4-Step Framework to Rapidly Accelerate Your Upskilling Strategy and Approach
Article 2 of 4 in a series on Rapid Upskilling and Reskilling
For years learning and development professionals have asked me the question: How can I get a seat at the CEO table? Early on in my career, I learned that one of the best ways you can get an audience with executives, a seat at their table, was to shift the way you think about your role- shift your mindset and then shift your skillset.
To change the learning and development conversation that you have with executives and add greater value, start by asking questions — lots of questions. The goal here is to discover what is critical to your executive team. What does the executive team need the organization to achieve — not learn? This approach is hard for many learning professionals because it often goes against what we’ve been trained to focus on — learning and understanding.
I’ve spent the bulk of my career as a learning professional attached to operations. Coming from operations, I value professional training, but realize that in operations it is all about what the workforce can do –workforce performance and business outcomes. So, if an employee learns something new, that’s great, but what operations leaders really want to know is: What can my employees do with what they’ve learned and how does it add value to our work?
Multiple surveys of executives highlight that one outcome of the COVOD-19 pandemic is the rapid shift in the role of learning and development and the impact of their work to improve business performance and advance growth. Three major trends that are driving this shift in learning and development:
1. The COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly accelerated business, causing many businesses to fundamentally change what they do and how they do it — mindset and skillset shifts.
2. This rapid acceleration is causing titanic changes in workforce reskilling and upskilling needs — organization capability shifts.
3. Executives acknowledge that how they trained and hired workers in the past will not see them through to post pandemic success–business shifts.
In 2019 most executives thought that the workforce skillset shift was 10 years ahead: 14 months later, many executives realized to stay competitive and succeed, the capability shift needs to happen in half that amount of time. Two key questions to ask yourself when considering your L&D strategy:
· How can you rapidly shift your strategy and approach to provide greater value to your organizations?
· How can you shift the focus from course-centric strategies to capability-building strategies?
Shift your strategy from the business of learning to the business of doing:
The first question to ask is: What business are you in? For many in the learning profession, they view themselves in the business of learning and understanding or delivering training programs. While this is an accurate statement, it potentially limits the value L&D can provide to organizations. Business managers value L&D programs that increase critical capabilities and improve operations. While this may be a subtle shift in what learning and development does, it is a critical change in their strategy and approach to ensure business success.
As a leader of learning services teams for 25 years, I’ve demonstrated that using capability build strategies provides higher value and return to the organization, than robust content and learning strategies. Capability building strategies typically focus on outcomes that improve workforce performance or directly add value to the bottom line. In contrast, content-centric strategies often only provide more content and learning, not necessarily improved outcomes. In my experience, when learning and development functions shift their strategies towards building critical capabilities and away from content and training, they begin to be viewed as an investment that returns value to larger organizations, not just a cost center.
Shift your approach to rapidly build capabilities, not just knowledge:
In addition to shifting your strategy, L&D needs to shift its approach to rapidly building capabilities. I have used an industry, proven four-step framework, with rigor and discipline, to deliver results for many organizations and executive teams. The complex projects that my consulting teams and groups have implemented relied on this model to shift senior leaders’ view of how this capability-building framework can rapidly produce better outcomes and results, not just more learning.
The four-step MyBaseline Capability Builder framework, used in tandem with technology, enables organizations to substantially accelerate the speed at which they build new capability and rapidly propel their organizations towards success.
Following this capability model, our experts have been able to:
· Rapidly upskill individuals in a financial industry and add significant increases in annual revenue, year over year.
· Shorten the time it takes to bring new products to market, in what was thought to be a dying, legacy manufacturing firm.
· Create new strategies that enabled global teams to bring products to market faster and raise revenue.
· Increase employee engagement scores by a factor of 5X.
· Substantially reduce labor and productivity costs; improve compliance and gain mastery level skills.
Success for L&D professionals in a post-pandemic business environment will require these two shifts in strategy and approach. Data, insights and comments from executive teams and the workforce confirm it’s not a question of if, it’s a question when to make this shift. Shifting from a course-centric strategy and training delivery approach to a capability-building strategy and skill building framework will add greater value to the organization and ensure business success.
If you’re interested in increasing the speed at which you or team can make this shift and are ready to work on a project, then take the next step to get a seat the executive table.
If you like to learn more, then contact us.
I look forward to this series. Please invite other people in your network to join in and add value to this new community.
Next, I’ll share how good assessments set you on the right path to building organizational capabilities and skills for future success.
