The Post-Standard (Syracuse, New York), December 18, 2005, Sunday

Copyright 2005 Post-Standard
All Rights Reserved.
The Post-Standard (Syracuse, New York)

December 18, 2005 Sunday
FINAL EDITION

SECTION: BUSINESS; Pg. E1

HEADLINE: SHE'S ONE OF A KIND AROUND HERE;
CHIEF LEARNING OFFICER TERRY FLYNN WORKS TO DEVELOP SENSIS CORP.'S WORK FORCE. 1SENSIS2E-

BODY:
Terry Flynn's title, chief learning officer at Sensis Corp., makes it sound as if she develops training programs, but she does more than that.
Early in December, the 44-year-old from DeWitt sat down with Post-Standard reporter Charley Hannagan to talk about her unique job.
Q) You are the only chief learning officer I've ever heard of.
A) They are more common in certain industries than others. They are much more common in high-tech organizations.
They're more common on the West Coast and Boston, the big cities. I do believe that I'm the only one in Central New York, so far.
Q) What does a chief learning officer do?
A) Generically, chief learning officers are responsible for thinking strategically about development. About the development of your work force, about getting information to people right at the point where they need it so they can make smart decisions and act on the information.
So, when business intelligence is a critical need, and it's rapidly changing, CLOs are more common.
Q) Business intelligence? Are you a spy?
A) It's the information you need to make intelligent decisions about your business.
Q) What qualifications do you have? Did you set out as a little girl to become a chief learning officer?
A) I started with an undergraduate degree in social psychology from the University of California at Santa Cruz. Go Banana Slugs. What we lack in speed we make up for in persistence.
Then I came out here to go to Cornell, and I studied at the school of Industrial and Labor Relations, specializing in organizational behavior. That includes organizational development and organizational science.
Then I started my own consulting company, Odyssey Consulting. For the last 15 years, I really devoted my time to large-scale organizational change, consulting with a variety of large corporations, strategic planning, executive coaching, executive development, the design of training.
Q) What do you do specifically at Sensis?
A) At Sensis, the chief learning office role was designed to incorporate a couple of different functions. It is a strategic training function. I'll say training broadly defined.
There's this whole organizational development, organizational design piece that Sensis has included in the CLO role.
Q) What do you mean by organization design?
A) It's the whole field of organizational development, which is the systems, structures and policies that help organizations achieve their goals.
At Sensis, the CLO role is about human performance, but it's also about organizational components and trying to wed those together.
Q) I think I understand, but what kind of things do you do on an average day?
A) First, I work out at the gym. I've got to get that in.
I view as my North Star our corporate objectives. Those are statements of the goals we're trying to achieve.
At any moment in time I may be working with an individual manager on how to achieve their goals, on how to structure their organization, or work with their group, develop their group, so that they're achieving their goals.
I might be playing a coaching role.
I've been spending a lot of time this first year - I've just passed my first-year anniversary - learning about the business.
The bottom line is as chief learning officer, I have the most to learn.
It's a tremendously humbling task.
So learning about what the work is and what the customers are looking for, what our competitors have to offer, really trying to learn the whole picture. But also learning more about how we go about trying to achieve results so that I can better inform the organization from an organizational development standpoint.
Q) When I first heard about you as a chief learning officer, I thought she must be the person who recommends courses or designs training. It doesn't sound like you do any of those things.
A) All of those things I might be doing, but in the pursuit of the corporate objectives.
Let me give you an example. Our corporate goal, and certainly as an imperative for survival, is we want to be as innovative as possible.
I'm all for the "I want to go off and contemplate some idea." It's a lot of fun and certainly that kind of creative energy is important.
But at some point you have to say, how much are we willing to invest in that.
We want to always be fostering an entrepreneurial spirit. Entrepreneurial to me is different than just creative or innovative, because the entrepreneur is always thinking about is there a business case for this. Where can I sell this? Can I make money doing this? Is there any need?
So, we partnered with Syracuse University and the Martin J. Whitman School of Management. They designed a course for us, Fostering an Entrepreneurial Spirit at Sensis.
Twenty-five employees are participating in the course.
That's an example of where we're trying to bring together our corporate strategy in a particular course in partnership with resources within the community. Then really combining that with a group of people who have that passion anyway, who really wanted to take the course and have a passion for that.
The reason I don't talk a whole lot about the training catalog is because I think of that as a means to an end. It's a tool that's really valuable, but it's a tool. It's not an end to itself.
You can contact Charley Hannagan at 470-2161 or channagan@syracuse.com

GRAPHIC: PHOTO David Lassman/Staff photographer TERRY FLYNN recently passed her one-year anniversary as chief learning officer at Sensis Corp., in DeWitt. She believes she's the only person in Central New York with that title.