Interview with Rick Wallace

Citation

(2007), "Interview with Rick Wallace", VINE, Vol. 37 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/vine.2007.28737daf.001

Interview with Rick Wallace

Interview with Rick Wallace

APC/MGE

APC and MGE UPS Systems recently combined to form a $3 billion (€2.4 billion) Critical Power & Cooling Services business unit of Schneider Electric. Together, APC and MGE offer the industry’s most comprehensive product and solution range for critical IT and process applications in industrial, enterprise, small and medium business and home environments. APC and MGE solutions include uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), precision cooling units, racks, and design and management software, including APC’s InfraStruXure® architecture the industry’s only integrated power, cooling, and management solution. Backed by the industry’s broadest service organization and an industry leading R&D investment, the combined company’s 13,000 employees help customers confront today’s unprecedented power, cooling and management challenges. Schneider Electric, with 112,000 employees and operations in 190 countries, had 2006 annual sales of $18 billion (€13.7 billion).

Rick Wallace is the Chief Learning Officer for APC/MGE, Mr Wallace has the global responsibility of developing and implementing all aspects of APC/MGE’s talent development and learning architecture for over 13,000 employees. Mr Wallace oversees a global network of learning and development personnel. Mr Wallace’s responsibilities include integrated leadership development, succession management, organizational learning, training and performance management. In addition to filling the position of Chief Learning Officer for APC/MGE, Mr Wallace is concurrently filling the role of VP for HR for North America. Mr. Wallace manages a staff of 20 HR professionals that serve over 3,000 personnel within North America and Canada and manages all aspects of a post-merger integration. Mr Wallace served a full career in the US Air Force retiring as a Colonel in 1995 and previously was a consultant with Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) outside of Washington DC.

What are your thoughts on the relationship between learning, knowledge management and innovation?

The three disciplines are intertwined. Most of the research I have found focuses on each individually. The organizational learning community is interested, and rightly so, on learning, the same for the knowledge community and those interested in innovation. There is some research into connections between two of the disciplines but not all three. That lead me to start thinking about how they may be intertwined and how one could make sense of it all. My experience tells me that the basis for learning is the knowledge in the organization. The application of that learning is the manifestation of innovation in an organization. There were very clear connections for me in the workplace but I wanted to make sure that there was research to back this up. One of the interesting things about innovation is the difficultly in sustaining it over time in an organization. It seems to me that if we understand how to establish a learning framework in an organization and feed that framework with the input from the knowledge of the organization then that particular organization has a higher probability of innovation. In this context, I define innovation as the managing of ideas into a discernable outcome for the business. We have to be clear that there is a difference between idea generation – invention in some quarter and creativity – and innovation that has a practical outcome meaning new process or product. Here at APC/MGE we have worked very hard at making sure we do not get caught up in a theological debate about which we are dealing with – knowledge management or organizational learning. The managers we work with don’t really care – they want results and they want business impact and they want it to be as simple to understand and implement as possible. The debates occur in the back office with my staff over what we are doing and what we are trying to achieve. We will even debate the theology but that is to make sure we are on solid theoretical ground. Once we are sure, we are all about implementation and business impact and measuring RoI. To be sure I have not abandoned my academic roots. I weave what I have learned in my own research into what we are doing here. The end result is a grounded research study on the interplay between organizational learning, knowledge management and innovation. That is the crux of my dissertation at George Washington University that I will complete this year.

Describe what you have done within APC/MGE to establish organizational learning

One of the most critical needs we had when I arrived a little over a year ago was the need to establish a managed program and process for learning. Our efforts were disjointed and all over the place without an understanding what we were getting or how it was affecting or driving our business. I started with setting out four simple objectives that were in concert with the strategy of the Company. Those were:

1. 1.

   Identify and grow future leaders from within – which meant that we had to do a better job of identifying and developing our talent.

2. 2.

   Learn from one another – which meant we had to understand where our knowledge was and how to tap into it.

3. 3.

   Develop knowledge and information flow that is fast, accurate and frictionless – which meant we had to have an infrastructure that supported both distributed learning and a fast, easy way to get at what the company knows.

4. 4.

   Develop our leadership – which means we had to make sure that our leadership development process reinforced 1 through 3 and it was integrated from top to bottom. In every instance where we pull employees together we try to reinforce the power and necessity of learning.

For example, we rolled out a tool this year called Success Factors that helps with the mechanics of performance reviews and our succession management process. In the training on the tool we not only taught what buttons had to be pushed to operate the system but how the performance review was an opportunity for learning between the employee and the manager. The conversations that we built into our performance management process we opportunities for discussions and feedback around goals, development opportunities and differences in perspective on performance. It is a long way from the manager filling out a form, checking a box and then the employee never knowing why the rating was set the way it was. We are slowly but surely developing a learning culture. Our next big push is for meaningful individual development plans tied to learning paths so the way ahead for the employee is transparent.

Do you have a learning model that you use within APC/MGE?

I adapted a model that I had read about in Return on Learning a book about how Accenture had reengineered the training apparatus within the company. We have four quadrants in our model. The first is the learning experience – we now hold people accountable for learning. By that I mean we base the experience on what the needs assessment gives us, we track the quality of the training and then we follow up to make sure what we though was supposed to happen in the workplace actually happens or try to figure out why not. We have implemented a robust RoI process that ties into this. We have also reengineered the entire training process for all 13,000 employees to make sure we have better integration of effort. The second quadrant is the networking experience. Every time we get our employees together it is an opportunity to establish learning network so we try to establish those as we come together at each level of the organization. The third quadrant looks at the learning experience from a facility standpoint. We spend the time and effort for the training venues to be appropriate for the task and that they are clean and have the proper equipment. We have just finished a $30 million training and R&D facility in St Louis that I think will become the center of training and learning for us. I know it will for North America at least. Finally, we look at every employee engagement as an opportunity to enculturate the employees on what it means to work here, why we are so interested in learning and what behaviors we expect. There is a passage in the Bible that essentially says that the little foxes destroy the vineyard. If we do not get the employees “the little foxes” and capture there imagination and get there behavior channeled in a positive way we have no chance of success.

What are your thoughts about the implementation of knowledge management within an organization?

First you have to understand both the culture and the climate of the organization. When I first got here there was an understanding for the need for what I characterize as horizontal learning – knowledge management by another name – but a lack of focus and time to get it done so I took that on as part of my task as the CLO. I also realized that people were more inclined to understand what was taking about if I couched it in terms of learning versus knowledge management. I was going where the stream flowed. If they understood better in learning terms then I was not going to try to engage in a philosophical debate over whether or not it was knowledge management. As I said earlier, it is important to understand the differences and the nuances so you are on firm theoretical ground as you move forward but I see a key part of my job as translation – translating from the esoteric to the practical so we can affect the business in a positive way. We have to be able to move seamlessly between the research/academic real into the practical realm and then back again. We also had to assess what was within the art of the possible. For example, I understand and have seen the impact of social network analysis for an organization and once we were engaged with the merger it was clear that there would be some benefit. However, it would have taken heroic effort to get the leadership to understand and support an initiative like that. They weren’t ready so I had to pick the areas where I was willing to engage and where I had a better than even chance of success. Sometimes we were doing things that I thought were fairly rudimentary but the employees thought were groundbreaking. It is an important lesson – you have to look at the problem from the perspective of the employee not from your own and you get a better picture of what is possible and what the impact will be. I am and always will be an advocate of knowledge management and think it is the right way to work. We just have understand what is in the art of the possible.