Chapter 1

The Strategic Learning
Alignment Model

What’s in this chapter:

• Why it’s important to use the language and tools of business in making the case for the learning function and learning solutions.
• The components of the Strategic Learning Alignment Model.
• How to use the SLA Model.

Involving business leaders in learning is not a new idea. In fact, a variety of best practices can be used to align learning solutions with business priorities and leaders, including governance boards and leaders serving as teachers. Some learning professionals are at the beginning of their alignment journey. They may be using few or even no alignment practices. Others are using some practices and missing others. And still others are using many good practices in a series of events but have not leveraged these into an integrated operating system. Imagine the powerful alignment you could create by having an entire system of best practices as your road map. By capturing and organizing decades of best practices, this is exactly what the Strategic Learning Alignment (SLA) Model provides learning professionals.

Using the Language and Tools of Business

The SLA Model is unique in that it uses the language and tools that are already being used by your business leaders. The learning function is often viewed as lacking rigorous business discipline and processes. By using the language and tools of your business leaders, you build strong credibility. And rather than operating on parallel paths, learning and other business functions can form a highly integrated operating system.

Perhaps you entered the learning and development profession because you enjoyed the creativity of design, the interaction of the learning delivery, and the satisfaction of watching someone benefit from a learning program. Typically, our learning and development passion serves us well in our roles as specialists. However, we do operate within the world of business. Speaking the language of business is critical to our success. If you travel outside your home country, you know the benefit of communicating in the local language. I have personally experienced increased service, friendliness, and help from people when I attempt to communicate in their local language.

Like any specialists, it is easy for learning professionals to get caught up in the jargon of their profession. Have you ever overheard this type of conversation between a learning leader and a business leader?

Learning leader: We’ll need to perform our full ADDIE process, to ensure that we are addressing the right learning competency. [ADDIE = analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation.]

Business leader: Hhmm. I just need them to increase their consultative selling skills so that we make our plan. What is the cycle time for this ADDIE thing? Is this something like our NPD—new product development cycle?

Learning leader: I believe they are similar. We can speed it up if we have full access to your key SMEs. Also, we can conduct a pilot first. This will give us some good formative evaluation data, and we can tweak the program from there.

Business leader: Hhmm. Aaaah. What is an SME?

Learning leader: Oh, sorry. An SME is a subject matter expert. They can help us understand the learning objectives. They can also advise us about the learning approaches that will be most effective for the salespeople, such as action learning, a blended learning solution, or on-the-job coaching.

Business leader: I will make sure you get your experts.

Learning leader: To make sure this program really makes the difference you are seeking, we will do a Level 3 and 4 evaluation about 90 days post program. Or do you think this should be longer, perhaps 180 days?

At this point, the business leader starts rubbing his or her forehead to alleviate the beginning pain of a learning-jargon headache!

Although this scenario is a bit exaggerated, I am sure some of it rang true for you. The learning leader definitely displayed his or her specialist expertise and made an effort to define the SME terminology. The business leader did attempt to understand the specialist terminology and even tried to relate the ADDIE process to his or her new product development business process. However, the failure to use the same language challenged the success of this conversation. The SLA Model will help you to become proficient in understanding what is important to your business leader and how best to communicate learning processes and outcomes in business terms.

Like most professions, business leaders use a set of tools and processes. Students enrolled in business schools are likewise taught how to use these. On a daily basis, business leaders use tools to assess data, make decisions, implement decisions, and measure success. Much rigor and process are required of business leaders by their stakeholders (management, customers, employees, shareholders, boards of directors).

Likewise, the learning and development profession has a set of tools and processes that we use with discipline and rigor. Although these are critical to creating successful learning solutions, they are unfamiliar to business leaders. In many cases, business leaders even view our tools and processes as nowhere near the level of rigor required of them from their stakeholders. How many times have you heard terms like “smile sheets” for our evaluation tools?

The only reason learning functions exist is to drive business outcomes. Therefore, it is our responsibility as learning professionals to become bilingual in both learning and business languages. In addition, to increase our level of communication and credibility with business leaders, it is our responsibility to use the tools and processes of business to augment our learning and development work. After all, learning is a business process.

Components of the Strategic Learning Alignment Model

The SLA Model is organized as a four-step process with various tactics and tools available for use at each step in the process. Figure 1-1 illustrates the model’s four steps, starting with the oval at the top and moving clockwise.

Step 1 of the SLA Model is Knowing Your Business, which provides a foundation for the other three steps. In business terms, this “knowing” is similar to “customer intimacy.” Learning functions most definitely have customers and other key stakeholders. The business leaders are, in fact, your “customers.” To be successful, businesses need to deeply understand customer needs and desired outcomes. This enables businesses to align products and services to meet these needs.

For example, Procter & Gamble has one of the world’s largest and strongest portfolios of trusted retail brands. You are familiar with P&G if you have used any of its consumer products—Pampers, SafeGuard, Head & Shoulders, Pantene, or Oral B, to name just a few. A big part of P&G’s ongoing success is its alignment with its customers’ needs. It goes as far as having P&G employees live (or “embed” themselves) with various customer groups. This close contact allows these employees to directly observe and identify customers’ needs. To align with business goals and deliver relevant, high impact learning solutions, learning professionals must have just as deep an understanding of their business.

Moving clockwise in figure 1-1, step 2 of the SLA Model is Building the Business Case for Learning. With a clear understanding of the issues facing business leaders, learning leaders are positioned to build their case for their learning solutions. Like other business leaders, learning leaders compete for funding from their company. In the P&G example, their depth of customer intimacy is used to create powerful and convincing business cases that P&G should invest in particular new products. Learning leaders also compete for business’s “mindshare” and support for their learning initiatives among a pool of competing business priorities. This step in the SLA Model guides you in positioning your business value, capturing investment dollars, and communicating in the “local language” of your business.

With deep knowledge of your business and completion of a compelling business case, you are ready to move to step 3, Engaging Leaders in Key Learning Activities. This step helps you engage your leaders to create relevant learning solutions, gain sponsorship, and design and deliver learning solutions. The result of this engagement is strong alignment. Once again, P&G stands out as exemplary in the way they engage their customers. In fact, through a variety of processes and technologies, P&G partners with their customers to co-create and codevelop products. This fosters relevant, successful products that meet customer needs. In addition, with customers directly involved in the P&G design and development processes, increased customer loyalty results. In the pages that follow, you will learn about numerous methods, processes, and tools to help you create and maintain a similarly unprecedented level of engagement by your business leaders with your learning.

Step 4, the final step in the SLA Model, is Communicating Your Business Results. This important step helps you create a powerful brand for your learning, increase continued mindshare, and enhance your business leader’s view of your learning function as a valued partner. For P&G, these activities are part of its marketing communication discipline, which involves a variety of tactics and tools, including tailoring messages for different segments of its customers, providing ongoing communication on the benefits and value of its products, using customer testimonials on the results produced, and linking its brands to various forms of external recognition and awards.

Using the SLA Model

The SLA Model offers a road map to achieving alignment between learning and business goals. The model contains a variety of processes and tools for your immediate use. As you familiarize yourself with these, you will be in a better position to assess your organization’s readiness and resources to adopt these practices. Much like working your way along the buffet line at a restaurant, you may find yourself selecting a few key practices from each step of the model. Of course, second trips along the SLA Model “buffet line” are allowed and encouraged. In these subsequent trips, you may identify additional processes or tools appropriate for your current stage in the alignment journey.

Exercise for Understanding the Strategic Learning Alignment Model

Complete worksheet 1-1, a strategic learning alignment self-assessment. Use your score to identify areas of strength and opportunity in your current alignment with business.