What I Learned From Creating JLT University

For the record, I wasn't from the HR department when I created JLT University. If the role reported to HR, I would never have been considered for the job. Not qualified!

Yet I had enough to get started.

I was creating learning management systems for government agencies in my first job. My team created animated digital learning content about some of the strangest topics, such as family planning and preparing for a "matchmaking" session. Back in 2003, anything interactive and animated was pretty cool. I've designed training and did it enough to be recognised as a people lover.

My sister was a high school teacher. University and high school ... close enough. Let's get a crash course from somebody trained the proper way by the Ministry of Education. And because she's my sister, she trimmed it down to a 10-minute essence of Bloom's Taxonomy and learning jargons (like lesson plans, learning outcomes, differentiating knowledge vs skills vs behaviours).

As last minute preparation, I spoke to a coach who attempted something similar the proper way mapping competencies and creating curriculum plans. While odd at first but in hindsight truly wise, he said HR would look bad if I succeeded alone, so I needed to be deliberate in my partnership.

I had just enough to not sound like a complete idiot in front of HR.

After 6 months, the Talent & Development team had some PowerPoint templates and a learning needs analysis from speaking to managers and leaders. So a big part of why I got the job was because I knew and loved peopled enough to try to design learning properly, but not enough to insist on going down the path of death by boring documentation. The other part of why I got the job was because my former manager (their regional COO) was tasked to get this done and he remembered my love of people. A boss that care never forgets!

I had one year to bring JLT University to life. In the next 5 minutes, I share what it takes to create a learning culture.

The Original Idea Was Filled With Contradictions.

The original idea was highly tangible. How tangible??

They dreamed at some point of having a physical campus on tiny land-scarce Singapore. They insisted on conducting training sessions face-to-face using their regional leaders based out of Singapore and Hong Kong - it's their way of creating the sticky people factor. They'd conduct classes each time they were on a business trip to those countries.

All sounds fine and dandy except they had a "Client First" motto which meant permission to drop all other commitments to attend to a client. Limited trainers coupled with a fluid trainer schedule and limited training rooms in the smaller offices meant the offices which could really use the training were waiting in line for months.

New joiner orientations were conducted when there was a sufficiently large group and when someone senior is available to wish their new joiners well 4 - 12 weeks from their first day at work. Sounds familiar?

Something Is Better Than Nothing. Embrace Constraints.

1 year with no full-time helpers. Fortunately there were people with good hearts who found time from their full-time jobs to write, train, and organise event logistics. Humble folk who loved people - some nominated by their managers, some who just wanted to do good. JLT University would never have existed without volunteers.

It was more than a full-time job. I asked but was denied on multiple occasions additional full-time help - not even one. Training operations did not exist. Classroom trainers (consultants and advisors) well versed in industry jargon that impressed and confused clients had to be trained to convey concepts simply in more engaging ways.

With no dedicated help from anyone trained to work on this project "properly", I broke every rule in the book:

1. I did not conduct a detailed learning needs analysis.
2. I did not outline career paths.
3. I did not categorise learning by role, and so did not restrict learning by role.
4. I did not personally brief the managers.
5. I engaged new joiners to promote the launch.
6. I did away with most of the face-to-face training for all knowledge-only and self-help classes, replacing them with mobile-enabled training.
7. I did not complete my curriculum content calendar and assessment criteria before launch.
8. I did not care if the content was an hour long to qualify for CPD hours.
9. I did not write with the corporate tone of voice, use corporate colours.
10. I did not translate material to local languages.

Breaking rules saved time and money.

Instead:

1. I interviewed customers (past and current) to understand they loved or felt was lacking from us. That formed our draft of desired knowledge, skills and behaviours.
2. I left the CEOs with a communication kit and promotional material to brief their managers if they felt it was required.
3. I grouped learning content by themes, and gradually released content starting with the simplest per theme.
4. My content calendar evolved based on what people were reading.
5. Everyone had access to whatever was available.
6. Subject matter writers were given a crash course on how to compose engaging learning content by former magazine editors.
7. I trusted the writers to be subject matter experts, and only proposed alternate choice of words and sentence structure to suit an Asian audience with no prior industry experience.
8. The tone of voice (in the content and questions) was cheeky, conversational, insightful to provoke honest reflection and a personal sense of challenge.
9. The content was concise (rarely taking more than 4 minutes), simple and fun to read.
10. Everything was written in English only.

Probably repulsive for HR practitioners who take pride in their training certifications. Call me lazy. But hey, it worked and it made business sense!

Customers (lost and won) helped define JLT's customer value proposition in their words, not ours.

Who would have thought JLT University would compel us to have to a genuine conversation with past clients to understand what JLT was doing right, but more importantly what JLT was doing wrong?

No trivial exercise, but our partners nudged us to ask our former customers why they would stop loving us. Using customer interviews, we created JLT's first customer value proposition on a page which did not boast of JLT's capabilities, but outlined the key knowledge, skills and behaviours required to be a trusted partner and advisor. This formed the basis of JLT University's curriculum outcomes, and set the scene for its sales and technical insurance programmes. This set the bar.

So how's this different from the typical learning needs analysis? Lots. First, it is an outside-in approach which outlined the gold standard. At the end of the day, if we had developed our people in the right direction, our customers would use these words to describe us. Second, it minimised debates from manager interpretations of what was top notch performance and simply implied, "This is the standard. Meet it." Managers will then have the option to encourage their team members to improve in certain areas.

While prioritising knowledge of products and sales processes, we engaged a startup (SmartUp.io) to provide an easy-to-use learning platform, train us in writing engaging learning content suited for mobile, and complement our content suite with content we were less familiar with - on new business models, startup mindset, human-centred design, deep tech, and more. JLT University wouldn't have been possible without SmartUp.

Much like a startup, JLT University had a humble beginning.

It needed to leverage partners, and make the best use of what little we had to create a model that scaled.

Our partners were the ones who suggested creating the customer value proposition. Our partners were the ones who taught us how to be engaging. Our partners also starred in our videos.

It wasn't ever going to be perfect right from the start. Fortunately we had partners who held mirrors and showed us how we can create something exciting for this age-old industry by rethinking learning. With their help, we invented JLT University along the way one idea at a time.

We Had To Convince Ourselves, Not Others That It Worked.

The Steering Committee wanted to ensure whatever we ended up with as a pilot would work for any country in Asia.

So they picked offices with varying roles, demographic, leadership popularity and challenges:

• Taiwan retail office known for opposing anything the local CEO promoted
• Malaysia retail office with a well-loved and respected local CEO, but otherwise known for being less than cordial to anyone other than the sales colleagues and subject matter experts
• Malaysia (regional) shared service centre with a loving centre head caring for a growing group of some of the youngest colleagues in their early 20s

Not our usual regional offices! Quite frankly a breath of fresh air to shift our focus to those who had been waiting in line. Although the 3 offices were used to receiving and sending mails in English, English was not their first language. So a big part of me wondered if they would refuse to try it or give up.

While I had a proper campaign message, I also said this, "We're not making you wait any longer. You're the first to try this for 10 weeks. Tell me if it love it or hate it. At least 80% of you must try and love it. If it doesn't work for you, we won't waste any time launching it to the rest of Asia and the world."

I wasn't going for visionary.

I went with a simple earnest plea to give it a shot, park aside the skepticism, offer constructive feedback or return to square one and deprive everyone a shot at having something. Perhaps that struck a chord. Because they didn't just tell me if they liked it or hated it. They offered unfiltered first hand stories of their personal struggles in the office.

Till this day, I believe my biggest takeaway from setting up JLT University wasn't "How to operationalise an idea with minimal resources", but rather "What wrongs must we address to create a learning culture".

It's Time To Think Deeply About How and Why People Learn.

What makes a workplace conducive for learning? Have you ever thought about it?

It has nothing to do with great content, and everything to do with the people.

In launching JLT University, I've uncovered an unexpected reason for not learning: workplace bullying. Don't worry no one was physically hurt.

Workplace bullying can take many forms:

1. Limiting office wifi connection to senior managers and leaders
2. Calling people out for using their phones in the office (even if it's for learning)
3. Making fun of learning enthusiasts

Yes...colleagues who have been around longer were openly groaning at the weekly promotional mail of what's hot off the learning press. They could have simply set up spam filters but no ... they made sure everyone around them heard their negativity, particularly the ambassadors.

Undeterred by the jeering, these change ambassadors (mostly within their first 2 years of tenure) kept on learning, and made it their mission to climb up the leader board and nudge everyone on their team to experience the joys and thrills of learning beyond boundaries. They found quiet corners to read during breaks to avoid judgment from their managers.

Shocking isn't it ... managers were preventing their team members from developing themselves during office hours, despite it being break time and despite it being at their own expense (since they were denied wifi on their mobile phones). The managers were particularly reluctant to grant their team members any time to browse what wasn't strictly related to their role. Yet despite the circumstances, the learning enthusiasts refused to give up on the only golden opportunity they've ever had to develop themselves.

With no registrations or approvals required to learn beyond what's required for their roles, strange things happened:

• The people who have been earmarked as talent were less eager to learn anything vaguely related to their existing roles.
• The quiet ones were getting noticed for how fast they learned and how well they scored.
• Non-managers, lacking clear role models, were reading up on material intended for managers to model after managers from the outside world - startup founders featured in the learning content.
• Colleagues at the shared service centre were beating sales colleagues at sales process and techniques.
• The younger teams at the shared service centre (whom we thought would jump at mobile learning) were at opposite ends of the spectrum - forming cliques or sitting out completely.
• CEOs, left to learn in private, read up on alternate management styles and technology applied to related industries for new inspiration.
• Select managers were deliberately ignoring new joiners' earnest pleas to experience what the rest of the team was raving about.
• Interns were consciously excluded from learning opportunities because they were not deemed employees, even though it cost close to nothing to include them.

Some good news - It became increasingly apparent age and language was not a major factor influencing how much people read, or why people read.

Some interesting news - The brutal reality of office culture was rearing its ugly head through learning statistics! Managers revealed their true selves when they weren't specifically reminded to develop their teams.

Without managers in the equation, we discovered new talent who proved themselves with their resilience to learn, and their willingness to seek out new learning beyond their immediate role.

When managers showed little interest in their teams' development, some employees looked toward formalised ways of paving the paths to their future, undeniable recognition. So was it necessary to plot a learning or career path?

One guy I spoke to sounded like he was about to beat me up for not plotting a path. He was in his 40s and had joined JLT from a competitor 2 years prior. He was one of the top scorers who sped through and aced anything I published. He exclaimed, "Back at my previous place, the leaders had a plan. Why do we publish content about technology and startups? We need to know where we are going with this when we publish all this content?"

Suffice to say, he was frustrated with how the insurance industry was getting all excited to move from paper-based records to digital records. He was eager to hear of plans to transform the organisation, with details which go beyond what was shared at the annual corporate townhall. He wanted to be part of the action, but the company just wasn't at that stage yet.

He had a point. Beyond the pilot, there was a definite need to be more deliberate in the intent and curation of learning, to connect the dots to JLT's strategy and short to mid term projects, to guide the discovery of emergent roles.

We Were Wrong About People & Learning.

"Anywhere. Anytime. Freedom. Choice. Fun." That was the campaign strapline for the 10-week mobile learning pilot.

What can we expect from such a social experiment? How will they respond when we go to the extreme to democratise learning and reshape what learning looks and feels like?

We had some initial hypotheses:

• The shared service centre will love this format given their relative youth. We expect them to have the highest adoption levels and active users within the shortest amount of time.
• The Malaysia retail office will dominate the leaderboard as they had tenured employees, product experts and sales leaders.
• The Taiwan retail office will have the lowest adoption levels and active users given the toxic culture and potential language disadvantage.

We were wrong.

#1 We Need To Redefine Talent Indicators.

She's not talented because her manager says so or because she gets a perfect score for her area of expertise. He may be scoring well in other areas but he can't possibly be talented if he's lacking energy to get through his deliverables.

"I'm hesitant to shine the spotlight on him. He's normally dozing off at work!"

Reluctant as they may be, I had to nudge leaders to celebrate the success of the unlikely talent, the unseen role models.

By making learning freely accessible, someone who aced their "Sales" training may have the same overall score as someone who achieved a decent score in "Sales" training and "General Insurance" training. The difference - the willingness to try and get better at something else.

Who's your next superstar - the specialist? or the curious generalist?

Today I think of talent as:

• People who are interested in other areas of work
• People who reflect often and are deeply aware of their areas of improvement
• People who overcome workplace circumstances to learn

They possess the elements required for success - humility, grit, curiosity.

#2 We Need To Give Everyone A Fair Chance At Learning.

The vast majority of specialists and sales leaders were native English speakers. The main content creators for the pilot were also native English speakers.

Over time, we wanted this to change by developing talent from each of the offices. But until then, we made a conscious decision to give everyone a fair chance at learning.

With the pilot, we said "No" to leaving people behind:

• Insisting learning is face-to-face
• Making learning strictly role-based
• Using jargons and complex sentences
• Prioritising offices with more people
• Excluding interns from receiving the same learning opportunities

Design learning to leave no one behind.

I was not an insurance specialist and while I studied Mandarin, my business vocabulary was limited. Ironically, my personal limitations helped me step into the shoes of a new joiner industry rookie based in Taiwan or Malaysia.

I personally attempted all draft versions of the courses. I would strive to translate what I read mentally in my head to Mandarin and answer all questions. If I struggled, I would propose a different sentence and order to the content.

Unpopular as he may be, the Taiwan CEO worked hard at getting his team on board all except the interns. While the Taiwanese took slightly longer to complete each course, they still managed within a respectable 2-minute difference. They reassured me.

"We work for a global company so please don't feel bad for writing in English :) . We will get better with time."

For Taiwan to come through with the highest adoption rate (88% at that time) and active users was a very pleasant surprise!

"These are interns! Why are we including them in the total count? They should be excluded. It shouldn't be just 88% adoption, it's more than that once you exclude the interns."

Till then, I never thought I would have to explain to a leader why it made sense to show the interns how JLT was investing in their development ... which by the way as much as a cab fare for all pilot users in Taiwan ... There's always a first time for everything.

I had included the interns and granted them access. Deal with it! I was not about to exclude anyone intentionally.

To develop a learning culture, we have to be more inclusive in the way we develop people.

• Recognise and accept how learners live and work (often on the road)
• Relentlessly simplify to eliminate barriers to learning
• Address workplace wrongs
• Facilitate discovery of new interests and more suitable or emergent roles, a future in JLT

#3 We Need To Connect The Dots.

We have people at opposite ends of the spectrum - people who thrive on ambiguity and enjoy the process of stumbling upon new areas of interest, people who value certainty and demand the shortest and fastest path to achieve their goals.

While the days of clearly defined career paths are over, we should spare no effort to explain the company's ambition and desire to change its way of working. And what better way to demonstrate the intent to change by making a conscious effort to get everyone prepared sooner rather than later.

"We want to be .... in 3 years. To do this, we will need ..... While we may not be prepared today, we want the people we have today to contribute directly to our future. There will be new roles. If you will like to get involved in the action, we urge you to get curious in ..."

No fancy words. Just simple sentences (yet daunting for managers and leaders) to outline commitment and ambition for the future. Connect the dots between the company's ambition and personal ambition. Then observe who takes the first step to stay relevant on their own initiative. These self-directed learners may well be the team members you needed to figure out the future of your company.

#4 Managers Aren't Always Interested In Developing Their Teams Beyond Their Current Roles.

Develop their teams to get better at their current roles? - Yes. The benefits are clear so it's perfectly alright for their teams to devote a couple of regular work hours to learning. That's no different from learning on-the-job.

Encourage team members to discover the knowledge and skills required for other team's jobs? - Perhaps, but only after office hours. While great for collaboration and engagement, managers are often hesitant to think beyond personal interest.

So the next time data suggests learning outside regular office hours, it's time to take a closer look at what people are reading. It isn't a fun fact. There's more to it that meets the eye - about the manager, not necessarily the sleepless learner.

When someone read consistently at odd hours, was it because they couldn't make time for learning "on-the-job"? Was it because they secretly craved a different managerial style? Was it because they were ashamed to have a little fun at work?

#5 You Should Be Concerned When People Refuse To Learn.

The people who refused to learn ... drum roll ...were:

• Managers who had not been engaging in any of other initiatives - clearly disengaged but still hanging around; and
• Teams who were prepared to resign after spending less than 6 months with the company.

In short, these are people who had given up on JLT and no one knew till we wondered why anyone would refuse a learning opportunity that took just 3 minutes to try. There were rumours. There were signs. HR knew. But now there is data.

With this knowledge, leaders had choices to make - to do nothing or to address unhappiness.

#6 Magic Happens When You Mimic Conversation On Mobile Learning.

Supporters of face-to-face classroom learning often think of online learning as being cold and lacking the human touch. All they had experienced of online learning were slides of jargon-filled sentences pasted without the facilitators' stories, jokes, thought provoking questions.

But it doesn't have to be that way.

It's still possible to keep the stories, and perfectly timed jokes and thought provoking questions. And because it's on mobile, the learning experience feels more personal - kind of like you had an exclusive one-to-one session with an expert buddy who isn't rushing to the next meeting, but there for the readers whenever they needed someone and wherever they may be.

Skilful weaving of jokes and questions draws interest and when delivered on mobile, induces split-second candid responses to potentially controversial questions.

We reduce the effects of groupthink. We know when someone's changed their mind. We know when someone grew tired of what we had to say. In a safe and private environment, learners responded to polls like they would to a buddy they've come to trust and respect.

Conclusion

See you later training materials created with tri-colour PowerPoint templates...

Bye bye long production times and time wasted formatting slides, translating videos, arranging training room furniture...

Hello engaging bite-sized learning content which looks and reads like social media posts, lifestyle and tech blogs, and your favourite short story collection...

JLT University wouldn't have been possible without the volunteers, change ambassadors, clients and partners.

When questions feel less like assessments and more like genuine interest in what readers are thinking ...when learning stops looking and feeling like learning ... when learning becomes so easy to incorporate into daily lives ... more people will commit time to learning. When they don't, there's probably negative energy brewing in the workplace, and dots we failed to connect.

Approaching the end of the pilot, it was time to reveal the prizes for the ultimate winners! We had deliberately kept the grand prizes a secret so everyone would learn because they wanted to. Cash? Annual leave? iPhone? Vouchers? The winners would decide because according to HR, the folks in the shared service centre were unable to utilise their annual leave so may see little value in additional days of annual leave ... which would probably explain why adoption rates weren't the highest (~60%), attrition rates were the highest, and leavers had no interest in learning what they could in their final days!

Following the end of the pilot, I moved on to pursue my MBA and JLT University replicated its success in the remaining countries in Asia. JLT's innovative take on people development was recognised with the Singapore Business Review's International Business Award in May 2018. Guess there really was no need for 10+ years of experience in Talent Development and Instructional Design!

In 2019, Marsh acquired JLT. I thought that would have been the end of JLT University...Thankfully Marsh retained JLT University as Marsh Academy managed by JLTU's very own Sales Dean. Good things are worth keeping!