How to make time to build or refine your learning strategy.
Which statement below resonates with you? The answer reveals where your team falls on the learning maturity scale.
“More learning equals more value!”
“If it doesn’t serve the business, it’s not a priority.”
Time is among the greatest obstacles to calculating the results and effectiveness of our programs. Thus, the ability to manage our time is essential. There is one thing, and one thing only that makes time management possible. Strategy!
Where you fall on the learning maturity scale.
If you said: More learning equals more value. You’re in an entrepreneurial phase of learning maturity. This means that your team is doing as much as you can, probably more than you can reasonably handle in 40-hours. And you’re hoping something will stick.
Being entrepreneurial, experimental, and exploratory is an important first step in well … anything! Most businesses start in this phase. Many operational departments (marketing, product, sales, and even learning) pilot tools, programs, and products to find the best market fit.
The problem is when we stay in the entrepreneurial phase!
If you said: If it doesn’t serve the business it’s not a priority. You’re in a purposeful phase of learning maturity. This means your team is aligned around priorities for the business and priorities for your learning function. If your programs and activities aren’t supporting the businesses goals and KPIs they aren’t a priority.
Guess where most learning teams are at?
According to MindTools reflection on 20-years of learning maturity data, most learning teams are in the entrepreneurial phase. Being in the entrepreneurial phase requires a lot of time, energy, and money. Your team is likely reacting to many requests for training, trying on many different tools, and even paying many vendors for the latest and greatest tech and services.
To get time back, we need a learning strategy! Learning teams who are strategic and purposeful experience lower rates of turnover, even during tough economic times!
Build or refine your learning strategy by following these steps.
Diagnose what phase you are in on the scale from entrepreneurial to purposeful with your learning activities. Select which statement below most closely represents how your learning team currently operates.
“Let’s do as much as we can. Something is bound to stick.”
“We need to take time to think about what we are doing and create space for each activity.”
“The space we created has helped us to see things more clearly. We are ready to build more purposeful connections among all our learning activities.”
“If what we are doing doesn’t serve the needs of the business, it’s not a priority to us.”
If you selected C or D, congratulations, you are in the purposeful phase of learning maturity. Keep implementing your strategy and make time every quarter to reflect and refine.
If you are like most learning teams, you probably selected A. Don’t worry you’re in good company. Now, the opportunity is to pause and reflect on what you’ve been doing to explore what’s actually supporting the business and your employees - and what is not. It’s time to move from reactionary to anticipatory. You need to create space for this reflection.
To create space for this reflection (which is selection B) you must be able to say no. This is tough and requires support from supervisors and stakeholders.
A lot of us don't have the power or the ability to say no to things, especially as internal professionals. The next step is setting up a meeting with your learning team and business stakeholders to explore what the learning team can do better to be more supportive of the business. Help stakeholders help you say no by giving you guidance on what is a priority to the business and what is not.
Practice saying no, taking learning activities off your plate, and meet weekly with your learning team to create a first draft of your learning strategy.
Once you have a solid first draft of your strategy, present it to your stakeholders to get their reaction and buy-in.
With your strategy in place, say no to anything that doesn’t align with the strategy to make time for designing, evaluating, and improving your most important activities!
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