1. Verizon Wireless as a Learning Organization
Thank you for taking the time to view my presentation. I will review Verizon Wireless as a Learning Organization.
Verizon Wireless as a Learning Organization
Bellevue University
Javon Annie Oh, MSM 620

2. AGENDA Marni Walden What is a Learning Organization
Why Change is Necessary
Learning vs. Training
Examples of VZW as a Learning Organization
Goals and Challenges
Leadership Development
We will going over the following. Read the Bullet Points.

3. VERIZON WIRELESS EVP & COO
Marni Walden
Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer
20 years experience in the wireless industry
Area President
Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer
I had the pleasure of interviewing Marni Walden who is the EVP and COO of VZW. Marni has over 20 years experience in the business. She began her career in retail and has had numerous sales and sales management positions throughout her career. She went on the be President of Southern California and the Desert Mountain Region. She also took on the role Area President of the Midwest. Then VP and CMO of VZW and currently is the EVP and COO of the largest wireless company in the United States.

4. LEARNING ORGANIZATION
“A learning organization is an organization skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights”
-David A. Garvin
David Garvin from the Harvard Business School defines learning organizations as the following. Read the definition.

5. CHANGE IS NECESSARY
“If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.”
- Jack Welch
Change is necessary in order for businesses to thrive and survive. If you look at the following business there was a time where they thought their business were great but they didn’t look forward enough and think about innovation.

6. TRAINIG VS. LEARNING Training – Instances Learning – On going
Product or Process
Beginning
End
Done
Learning – On going
Culture
Appling Skills
Business Better
When asked if Marni felt that training and learning were the same thing her response was that she thinks of training as instances. You have a product or process that is trained on and there is a purpose, beginning, end and your done. Whereas with learning, it’s an ongoing thing. It’s about creating an everyday culture by applying a new set of skills everyday which in turn makes the business better.

7. VERIZON WIRELESS VLSS 1 NPS 2
Verizon Lean Six Sigma
NPS 2
Net Promoter Score
When asked to give examples of how VZW is a Learning Organization there were three key items.
First is Verizon Lean Six Sigma or VLSS which takes existing processes that are done today and improves upon them. The vision is to make it a part of the VZW culture. Members of the VLSS team are leaders of the business who are on succession planning and at the top levels of leadership. VZW takes the best talent within the organization out of their leadership roles and puts them through an intense advanced program of learning. VLSS is about constantly improving the business with a new set of skills. It’s about creating an ongoing culture and integrating it into the business vs. programmatic training. The 2nd phase of VLSS will be around design. So not taking existing processes and making them better but even before a new product or business is launched VZW will be looking at the design. Develop the right processes upfront.
The second example is Net Promoter Score or NPS. We take the voice of the customer and everyday we learn about what the customer tells us and integrate it into the business. Everyday we learn something new from what our customers tell us.
Lastly is Ideas at Work. VZW also learns from employees on ways to improve the business.
VZW takes the voice of the customer, the voice of the employees and the voice of the business and incorporate knowledge into the business and takes action and changes the way they do things.
Ideas at Work 3
Get ideas from employees.

8. GOALS & CHALLENGES GOALS CHALLENGES Deliver shareholder value
Grow Revenue
Cost Structure
Satisfy customers
CHALLENGES
Employees
Commitment
Engagement
What are the goals that VZW tries to achieve by being a learning organization? The bottom line is simply to deliver shareholder value. In order to do so we need to grow top line revenue. In order to do that you have to make sure that you have the right cost structure and at the end of the day we have to continue to satisfy our customers. All of this is done by people so continuously improving the skill set of your people which has to be an ongoing process to deliver results.
What are the challenges of maintaining a culture of a learning organization? VZW has 72, 000 employees and we are a very dynamic organization. The majority of employees are frontline facing employees either in our retail stores or our call center. Everyone is committed but you often have different levels of commitment so getting all 72,000 employees engaged and bought into improving themselves and improving the business everyday the biggest challenge when dealing with people. We have our credo that guides us and shows that VZW is committed to being an learning organization. You can pick out words from the credo that confirms this, such as focus on customers, knowing our products and services and delivering value. You’ve got to get people wanted to run through the wall.

9. LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
Execution
Think
Broader
Strategic
Communication
Innovation
There is a lot of literature available on leadership development. Are there any critical aspects of leadership development that VZW needs to improve upon? There isn’t a company out there that executes better than VZW, that’s what we’re known for. What we do today is say, here are the top 5 things we need to do, we need to execute them from end to end and no one does that better. We have more things to sell, products and services have become more complicated, but our customers demand more simplicity and ease of access. As the business becomes harder our leaders need to be able to more than 5 things. So leaders now have to think much broader and be more strategic in their thinking. Communication continues to be the most import thing that leaders do so they need to have strong communication skills. They also need to think about innovation now as part of their role. Leadership has to be curious, leadership has to be innovative and develop teams around them that do that too.

10. Closing
Organizations have to constantly learn in order to get a ahead. Without constant learning and innovation they will not be able to stay ahead of the curve and survive. In closing I’d like to thank you for viewing my presentation today. Special thanks to Marni Walden for taking time out of her busy schedule and allowing me interview her.