Why the build-it-yourself “manager learning portal” usually fails

I’ve talked with dozens of HR and Learning & Development leaders who have tried to build from scratch their own manager learning portal. It sounds like a smart idea: Great managers are critical for company success, you know the benefits of performance support for managers, and you want your learning resources to fit the company context.

Yet, this almost always fails. You end up with another website that managers never use. The challenges are two-fold: 1) resources and 2) lack of the necessary core competencies.

As one chief learning officer told me, disgusted: “I would never try to create one of those again. It’s always a huge waste.”

The typical story:

• You secure engineering resources for the website, you write a bunch of articles for managers, you produce some videos of senior leaders talking about management. It takes longer than you thought, but you keep trucking on and decide to launch with a scaled-back version.
• You launch! It includes a splashy announcement to your managers. You get a gratifying initial burst of interest. That quickly turns to a trickle.
• You try reinvigorating the site with a burst of new articles and videos, and maybe a monthly newsletter. Nothing changes.
• Meanwhile, the L&D partner tasked with “owning” the site content, gets frustrated, loses interest and starts working on something else. Before you know it, the “Manager Learning Portal” is the “Manager Ghost Town”. Another embarrassing, orphaned project.

Meanwhile, managers don’t get any more effective.

Why does this happen? Here’s why I’ve seen the manager learning portal fail:

• Not enough resources to do it well. Building a highly engaging, effective learning portal is a tremendous amount of work. L&D typically tries to get by on a shoestring budget. It’s not one-and-done; it requires years of continuous improvement and constant freshening.
• Not your core competency. I’ve seen this fail even at some of the richest companies in the world, where management and leadership is a real priority. It’s not just a question of resources. To build a great learning portal for managers, you need to be an expert on content (research, writing, production, editing); engagement (online and offline marketing); and platform (software, user experience, design, integrations). It’s too much! One of the trends in Learning & Development is “L&D as curator.” A curator’s job is to “remix, refine, and transform content for new purposes.” Your job is NOT to build everything.

Recommendation: Outsource to a partner who is a proven expert at creating manager learning portals, or don’t do it at all. It will be much cheaper and much more effective.

What else? What are your experiences with manager learning portals?

Want to develop great managers at your company? Learn about Jhana and request a demo at www.jhana.com.