In Real Life: Don’t Leave Your L&D Team Behind

“Change is theonly constant in life.” Heraclitus really knew what he was talkingabout when he threw down this quote sometime around 500 BC, and he’s been“retweeted” plenty of times since. While he was likely philosophizing aboutsome pretty deep stuff, this sentiment also applies to the pace of change intoday’s workplace.

As L&Dprofessionals, we often find ourselves in chase mode as we try to keep up withour stakeholders’ evolving strategies. We therefore must become change-managementexperts after recognizing the importance of communicating decisions andmanaging objections in order to drive desired behavior change. But do we alwaysapply the same expertise when there is change within our L&D teams?

How many timeshave you jokingly referenced the fact that L&D never sets aside enough timefor self-development? Unfortunate, but so often true. We talk a big game whenit comes to concepts like continuous learning and change management. But, inreal life, we are often so “production-focused” that we fail to eat our own dogfood. We make decisions regarding instructional strategy, content, technology,and more without bringing our teams along for the ride. We incorrectly assumethat our L&D identity will keep everyone onside without the same effort weput into change initiatives for our audiences.

Many L&Dpros base their professional value on their tangible work as well as theirunique skills. Even a minor shift in direction can challenge this value and causethe team members we critically need to promote change across the organization tobecome defensive. If our teams don’t believe in our vision, our initiativessuffer due to distractions, inconsistent execution, and extra work. Therefore, L&Dleaders must foster the necessary mindset shift within their teams beforeattempting to execute change within stakeholder audiences.

I continue to confrontthis challenge in my work with a variety of global organizations. Here are afew of the practices I recommend to L&D partners to help them enable a mindsetshift within their teams. I’ll be calling on examples from my time as directorof learning technology and development with Kaplan along the way, too.

Continuously explore new directions

We shouldn’twait until change is necessary before we start to explore the possibility. Forexample, even though my Kaplan audience was almost entirely tied to desktopcomputers to do their jobs, my team still made the effort to explore mobilelearning. Not only did this prep my team members for the potential applicationof mobile technology in future roles, but it also exposed us to related themesthat we eventually integrated into our approach. We always dedicated a smallchunk of our working capacity to trying out new concepts that weren’timmediately applicable to our audiences. Because we were constantly immersed inaspirational ideas, we were that much more prepared to deal with change whenthe need arose.

Bring everyone along from the start

This is where working outloud can play a huge role in proactively supporting change within your team.Let’s discuss why I was the only employee in the world’s largest educationcompany who maintained an internal blog. Early on, I recognized the need topace the rate of change for my team as well as my stakeholders. Therefore, as Iexplored new themes like shared knowledge and the science of learning, Iblogged my findings within our Confluence wiki. This gave anyone who wasinterested, regardless of role, a chance to see the ideas my team wasconsidering and how these ideas related to their work. When a great idea roseto the top, many L&D team members (plus stakeholders) already had someexposure to the concept and were better prepared to take the next step. It alsoprovided me with a ready resource to push to impacted partners and eliminatedthe need to add this work into already tight project schedules.

Clearly define vision and roles

Once you make the decision toinitiate change, the clock is ticking. You only have a limited time to clarifyyour vision within the L&D team before people start filling in the blankswith their own concerns. And it’s not just the overall vision that requiresexplanation. As soon as change is detected, people will start asking, “How doesthis affect me?” If you decide to augment your online training content, yourclassroom trainers are going to wonder. If you start down the path ofuser-generated content, your content developers will be curious. If youdelegate reporting to front-line managers, your admins will notice. Clearlydefining each individual’s role in executing your new vision before you attempt to implement outsidethe team, regardless of whether or not it may change from what it is today, istime-consuming. But it’s also critical!

Provide relevant examples

People may say they “get it,”but they may also be worried about their jobs. If you’re worried about beingreplaced, you may try to avoid appearing confused or getting a reputation for rockingthe proverbial boat during a time of change. Providing tangible examples ofsimilar implementations can help ensure consistent understanding of your newvision. For example, when we introduce the Axonify Knowledge Platform within anorganization’s distribution functions, we heavily leverage case studies fromour partnership with Walmart as part of our change strategy. This includes logisticaldetails, measurable business outcomes, and anecdotal feedback from variousstakeholders, including the L&D team and front-line employees. The new organizationmay not be exactly like Walmart, but seeing these potentially disruptive ideascome to life in an impactful way can help clarify the overall vision and allayteam member concerns.

Apply the same principles within L&D (first)

Another great way to helpyour L&D team get more comfortable with a new idea: Apply that idea withinyour team before you take it out toyour audiences. Prior to positioning shared knowledge as the foundation of workplacelearning at Kaplan, we tested and perfected our approach within our own team. We’redoing the same thing within Axonify as we develop new product features andstrategies. This helps our team members to position the value of these ideaswith their audiences based on their personal experience—not just theory. Italso gets team members hands-on with a new approach and the roles they willplay more quickly than an external implementation, which requires a lot moreplanning.

Make time for upskilling

We can’t just expect everyL&D professional to be capable of executing a new vision with theirexisting skills. That sounds obvious, but we too often make this mistake forexpediency or to minimize disruption in workflow. While we are the internalexperts in learning and performance, we can’t do absolutely everything in ourfield. We must dedicate time, effort, and resources to any upskilling requiredto execute on a new vision. When we shifted some of our classroom trainingcapacity to online performance support at Kaplan, we put our trainers through aseries of workshops on how to help employees in a new way. They had the initialmotivation and workplace knowledge necessary to execute the new assignment, butthey needed some help with the process, technology, and interaction model todeliver the desired user experience. In many cases, this upskilling may requirebringing in outside help from an industry expert who has more experience withthe concept than anyone within your organization.

Be ready for difficult conversations

Hopefully all of my previoustips work perfectly, and you never make it this far down the page.Unfortunately, this one comes up now and then. For whatever reason, a team membermay be unwilling or unable to shift their mindset and adopt the new idea. It’stime for a difficult conversation about their role within the modern learningorganization. Be honest and direct. Have this conversation as early aspossible, before the individual figures out the potential mismatch all on theirown and reacts negatively. Be aggressive in offering development opportunitiesand coaching to support their mindset shift if it’s still at all possible.Otherwise, if L&D will not be a fit moving forward, be ready to offeroptions regarding their role, hopefully within a value-add position inside thesame company. We should do everything we can to avoid getting this far, but wealso can’t let the status quo slow us down if we hope to provide tangible valueto our business partners.

Youmay have already noticed that none of my suggestions is new or even exclusiveto L&D. While change is a natural part of every role in a modern workplace,L&D professionals are expected to be better at the task than others whodon’t focus their work on behavior improvement. If our own team members don’tbelieve in our vision, how can we expect the people we support to believe?Strategy, tactics, technology—they all play important roles in change-managementinitiatives. However, they are ultimately worthless if we can’t first enablethe mindset shift that will allow people to accept and embrace the new behaviorwe wish to enable.