello Frédérick!

Frédérick Bénichou (Coorpacademy): Hello Alexia, hello Fanny !

Alexia Borg (DLM News): 4 years ago, you were amongst the first to speak about digital transformation and this is how Coorpacademy got recognized and well-known. What is your situation now?

Frédérick Bénichou (Coorpacademy): Indeed, when we created the company, we we all coming from the digital world – my two business partners Arnauld Mitre and Jean-Marc Tassetto came from Google, and I was what you could call a serial web entrepreneur- and we created the first corporate digital learning platform. We investigated our market’s needs, which allowed us to develop our skill in content creation and our skill in technology. We chose to broadcast digital transformation content in an innovative, original manner, with flipped pedagogy, gaming, etc. which was pretty new back in the days.

We’ve created the first corporate digital learning platform for the digital transformation of companies. And while we were doing this, or improving it, we realized that companies’ digital transformation was ongoing, and well advanced in some cases. Which meant that very basic kind of content, the acculturation type of content, like ‘How does Google make money?‘ or ‘When did the first iPhone come out?‘ – these topics of general knowledge – were becoming mastered and understood by corporations’ employees. Which also meant that these topics were now less important than more precise topics, such as data evangelization or cybersecurity risks. Companies were becoming more and more alert on these topics. Digital transformation was becoming more ‘expert’. Nowadays, digital transformation contents are looking towards improving the expertise of employees, and not simple acculturation contents anymore.

Fanny Berthon (BFM Business): So we’re not looking at pure digital transformation only, we’re looking at more advanced training programs?

Frédérick Bénichou (Coorpacademy): Exactly!

Fanny Berthon (BFM Business): Towards management? Towards culture?

Frédérick Bénichou (Coorpacademy): Indeed, since then, we’ve broaden our course catalog. Our mission today is to upskill the whole workforces of large corporations on all transformations that are at stake for companies. We all live in a world that is changing faster than ever, with a lot of speed, a lot of turbulences, and coworkers now need to adapt and to open their chakras on important matters.

Fanny Berthon (BFM Business): What are the companies asking for in priority? We talk a lot about soft skills in the upskilling process. Is this something you’re working on too?

Frédérick Bénichou (Coorpacademy) : I think that in the end, the word ‘soft skills’ is a generic word, that can incorporate multiple topics. We have a catalog of 1,200 courses teaching soft skills. However, we categorize and editorialize them under the theme of companies’ transformations. Nowadays, digital is a soft skill. New management techniques, the lean management, agile methods, stress management, inclusion are soft skills. And for the company, it is becoming a true managerial transformation. Companies’ organization are changing. We observe cultural transformations too: working with international employees for example is becoming a major topic as we’re more and more in contact with the international business world. How do we work with Chinese people, with Romanians, with Indians? More than 40% of our platforms’ users out of our 800,000 learners are located outside Europe. Everyday, we see behavioral differences in companies, in the way people learn or interact with each other. To tackle cultural transformations, we have now in our catalog courses and content – co-edited with our partners – on how to write a good e-mail in English, for example, or on how to welcome and listen to an international coworker. These are soft skills too, but we call this the cultural transformation of companies.

Alexia Borg (DLM News): Very interesting! Last year at the very same tradeshow, we spoke about Learning Experience Platforms. One year later, is it still relevant for you?

Frédérick Bénichou (Coorpacademy): Actually, yes, we’re still there, it’s still an experience to play Coorpacademy, we do like to use to word ‘play’. It’s still an joyful experience to play Coorpacademy, as we have more than 80% learners who complete the modules they’ve started…

Alexia Borg (DLM News): This is huge!

Frédérick Bénichou (Coorpacademy): We also have a lot of original content, co-edited and co-created with more than 50 partners, like IBM, Fabernovel, Forbes, Challenges – to name a few. The Learning Experience Platform part, if I may say, is to broadcast this content elegantly, efficiently, with a qualitative experience that makes you, me, anyone want to do more of it. We like to say that our content is backed by great user experiences, that is backed by great data which allow AI-powered or machine learning recommendations… But it has to come to one end: the learning, and the learner. We don’t want to create technology just for the sake of it. It has to be fueling the learning experience, the content. We don’t want to do new features just to do new features. In the past, we’ve ‘killed’ features which were not used, that we thought were good ideas internally – in some cases, data analysis told us they were not such great ideas for the learner. And in the end, all our work comes to the same end: the learner.

Fanny Berthon (BFM Business): So, yes to digitalization, yes to technologies, but not at the expense of the learner?

Frédérick Bénichou (Coorpacademy) : We keep the user, the learner, at the center of all our thinking processes. The KPIs we observe the most are actually the engagement rate, the return rate, the Net Promoter Score… Those KPIs enlightening us on how people use the platform and especially on how people like it!

Alexia Borg (DLM News): Thanks a lot to making us go through those new transformations, Frédérick!

Frédérick Bénichou (Coorpacademy): Thank you!

Customer Success Manager at Coorpacademy: an octopus at the heart of business!

By Yaël Dahan, Customer Success Manager at Coorpacademy for 3 years.

Because the job of CSM – Customer Success Manager – has the wind in its sails, and because it is particularly strategic here at Coorpacademy, I wanted to share which missions enliven us on a daily basis. It will allow the curious to better understand the job, and the ones who want to start a career in this extremely employable job to have a better view on what they would do.

It’s a reality: the CSM job is really sought-after in startups and also sometimes large corporations. Actually, any company with a large account in B2B [1] business model will need CSMs to take care and pamper the big clients.

A CSM, to do what?

In ‘Customer Success Manager’, there is Customer.

The Customer Success Manager manages a reduced portfolio of accounts with a ‘qualitative’ approach – on the contrary, Customer Support manages the masses with a ‘quantitative’ approach (users, learners in the case of Coorpacademy). In this particular case, clients are CAC40 companies and interlocutors are high-levels managers (C-level, like CHRO or CDO). The CSM’s goal in to ensure the clients are satisfied and to grow the revenue within the account portfolio.

To achieve this sales-oriented target, the CSM has a transverse job including different missions and a wide set of assignments. In a tech company like Coorpacademy, the stake is that the implementation and the use of the product are in line with the needs expressed by customers.

How does the CSM build a success story with the client?

In ‘Customer Success Manager’, there is Success.

The biggest criteria of success is to position yourself as a client partner on a project with a strong strategic dimension. The implemented project must be completely integrated in a plan which brings together the maximum of involved parties and have a lot of visibility within the company. Every initiative putting the project in the spotlight bode well, for example:

Members of the top management speak in video interviews,
An ambassador program is implemented in order to multiply the impact of any communication
The project promotes the best learners or is part of an incentive plan…

And any other idea which creates a ‘Wow’ effet!

On the contrary, it’s not hard to notice it when the project is not considered as strategic for the company. I’ve seen newsletters listing, without any agencement or consideration – all HR initiatives conducted internally, where training platforms appeared like the umpteenth project drowning in a plethora of other projects, like ‘Never eat alone’ or the ‘Solidarity Rounding’. It’s not easy in that case to get noticed in the communication plan.

Once you became the partner of the client in a strategic project, the key to success is in the good management of the project (in Customer Success Manager, there is Manager). It starts with defining clear objectives and KPIs of success. Without objectives, how would you know if the target is reached or no? It may sounds obvious, but some projects start sometimes without any clear and defined targets. The whole thing becomes blurry, and it’s hard in that case to set up an action plan. It’s then the role of the CSM to force the discussion and make the client think of the ‘Why?’ Why this project? What is its goal?’ ‘Which need does it fulfill?’ With answers to these questions, the CSM will then have the opportunity to bring an action plan aligned with the goal of the project!

Through the project life, the CSM stays data-oriented to demonstrate the good use of the product and the alignment with the initial target. There’s no secret: a tool – if well used and not left in limbo – proves its value. Customers also like to do benchmarks: they like to see what their peers are doing in other companies and see which companies are doing better than them. If the CSM is good at what he does, he can find ‘good things’ and ‘less good things’ regarding the competition, to value the customer but also identify rooms for improvement (‘You’re very good here, but X is better than you there, they’ve implemented this with us, should we try to do something similar?’)

Furthermore, a CSM must be solution-oriented: never say ‘it’s not possible‘ but: ‘if I understand well, here’s your need, and I suggest we do this…’ You must be creative to always find solutions without creating as many tools as there are clients to maintain your business scalability. When the client asks features that are not in the internal roadmap, you must be firm. The CSM as a pedagogue can unveil the best arguments: what usually works is to inspire the client with a long term vision, which takes the project in the long time – strategic and visionary – and doesn’t need right now the very specific customization the client wants.

Finally, being one of the interfaces between the company’s internal and external world, the CSM has a pivot role which brings him to always work with the other departments in the startup. I’ve read one time the CSM was compared to an ‘octopus’ which always interacts with all the different teams. It’s an analogy that seems very appropriated to me!

Why is the CSM an internal octopus?

First of all, because the CSM has a lot of insights to bring to the Product Team.

Because the CSM has a great comprehension of his clients’ stakes through daily interactions and analytical studies, the CSM has a pretty good knowledge of how the product is perceived by the client. The CSM is the one often reporting to the Product Team by doing a state of play on new expected features, frustrations or evolution needs. The stake for the CSM is to take a step back on what the client needs by evaluating the global value creation, hence questions like: ‘Are there other clients having the same feedback on the use of features? Would the evolution be relevant for other customers?’

Because the CSM needs the Marketing Team to collaborate on thought leadership missions.

The marketing is a key allied of sales teams and CSMs and it is for me a very strategical topic. It is thanks to an active collaboration with the marketing that the CSM can start the process of becoming the client partner. A lot of actions are possible: put the client’s story in the spotlight through interviews, business cases, integrate the customer to a Premium Club through regular inspiring and qualitative gatherings, or participate to the clients’ own events (Digital Days, seminars, conferences, etc.) Coorpacademy positions itself as a thought leader evolving in a rich ecosystem, with continuous sharing of relevant insights on the corporate digital learning market.

Once we’ve said all this, how can we describe the day of a CSM?

I don’t know if I can speak of ‘typical day’ regarding the variety of assignments. But if I try to sum up the time spent usually (there had to be numbers in this article) on a regular day, I’d say the CSM spends:

35 of the time for customer relationship (follow-up meetings, steering committees, understanding the needs, identifying upsell opportunities, etc.)
35% of the time for project management (software management, highlighting training programs and courses)
20% of the time being the octopus, interfacing with other departments internally
10% of the time for administrative work (CRM management, billing, etc.) – Not what we like the most, but it allows us to do good forecasts, so pretty useful 😉

What about the difficulties?

Monday morning, 8:10 AM, the phone rings, it’s your client, panicking: “There are errors 500 in production and we’re supposed to launch the new program this morning!”

The first difficulty for a CSM lies in the very nature of tech startups (bugs happen!) and particularly for SAAS (Subscription As A Service) products in which product evolutions and new features happen for each clients the same way. I’ve had to face exasperation from some clients (“I don’t want this course / I don’t want this new feature”). The key here is to react: I’m taking care of your issue as an urgent matter and see what can be done (50% of the issue is tackled when it’s prioritized). Then, a good organization with the Tech Team is essential.

The second difficulty is that there’s a real need to prioritize. We don’t get bored as a CSM! So we need to prioritize in terms of what brings rooms for opportunities and development. The CSM has something to say about the investment of his time regarding the customer level in the Customer Journey. For example, POCs (Proofs of Concept) or launch management is paramount and strategic: the CSM has to be very involved at the beginning because it is a critical phase on the long term. And this is very interesting too: launching new projects is a very exciting phase!

Finally – and it’s no groundbreaking news – we need to handle sometimes unhappy or demanding clients. The CSM learns how to manage complex situations, learns how to say no in a constructive manner: the CSM will suggests solutions or will explain the vision of the startup to send messages. It’s not easy everyday, but not the hardest, as there are on the other side very interesting discussions everyday – where everything goes well. And this is also a good thing: clients’ demands are a great strength to make the startup better, because they require the startup to take the good calls regarding the market and its evolution.

A few words to conclude:

The job of CSM is strategic, employable, eclectic with numerous and various assignments and a strategic positioning. I think that a good product with a high quality accompaniment of the customer is the major asset for a startup on its way to success, and represent the condition for a premium service. The job actually got a lot more value in the past years, and evolved a lot since I joined Coorpacademy at the beginning of 2017. At that time, the CSM was mostly taking care of very operational missions (tool configuration for example, or support and creation of custom courses). Progressively and thanks to the creation of new jobs supporting the CSM, it became more of a Key Account Manager according to the current job definition on the work market.

Customer Success Manager: an octopus at the heart of business

I recommend this job to everyone who want to have a strong customer focus and a transverse job with high responsibilities. I’ve seen very beautiful projects, some ‘for the greater good’ with an impact on society; I’ve seen users that were fans of the product, thrilling and captivating talks, and the evolution of a job that keeps showing its value!

[1]Business to Business

Airbnb, spearheading the employee experience

This is an extract from the course The employee experience, co-edited with Clustree and available only on the Coorpacademy Learning Experience Platform.

The employee experience: everyone’s talking about it, but what does it mean? This new concept may appear quite complex, but it can also be seen in a very practical light: EX (the employee experience) covers every single interaction that an employee has with their work place throughout their career. In this course, you’ll discover more about EX and find out that it’s not just a passing fad. You’ll see that it’s a new and essential strategic approach that any business can adopt to attract and retain talent.

Airbnb, leading the way in quality employee experiences

One company that sets a good example when it comes to employee experience is Airbnb. And this is why!

Airbnb, spearheading the employee experience

When Mark Levy joined Airbnb as the Global Head of Employee Experience in 2013, the HR function was split into several different groups. The idea emerged to bring all these different groups together and create one team. However, Mark suggested going one step further. “If Airbnb had a Customer Experience Group, why not create an Employee Experience Group?” he said. In 2015, the Employee Experience team was created, effectively replacing HR.

An employee experience that’s in line with business values

Airbnb has constructed its entire business model around HR and the idea of feeling at home anywhere. Like Internet users, Airbnb’s 3000 employees function as a community. Each member of staff is considered to be both a customer and host. The idea is for the business to offer employees the same level of ergonomics and quality that it offers to its customers. The business hopes that in turn employees will listen more, and be more attentive to others. Airbnb core values are centered around benevolence, transparency, optimism and those values are also reflected in the employee experience.

The day-to-day employee experience

Airbnb has created a positive employee experience across all areas of their employees’ daily lives, especially at work. Goodbye to the classic open plan office. Employees were involved in the design of the office, which looks more like a home than a business. Airbnb also offers its employees flexible working arrangements and staff is divided into small teams, which flexibility and commercial agility are prime importance. The business makes sure staff has access to the latest, most ergonomic software.

Continuous training is central to the employee experience

Airbnb believes employees are there to grow. So for 3 months, employees can try out a new job in a relevant department, in a completely different Airbnb office anywhere in the world. Airbnb also regularly asks influencers to share their experiences with employees. Such influencers include Allison Johnson, former Vice-President of Marketing Communications at Apple, and Ambassadeur Henry A. Crumpton, a former member of the CIA.

A positive experience!

In 2016, a year after establishing their employee experience team, Airbnb took 1st place on Glassdoor’s ‘Best place to work’ list. And in 2017 it came 11th on LinkedIn’s list of ‘Top companies: Where the world wants to work now’.

Author: Rédaction Blog