Many organisations invest significant time and money into developing a learning strategy, only to find that it never gained traction. Worse still, it lacked credibility and came nowhere near transitioning from a bold vision into a living reality. So why is this?
A strategy that fails to ignite a passion in others will never get the momentum it needs to see it through to realisation.
So consider these five ideas to help you inspire commitment to learning:
1. Think Context and Future Focus
In today’s world of complex information, granular focus and fast moving pace, the Learning Strategy needs to focus on ensuring the organisation has the skills and capability needed to deliver on corporate objectives. It does this by encouraging everyone around the organisation to continually learn, adapt, reflect and enhance their own skills. To do this, we as learning professionals need to understand our business. Consider the following….
• What are the aspirations and strategic intent of the organisation with regards to its market place?
• Usually a business strategy is for 3-5 years so a learning strategy should mirror that timeframe.
• Look at your people strategy and technology strategy. What changes are expected in demographics, is there an even spread of ages or will there be a retirement surge? Are any roles hard to fill? What is the current and future global spread? How will work practices change? What technological opportunities are there to bring learning to the learners? Who might not have access to technology – how will they learn? How will these changes impact on skills needs?
• Talk to your Business Directors to find out what’s on the horizon. Look at your public documents, maybe a shareholder report and draw out any themes about people that L&D can help to develop in addition to any internal documents you can get your hands on.
• Remember culture matters. What needs to change in the culture to deliver the future strategy, how can learning encourage that change? What aspects of current culture will act as barriers to learning and change, how can the learning strategy influence the behaviour changes needed to create a culture which supports the business strategy (think not just about what learning you will provide, but also how it is provided)?
In a nutshell dissect the organisation’s strategic intent and ask HOW will people help this happen… then you can start to analyse where the gaps are in skills and learning provision and seek to fill that with your L&D strategy.
2. Think about the wider Information landscape (not TNA)
It is very easy for a learning strategy to get side tracked in a costly and lengthy Training Needs Analysis exercise, which at best tells you what people need from the current solutions but rarely encourages future thinking aligned to business strategy. Whilst this information may be useful, it is only part of the story, in other words a TNA is not a strategy for learning, it is partial data to inform a strategy. Essentially your strategy needs to focus on the next 3- 5 years and how learning can help equip the organisation to grow in alignment with the business plan. So a forensic analysis of the plan will drive the area you need to focus on.
Your approach to strategy should require you to be investigative, thoughtful, challenging, be reading into everything you are told or observe and ask WHY?
As your insight grows, start to think what comes first, what is the foundation piece to help you achieve these goals and what are the top three to five things that need to follow?
3. Think Collaboration
Do not develop your strategy in a vacuum, not only will you not gain buy in and have ever reducing budgets, but you will alienate the very people whose commitment you need. Conversely, a well handled engagement and collaboration approach to developing your strategy can produce some strong champions for learning.
4. Think engagement
You are not a passive passenger in the business – you are a driver for improvement. You supply learning and like all good suppliers a key part of your job is to sell the benefits of learning to everyone all the time – never rest!
Become the voice of learning. Every email, every conversation, every note you write will help you promote the value of learning, never forget this and constantly tap into it. With each conversation you have the opportunity to tap into issues that matter to people and show how learning can help.
Consider a quick example from Diesel. We all know they sell jeans but so do hundreds of other people. So how do Diesel build committed buyers in the same way that you need to build committed learners? They describe their brand as living, breathing and wearing passion, it is a lifestyle and if that lifestyle appeals to you then you will buy the product.
5. Think Business Acumen
Finally, it is important to show that L&D people have a business focus and can talk the language of the business.
When you present your strategy ensure that you are doing so in the context of what matters to them, organisational objectives, corporate risk, market share.
Articulate how each solution contributes to a positive change in the business bottom line through reduced errors, increased productivity, and improved customer responsiveness. Ensure your learning success metrics demonstrate critical business improvements and create good news stories that resonate with the business.
The bottom line is that your learning strategy should satisfy a business case which states investment in learning equals improved business outcomes. If you want credibility for learning, your approach needs to stack up against other business leaders – most especially the Finance Director, as they allocate the budgets!
