Strategic Planning – Be the Windshield

This is the second in a series of posts for the business of learning. In my previous post, I spoke some about innovation and how it applies to the learning department <Learning Innovation, Keep Stumbling> and will save related topics on culture, leadership, and running the function as a business for future posts in a different series.

Strategic Planning

In my experience, training groups are rarely involved in the overall business and strategic discussions happening at the executive level. Sure, many large companies have CLO roles, or top learning executives that get a ‘seat at the table’ and contribute to those discussions. How many are in the driver seat though, building global initiatives from the epicenter of the learning team, rather taking direction from other groups (engineering, marketing, sales) and executing to support their plan?

In fact, I’ve seen very few learning organizations that actually have the opportunity to be proactive in nature, creating a full-fledged annual business plan (hey, that would actually be in front of the budgeting process right?) to support corporate goals as well as their own vision.

Too often the planning process goes something like this:

This makes you the bug, not the windshield. This sort of direction causes you to always be following... catching up... trying to get your head above water....it doesn't have to be that way.

Learning departments are in the midst of great change. eLearning, virtual classrooms and remote labs have nothing on what is happening right now in front of our eyes, changing the very nature of our profession with lasting effects. Strategic planning brings you out of the turbulent vortex.

As this pattern emerges, I think you will see a greater bifurcation of the locations of training departments, with more moving out of HR functions and into departments that have titles such as Customer Success or Client Advocacy, both of which are probably under the umbrella of Sales. Will HR still hold onto internal training and development? I’m really doubtful of that. Even those completely internally focused (and why would you actually ever want that?) organizations will be shifted towards providing management and support (as opposed to content generation and instruction) for knowledge platforms, social learning, informal learning and communities to drive the professional (and sometimes personal) development of their organization.

As talent management practices grow, more emphasis needs to be placed on programs to onboarding people in a dynamic learning environment based on their role, level, knowledge of market and industry, etc in order to minimize the actual ramp time and maximize productivity and engagement in their new organization. This is easily extended to partners, vendors and customers in various ways, thus removing any need to have direct ties to HR.

Strangely, one of the key perspectives missing from most strategic planning discussions is the user. The customer experience should be paramount (customer = internal, customer, partner, vendor). Happy customers are loyal ones - they drive customer satisfaction, product adoption, and better marketing reach than you can ever imagine. Your learning programs should strive to build the same kind of loyalty. Best-selling authors and recording superstars build a rabid fan base that look for new ‘product’ to consume. Your learning releases can build a rabid fan base too!

Strategic planning is about delivering the best solution for your customer within a reasonable budget and timeline, integrating innovative approaches, via a well thought plan. Build the ideal business plan to best serve their needs, whether it includes blended learning, customer success portals, communities of practice, feedback mechanisms to drive continuous improvement, and even defining new roles and responsibilities within your organization. Craft the budget and resources with a keen eye towards scope creep (avoiding, yes, that sounds great, we could also just …). Take baby steps and use your tools to help align the organization: build an Excel worksheet or Gantt chart to show milestones, risks, dependencies and delivery dates. Clearly demonstrate that you are not being ‘wagged’.

For a decidely unconventional way of looking at planning, read this blog from Seth Godin, or listen to him discuss it here.

As new projects come up throughout the year (and they invariably will, in force), you will be able to make objective decisions on how to support the new initiatives and the consequences and impact as it deviates from your plan. Having flexibility is good, being inflexible is career limiting at best.

~ posted by Jon Lloyd on 14 Jul 10
   tagged as: business, innovation, strategy

 

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