In Real Life: Your 2018 L&D Strategy

Getback to work! At least that’s what January can feel like. I hope you had arestful and joyous holiday. But now, back to real life! It’s time to thinkabout your 2018 L&D strategy.

Anyoneelse feeling like this to start the year? (Pixabay)

What’syour learning and development strategy in 2018? No, I’m not talking aboutpredictions for what the big topics will be. Marc Rosenberg already has that covered (thanks,Marc!). And I’m not talking about the massive project list you’ve been handedby your operational stakeholders. I mean yourstrategy. How are you going to help people do their jobs even better this year?How can you be sure you’re moving the needle forward on how you do your workwhile remaining agile to address timely stakeholder needs?

Eventhough I don’t know your business, I’d like to help out with your planningprocess. So, here are six additions for your 2018 L&D strategy that you maynot have considered.

1. One small problem

L&Dhas a habit of swinging for the fences. We want to solve the big problems with big solutions and prove our value once and for all. Unfortunately,when you swing that hard every time, you tend to strike out a lot (look up Mike Schmidt to expand the baseball analogy).Business priorities also tend to have big components, leading to big, high-visibilityinitiatives for L&D. Sure, we could realize huge success. But, if we miss(or leave an audience out), we may take a step backward.

L&Dshould still go after the big problems. However, they shouldn’t be the onlyitems on the list. Your strategic plan should include one small problem—one naggingproblem that always comes up but never gets prioritized. If you can solve itquickly and simply, it will make a difference for your audience and build thetrust necessary to go after those big problems. Know that wiki project I always talk about from my time withKaplan? That started as my one small problem. And maybe it’s not just one problem.Maybe it’s one per audience. One per business unit. One per quarter. But youneed to plan at least one simple, meaningful action L&D can take toestablish value with your employees (not decision makers).

2. A list of experiments

It’snever a good idea to try out a new concept by applying it as part of ahigh-visibility project. To the contrary, I’m a fan of organic growth anditeration. This approach gives you the chance to fail fast, collect evidence onwhat does work, and make small fixes along the way with minimal effort andexpense. But to pull it off, you need to dedicate a portion of your team’scapacity to research, execution, and evaluation. An experiment could be assimple as trying a new design for a job aid, or as involved as running a proof ofconcept for a new technology. Yes, this will take some bandwidth away frompriority projects. You should position it as an investment in the long-termcapability of the L&D function. Set clear expectations and goals for eachexperiment, and openly share the results—both positive and negative—to justifythe expenditure and ensure everyone learns from the process.

3. Content review process

Doyou have an ever-expanding catalog of potentially outdated content sitting inyour learning management system that you keep saying you’ll get around todealing with someday? Most L&D teams do. In a past role, I discovered wehad amassed more than 600 LMS assets over the course of a few years. While eachwas active and available, I couldn’t tell you how often they were accessed orhow relevant they were at that time. It took FOREVER to clean up that mess.While doing so, we established a process to regularly evaluate online coursesto ensure relevance. It required scheduled effort twice per year, but it alsoincreased the value of our resources and saved us from future contentmanagement nightmares. If you don’t already have a process like this in place,you should get started on it ASAP—before things get even messier.

4. Strategic lunches

L&Dneeds to spend more non-project time with critical partners across theorganization. I’m calling it “lunch,” but it could be standing meetings, water-coolerconversations, or any other planned-but-informal tactic to build relationshipsacross common battle lines. Are you having an L&D team-building activity?Invite the IT project manager with whom you always work. Throwing a teamholiday party? Invite the corporate communications person who sends yourtraining announcement emails. Plan strategic efforts to build trust and rapportthat will become invaluable when you need help later.

5. Operation time

Howmuch time do you spend embedded within the frontline operation you support?When I started on a new project at Disney, I always spent time in costumealongside the cast members we would be training—before we arrived at asolution. I gathered a ton of contextual information that wasn’t volunteered bythe subject matter expert. It was the difference between designing for “howthings should be” and “how things really work around here.” Regardless of role,everyone in L&D should be scheduled to spend time in the operation. Notonly will they gain insight to inform their work, but they’ll also walk awaywith a greater appreciation for the people, the challenges they face, and howhard they work every day.

6. Development for the development people

Theworst joke in L&D is that we never make time for our own learning anddevelopment. It’s not a joke. It’s actually inching closer and closer to mildhypocrisy. If you want to take your practices to the next level, you need to evolve the capabilities of your team.This will require time, effort, and resources. While you must maintain theagility to respond to timely business needs, you also need to fence offcapacity for L&D development with barbed wire to make sure they get whatthey need, too.

Ihave one more point related to eating our own L&D dog food. As I’vediscussed in the past, learning activities should be targeted, blended, and fitinto the workflow whenever possible. These same principles apply to L&Dpros. Therefore, creating opportunities for your team should not always requirea pile of time and money to send people to conferences and workshops. Rather,we should introduce practices and shape habits that foster continuous learning.For example, you could facilitate regular reflection sessions, providing teammembers with a chance to share successes and failures from recent work. Youcould foster network growth, and challenge team members to engage in industrydiscussions outside your organizational silo using platforms like Twitter andLinkedIn. Overall, L&D pros should be shining examples of how modernlearning practices can drive results in the workplace. They just need thecapacity and support to make it work.

Sinceyou’re obviously a devoted fan of my column (humble brag), you may have noticedthat these ideas are very similar to my suggested L&D resolutions fromone year ago. After talking about these concepts for another 12 months, I havecome to believe they are too important to leave to the individual. They must besystematically introduced into the L&D workflow to yield maximum benefit.Therefore, I highly recommend you make them formal parts of your L&D strategy.