Managing for Quality and Performance Excellence 10th Edition by James Evans ,William Lindsay

Exercise 13

American Honda Motor Co. is part of Honda's North American operations. Based in Torrance, CA, American Honda provides information services, purchasing, financial services, leasing support, and a host of sales and marketing-related services to Honda's business and manufacturing units throughout North America. In 2001, American Honda's associate learning and organizational development group undertook a broad assessment of its approach to training, looking at what was offered, why, to whom, and how. One focus of this initiative was to deepen the emphasis on quality, which has long permeated Honda's manufacturing operations, within the internal support and service portions of the organization. "The Honda philosophy encourages every individual to continuously expand his or her ability to identify and impact both internal and supplier quality," says Lou Juneman, manager of associate learning and organizational development for American Honda. "Innovation, branding, customer satisfaction, and efficiency are central to our success; therefore, quality is at the core of everything we do."
The challenge laid out for the development group was to improve and extend the delivery of training for employees, reduce their time away from the job for training, take advantage of expanding technology capabilities and infrastructure and, above all, ensure a tangible transfer of skills that would take internal service quality to an entirely new level. Honda's approach to service quality improvement through e-learning was focused and disciplined. First, the company began to use a learning management system (LMS) to schedule, administer, and track training. The system was applied not only to instructor-led offerings but also to pure online training, blended learning (a unique mix of online and instructor-led training), and other offerings. Using a customized LMS, Honda employees and their managers learned to define and manage individual training plans as well as enroll in, complete, and track their progress in courses and curricula through a learner-specific web portal.
Decisions also had to be made about which programs to offer and which formats would best support the overall emphasis on growth and quality. Their approach, called blended learning, is to provide the best mix of electronic, instructor-led, and self-paced learning to employees. One of the programs to which the blended learning approach was applied was problem solving and decision making. This program sharpens an individual's ability to separate and clarify issues, identify those that need immediate attention, and resolve them using a systematic, rational problem-solving, decision-making or action-planning process. These rational thinking skills have been successfully taught at American Honda for many years in a purely instructor-led workshop version. The skills have been critical to establishing and sustaining quality throughout Honda, in both the manufacturing and service/support areas. American Honda worked closely with several vendors to shorten the time spent at the workshop, produce online learning elements, and document results electronically. The blended learning approach also enabled American Honda to capture and measure detailed, useful data about how the problem-solving and decision-making processes are used to impact and improve quality in critical service and support areas.
American Honda realized from the beginning that training, by itself, wouldn't lead to quality improvements. Applying the skills learned during a training experience regularly and accurately requires a great deal of practice and support. This led to American Honda's three-phase learning model (see Figure 4.7). The first phase takes place online. For two to three weeks, learners access a series of online modules that introduce the logical processes for effective problem solving and decision making. Learner progress is essentially self-paced, but because the content is driven from a web server, the instructor can follow the progress of each learner and provide ongoing encouragement and support. During phase one, learners are also asked to identify situations to which they intend to apply the techniques so they can focus on these situations when they attend the workshop. This powerful combination of initial learning and preparation for applying the concepts to real-life issues ensures the following phase will not only be efficient but will also build deep understanding and significant motivation to use the ideas on the job after training.
FIGURE 4.7 American Honda's Three-Phase Learning Model

Source: Adapted from Wayne Stottler, "Improving Service Quality at Honda," Quality Progress, October 2004, pp. 33-38.
The second phase takes place at the workshop. Guided by the instructor, learners spend two days deepening their understanding of the concepts, discussing best practices and additional techniques for problem solving and decision making, and practicing on detailed case scenarios. Because skill transfer-and results-occur most rapidly when one starts with the learner's on-the-job issues, a significant portion of the session is spent working on the problems, decisions and plans identified in phase one. Simultaneously, learners receive coaching and feedback from the instructor and one another. Learners leave the session ready to fully apply the concepts and with a plan in hand to move successfully from the workshop to consistent use of the concepts back on the job.
The final phase takes place back online. In the three weeks following the session, learners resolve the on-the-job issues they began to work on during the workshop. They document the specific techniques they used to resolve the issues for instructor review, feedback, and approval. During phase three, learners have access to a host of online support tools and information. They can contact the instructor with questions at any time. The goal of this phase is to ensure use of the learned concepts, build confidence, get results, and capture information about how the problem-solving and decision-making tools impact American Honda's business; how they create quality and value through their use.
Honda managers learned a lot about electronic learning. As one observed, "True online learning requires culture change, and like any change, it requires planning, communication, and persistence." While online learning displaces some workshop time-the session was pared from three days to two-learners must take time to go online and learn. This requires new behaviors on the part of learners (who have to find the time and resist distractions), managers (who have to encourage and protect the time necessary for online learning), and instructors (who become performance partners and must be available to coach and support learners).
To promote and support the success rate of online learners, American Honda now kicks off each training session with a web conference to clarify expectations and provide participants with practical tips for online learning. In addition, learners' managers are brought into the loop and asked for input into the choice of high priority problems, decisions, and plans to be tackled during the workshop. Instructors at American Honda have also received additional training to help them effectively coach online learners and act quickly to intervene with anyone experiencing difficulties. The company has also created an extensive online library of reference and support materials on which instructors can draw.
Because instructors can track phase one learning progress in real time, they can provide direct support to individual learners even before they come to the workshop. As a result, the instructor can tailor the learning experience, minimizing the one-size-fits-all approach that frustrates many people in traditional training. After the session, the instructor becomes an on-call coach-tracking progress, providing pointers, and answering questions so learners get personalized support during the critical days following the workshop, when traditional learners often stumble and give up in frustration.
This adds up to a higher quality learning experience that produces the motivation and support June-man believes are key to setting the stage for integrating learned concepts into daily use longterm. Because learners now submit online documentation of the issues they have resolved, it is much easier to see how and where the concepts are being used and evaluate the impact of the training on the bottom line of the organization. They have identified five indicators that support the success of this initiative:
1. Increased learner readiness for workshop learning
2. Better identification of relevant application topics
3. Increased volume of completed applications
4. Increased dollar value of after-workshop applications
5. Greater ongoing use of skills
With more than 300 learners having taken advantage of the blended learning opportunity in the last couple of years, American Honda is happy with the results. Juneman offers an example: "When someone in our dealer support function uses these rational-thinking processes to systematically find and resolve the cause of a longstanding computer systems issue, I know he or she and a number of other people across the organization will be able to work more efficiently. The quality of individual output is improved, customers are happier and more efficient, and learners are very likely to use the problem-solving process again and again to achieve similar results."
What were the benefits of the three-phase learning model? How does it support the achievement of high performance?