The Changing Roles in the Learning Organization

Among the continuing themes across conferences last week (Learning2009, #L2009 and DevLearn09, #dl09) was the very nature of the learning organization itself. The functional nature and the very fabric of the organization itself was continually pulled upon like a loose thread waiting to come unwound.

What really caused it to bubble up for me was a summary on Tony Karrer's eLearning Learning about a DevLearn session by David Mallon from Bersin & Associates, called "The Changing Learning Function: Rethinking how your organization works". Sumeet does a very complete job in detailing out the session, as well as many of the other DevLearn sessions that he attended, well done!

The part that really catches my eye is that several of the sessions that I attended at Elliott Masie's Learning 2009 event had similar themes about the changing makeup of the learning organization. The most telling was the session from Nigel Paine called So you want to be a Learning Leader?. I've already summarized some of the skills that Nigel aggregated from the group on desired characteristics of a CLO, but had not quite hit this tangential discussion of what does the group that the CLO is leading actually look like?

This was a lively discussion that came around to a slightly different outcome than what looks like came out of this session.

[from Sumeet's summary of the David Mallon preso] New Roles in the learning organisation:

* Performance Consultants
* Instructional Designers
o Work out in the biz, teaching others to structure knowledge;
o Supervise SMEs
o Add additional disciplines to create environments
o Be masters of the business
o Measure approaches in business terms
o View fast/ efficient business performance/ improvement as ultimate expression of their abilities.
* Content Developers
* Multimedia Specialists
* Information Architects
* Editors/ Production Support
* Community Management
* Content Stewards
* Moderators
* Program Managers
* SME's

The discussion that we had in Nigel's session supported the concept that the learning organization was evolving to an organization of management of learning, as opposed to an organization of content development and distribution. As such, many of the roles that are listed above support that evolution.

However, a big disagreement would likely be the need to have SMEs and Content Developers in the organization. Granted, the Instructional Designers will fill in many of the other titles listed (Community Management, Content Stewards, Moderators, and Program Managers), but many of the other functions will likely be outsourced (or what our CEO Glenn terms "smartsourced") to companies that have a wide range of development talent and can quickly pool resources depending on the desired subject matter, architecture, and level of sophistication of the desired end state.

As a result, the critical job roles within the learning organization become Information Architects who create standard templates and methodologies to allow these companies to easily produce and drop content in place. These people are also supported by team members who are Project Managers and can identify the SMEs and QA resources within their organization to verify and validate the content. The Information Architects are also critical for developing a holistic learning continuum to ensure the audience (or the 'customer') has the necessary pre- and post work/application/community/assessment to enforce and enhance the learning outcomes.

Interestingly, neither list had the term "Trainer" in it. In Nigel's session, the term 'Facilitator' was thrown around quite a bit, but in the end, the decision was that these resources do not have to reside within the learning function. The expectation is that these trainers/facilitators can wear multiple hats and provide additional value to the organization while building skills and stories that they can bring into the 'classroom'. The foundation for success are standard templates, processes and methodologies for these trainers to be successful. In some cases, that might be a train-the-trainer class (covering Instructor101, classroom, virtual, tools/technologies, etc...maybe CTT+) or even an Instructor Certification.

For me, the new 'rockstars' of the organization are going to be Information Architects, Project Managers, and Program Managers with a keen sense of the business and ability to align their priorities with the changing strategic needs of their corporate leadership team. And just about every single Job Description in the Learning org is going to have to change along with the times. What a cool workforce planning exercise!

If you are in an organization that is in an evolutionary (or revolutionary?) period, or considering this, add a comment on your lessons learned to date (what a fantastic topic for an upcoming conference as well!).

If you attended one of these two presentations, what are your interpretations of how the learning organizations are going to change over the next five years? Or if you have your own opinions, jump in and let us know. Having built and run training organizations over the past 13 years, I think this is one of the most disruptive times our industry has ever seen - our world is being turned upside down by the need for a new vision and methodology for execution, which is both an amazing time to be in the business, and at the same time, incredibly painful for those that can't or won't adapt.

~ posted by Jon Lloyd on 16 Nov 09
   tagged as: bus, business of learning, learning2009

 

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