Establishing a valued place within an organization is a challenging endeavor for learning and development leaders and their teams. That which is critical to business success for our enterprise is also imperative to the success of our L&D organization. We know this. Yet, so often, we don’t fully embrace and completely acknowledge this simple truth. We should change. We must change.
Other parts of the enterprise usually seem to understand and embrace this more fully than L&D. We expect the sales organization to enthusiastically take on revenue goals. Marketing also generally has no issues with taking accountability for such a business outcome. But it’s also common to see customer service, operations, manufacturing and engineering sign up for the overall revenue goal.
Yet HR and L&D have at least an inclination to resist “owning” a revenue business outcome. The reasoning I’ve often heard goes something like this: “We don’t control enough of the variables that go into the attainment of a broad business outcome like a total revenue target.” This reasoning is certainly no less true for service, operations, manufacturing and engineering. Even sales and marketing control only some of the variables for a strategic outcome, like total revenue.
Mind you, overall revenue is only one example of strategic business outcomes we’ve shied away from. Customer satisfaction, employee job satisfaction, margin and product delivery schedules also make us learning professionals nervous. It’s no wonder then that some people within our organizations regard L&D as a cost with limited value.
In this article, I will provide an overview of the things we must do to change our image, be regarded as strategic partners and be recognized for contributing meaningfully to organizational success.
Mapping learning
By accepting a strong level of accountability and working across functional lines, L&D can make a real difference. A great way to start on this is by mapping learning from desired business outcomes through to program design and deployment.
We’ve all experienced an executive requesting a very specific learning program. It can be even more challenging when such a request comes through channels and feels like an order. Part of us knows that such “order taking” is often wrong and may not lead to problem resolution. What we can do is take the order while still analyzing the business outcomes. The dialog I’ve had generally goes something like this:
Executive stakeholder: “We need a new onboarding program. When do you think we can have that ready?”
Learning program owner: “That sounds like a great idea! Can we talk for a minute about what we want to get from the new program?”
Executive stakeholder: “Well, we are facing a whole new challenge now. We are having a much harder time finding and keeping the right people.”
Learning program owner: “Sure, I see that, and I hear you. What else?”
Executive stakeholder: “We really need to ramp people up much more quickly. Our window of opportunity is closing.”
Learning program owner: “That’s true. Let me get in touch with the CHRO to get a handle on the business outcomes we want to address.”
Now the door is open to analyze and nail down the required outcomes, underlying problems and solutions without “taking the order” for a new onboarding program — at least not until we know that it’s a valid part of the solution. The door is still open to recommend alternatives.
There are many ways to accomplish this, of course. But I have found one methodology that resonates with most business leaders: High-impact learning mapping. I first came across this kind of methodology through the work of Dr. Robert Brinkerhoff.
If you are not already familiar with it, learning mapping is an analytical process that creates a connected logical stream of key points that ultimately suggests a set of solutions to achieve desired business outcomes. It often looks something like this:
The high-impact learning map absolutely relies on the “start at the end” principle. We must begin by first considering what the desired state will be when we are finished. Logically, we begin by recording our desired outcomes. It’s best that our outcomes be both measurable and measured, for that is the only way we can ultimately know if our map is successful. That said, I advise not getting too caught up in “measurable and measured” — we often find it’s enough if most people have a shared vision in the meaning of a completed outcome.
You may have any number of outcomes, but it’s generally important to complete the mapping exercise separately for each outcome that you have documented. You can, and should, compare the result of the analysis for each outcome later, for you may find overlapping points between these outcomes.
Next, we will look at the different roles or personas that can impact your designated outcomes. Look across the organization at the various key roles. It’s often helpful to start with the most populous roles and determine whether each role has a direct or indirect impact in achieving the result. I use a spreadsheet to record the roles for each outcome and note their status. Those playing a direct role will likely need to be prioritized but it’s important not to leave the indirect contributors out of the analysis. You may find later that those indirect contributors are playing a critical enabling role for the others.
Carrying on with our example, we now have a list of documented outcomes and a list of the various roles that can impact the outcomes directly or indirectly. The next step potentially consumes the greatest time and attention. For each role, you should consider and document the following elements that contribute to attainment of the desired outcomes:
- Skills and knowledge: the kinds of information needed by the role to obtain the outcome.
- Behaviors: Which actions must each role undertake or cease undertaking to obtain the outcome.
- Environment: What policy, process, systems or work condition changes are required to enable each role’s behaviors.
For each outcome, we now have a list of key roles that can impact those outcomes. For each role, we have a list of skills, knowledge, behaviors and environmental factors required for success.
The last step in this strategic analysis is to analyze this data to create highly impactful programs and interventions to enable role acquisition of the skills, knowledge and required behavioral changes, as well as a plan for working with the business to close any environmental gaps like policy changes, process documentation and systems acquisition. We might accomplish this by:
- List all required skills, knowledge and behaviors needed regardless of group.
- Prioritize required skills, knowledge and behaviors by noting how many different roles require each skill, knowledge or behavior.
- Form the most highly prioritized skills, knowledge and behaviors into logical programs or courses that could work across different groups and customize only when needed.
- Make careful note of the environmental changes needed and consult with those parts of the business needed to make those changes so that the changes are coordinated with any new learning programs.
The results of this analysis are then easily compiled into a presentation showing an absolute linkage of the learning map and resulting learning development plan for your original stakeholders to consider. That previously mentioned onboarding plan may or may not be needed, but the path will be clear. From here, a budget can be developed that is aligned with the real or perceived value of the business outcomes being sought. Just the review of this analysis is the start of demonstrating true alignment with the business.
The experiential difference
Armed with a high-impact learning map that clearly indicates a strategic plan for engaging business outcomes successfully, it’s time to consider the more tactical plan behind creating programs that will effectively drive success in a way that also makes L&D’s role in the attainment of outcomes clear.
An experiential learning approach delivers more than simply knowledge, or skills instruction, or documentation of policies and processes, or system overviews. It folds all those elements together into simulated or actual experiences that allow the learner to practice new-found skills and see the real value of change. It can even provide opportunities to learn “the hard way” about the downside of holding on to outmoded ways of doing things.
Several years ago, our team was grappling with a high-impact learning map that needed to support many parts of the organization moving to Agile methodologies. The Agilists reading this will know that real teamwork is one of the things that prevents teams from reaching the outcomes behind Agile; like increased innovation, increased customer satisfaction, increased job satisfaction, and reduced time to market. We saw that simply delivering information to teams about the value of teamwork, techniques for teamwork, and teamworking tool knowledge did not make much of a difference for people that had enjoyed relative success for years in a highly individualized business setting. Our solution was to build a learning experience around a team driven board game called “Pandemic.” In Pandemic, the players all win together, or all lose together.
Our experiential learning session occurred in three phases over the course of one day. In phase one, the teams were assembled and asked to simply “play the game” once through. This typically took 1-3 hours but included the teams teaching the rules of the game to themselves. No instructions were given regarding play of the game or teamwork.
In phase two, the teams were debriefed on their experiences playing the game. It was very unusual for a team to win this first game. Players were asked in an open session about “why they lost,” and what was frustrating about the experience. The oft-recurring themes were about a lack of teamwork or even simple conversation among the team members. People expressed fear around suggesting actions for one another or coordinating actions between players. These behaviors are required for victory in most cooperative board games. Now that teams could see the value of teamwork, they were more ready to learn and embrace new behaviors. We would then close out phase two with about 45 minutes of content regarding the value of teamwork and techniques for team communication.
The third phase began with, you guessed it, playing the game with the same team for a second time followed by a usually short debrief. Teams usually won these second games; they always at least improved their performance. Our observations revealed louder and more boisterous sessions with more laughter and camaraderie.
In conclusion
You might say, “so what?” What about business outcomes? Many of the outcomes being sought for this program were of the types we discussed at the beginning of this article. Increased innovation, increased customer satisfaction, increased job satisfaction and reduced time to market for new products are all dependent on many variables; learning is only impactful on some. It’s also true that over time the firm was not as successful as might have been hoped. Only job satisfaction was truly statistically improved.
Yet leaders all the way up to the C-suite praised the program and were comfortable in saying that things might have been worse if not for this program. They saw team behaviors change. We also received requests for delivery of the program to many executive teams and they universally reported value from the program. The learning function was viewed with much more esteem following this and other mapped experiential exercises.
Indeed, ROI is a useful tool in gaining recognition for the efforts of the learning function. But, as the saying goes, “perception is reality.” By grabbing hold of business outcomes and taking on accountability for achieving them, learning organizations become key team players. By avoiding “order-taking” and engaging in high-impact learning mapping, we can chart a verifiable and visible path to achieving outcomes.
Lastly, by using experiential learning techniques, you can facilitate learners in proving to themselves that new behaviors and ways of doing things are possible and game changing. These things taken together can make a real difference in demonstrating the true value of an engaged learning team.
