Corporate L&D: The Flea and The Whale
The Flea and The Whale - Resourcing, Agility and the need to Prove the Value of LearningWhen considering the strategic direction of a central L&D function in a large organisation, I find it helpful to think in terms of two key characteristics:
1.
resourcing levels and
2.
agility (the capacity to innovate)
Resourcing is obvious – it’s the L&D headcount plus any
third party resource used. Agility is
the ability to adapt to fast-changing circumstances: changing processes to be
more efficient; adoption of new technologies; meeting the ever-changing
development needs of the workforce, and the way they want to learn.
By plotting these two factors on axes (see below), you could
describe a wide variety of conditions. Each of the four corners of the graph
represents an extreme situation, which I'll describe using animal metaphors:
- The Flea (high agility and low resource levels). Highly adaptable, but not enough resource to carry anything through.
- The Cheetah (high agility and high resourcing). The ideal situation: very agile, with the resourcing to carry change through to fruition.
- The Beached Whale (high resourcing levels but low agility). Lots of resource but unable to change, stranded.
- The Dodo (low resourcing and low agility). Where a learning function is low on both counts, it performs no useful function, so is headed for extinction.
Worse still, when L&D departments get big, they risk losing
agility - their sheer mass makes it harder to achieve change, as ways of working
become entrenched and changing them requires altering the behaviour of too many
people. Such situations are at risk of drifting towards Beached Whale
corner.
At the board level, when the C-suite look at an L&D
department in this state, they are liable to see a large cost with very little
benefit associated with it (except maybe compliance). What happens next
is L&D gets its budget cut. And next year when the board realises the
wheels haven't fallen off, they cut some more. And so on...
Now the trajectory becomes downward, as cuts lead to
resourcing reductions. Instinctively, L&D maintains frontline
learning delivery to the business, but what gets sacrificed is longer term
investment - L&D becomes less agile still. We are, in fact, on the
slippery slope to extinction. I have seen more than one central L&D
department become so small it no longer provides any meaningful support to the
business beyond some leadership training and maybe a graduate programme.
Meanwhile the business units sort out their own training and the central
L&D model with all its benefits breaks down completely.
As training budgets get cut, smart Heads of L&D anticipate
the future and are trying to pull their department out of that decline before
it’s too late. They are concluding that
a vital part of turning their department round includes recognising the value of the learning they provide. Put another way: where does learning make a
difference to organisational performance? All of L&D seems to know
that learning is ‘A Good Thing’ but very few are able to be more specific than
that. In the face of a challenge from the CEO, we need something more
convincing.
Here at KnowledgePool Capita, we're helping our clients to
do just that. We are talking to learners
after key investment programmes, and gathering evidence of the business benefit
of learning. It's not big sample sizes but the evidence is
compelling. Not only does it show clear evidence of significant business
benefit from learning, but it informs L&D about what components of their
programmes add value (and those that don't), it also highlights the key role line
managers have in releasing that benefit.
Armed with this information, L&D can challenge proposed
cuts and show where additional learning investment will give performance uplift.
L&D starts talking to business leaders in business terms.
Halting budget cuts is only half the answer. The other
half involves creating greater agility, we'll come to that another time...
Kevin Lovell
Learning Strategy Director
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