Like Google, digital health agency Klick uses the “technology as a trainer” philosophy to embed data-driven training into its culture and everyday operations. Genome helps Klick identify when someone needs to learn a particular skill. That triggers an automated process that takes the team member’s unique profile into account.
One of the ways that we seamlessly integrate intelligent training into our system is through an initiative called Klick Academy that delivers a personalized training experience tailored for each individual’s experience and performance. Additional elective courses, resource libraries, and lunch-and-learns are available to talent, as well.
The Klick Academy was created in 2004 and is managed internally by Klick’s Concierge Team. The underlying philosophy is that there are no such things as generic, role-specific requirements. There are only prerequisite experiences triggered by actual work. Part of the Klick Learning Solutions group’s mandate is to ensure that employees are learning constantly, by designing its various learning vehicles, such as Klick’s course catalog and Klick Talks, strategically.
At the academy’s core is a group of short online courses that are a part of the process of bringing new employees onboard. They include an overview of the company’s culture, an introduction to Genome, and a primer on the health industry (Klick’s primary target market). After many years of overseeing hiring into Klick, Leerom (Leerom Segal, a co-founder and CEO of Klick Health) has observed a real need to help new employees understand how different our environment is quickly. His real goal for the core courses is to deprogram new employees of what they learned in the unhealthy environments they’re coming from. It’s a tangible way for them to understand how we see the world, what we stand for, and how we behave.
In addition to the core courses, there is a wide variety of elective courses (generally five to 30 minutes long) designed to help employees continuously learn and refine their skill sets. The courses are not mandatory, but a manager who sees a gap in a team member’s capabilities might recommend that he or she complete a specific one.
The courses cover a wide array of subjects, from introducing an employee to a specific client to industry regulations, technical tutorials, and even an introduction to statistics. Anyone can suggest and build a course by working with the learning group to deliver high-quality content that follows adult learning practices. The general rule of thumb is that you should create a course if you find yourself teaching or explaining a subject regularly, because there is demand for that information.
Klick Talks are much simpler and basic than courses. If you have a question about absolutely anything— from procedures such as filing expenses all the way through to the company’s vision and mission—you can submit it through Genome (as a ticket, of course), and you’re guaranteed to receive a video answer from someone within 24 hours. Klick Talks are limited to two minutes in length and are indexed and archived in Genome, and they provide a rich and organically grown repository of content. Instead of imposing a top-down, hierarchical structure on the material, every course and every Klick Talk is tagged with keywords that make it easy for our talent to search for and find them.
Now here’s where the power of data in delivering training becomes obvious. If you recall, Genome’s vast database contains information about every project and task that an individual undertakes for the entire duration of his or her time at Klick. Thanks to this vast historical data, we know the skills that are needed to complete a type of project or to fill a role. Rather than using static role descriptions created by someone in HR, these capabilities are tagged and clustered together to create personas that define the ideal hire. Every member of the Klick team also has a detailed persona within Genome, comprising their work history, kudos, system interactions, work role, metrics, etc. Managers can compare the skill set required of the ideal persona with that of their team members and immediately spot knowledge gaps. Then they can search Klick Academy for the required materials and easily deliver a customized training program to address them. A manager could look at the commonalities in skill sets associated with the most successful projects in the company, and then make sure that his or her team gets the right training to help them succeed.
In the previous chapter’s Klick Labs product manager example, we see that the initial persona defined by Jay was based on his past experiences in software companies and in performing the role during the launch of our iCONNECT product. That early draft persona was essential for our Concierge Team to recruit for the role, and it then was adapted within Genome as we learned more about the backgrounds and skills of the people we hired. Those new team members started forming their unique Genome personas on their first day at Klick, beginning to build a rich history comprising digital footprints and body language as they completed coming on board, closed their first tickets, and began work on their first projects. Each weekly one-on-one and quarterly review contributed more information to the ideal persona, as well as provided opportunities for Jay to identify gaps in his team’s knowledge and skills. Using a combination of Klick Academy and our goal-driven dashboards, Jay quickly can curate a customized mix of courses, lunch-and-learns, and mentors for his product managers to keep them engaged and challenged and constantly learning.
Once again, the theme of technology as a trainer plays a big part here, since the programs are delivered online. Each person progresses at his or her own pace; it’s not embarrassing if you have to ask a question or redo a module. Unlike an instructor, a machine never gets annoyed with you if you need to be shown something over and over again. It will keep coaching you and testing you until you finally get it right.
Excerpt from The Decoded Company: Know Your Talent Better Than You Know Your Customers by Leerom Segal, Aaron Goldstein, Jay Goldman, and Rahaf Harfoush, in agreement with Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Copyright (c) Leerom Segal, Aaron Goldstein, Jay Goldman, and Rahaf Harfoush, February 2014. For more information, videos, and experiments, visit http://www.decodedcompany.com/
Leerom Segal is a co-founder and CEO of Klick Health, an independent digital health agency. He has won numerous awards as one of Canada’s leading young entrepreneurs.
Aaron Goldstein is a co-founder and COO of Klick, responsible for orchestrating the creative application of technology that drives the company’s operations.
Jay Goldman is a managing director for Klick and has been published in the Harvard Business Review.
Rahaf Harfoush is a technology author and lecturer.
