DIGITAL CULTURE AT SCALE

BEST PRACTICES FOR IMPLEMENTING DIGITAL CULTURE AT SCALE

THROUGH TRAINING
TABLE OF
CONTENTS
00 INTRODUCTION ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● P.06

01 SKILLS & PRACTICES: ●● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● P.10

what knowledge needs to be implemented
and shared within the organization

02 COLLABORATION & PERFORMANCE: ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● P.16

how to effectively work together

03 KPIs & EVALUATION: ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● P.22

how to measure acculturation

04 MANAGERS & EMPOWERMENT : ●● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● P.28

how to create a resilient system

05 BONUS : ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● P.34
how to start your digital transformation

06 CONCLUSION ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● P.38
360LEARNING SUPPORTS
MORE THAN 900
ORGANIZATIONS IN THEIR
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

ABOUT
360LEARNING
360Learning is a collaborative Digital Learning
platform that leverages data to engage learners
and trainers.

360Learning allows companies to place digital

technology at the heart of learning: social, peer-
to-peer, gamification, mobile (iOS & Android),
ranking systems, user generated content,
intelligent learning.

Created in 2010, 360Learning now has over 900

clients and 500,000 users in 120 countries.

Over several years 360Learning has conducted

research into digital transformation. This White
Paper outlines these findings, as well as material
gathered during a joint event with Learn
Assembly, a company specialized in digital
transformation and educational methods.
INTRODUCTION
In the past 15 years, 52% of Fortune 500 companies have disappeared;
their average lifespan shrunk from 75 years in 1955 to a mere
15 years in 2015. From small businesses to global corporations,
including start-ups and middle market companies, the landscape
is the same: the economy has shifted, organizations need to adapt
to accelerated business cycles and the widespread disruption of
markets. Everyone is asking the same questions:
■■How can we leverage the digital revolution to re-invent the
business model in our market?
■■How can we drive constant innovation?
■■How do we attract and retain top talent, who are no longer
interested in the traditional corporate model and culture?
■■How can we boost performance using new technologies?
How do we accomplish all of this? For several years now, the digital
transformation of companies has been hailed as the answer to all
of these questions. The problem is that this term encompasses a
multitude of different situations and does not address a core aspect
for companies: their complexity – a problem that cannot be simply
solved with abstract, catchall solutions.
We have spent decades building process pyramids, creating
sprawling, almost Kafkaesque organizations that are completely
unable to adapt since they are based on outdated paradigms
including vertical models that are diametrically opposed to horizontal
structures that have emerged with the Internet. In recent year, many
organizations have decided on a different strategy to accelerate their
digital transformation: the use of tools. However, thinking strictly
in terms of tools can be a trap. CRM, project management tools,
e-learning platforms…A recurring problem in large organizations?
Investing in tools only to see employees abandon them or even
witness a sort of passive resistance with regards to using them. The
amount of money invested in digital tools is by no means a KPI
that attests to a true digital culture within a company: what really
matters is employee engagement and how staff members work
on a daily basis.
The real challenge is transforming corporate culture. Without a digital
corporate culture, people will not use the tools that are available
to them. If company culture determines how an organization and
individuals respond to a given stimulus, it also determines how
they will organize themselves to respond to a problem and dictates
everyday work habits. Culture therefore has an impact on both the
strategic management of a company and its everyday effectiveness
and attractiveness.
And what are the foundations of company culture? Not vague,
sweeping declarations that are often re-used by multiple companies.
Corporate culture is not based on words and statements of intent; it
is not some magical thought or ideal. On the contrary, it is based
on concrete results directly linked to daily practices embraced
by the entire workforce.
We are also faced with a second major challenge that digital
transformation poses: getting employees on board and accustomed
to new digital practices is of course a key component – but the main
issue is scale. It is imperative to get everyone on board internally to
create a new global corporate dynamic based on scalable culture
and practices.
Implementing digital corporate culture at scale is a strategic project
with massive implications:
■■Culture can boost individual motivation and engagement by
empowering employees and getting them involved with the
company’s mission, creating unparalleled room for expression
and creativity
■■It can also contribute to creating a productive daily work
environment with efficient collaborative practices that rely on
technology
■■It is a means of stimulating innovation by creating new internal
reflexes and simplifying complex processes
■■Culture is a strategic aspect that can transform a company into
one that constantly adapts and optimizes workplace practices
to improve market efficiency and responsiveness
■■It can also strengthen a corporation by facilitating the
decentralization of processes and encouraging the emergence
of bottom-up practices that practises that allow managers to
focus on the company's strategic vision, rather than micro-
management.
■■Finally, strong culture is an excellent argument for recruiting
and retaining top talent, especially when it includes room for
continual growth and learning.
We did this first and foremost because we are directly concerned
by the topic: we are in a scale-up phase that has seen our number
of employees double in just a few months and we needed to put
specific actions in place to preserve our digital culture that is so
vital to continual, smooth growth. We discovered that the key to
achieving this is to establish concrete work habits related to, for
example, organizing information and making it accessible to all
employees.
No surprise here: whether based on our own experience or that
of our clients, we are all in agreement. The best way to establish
company culture at scale is through training, but not just any type of
training. Training must be collaborative, bottom-up, personalized,
fun and focused on the right topics for the right people who are
able to promote best digital transformation practices internally.
This white paper contains the best practices we have compiled over
the past year. It will provide you with tips and examples on the best
ways to accelerate the cultural transformation of your organization
through training.
Enjoy!

This is all very exciting, isn’t it? We have been thinking about these
issues for many years, both with our clients and partners and also
within our own ecosystem. Over the past few months, we have
organized numerous workshops and discussions on the subject
in order to collect best practices on how corporations can create
digital culture at scale.
01
SKILLS
& PRACTICES:
WHAT KNOWLEDGE
NEEDS TO BE
IMPLEMENTED AND
SHARED WITHIN THE
ORGANIZATION
12
#1
OUR RELATIONSHIP TO KNOWLEDGE HAS EVOLVED
The democratization of learning, related to the emergence of digital
technology is more prevalent than ever. MOOCs, tutorials, online
courses, YouTube videos…Think of any activity you would like to do:
in less than 5 minutes, with a good Google search, you can find ample
information on the topic. With information being widely available,
our relationship to knowledge has changed. Unlike centuries past,
you cannot simply learn something once and build your entire career
on this skill set. Today, you need to learn how to continuously learn
and update your skill sets throughout life.
This is even more important given our current context where we are
seeing an acceleration of skill obsolescence. 50% of tomorrow’s skills
and professions do not exist today. Each day, new tools and languages
see the day; we do not create a website the same way today as we
did a year ago. The same goes for “growth hacking”, hardly anyone
was talking about it a few months ago and now everyone is looking
to recruit a top growth hacker.
Never has it been so important to be able to update skills in real
time, in order to perceive, understand and adapt to changes in
your market or profession. The paradigm shift is even present in
the vocabulary we use: we have gone from the idea of qualifications
(objective, verifiable, defines a profession or trade) to that of skills
(personal, harder to measure, cross-functional) in the 1990s, to move
on to the idea of talent, where soft skills are more valued than hard
skills. Then came the challenge of digital technology: to deploy
internally, and at scale, a set of soft skills and work methodologies
capable of accelerating this change by creating a true digital culture
within the organization.
01 - SKILLS & PRACTICES 13 01 - SKILLS & PRACTICES
#2
DIGITAL CULTURE: WHAT SKILLS DO EMPLOYEES
NEED TO DEVELOP?
One of the first things to do is focus on raising awareness about the
challenges posed by the acceleration of technology. This implies
that technical literacy, whatever your profession, is necessary in order
to acquire certain technical skills without having to systematically
go through the IT department. Understanding the tech ecosystem,
major trends and disruptive technology in your market and profession
is vital.
Mastering the use of tools is also an essential skill. Beyond simply
learning how to use the tools correctly, it is important to understand
their purpose and how different tools can be used together and the
benefits one can derive from them.
Training employees on digital practices is also imperative. Somewhere
between soft skills and work methodologies, several key skills can
be identified, including:
■■The ability to regularly monitor the competitive landscape of
your market
■■Sourcing innovative initiatives or people within your ecosystem
■■Customer knowledge
■■Failure management
■■Risk taking abilities
■■Independence
■■Responsiveness and adaptability to an unstable environment
Everyone can acquire these skills, but they are not enough to transform
an organization as a whole. Let’s use the example of competitive
intelligence: it is relatively simple to ask teams to monitor major
market trends, or to source partners or innovative service providers.
It is simply a matter of having minimal training and the right tools.
On the other hand, it is much harder to create a culture of collective
intelligence, to set up test & learn initiatives (even if they ultimately
fail), in short, to actually capitalize on these skills. This is above all a
question of managerial culture.
14
#3
NO DIGITAL CULTURE WITHOUT MANAGERIAL
TRANSFORMATION
Without reviewing your managerial culture, the chances of transforming
an organization are extremely slim. Recent enthusiasm for freedom-
form companies and holacracy clearly illustrates this point: traditional
organizational methods need to be re-examined. By definition vertical
and based on a hierarchical structure, these practices are no longer
in line with methodologies inherited from the Internet which are
characterized by their decentralized and horizontal nature. Without
going as far as saying that all digital transformation initiatives require
organizations to switch to a freedom-form company model, it is true
that it does involve rethinking and reviewing various internal mechanics
including individual evaluations and decision-making processes.
How can you ask employees to mobilize these skills without providing
them with the necessary managerial framework, without allowing them
to work independently and giving them access to information? How
can the organization be flexible and capable of continuously adapting
to external factors and even anticipating them while simultaneously
adjusting internal processes?
The industrialization of digital skills requires questioning current
managerial models and creating a common culture by training
employees on best practices resulting from experience and by
implementing a strong digital culture inherited from the Internet.
#4
CULTURE: A QUESTION OF HABIT & METHODOLOGY
Culture is concrete, resulting from everyday practices. Influencing
these daily practices while also reviewing your managerial model
is the best way to accelerate digital transformation since it involves
implementing new work habits among employees.
Let’s look at an example: email management using the Inbox Zero
policy. The goal: have simple rules for email management that make
it possible to always have an inbox with 0 emails. At 360Learning, this
is a widespread practice and the results have been simply incredible.
Team performance (both actual and perceived) has skyrocketed and
Inbox Zero has paved the way for a rational, targeted and efficient
way of processing information. No more unnecessarily long sentences;
simple, clear phrases, smart filter management; our daily relationship
to information has changed. This has impacted other aspects of our
work. In 360Learning’s case, Inbox Zero has allowed us to get
01 - SKILLS & PRACTICES 15 01 - SKILLS & PRACTICES
rid of internal meetings and log all information about project
management in digital interfaces – which, in turn, has created new
use cases. Transparency at 360Learning therefore has tangible results,
not some vague mission statement.
Formalizing and promoting these practices internally is essential.
This is where e-learning is useful. A good e-learning platform should
allow anyone, without requiring technical skills, to create and promote
their own training programs –imagine the impact of circulating best
practices internally! Better yet, the platform should permit you to
create skill-based programs and to pilot them both granularly and at
scale while monitoring employee usage and progress. At 360Learning,
many of our clients are already working this way and the results are
impressive: employee engagement rates have exploded, the word
“collaboration” has never been more meaningful.
MIKAEL DELMAS, TESTIMONIAL,
GLOBAL ACCOUNT MANAGER AT 360LEARNING
As a startup, scalability is at the heart of our DNA and culture.
It’s even more important when you take into account the fact that
we’ve doubled our workforce in just a few months. To successfully
scale the onboarding process of new hires and to help them
rapidly become operational and productive, we’ve deeply
reflected on different methodologies to adapt as quickly as
possible into their daily work habits. These habits include, for
example, Inbox Zero, systematic logging of information into our
project management interfaces, the power to cancel unnecessary
meetings and integrating asynchronous work mechanics into
their daily routines.
For us, this is really the foundation of an efficient and high
performance culture: work processes based on emerging digital
paradigms, shared by all staff and continually improved. It’s
not insignificant to note that some of our clients, including the
MAIF, one of the most important French Insurance companies,
have started to adopt these same ideas: MAIF’S Digital Academy
initiative is part of a Digital Transformation project and is based on
essentially the same set of habits they want to develop internally in
order to accelerate employee adoption and changing work habits.
02
COLLABORATION
& PERFORMANCE
HOW TO EFFECTIVELY
WORK TOGETHER
18 02 - COLLABORATION & PERFORMANCE
#1
WHAT IS COLLABORATIVE CULTURE?
Getting your staff more comfortable with the emerging digital
landscape is good. Helping them acquire new reflexes by teaching
them about new practices is better. How can you help them work
together? How can you develop a collaborative workplace culture
to accelerate this transformation?
By implementing a truly collaborative, scalable and cross-functional
culture. This is a challenge for everyone involved. Within most
organizations, employees often (rightly so) have the impression
that they do not have time to work together or collaborate and that
incentives are structured in a way as to discourage collaborative
practices – this is particularly true in large companies.
Yet, collaborative workplace practices present numerous advantages.
They not only allow people to better leverage their experience by
promoting best practices and knowledge (and therefore improve
performance), they also create a sense of community belonging
within the company.
Putting collaborative practices into place also helps challenge
vertical systems by developing bottom-up mechanics and valuing
everyday employee expertise. In doing so, collaborative practices
boost internal innovation by highlighting and promoting ideas from
all levels of the organization.
#2
GETTING STAFF ON BOARD, A MUST HAVE
How can you do this? First and foremost, getting staff on board
internally is essential and intrinsically linked to defining and constructing
a company-wide reflection and strategy for corporate culture. At our
last conference, one of the participants brought up Elon Musk and
his company SpaceX, whose mission is not simply to verify if there
is life on Mars but to create life there in the next 70 years. By then,
most current SpaceX staff will no longer be alive; yet, employees
are as committed and motivated as ever to fulfill this mission. The
notion of commitment is key: without it, without them adhering
to a common vision and highly ambitious mission that requires
19 02 - COLLABORATION & PERFORMANCE
everyone to work together in order to succeed, there is very
little chance of generating a collaborative working environment.
Cultivating ethical, daily collaborative practices across teams is also
vital. The term “collaborative” tends to be used as a catchall, without
a concrete meaning attached to it. You must have a pragmatic vision
of what it means to be collaborative: for example, by incorporating
specific goals directly related to individual jobs like sharing best
practices, putting collaborative processes into place, etc. – and by
creating incentives related to this. It is also necessary to teach staff
how, when and where they can work collaboratively. There are different
ways of doing this, including:
■■Leveraging important moments, for example during strategic
pivots to encourage collaboration: in addition to creating
collective momentum, this type of initiative is extremely effective
in making staff aware of different methods they can later use on
a daily basis (design thinking, feedback collection, etc.)
■■Creating spaces dedicated to collaborative work: rooms, digital
interfaces, etc.
■■Training staff on daily work practices that will transform their
relationship to their job
#3
PEER-TO-PEER AND DOCUMENTATION CULTURE:
WHAT PRACTICES TO PUT INTO ACTION
Creating a collaborative workplace culture requires you to rethink
some of your current processes: the goal being to put mechanisms
into place that allow individuals to work together in a flexible, but
disciplined, manner. This implies a larger reflection on the tools your
company uses (favor cloud-based tool, easy to use on a daily basis)
and to instill certain habits in your employees:
■■Sharing Knowledge:
Systematically documenting best practices is an absolute
necessity for collaboration since learning how to summarize
one’s expertise in order to facilitate the work of others already
incorporates notions of teamwork and joint participation. All of
these best practices must be easily accessible to all.
20 02 - COLLABORATION & PERFORMANCE 21 02 - COLLABORATION & PERFORMANCE

■■Creating Internal Feedback Loops
To encourage staff to give and receive feedback and continually
adjust & optimize ongoing projects;
■■Developing Independence:
Collaborative working paradoxically requires a large amount
of independence because you have to be able to properly
understand your priorities to efficiently work with someone else;
■■Ensuring Transparency of Information:
Without proper visibility on business objectives and global
corporate strategy, it is difficult to encourage staff to work
together – everyone must do everything possible to develop
transparency, including for example, logging information into
digital interfaces and phasing out paper documents.
■■Creating Team Alignment, by encouraging the sharing of
information & creating clear decision-making processes.
to a deluge of information and announcements. In this context, it is
difficult to understand what the top priorities are at any given moment
and to feel involved in them. Creating clear roadmaps at all levels
of the organization is essential for developing collaboration.
Finally, applying collaborative workplace practices internally requires
developing both a sense of empathy and understanding each
employee’s organizational process. This can be encouraged by “Live
My Life” programs where staff members test out another position at
the company or by simply documenting different positions and the
different tasks performed by everyone at the company.

#4
THE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS FOR CREATING A
CLIMATE OF INTERNAL TRUST
Generalizing collaborative practices requires creating a managerial
atmosphere that is conducive to collaboration and working together.
This is done by making sure staff are free to speak their mind internally
and driving project ownership amongst employees. Let’s take the
example of creating a company university: instead of deciding top- MORGANE MALLEJAC,
down the skills staff need to acquire, why not directly ask employees VP BRAND & CULTURE @360LEARNING
what skills they would like to learn? This is what one of the participants
who attended our last conference on this topic did, with impressive
results. By adopting an exploratory, operational and creative method, At 360Learning, we pay particular attention to developing a
project owners of the company university initiative surpassed their collaborative workplace culture based on continuous improvement.
goals with an 87% registration rate on the e-learning platform. This is essential for us since we are trying to establish a scalable,
decentralized model that gives employees a large amount
of autonomy. For us, implementing this kind of culture starts
Involving managers in the project is also crucial. To establish long-
on day 1 with new hires, thanks to a finely tuned onboarding
lasting collaborative workplace habits, managers must constantly
process that quickly familiarizes them with different processes
communicate, show signs of engagement and demonstrate exemplary
and methodologies, for example making their roadmap visible
behavior. They also need to be reassured about their role within a
to everyone, continually giving and receiving feedback, or
collaborative environment. They should be driving forces within the
systematically documenting their best practices to allow other
organization by animating working communities and by empowering
staff members to improve their productivity and scale quicker. We
employees to take responsibility and finding solutions to problems
rely heavily on ongoing training and assessments and the results
on their own.
are worth it: our new hires are operational on average in just 2
or 3 days and these processes guarantee our ability to scale.
Developing internal transparency of information using accessible
formats, is also key. In large companies, employees are often subjected
03
KPIs & EVALUATION
HOW TO MEASURE
ACCULTURATION
24
#1
DIFFERENT LEVELS OF APPROPRIATION IN ALL
ORGANIZATIONS
No matter the size of the company, when talking about digital culture,
you will be faced with different levels of appropriation. This can be
explained by several factors, including the age of employees, of
course, but also seniority, their past experiences within the company
and obviously their job. A developer is much more likely to have a
solid digital culture than a financial analyst!
Various barriers exist in the workforce: digital reflexes that have not
yet been mastered, tool complexity (whose ultimate purpose is often
forgotten), job-based cultural difference (Smartphone usage at work,
for example), lack of skills, fear or resistance to change.
Even within an organization that one imagines by definition to be
“digital” since it is a startup, like here at 360Learning, these differences
exist and it is perfectly normal. Based on this observation, how can
you efficiently measure workforce digital acculturation?
#2
MONITORING TOOL USAGE, A GOOD IDEA?
You have understood by now that to establish a digital workplace
culture requires a pedagogical approach that can take different
forms: online training, classes, internal initiatives, conferences, etc.
Identifying measurement criteria for each channel is a best practice
that allows you to analyze the pertinence of each method and the
degree of message retention.
Measuring the usage of each channel, such as email open rates or
the engagement rates on a corporate social network also provides
you with a general idea of internal appropriation of these tools.
Ultimately, what counts is driving action. Vanity metrics, what we
call KPIs that are only used to make something look good, are not
pertinent actionable items.
03 - KPIs & EVALUATION 25 03 - KPIs & EVALUATION
Let’s use an example that we are very familiar with here at 360Learning:
e-learning. If you deploy an in-house training platform, you can
establish various KPIs ahead of deployment, including training
completion rates, session length, average score, etc. With 360Learning,
you can even monitor learner interactions or learner-trainer interactions
and therefore have a clear idea of what topics excite passion and
questions and offer further training on these topics. In this example,
training-related KPIs have a real impact on efficiency.
#3
EVALUATION METHODS & GOALS
Measuring tool usage can provide an overall vision of digital
acculturation, however, it is nevertheless essential to develop a
personalized approach and objectives. As we mentioned earlier,
defining goals for each individual staff member is a must. Since
culture changes over time, these goals must be able to evolve and
adapt based on both strategic corporate priorities and individual
employee progress.
One best practice identified during our last conference on the
topic concerns the frequency of updating these goals. Transforming
annual objectives into short-term, flexible, measurable and precise
objectives makes it possible to establish clear, understandable
roadmaps. This corresponds to the dynamics of digital transformation
– agility within a company results from the transition from a static
performance management model to a model based on continual
improvement and the development of staff members’ skills.
Adopting simple and customizable project management tools, including
Trello to give an example, is an easier way to consistently monitor
business goals. Adopting an e-learning platform like 360Learning also
allows you to monitor digital acculturation progress and to continually
adapt and refine objectives.
26
#4
ONBOARDING NEVER ENDS
At 360Learning, we have taken this approach even further by structure
training programs that combine the mastery of cultural skills (workplace
methodologies & practices) and job skills. To fulfill objectives, the
mastery of both skill sets is necessary (business or cultural) and
different assessment methods are used (self or peer assessment).
The underlying goal is to ensure that new hires quickly assimilate
culture and processes and are operational almost immediately. With
this is mind, their onboarding objectives are set ahead of time and
depend on their program progress.
Thanks to feedback loops present during the onboarding program,
their objectives are constantly adjusted and refined based on new hire
and onboarder feedback. The onboarding program does not end, it
accompanies staff members throughout their career at 360Learning, to
help them learn and master a maximum number of skills. Employees
are free to branch out, by for example following a program related
to another profession. Success is evaluated by the mastery (or not)
of work methods that are constantly measured.
Our KPIs are solely linked to the assessment of processes and habits,
which gives us excellent visibility on staff members’ internal culture
fit. Our model is still being tested, of course, but we are already
thinking about the next steps, including measuring the speed of
new skill adoption – the goal being to provide the most efficient
personalized skill programs possible.
03 - KPI & ÉVALUATION 27 03 - KPI & ÉVALUATION
ISABELLE DAVIAUD,
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION PROJECT
DIRECTOR @ACCORHOTELS
At AccorHotels, measuring cultural adoption internally is at the
heart of our digital transformation strategy. We have put in place
a number of initiatives to develop a common digital culture.
For example, we created Digital Shakers at our head office. The
goal? Have inspirational and unique speakers (startup founders/
employees, artists, etc.) at the forefront of digital innovation raise
awareness internally about what is possible. Another initiative,
Digit’all is an e-learning program with 9 episodes about how digital
technology has changed the lives of different staff members.
For this type of program, we monitor the number of video views
and the number of people who responded to quiz questions.
At the same time, we also created YAMMER (our internal social
network) that allows for the sharing of best practices and inspires
employees. This has provided us with visibility on the degree of
impact of messages internally.
04
MANAGERS &
EMPOWERMENT
HOW TO CREATE A
RESILIENT SYSTEM
30 04 - MANAGERS & EMPOWERMENT
#1
MANAGERS: A ROLE THAT MUST EVOLVE
This is one of the main findings we have gathered over the past
months: the role of managers within organizations must evolve. Today,
managerial methods are often embodied by invisible, unwritten
practices that are hard to measure but that ultimately sculpt corporate
culture. By default, corporate culture is essentially the result of the
current managerial methods in place within the company and is
therefore the sum of the individual behavior of managers. We have
already pointed out that a desire to transform your company’s culture
without rethinking your managerial culture leads to failure.
Even if the function or “manager” title sometimes disappears in new
organizational models (freedom-form companies, holacracy, startups,
etc.) traditional management functions live on. You still need to
know how to manage a project, delegate, take a leadership role
depending on the situation, etc.
In recent years, there has been much talk of the shift from managers
to coaches. This evolution is happening and testifies to the challenges
posed by digital transformation. What is the manager’s role when
a company announces projects focused on innovation and
disruptive technology when 50% of staff struggle to upload a
video in less than a minute? The manager must not only convey
the organization’s strategic vision but also provide their team with
the means to understand and adapt their work accordingly.
#2
SUPPORT & EMPOWERMENT
In terms of day-to-day support, managers have a key role to play.
Transformation is not so much a question of competence as one
of culture and training to fit this culture. It becomes a matter of
empowering staff by allowing them to explore and learn and helping
them anticipate the obsolescence of their current skill set.
A manager’s main role is to encourage this almost organic skill
improvement by identifying learning opportunities based on strategic
corporate goals. Managers must also support and encourage self-
training. As previously mentioned: training used to be done at specific
times or dates, now, our relationship with learning has changed since
31 04 - MANAGERS & EMPOWERMENT
we are continually training and learning new things. This also implies
that managers give staff time to learn by allowing them to manager
their schedule, for example, and creating dedicated time for training.
Finally, managers need to nurture employees by helping them
understand multiple viewpoints and understand the goals of other
departments within the company. This is essential to allow staff to
fully understand their work by viewing it as an ecosystem and not
merely as a set of meaningless tasks without concrete, measurable
and understandable outcomes for the employee.
#3
CENTRALIZE AND PROMOTE BEST PRACTICES
When a company is continually learning and adapting, managers
tend to take on another role: that of centralizing, facilitating and
promoting best business practices and methods internally.
It is up to him or her to encourage their team to document best
practices, to highlight them, develop a process and circulate content
that is produced. Managers are in charge of creating optimal
working conditions in order to develop collective intelligence within
the company. This role is paramount, especially when there is a
generational renewal taking place within a team. Orchestrating
the transmission of knowledge between senior staff members and
younger employees (and vice versa) is essential. This helps save time
and increases performance by leveraging knowledge accumulated
within the company and making it actionable.
Implementing new work methods at the team level is also the
manager’s responsibility. Often, digital transformation efforts
fail because the organization is taken as a whole; transforming
everyday, micro-practices of individual employees tends to be
much more effective, especially when there is a team dynamic
involved. This is what we have experienced at 360Learning; over the
past several months, clients from different sectors have visited us to
understand how they can leverage our work practices to accelerate
their transformation. Our answer is the same each time: start by
deploying discernible actions at the team level, like Inbox Zero and
by highlighting immediate benefits employees will see (no more
email overload, easily find information, etc.)
32 04 - MANAGERS & EMPOWERMENT 33 04 - MANAGERS & EMPOWERMENT

#4
MAKE THIS TRANSFORMATION AN INDIVIDUAL SOPHIE COHENDET
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AT LEARN ASSEMBLY
GOAL
To implement a company-wide transformation, do not expect any
miracles. You will need to translate this cultural evolution into individual During our recent assignments at Learn Assembly we were able
objectives. Culture must be a performance indicator for managers, to observe how digital transformation naturally eliminated power
you can even index part of their variable pay on their contribution games related to the retention of information. Managers that we
to the company’s transformation. spoke to quickly left their role of “knowledge holder” behind to
evolve into a new, multi-faceted role and now describe themselves
as “pilots”, “coaches”, “contributors” and “leaders”.

They play a vital role in conveying the company vision, creating

communities centered on corporate values and fostering ideal
working conditions for each employee. When we asked them what
had actually changed in their role, their answers were clear: managers
are the driving force behind digital transformation, they make it
possible…and this transformation is above all felt at an individual
level because it requires them to evolve very quickly. Knowing
one’s self, developing empathy, actively listening to their team,
inspiring confidence, encouraging team creativity and managing
one’s emotions, all of these individual transformations are required
to succeed in a collective transformation of the organization.
05
BONUS
HOW TO START
YOUR DIGITAL
TRANSFORMATION
36 05 - BONUS 37 05 - BONUS

INSIGHT FROM NICOLAS HERNANDEZ, CEO OF 360LEARNING,

look at a simple example: today, we talk about the importance of user experience on the
AND ANTOINE AMIEL, PRESIDENT OF LEARN ASSEMBLY
web. We learn how to develop a complete customer journey, from the moment the client
lands on the website to their order confirmation, for example, and we try to continually
optimize this journey.

Training should leverage these same practices, to provide learners with a better experience.
On the other hand, we also need to encourage the transmission of knowledge: teaching
and training are still far too often seen as strictly a service, and they shouldn’t be. If
business experts and managers had objectives related to sharing information, contributing
to knowledge management and collective intelligence, things would be very different. All
the more so since the age distribution in companies is rapidly evolving as older generations
NICOLAS ANTOINE retire. We are losing a huge amount of knowledge and this is something we should fight.
HERNANDEZ, AMIEL, Creating a culture based on information sharing, peer-to-peer principles, has enormous
stakes. This is something GAFA, like Google, are doing very well and in my opinion this is
CEO OF 360LEARNING CEO OF LEARN ASSEMBLY really the key to a successful digital transformation.

A graduate of Polytechnique with a Master’s Former student at HEC, Antoine Amiel

Degree in Philosophy (specialist of Michel
Foucault), Nicolas Hernandez founded
360Learning and has been the CEO since
2010. Passionate about new management
models, he has been experimenting with a
new organizational model at 360Learning for
the past six years. Based on decentralization
and staff member autonomy, Hernandez
also advises many CEOs on the best way to
create a scalable organizational model that
will drive growth within their own companies.
founded Learn Assembly in 2013 with one
goal in mind: encouraging people and
organizations to focus on creating a culture
focused on entrepreneurship and digital
technology. Today, he works with numerous
companies and advises leaders on the best
way to carry out digital transformations in
their organizations.
NICOLAS HERNANDEZ
It’s a difficult question. To give you a concrete example, we’ve been working on our
company culture for years. It’s a constant experiment, always in progress, that sometimes
requires a degree of risk taking. Today, a number of our clients, or founders, come to see
us so that they can understand how they can transform their own organization. On our end,
we’ve put in place various codes and practices that determine how we work on a daily
basis. On our scale, it’s already a huge challenge, imagine how big a challenge it is for an
organization with an established legacy, processes and a corporate culture that’s been in
place for decades.

QUESTION FOR THE EXPERTS: IF TOMORROW YOU HAD TO TRANSFORM A
GLOBAL COMPANY WITH 10,000 EMPLOYEES WORLDWIDE, WHERE WOULD
YOU START?
It requires a great deal of modesty and above all to consider this challenge in a rational and
pragmatic manner. Using lean methods is key: you have to analyze the problem, segment
it into smaller problems, prioritize them and deploy solutions based on this prioritization.
This method has worked for us, we set smaller objectives, we reach them and move on to
the next. Trying to tackle and force digital transformation in one go, head on, won’t work.

ANTOINE AMIEL
I would start by trying to get staff interested in training. Today, in France, people have
no interest in training, we tend to have a negative impression of training and it’s often
misunderstood – yet, we are entering into a world in which the capacity to continually learn
and self-train is an absolute necessity for professional mobility. In my opinion, inspiring
a love for learning in employees is vital. This is done by using innovative formats and
training initiatives that offer true added value and an enhanced learning experience. Let’s
The other challenge is to successfully modify daily habits and behavior. For this, there’s no
secret, you need to train, train, train. But not just any old way. Hyper-vertical, top-down
training courses won’t be effective; they don’t speak to employees or impact their work
on a daily basis. You have to start from the bottom, get them familiar with new, defined,
methods and show them the immediate benefit they can drive from their work. The next
step is to get staff to educated and adopt these same practices with their coworkers,
solve problems one by one, create workflows that are continuously improved, circulate best
practices internally.
CONCLUSION
All organizations are faced with the same problem: how to avoid
market disruption in their sector and preserve their existence? The
answer is unanimous. You must be capable of:
■■Constant innovation; in short, transversal cycles with all
employees working together to increase agility;
■■Relying on available technical tools & digital practices to improve
overall performance;
■■To be at the heart of an ecosystem by playing the role of a platform
and therefore reinventing the ecosystem’s business model.
These are the three driving forces behind a successful digital
transformation in today’s world. The problem is that it is not enough
to simply get top management on board and decide to put this into
action. Defining a strategic, high-level plan is not enough since it
is fundamentally a transversal revolution. Each and every employee
must be involved. Taking top management on a learning expedition
to San Francisco is not enough; even if they come back convinced
about what they have learned and observed, it will not help get
staff members involved. Today, the vast majority of employees
have not yet taken digital culture to heart and have been subjected
to years of poor managerial practices. This paralyzes any digital
transformation efforts.
This is the exact moment that training plays a vital role by educating
and initiating culture change within the organization. E-learning
allows you to go even further by eliminating barriers posed by
traditional attended training classes including geographical distance
or training at scale. The problem is that e-learning has a poor
reputation. Traditional e-learning does not generate engagement
and staff tend to think of it as removed from their daily work routines
and business cycles. This is not surprising when you consider that
the NPS of traditional e-learning portals varies between -10% and
5% while Netflix is at 68%1.
Several factors contribute to this:
■■Complete lack of human interaction, totally demotivating for
learners and in stark contradiction with what the Internet has
become today;
■■Extremely poor design and ergonomics, far behind current web
standards;
GO EVEN FURTHER
Discover the Learn Assembly MOOCs available on 360Learning University:
Digital Culture Digital Transformation Managerial Innovation
■■Top-down usage, traditional platforms have not embraced
concepts like user-generated content; the design and production
processes are completely top-down.
As a result, these platforms struggle to generate engagement with
an excessively long time-to-train between the moment the need is
identified and training deployment, with extremely high marginal
costs: each new training course requires several months of back
and forths with non-negligible costs. The methods, formats and
use cases of traditional e-learning are out of step with current
business cycles that impact end customers and staff members in
their daily work.
Yet, this is a major priority today: we are stuck with distance
training based on obsolete practices (in terms of design, human
interaction and agility), both cost and time inefficient and that can
only be managed by specialists. These practices and companies are
incapable of responding to urgent needs expressed by managers
confronting the digital revolution. This is exactly what we are trying
to tackle at 360Learning by developing a friction-less e-learning
solution that is a driving force behind transforming culture at scale by
leveraging modern design and relevant training programs. Easy to
produce, short, quick-paced with questions to check knowledge and
interactions between learners, mobile and continually optimized. In
our opinion, this is how training should be and this is the only way
organizations will be able to truly transform their culture.
1
NPS (Net Promoter Score): Is a web-based index that consists in asking users of a product or service the following question: “On a scale of
1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this product / service to others?”. Those that respond between 0 and 6 are Detractors, between 8
and 10 are Promoters. The NPS is obtained from subtracting the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters.
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