strategy
n Building competencies, performance indicators and behavioural capabilities n Agreeing workflows and processes n Exploring new technologies and stimulating early wins to build confidence n Creating thoughtful blends that enable personalised learning journeys with multiple access points for content. It is important to start with a clear vision of what it is we actually want to achieve with our learning programme. Is it increased sales? Is it lower attrition rates? Is it achieving better customer service ratings? This vision will be the starting point you need, and will be a constant reminder of why you are commissioning your learning programme in the first place, beyond ‘Because I have to’ or ‘Because I should’. To do this most effectively, we should be thinking about using tools to help us structure our learning programme. Performing a health check of our current learning allows us to align stakeholders and their challenges, define the strategic direction for our learning methods and ensure that our organisation’s people, processes and technologies can support this strategy. A global automotive organisation used LEO’s HealthCheck process to examine its current processes and technology. The solution was to create a three-year strategy to cover all aspects of dealer training, significantly improving the company’s ROI on these programmes. This could only have been achieved with the involvement of senior stakeholders, who became leaders of the change process. In another leading automobile company, a senior leader needed to create and realise a content strategy that leveraged new learning technologies. To support this vision, a stakeholder engagement plan was created, ensuring that all stakeholders contributed their challenges and opportunities into the core strategy. Looking at the capability of the delivery functions, the learning development processes, the culture of the organisation and the technological readiness of the teams, twelve streams of work were identified to deliver on this 21st century learning strategy, ensuring the business was fully prepared for change. Again, stakeholder alignment was crucial to the strategy rollout being successful.
Building a learning architecture Moving away from thinking of our corporate learning as a series of disparate elements can be difficult without a new structure into which all of these elements can fit. Creating a learning architecture enquiry map is one effective way to visualise how to rebuild learning from its foundations. Using this architecture, we can consider each of the learning components as a building block, with the cement being what brings it all together and makes our organisations unique. The largest, most complex organisations will be able to draw on a wide variety of technologies and methods. Whether you are building a single learning intervention or a broader organisational strategy, you must assess the capabilities of both the systems and the people in place to deliver the component parts. A blended learning framework is one approach to help businesses build structurally sound learning architectures from the many technologies available, setting a path for learner progression against pre-assigned competencies or capabilities. More than just adding clever technologies to a pre-existing programme, the blended learning framework should pull from commonly available learning methods and modalities. An example of this approach in action is the Ministry of Defence. We developed an approach to transfer blended design skills to civilian HR staff whereby the starting point was to have blended learning design woven into all training interventions. We created an iterative design methodology which clarified training objectives across the branch and queried the methods for delivery against the appropriate media for the blend. The entire training operating model is underpinned by the requirement to refer back to the organisational objectives, ensuring that the learning intervention aligns to the strategy of the wider organisation. Both strategic planning for a strong, readily accessible architecture and
e.learning age september 2014
The whole organisational learning culture must change to make the context of learning the focal point, rather than the prescriptive course model
consistent blended programme design are important elements for the 21st century learning organisation, requiring both learning architects and blended learning designers for the most successful L&D functions.
Extracting measurable value from our training investment
The new learning organisation is one that can readily measure the value that learning delivers to the strategic aims of the business. The conversation about results has matured significantly in the past two years. Businesses are moving beyond asking for a return on investment and are asking for support in demonstrating value. Organisations are asking how can L&D build a convincing business case for stakeholders to secure future investment in training? Return on investment (ROI) plays a small part in the answer. Organisations are seeking ways to introduce business benefit measures which enable them to demonstrate the value of the intervention. In fact, we would argue that all learning interventions should demonstrate real business benefits that are aligned to the organisation’s strategic business outcomes.
Our advice is to first define the evidence criteria for the change that is both practical and relevant. Then, clarify how this evidence will be gathered, before checking back to see how this change has affected the capabilities or performance of the organisation. It should then be fed back into the evaluation process to enable continuous improvement. This methodology was built into the learning design of a manager training programme for a European auto manufacturer. Learners immerse themselves in real-life issues to identify critical business challenges, analyse root causes to the problem and develop action plans to address performance in their critical business areas. They then adjust their action plans as the business feedback changes. This programme was so successful that it has now been rolled out internationally, showing that this approach has the potential to transform learning on a global scale. Realisation of the business benefits of our training programmes should be an integral (and early) part of the learning development process for L&D. Creating and interpreting solid business cases for learning development is yet another capability that L&D teams need to strengthen. By aligning the learning objectives and training outcomes to the business’s aims, L&D teams will stay in step with the changes their complex businesses are undergoing.
The transformation crescendo
The speed and complexity of the change we are witnessing in learning technologies is only increasing organisations’ appetites for learning transformation. Towards Maturity’s Benchmark Reports consistently prove that technology-enabled learning returns value to businesses that adopt it. L&D teams have the ambition to evolve and change. They are well versed in looking at the capabilities of the wider organisation. We are now seeing L&D teams looking inwards and assessing their own capability to evolve, making thinking strategically an integral part of the 21st century learning transformation process.
Patrick Thomas is LEO’s consultancy service leader
@leolearning 27
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