8

Conclusion

The work of today’s performance improvement practitioners is aimed at creating and leveraging strategic value in organizations. Commonly, organizational leaders will look to the L&D professionals to build employee and organizational capacity so that the organization is positioned to leverage (and capitalize upon) its competitive advantage. This focus on value has been the mantra for the performance improvement profession over the last decades, and with the strategic alignment process, practitioners now have a way to uncover and facilitate that value.

The purpose of a performance improvement practitioner is to develop organizational members to carry out the strategies of the organization. This development comes not only from the lessons learned in the classroom, but also from the lessons derived from performance feedback, which may be leveraged to aid decision making. Supplying timely and accurate performance feedback is the job, and it fulfills the purpose of the performance improvement role. This transformational perspective of today’s performance improvement role is purposeful and proactive—it builds upon and grows beyond the traditional, transactional approach to L&D work and interactions with stakeholders. No longer fulfilling training requests ad hoc on a first come, first served basis, according to the products on the shelf, the strategically positioned L&D unit proactively assesses and remedies human performance misalignments between the strategies selected to secure and grow an organization’s positioning and capabilities to execute those strategies.

However, the current methods you are using to provide strategic performance feedback may not be answering the right questions. For example, reporting the reactions of participants who attended a customer service class will not tell you what you really want to know: Did the customer service class affect the service performance of course participants? Or, did you realize an increase in sales? Or, are your external customers more satisfied with the service they are receiving? Without connecting the work of the performance improvement role to the business, your ability to inform progress toward your purpose is limited. Like all other functions in the organization, learning and development contributes more than products, yet we favor measuring what we put into a product, the activities we completed for the product, and the product output itself. Imagine evaluating the entire information technology function by the implementation of one system or program. By looking only to the products you have delivered in the past, you miss the opportunity to participate in the formulation of the desired future.

Performance improvement practitioners have much more to offer than products and, as such, require a holistic view of the total, strategically valuable contributions. They offer a quality service to their stakeholders, guiding the selection of L&D choices by using and demonstrating the most pragmatic and timely approach. With effective and efficient outcomes for learning and development and other performance improvement initiatives, everyone wins. While using the strategic alignment process to select learning and development and other performance improvement solutions may be unfamiliar in your organization, remember it is a process. It will take time to recondition the ways in which your organization makes decisions about how to improve performance.

Employers are receptive to viewing performance improvement solutions as strategically valuable; yet, we do not often demonstrate a comprehensive view of the strategic investment of training in organizations or if such investment equates to improvements in firm performance. Performance improvement professionals have an opportunity, especially in cases of progressing from transactional to transformational functions, to proactively influence how and in what ways their work contributes to the strategic priorities of the organization. It is with this perspective and associated effort that L&D professionals may gain their seat at the table and have a part in making the key learning decisions that direct their work and efforts.

A systems approach may be applied to more fully examine the influence of L&D work and its relationship to the firm’s performance. This is an opportunity to uncover the unit’s influence to measures of organizational growth and productivity, and also measures of employee motivation, turnover, engagement, satisfaction, and so on. Those performance improvement functions that can measurably connect the work they do to the strategic needs of the organization are positioned to demonstrate that their work is strategically valuable. The benefit lies within learning and development’s ability to engage in (and foster engagement in) optimized strategic alignment processes. Thus, the alignment activity of performance improvement practitioners is not to strive for the ever allusive (or even unattainable) perfect alignment, but rather to engage in the processes that facilitate ongoing alignment. This offers practitioners a perspective of alignment as an end state and also a dynamic process that reflects ongoing changes in the environment.

Strategic Alignment Process as a Tool for Strategically Valuable Work

The strategic alignment process is a structured, yet flexible, process for ensuring your L&D work is clearly aligned with strategic objectives and generates measurable evidence of your contributions to the organization’s success. It aligns your services, products, and programs to business needs, and in turn, business results. This process is conducted collaboratively to generate a shared sense of input and accountability for the work and for the results of that work. This way of doing performance improvement work will shift your view of your current role to that of a performance consultant, architect, and designer. You will begin to see your work and yourself in a different way. Rather than fulfilling training orders using predetermined solutions, you connect the goals of the organization to the solutions you use to achieve those goals. And, you do so collaboratively alongside your stakeholders—sharing in the design, the work, and the results.

New (or further developed) ways of thinking about ourselves and our work are required to apply the strategic alignment process, namely, system thinking, strategic thinking, critical thinking, and collaboration. These skills complement one another throughout the strategic alignment process. Let’s take a look at an example. An internal customer in a leadership position noticed that a large number of newer employees were voluntarily leaving the organization within their first year of employment. The leader did not know what the turnover rate should be, but recognized something was off. Why were new hires leaving in such short time?

She asks you to put together a training program for all managers so that they can learn how to hire people who are a better fit for the organization. As the performance improvement professional, you have a couple of options for how to proceed:

•   Follow the direction of the requestor and implement the solution she asked for (option 1).

•   Engage and negotiate with the requestor to embark on a collaborative performance needs journey (option 2).

The strategic alignment process incorporates these essential skills throughout each stage, which helps performance improvement professionals ensure alignment between the solutions selected to improve performance and the organization’s strategic objectives, while also providing a framework for demonstrating the strategic value of L&D work. It enables performance improvement professionals and their respective organizations to look at performance problems and opportunities in a different way, and by doing so derive innovative solutions.

The first option is an example of an idea being imposed as the solution—perhaps a habitual response, perhaps we don’t want to “turn work away”—it’s what our customer is used to. A stakeholder begins with an idea in mind, such as an L&D solution, and directs the HR-related team to implement it. A problem or challenge may have prompted the idea, but a search for the solution is not performed. Measurable targets that show success (or nonsuccess) of the solution are not set. The stakeholder gains credibility and buy-in for the decision by securing the acceptance of others, often key decision makers, who deem it valuable and thus assume that this will lead to employees adopting the solution and positive outcomes. Those who take this idea imposition approach often do so because these behaviors are assumed to be timely and pragmatic—quick decisions and immediate action are rewarded.

The second option is geared toward discovery. In this case, decision makers start with a focus on performance, rather than solution. They gather support for the performance problem to show that the problem is real—there is an issue of performance that requires our attention. Rather than presenting a specific solution next, discovery decision makers enlist others in the search for a solution and use targets to guide the efforts. This process communicates that improvement in performance is both desirable and feasible, while at the same time gains momentum for early and sustainable adoption for the solution. A solution is then selected and once implemented, receives ongoing monitoring to verify the solution is meeting the performance need. This approach is not as popular as idea imposition as it is regarded as taking too much time, and therefore, is more expensive. It is also assumed that it is not realistic for today’s organizational decision making.

So, in a world that demands quick action and decision making, how does a performance improvement practitioner apply a discovery approach tool, such as the strategic alignment process, successfully?

Researchers have looked into not only what the process of decision making in organizations looks like, but also what the outcomes of each approach are likely to be. In other words, which approach is more successful? Table 8-2 shows their findings.

Table 8-2. Comparison of Two Decision-Making Approaches

Surprising? While we may have guessed that a discovery approach would produce better outcomes, what may be surprising is that it actually takes less time, that solutions born from this approach have a much better chance of being adopted and sustained by employees, and that more of these types of decisions actually get the green light to move forward.

Making the Transition to a Strategic Alignment Approach

Your stakeholders may be accustomed to reaching out to the L&D professionals to impose a solution, such as a training program, as their go-to solution, so altering the ways in which you respond to such requests will be important. This is your opportunity to begin changing the paradigm about what products and services you and your team can offer to support performance in the organization. While the way you conduct business may be different from what your stakeholders are used to experiencing, don’t let this stop you from breaking with tradition. You are establishing a partnership with the requestor. In time, you and your stakeholders will have a closer consultative relationship focused on strategic decision making that delivers performance results, rather than a strictly transactional relationship focused solely on the delivery of a learning service or product.

To test it out, try using this approach on one of your stakeholders whom you anticipate being most amenable to a change in the way you interact when making L&D choices. Find an early adopter and keep progressing. As you achieve success, others will take notice that your approach produces better outcomes, is timelier, pragmatic, and it’s not just another L&D fad.

L&D solutions can be expensive endeavors for organizations, so it’s critical to consider how we go about making good decisions for what L&D solutions to invest in. Those in HR-related roles, such as talent development, talent management, and organization development, can help their stakeholders make decisions about L&D strategies using criteria that’s important to them—timely implementation, strategies with the greatest chance of being adopted by employees, and those that will offer a positive return for the investment. Are you ready to get started?