I was reading the blog “Clive on Learning” http://clive-shepherd.blogspot.com/, in which my friend raised some interesting questions about why training fails to align itself with business needs.
Maybe the reason why learning does not satisfy business needs is, as Clive suggests, that The Business cannot, or will not say, or Learning and Development neglects to ask. If so then the solutions would indeed be the antidote to each of these – demand that they tell you; help them to understand and articulate their needs; make certain you ask.
I’m strongly inclined towards the second premise in Clive’s blog, which is that L&D may very well know what the business needs, but gives it something else! Do we then supply the wrong thing because we don’t really want to align our interventions to business objectives? It seems unlikely until you begin to dwell on the question. But the reasons why this might be the case might be:
- We lack belief in the business needs, and think we know better!
- We have our own pet panacea (e.g. e-learning!)
- We lack the know-how or skills to develop the proper solution
- We give in too readily to the demands of powerful sponsors with agendas that are different from the “Party Line”.
The call to ”be assertive”, will not do the trick on its own.
A survey carried out recently by Capgemini and the Economist Intelligence Unit was reported as asking, “Do companies have the skills and experience necessary to deliver successful transformation?”. It reached some very interesting conclusions. The companies surveyed had carried out an average of seven transformation projects in the past three years. They reported that globalisation will force up the level of transformational activity in the next three years, and that corporate survival depends upon “Business Agility”. This month three of my corporate L&D clients found their jobs became redundant while they were looking the other way. So it came as no surprise to read that European executives who initiated transformation or major change programmes were unanimous in the opinion that they have not delivered the expected or desired outcomes for the business. In the survey mentioned, 70% of European companies reported that the programmes they initiated were unsuccessful.
So it seems apparent that “Skill” as well as “Will” plays a key part in all this.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
I fully agree with the research in Clive’s blog, that a big challenge facing L&D professionals is aligning training with business needs.
The comments that L&D professionals either knowingly ignore what they know the core needs are, or that they are ignorent and should therefore ‘ask more questions’ in order to align better may be valid in many organisations. However this may not always be the case and I would like to offer an alternative point of view.
In my experience, the talent within L&D teams can be overlooked by those at the top of an organisation. There are some L&D teams who are highly capable and enthused to deliver training linked with core business needs. After all, to justify continued spend on an internal training function (or external for that matter) requires the L&D team to demonstrate a return on investment. This is even more important in times of economic difficulty where the training budget can be first to go. Furthermore, many people, incuding myself, find it far more motivating to work on a project that will actually make a difference to the performance to the organisation. Research from the Corporate Leadership Council backs this up, with aspects such as ‘knowing how your work contributes to the success of the organisation’ being a key driver of employee engagement.
So I believe that there are L&D teams who contain highly skilled individuals who are motivated to (and are capable of) massively contributing to a successful change programme or initiative, yet their talents are wasted. The question is why?
One of the major barriers in large organisations can be the number of other functions involved with change initiatives, from the strategy teams themselves, to project managers, HR departments, internal comms etc. I think sometimes, with so many other ‘fingers in the pie’ L&D teams are overlooked in their ability to contribute to programmes (especially at the early stages) and, even though they ask strategy leaders to be involved, they are not. For example L&D teams are promised information as and when it is available, and then it is not given to them.
Perhaps one of the reasons that L&D is overlooked is because of the ‘reputation’ that training is often not linked to core objectives, therefore devaluing the contribution that L&D is percieved to be able to give.
I do agree fully that all L&D professionals should be more proactive. However I think in some cases their proactivity should centre upon promoting the skills, motivation and capability within their teams so that strategy makers believe in the value that L&D can bring. Therefore opening up the communication lines between the two functions.