Marc Rosenberg on Ensuring Business Alignmnet – LMC

His questions to us on a scale. The first of the three is a one, the middle is a 3, the last a 5. What is your organization like RIGHT NOW, not what you want it to be.

• What is your purpose?
  • We give a wide array to cover everything
  • We recommend programs
  • We target only the most critical needs
• How do you know you are successful?
  • Pre/Post testing
  • Track learning, usability (level 1)
  • Impact on organizational performance
• How do you define your e-learning
  • Formal instructional solutions

    Blending workplace tools, resources in training

    Focus on Non-formal

• Sponsorship
  • Told there is support of e-learning
  • Sr. Leaders support and provide funds
  • Sr. Leaders take proactive strategic view and make a part of how they run business
• Hearts and Minds?
  • Making assumptions of e-learning
  • Lots of roll outs
  • Culture – long term

5-11 points – weak alignment; 12-18 – moderate alignment; 19+ High alignment

• What is our focus? Performance or results?
• Do we have a broader view of learning in the workplace?
• Do we focus on Champions, Communication, and Change.

14 barriers to performance (too many to list) Make sure learning solutions exist to solve problems. Only 4 of the 14 can be helped by Learning. This is basic a Performance Technology outlook, more systematic, not as narrow as view of Training and Learning.

Ask these questions which will guarantee alignment:

1. Who is it for, and why? Where are they?
2. What is the Content and the Context? What should it solve?
3. How deep should it go? We can’t give EVERYTHING!
4. What type of learning do we need? Do they have to memorize, perform a skill, reference something?
5. How much time is available? Not so much for development, but how much time for delivery?
6. How will it be delivered? By now, it should be obvious.
7. What are the metrics? Your client defines this.

Our role today is some education, a lot of training and little information. Our emerging role is some education, less training and much more information. Learners just want the information now. Something that is stable and unstable content. When you go online to learn something, can you imagine going through objectives before finding what you learn?

We need ILT and keep Online Training. This is blended learning. Add (a) Knowledge base(s) and performance support tools, Communities of Practice. Today’s elearning is all of this put together. Training is not always the solution. We need to embrace the new technologies and approaches into our mix of solving organizational problems. These last things make up the Informal workplace learning. Add them altogether and you have true blended learning.

The three Cs of a strong learning culture.

• Champions. Many initiatives fail because of lack of champions. Beware of business leaders who say that LOVE learning and then they act differently, watch out:
  • Give directives without any money
  • Assign work to people who are overloaded or don’t have a clue.
  • Refuse to learn about learning
  • Refuse to tell their boss anything about it
  • Leave it to the team to make all the decisions.
  • Don’t assign deliverables or accountability
  • Don’t understand the role of t raining.
  • Approve other initiatives that undermine learning
  • Suggest that using the web at work is disruptive.
• Communications: We use marketing, themes, branding, events for awareness: Newsletters, informal meetings, policy websites, FAQs, trainings for understanding; Success Stories, leadership presentations and involvement, manager presentations, coaching and testimonials for real adoption, to win the hearts and minds of executives down to the front-line people. If you only do the first, usage will be high and then drop. Those in the third camp, who prefer to use it, they will sing the advantages and alignment is easy.
• Change – 9 things you can do to manage resistance:
  • Balance change management
  • Set proper expectations and incentives
  • Build support at all levels, including the front-line
  • Implement change management before the change itself
  • Commit to sustain the change long after initial deployment.
  • Early adopters may not be your most important audience.
  • Understand resistance and inability to change – they are different.
  • Recognize that implementation is not behavior change. Behavior change takes time.
  • Think big, start small, scale fast.

Leading Change – a book he recommends.

If your clients know what they want but they can’t define the problem, how will you solve it? You can’t! You have to figure out what the problem is. Remember that they are clients – we should be telling them what the solutions is, not them us.

Certification is good, but it should not matter where you get the information (focusing on the delivery) but instead on the performance.

“The worlds greatest technology fails if you are not aligned with the workplace, culture, objectives.”