FUTUREVIEWS, April 2009

We believe that for companies that want to maintain growth with restricted budgets, “accelerated learning” is not only possible, it is essential.

Accelerated Learning is a term people use (or misuse) quite a bit. It is often employed to describe the kinds of learning that require basic memory skills, repetition, and quick recall, like reading speed, languages, or basic math. While these can be useful for certain basic tasks, front line expertise and high stakes decision making skills require a more powerful form of accelerated learning.

The key to accelerated learning in the workplace is not simply how long it takes to train workers. Rather, it is a measure of:

How well the workforce is able to coordinate perspectives among multiple parties to identify and focus on what needs to be done. This involves expertly coordinated communication channel and access to the right expertise for the right situation up and down the corporate ladder
How rapidly the workforce is able to adjust their practices when necessary to focus on the right problems to resolve the true needs of company. Even with open communication channels and coordination between various divisions, the right problem you are solving one day is not the right problem to be focused on the next. Remaining flexible in the outcomes and the way to get there is key.
The company’s ability to apply key insights to critical situations from within the organization, not just from the top. Much of the knowledge you will need to tackle new and unknown situations is already in your organization. You must find a way to harness what is there, change the old habits that are no longer contributing to your success, and be ready to re-apply what you know how to do best to get the right job done the right way.
However, achieving this is not as simple a refocusing vision or directives from the top. It involves tapping into the entrenched work patterns that, for one reason or another, are no longer contributing to the growth of the company. From our perspective, this kind of knowledge doesn’t come from lectures, manuals, or seminars. This kind of accelerated learning is only possible in immersive, hands-on rehearsal. Based on experience designing these kinds of rehearsal environments for a number of years, we find that tapping into the kind of tacit knowledge and expertise in your organization, and shifting that expertise to new goals requires high fidelity, immersive environments that can translate back to real world applications. It also requires accountability, not just to remember a set of rules, but rather, accountability to hard, mission critical, non-negotiable outcomes.

Below is an example of accelerated learning from an OpSim™ we ran a few years ago.

Medical Device

Companies that make medical devices, like stents and balloons for aneurisms, have a different set marketing challenges than, say, your typical electronics manufacturer. For one thing, time is extremely crucial. As soon as you start making an improved or innovative device, you know that another company is right behind you. In addition, you can’t always count on device innovations alone to make the company profitable. You must look to the market itself in order to choose what to work on.

When WTRI was called on to work with a mid-sized medical device firm in California, we found that this was precisely their problem: focusing too much on the next big innovation, rather than looking to markets for what was most needed. In addition, the R&D people and the marketing people lacked efficient communication channels and often failed to coordinate on key steps in the process. Adding to that, the R&D folks often did not consider the factors involved in manufacturing and scaling their products, sometimes choosing materials that were hard to obtain or hard to work with on a grand scale.

This particular firm was famous for an innovation for treating giant aneurisms and AVMs. While they were known for this innovation, the types of conditions their innovation was appropriate for represent a very small percentage of total treatable aneurisms. In other words, their technology was not going to keep them afloat for long, and their R&D-marketing communication problem wasn’t helping. WTRI designed an OpSim™ to specifically address these issues: How can the firm leverage their existing expertise in new technologies to extend profitability to new areas? And, how can the firm coordinate the needs of R&D and marketing to provide more effective devices for treating patients?

During the OpSim™, they were able to shift their thinking around marketing. Their key technology could be modified to treat other neurovascular conditions. They saw that if they expanded to making devices for smaller aneurisms, as well as adding coils as a product, they could service a larger market. Rather than providing devices for one problem at a time, they could become a total solution provider. They found a way to leverage their position as a leader in giant aneurism and AVM technology to provide a comprehensive solution. This way, their profitability wouldn’t depend on such a small market. When they were looking at what to work on next, instead of going to a scientific conference and asking “what’s the latest?” they began asking, “what do doctor’s need for their patients? What does the total toolkit look like?”

However, this shift exposed a deeper organizational issue. In the past, marketing, manufacturing and R&D did not coordinate with one another when developing new products. R&D would spend $10 million designing something using a plastic that couldn’t be mass manufactured, for example, before realizing they were headed to a dead end. On another occasion, R&D solved an ease-of-use problem in one of the devices without notifying the sales team. The sales team was out there negotiating around a technical difficulty that had already been solved. All of these are problems that would have worked themselves out in a year or two. But this firm didn’t have a year. At their current burn rate, they had about five months of cash left. Shifting their perspective in a shorter timeframe, focusing on the right opportunities, and applying their knowledge in the right way was crucial to saving the firm. A year later, they were not only still in business, but turning a profit for the first time in 9 years, and looking at a major acquisition.

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