Change! Revolution! Resistance! You hear words like thesemore and more nowadays in relation to a variety of topics, from politics totechnology. These terms have also been flying around the L&D community forseveral years now in response to the perceived declining value of corporatetraining.
I’ll leave it to Clark Quinn to summarize. After all, heliterally wrote the book onL&D’s need to evolve—or perish. “Existing training and development practices need a major overhaul.Learning and development practitioners and managers must increasingly face thefact that old methods are no longer relevant in today’s tech-savvy world and,in many cases, they simply don’t work.”
We—L&Dprofessionals—want to change. We want to evolve. We want to do a better job.Well, at least most of us do—and for good reason. Deloitte points out in its 2017 Global Human Capital Trends report, “As legacy L&D responsibilities become lessrelevant, the opportunities for L&D to be more relevant have never beengreater. L&D organizations that recognize the new future of careers,embrace exponential changes in technology, and become flexible content curatorsrather than right content creators have the potential to become highly valuedbusiness partners.” From where I sit, L&D has never been more ready toembrace a new role when it comes to workplace performance. No, we’re not allthere yet, but a growing number of L&D leaders are driving forward withawesome new (and solid traditional) ideas. That’s awesome, but it also makes mewonder: What about everyone else? Arethey—the people we work with and support within our organizations—ready for anew and evolved L&D?
Evolving perception
How isL&D perceived in your organization today? Many are still seen asorder-takers, even if they’ve been improving their strategies for some time.L&D is that team that pops in and out of employees’ lives when somethingbig happens, like a new product release or major process change. We also handlethat regulatory stuff that people have to complete every year, and we’reprobably involved in the onboarding process at some point. Other than that,L&D doesn’t typically demand ongoing time and attention from the workforce.
A hugechunk of the people we support still think workplace learning should look likeschool. After all, that’s what they grew up with—both academically andprofessionally. There has always been a dedicated time and place for learning,whether it was an actual school, corporate university, or online system.Obviously, this hasn’t been the case in everyday life for years, given ourubiquitous access to information and one another. And, of course, they’relearning all the time just by doing their jobs. However, they haven’t beenasked to use those same natural learning and problem-solving skills in theworkplace.
When itcomes down to it, we all want the same things. We all want people to do theirjobs better so they can be happier, more engaged, and show better results forthe business. So at least we have something in common. Now, in order to bestsupport our workplace ecosystems, we must enable a mindset shift across ourorganizations to help everyone involved see the value of a modern approach tolearning—before we get too far into our new strategies and tactics.
Shifting mindset
While Idefinitely generalized how L&D is currently perceived across organizationstoday, the reality is that this perception varies considerably based on theroles people play in workplace learning. Stakeholders and subject matterexperts may assign completely different value to L&D than do frontlinemanagers and employees. Therefore, L&D must seek to influence all key playersin appropriate ways based on their existing mentality and evolved role within amodern learning ecosystem. Tactics will likely vary by organization, but theseinfluencing activities should include both structured and unstructuredconversations as well as practical application exercises focused on the prioritiesof those you need to influence.
Stakeholders are the people who run thebusiness and make the big decisions, including whether or not to resourceL&D. They have become comfortable with measuring our value based oncompletion metrics, such as compliance status, project readiness, and hours oftraining offered per employee. However, we know this type of data only goes sofar in really justifying L&D effort. In order to facilitate the evolution ofthe learning ecosystem, we must help stakeholders recognize the connectionbetween learning and business results. Our measures of success must shift toalign with the business, and we must be permitted to make strategic decisionsbased on the data-driven needs of the organization—not just vague, rushed, andconflicting requests for training.
Subject matter experts have the information andexperience we need to enable learning and performance at the frontline. Todate, they’ve been trapped in a “when all you have is a hammer, everything is anail” scenario with regard to training. A modern learning ecosystem affords usa variety of methods for providing support that aligns to performance needs andfits within the workflow. Therefore, we must help SMEs understand these “new”tactics, such as shared knowledge and performance support, and recognize thevalue they can provide, especially when they don’t include the formal trainingwith which SMEs are most familiar.
Managers are the most important players inthe modern learning ecosystem. They’re in control of the operational day-to-dayand have heavy influence on the people doing the work. So far, many managerssee training as something that just has to get done so people can do their realjobs. They’re often called upon to track people down to ensure timelycompletion for training efforts that, in their minds, have little to no value.A modern approach to learning recognizes and leverages the power of frontlinemanagers to enable performance improvement. Rather than just seek their buy-inand tactical assistance, L&D must align learning and support to themanagers’ role in driving performance improvement, especially when it comes toproactive coaching.
Employees are doing the work every day.When it comes to training, they are often heard remarking, “I don’t have timeto learn today.” A modern approach appreciates that people are at work to dothe job, not to learn. Therefore, learning and support must be continuous andfit into the workflow wherever possible. While they’re already learning on thejob with or without us, we must help employees recognize the impact ofcontinuous learning on their ability to do their jobs better. We must help themrecognize how our evolved tactics, such as microlearning and curation, align totheir natural learning behaviors and are therefore worth the time and effort.
Extended L&D represents the larger learningfunction, beyond those who are making decisions related to our ecosystemevolution. This often includes execution-oriented roles, such as designers,developers, facilitators, administrators, and account managers. While the otherplayers we’ve already discussed are essential in shifting the organization’smindset, the process should really begin here. Discussion of new tactics andapproaches may raise questions about roles, responsibilities, and personalvalue. We must ensure clarity and understanding within the extended L&Dteam so they can support our influencing efforts elsewhere within the company.
Influencing considerations
So howshould L&D influence each of these groups to ensure they recognize thevalue of a modern approach to learning? That’s a difficult one. Everyorganization is different, and different players play different roles inworkplace learning and performance. Therefore, each L&D team must identifyand apply tactics that work best for them. That said, here are a few high-levelconsiderations to keep in mind.
- Focus on value: This is ultimately all that matters.Rather than stress the philosophical strength of our approach, we must clearlydemonstrate the value it provides to our people and our business.
- Paint a clear picture: We don’t have to explaineverything about what we do to everyone we work with. Learning science is onlyso exciting to most people. Rather, while we should provide the opportunity fordepth of understanding to those who are interested, we must adjust ourmessaging based on the value proposition and role our audience will play in ourevolved ecosystem.
- Take a consistent approach: The more solid our framework foraddressing performance challenges, the more easily understood our approach willbe across the organization. This demonstrates not only strategic effort butalso clear mastery of our craft. We should be able to easily explain how we canapply our reimagined approach to address any and all potential workplaceperformance needs.
- Provide practical guidance: We can’t stay theoretical if wehope to bring everyone along for the ride. We’re L&D people and often speakour own L&D language. The people we’re trying to influence are usually muchless excited about this stuff. Therefore, we must quickly get practical andspecifically show how we will provide value with our new approach.
