Learning and Development professionals often complain that they do not “have a seat at the management table” — that they are viewed as just a service organization, fulfilling orders for training, rather than as valued business partners helping to set strategy and create competitive advantage.
We feel strongly that Learning and Development needs a seat at the management table and that in today’s rapidly changing business environment, any successful business strategy must include learning.
But how do you get a seat at the table?
You earn it. Terrence Donahue, Vice President of Organizational Development for NetJets, put it plainly: “The title of ‘valued business partner’ has to be earned, not self‐proclaimed.”
To earn a reputation as a strategic partner and get a seat at the management table, you must:
- Align with the business.
- Focus on results.
- Demonstrate added value.
Align with the Business
The first and most important step in earning a seat at the table is to align your efforts to the business’s priorities and goals. Indeed, when Training Industry, Inc. asked business leaders what capabilities were most important for a learning organization, they ranked strategic alignment with the business first, far ahead of either content development or delivery.
That is because organizations create learning departments to help them achieve their mission and vision, not simply to deliver knowledge for knowledge’s sake. If you can show a clear connection between L&D initiatives and business’s objectives, you will receive greater support and more enthusiastic participation.
Obviously, showing that connection requires that you understand the business priorities. Read the business plan for the unit you support, attend business meetings, ask questions, and find a business mentor.
Focus on Results
In organizations – whether for-profit, or not-for-profit, learning is goal driven. Its purpose is to enhance employees’ abilities to achieve the organization’s purpose, whatever that may be. Therefore, it is incumbent upon us, as corporate trainers, to make sure that the instructional design, delivery, and follow-up focus on results – what people will do differently and better on the job, not just what they will learn.
That means we must emphasize skill development more than content delivery and avoid overloading students with more content than they can possibly absorb in the time allotted. Most importantly, we must include the post-training application period as part of the instructional design and engage frontline managers in pulling the learning through onto the job. It is the application of new skills and knowledge that produces results, not merely their acquisition.
Demonstrate Added Value
In the entertainment business, the most important metric is whether the audience enjoyed the experience and will recommend it to others, since those are good predictors of future attendance and revenue.
But we, in corporate training and development, are not in the entertainment business. As Fred Harburg wrote when he was Chief Learning Officer at Fidelity Investments: “We are not in the business of providing classes, learning tools, or even learning itself. We are in the business of facilitating improved business results.”
Training takes time and costs money. It is an investment. To warrant continued investment, we need to demonstrate value in return. That means going beyond end-of-class satisfaction surveys because, unlike in the entertainment industry, they don’t predict success.
To prove the value of the investment, we have to measure an outcome that aligns with the business goals. That could be changes in behavior in a direction more conducive to results, or changes in outcomes that the company values, such as employee or customer satisfaction, sales, retention and so forth.
Summing Up
Learning and Development professionals earn a seat at the management table by aligning their efforts with organizational goals, delivering training in a way that produces on-the-job results, and then measuring and reporting outcomes the company values.
Obviously, there is much more to say on the subject than we can cover in this short blog. To learn more about the practical application of these ideas, join us for an online 6Ds workshop (https://the6ds.com/open-enrollment/) or take the self-paced online 6Ds course at https://the-6ds-school.teachable.com/ Either way, your career and your organization will benefit.