This space will help you to have a perspective, fundamentally things don’t change it’s all about business partnership. One thing that helps to get success in your business will be aligned to the business.
The answer to the questions is – It is important to assess ourselves and find out if we really have a hold on to the strategic front and if are we really valuable partners.
As long as you have the conviction that YES, I know what the business is doing, I think I am aligned and I think that I understand my organization’s business
If you feel that there is a need for improvement and you have identified that very well at least you have that understanding that we need to work more probably I am there but there is still room for improvement. There are also some people who are gradually coming over there which is very good. What is not good is that if we have a blind spot and we do not understand whether are we aligned or not. If there are no answers to your questions it is time to really introspect or take certain help because that’s where we need to make our fundamental base strong.
We are no more order takers we are strategic partners under the HR umbrella and to the Business. Taking a seat at the table comes from the credibility that you establish. It comes from how much do I understand the business as a Learning and development professional no whatever role you are performing each one of us needs to understand what is the Business expecting. That how we will win the seat on the Business.
Do you have a hold on skill heat maps and skill metrics to drive Org wide learning agenda?
If you do not know what your Talent Landscape looks like how many people are in managerial roles, what kind of competencies they hold in terms of people management, how many people are in technical roles what kind of competencies they are expected to have versus they do not have. Where is the business driving, and how we are envisaging ourselves to do a different set of things, all of this collectively comes from skill heat maps and skill metrics, and if you do not have a hold try to get it? This happens in every organization because it is one of the most important fundamental pillars.
However, the way it is projected varies from organization to organization they would be workforce management groups who might be having a hang on it, and there might be HR partners who might be hanging onto it.
How many of you genuinely feel there is a gap in alignment between business and L&D alignment?
There is a huge gap.
Key Business Expectation from L&D
Understanding the Pulse of Business
Partner strategically with Businesses for reshaping the Learning culture and building a competent talent landscape
Focus on the talent landscape, and enable continuous learning to leverage the competitive edge
Proactively work on future-proofing the talent skills aligning to business needs
Enable talent fungibility through Upskilling and Reskilling
Hang-in glove partnership in Business
- Understand the business and have a strong business acumen
- Elicit the business vision and demand to meet the same
- Weave the learning curve into the business strategy
- Solve for a purpose & be a strategic and consultative partner
Cue Card:
- Reach out to the right business stakeholders
- Network read and connect
- Have regular conversations with multiple stakeholders
- Get your seat at the table and make a difference through your solutions
Aligning Learning Strategy to Business Strategy
- Business Strategy and Learning strategy are the two sides of the same coin.
- The key role of L&D as a function is to develop and shape a learning strategy based on the organization’s business vision and talent strategies
- An amalgamation of learning initiatives & business imperative is the key to success
- Shift gear, take charge, and function as a strategic enabler and not a support function.
- Be a solutioning partner, by driving learning initiatives aligned to the business goals.
- Innovate and evolve through disruptive thinking
- Provide competitive edge to business by future-proofing the talent with trending skills and copyright-baseball sight-based decision-making through meaningful updates and dashboards
- Embrace technology to revolutionize learning in the organization
Cue Card:
- Get to know what is the priority of the business
- Align capability development initiatives aligning to the priorities
- Drive it top to down an across
- Help the Business with meaningful insights
Strategic roles – Learning and Development
Key components for Successful Alignment
L&D to be strategic and consultative partners
- Take the ownership of positioning the organization for success through a wholistic talent development strategy
- Shift gears – from skill and competency development to mindset change for learners and capability development
- Transform learning methodology – map it to a diverse workforce and job roles
- Advocate digital learning and thinking
- Channelize your energies on giving a learning experience to learners
- Move from being content providers to content curators and driving focused learning
Cue Cards:
- Do not wait for instructions
- Sense the pulse and proactively drive the learning culture
- Focus on how the learners can be captivated rightly through learning innovation – Gamification, white paper, hackathons, embrace technology, and fuel the learning culture through the right recognition process
To Summarize:
For L&D to become a strategic Function:
- Challenge yourself as a strategic function
- Get uncomfortable and reinvent the purpose of the function you belong to
- Learn to sell, monetize, persuade, market, and create a learning culture
- Bring in discipline for learning in the organization
- Empower yourself – Ask tough and meaningful questions to yourself and to the business
- Learn and unlearn
- Equip yourself with strong Business acumen
- Develop your own research capability, be well-read and abreast of things happening in your space, and take the exponential leap.
- L&D programs must be clearly linked to a tangible increase in performance
- Stakeholders’ analysis and mapping are crucial
- The cornerstone of a strong partnership with the business is trust
- An L&D organization can only act as a true partner to the business if its professionals are capable of living this role on a daily basis
- Lead organizations in closing skills and upskilling
To upgrade L&D Professional skills, I recommend you take up our most appreciated and globally acknowledged learning and development certifications for aspiring and existing learning and development professionals
To know more about L&D Professionals you can join our Linkedin L&D Community – Discussion Group
