Chief Learning Officer Job Description: Change Needed

Learnerprise is the combination of Enterprise 2.0 and Learning 2.0 concepts.

The use of emergent social software platforms as well as formal and informal competence exchange processes, between companies, partners and employees, to improve both productivity and business results.

We’re all in charge of our careers, whether we’re employed by an organization, or employed by ourselves, so I occasionally visit bookmarked employment sites to review potential roles. Some of those searches involve Chief Learning Officer titles and at this point in time, I still believe some change is needed to augment the new intent of the 2010 CLO. To me, the CLO needs to be renamed. No longer should the term learning be the only adjective used to describe this new 2.0 function; it needs to be representative of Learnerprise, and in doing so, the title should reflect all things related to collaboration:

• Enterprise 2.0
• Social Learning
• Collaboration Technologies
• Flat-based culture innovation

Thus, the title could (and should) morph to become the CCLO – Chief Collaboration and Learning Officer – where duties and experience are reflective of a formal, informal and social learning AND collaboration cause. Inherent in the activities is driving a connected workforce, ultimately delivering on a more productive and engaged ‘culture of collaboration’ organization. No disrespect intended with the following job descriptions, but review them and ask yourself if the CLO job description outlined showcases this type of visionary thinking:

• US Treasury
• TD Bank University
• Fifth Third Bank
• Health Care Example

Mike Petersell recently posed a great question on the CLO Media site entitled “Who should Lead Social Media Integration in Workforce Collaboration?” Of course I’m completely biased and believe it should be the newly titled CCLO because it is this individual (and corresponding virtual team) that should have the following traits:

• Deep partnership with IT/CIO office
• Thorough knowledge of both learning AND social collaboration technologies
• Responsibility for a connected culture (of collaboration)
• Duty to ensure the organization is ‘smart’ and more ‘efficient’
• Visionary of the new Learning 2.0/Learnerprise mantra (formal-informal-social)

The CCLO, (and corresponding virtual team) therefore, needs to become the key cog in the wheel of organizational cultural change. This cultural change is predicated on the CCLO being able to fluently speak both Enterprise 2.0 and Learning 2.0 seamlessly. As a previous CEO of mine used to say, “Be Fearless”.