Introduction
There are a considerable number of sources on strategically aligning training to the business. Unfortunately, most of the literature about strategic alignment, particularly within learning and talent development, is fundamentally flawed. Much of what has already been written comes from a preimposed solution mindset and, in many cases, a training mindset. Loose associations between how much an organization spends on training and the organization’s success are often touted; however, what is referred to as a “strategic alignment approach” typically consists of a solution-driven analysis and design process.
What’s wrong with that, you might ask? This training mindset illustrates an inherent bias toward familiar solutions, rather than ensuring organizational accomplishments. While analysis and design may improve the look and feel of the solution, they often do little to improve the organization’s strategic results. No amount of analysis and design will deliver worthwhile results if you have picked the wrong solution.
Our experience over the last few decades—along with feedback from clients, colleagues, and students, as well as support from the research literature—indicates that our ability to deliver meaningful results rests on genuinely and actively collaborating with our clients to address problems and opportunities. This has important implications for what we are expected to do and deliver.
Partner for Performance sets out to help you, the L&D professional, establish partnerships that measurably contribute to organizational success—and provide you with a practical set of frameworks, processes, tools, and skills to meet those expectations effectively. Helping or adding value requires a consultative approach in which you partner with clients-whether you work within an organization or offer your services as an external party-to collaboratively define, understand, and address important performance problems and opportunities. This consultative approach is based on trust, openness, and authenticity. If a client submits a request you think won’t help, and perhaps even make matters worse, you must be able to say so compellingly and empathetically.
A consultative approach requires you to ask questions—a lot of questions—that come from a “help me understand” mindset, rather than to assume you always have the perfect solution in mind. Given that clients know their context better than you ever will, opening the relationship with a line of questioning allows you to help them recognize the underlying, interrelated symptoms behind a problem.
Recognizing the integrated nature of organizations—creating fit among organizational activities in relation to internal and external environments—is a critical aspect of strategic alignment. Strategically oriented organizations do not want to waste time, energy, or money on activities that aren’t essential to success. They connect action to a value-added purpose that interacts with and reinforces other activities. They carefully consider how to deploy their resources to the processes that will have the greatest impact on their strategic priorities.
L&D professionals will succeed and thrive if they view their roles as much more than mere deliverers of learning services and products, and instead form partnerships with managers to drive performance aligned to the strategic priorities by generating, sharing, and using timely and relevant performance data to support decision making and action.
To influence how L&D professionals view themselves and their role, this book will use the term performance improvement professionals interchangeably with L&D professionals. It is important to stay focused on performance and broaden your range of tools and approaches for improving it. Your sustained value depends on moving out of familiar frameworks, actions, processes, knowledge, and even job titles and roles to expand beyond your comfort zones.
The focus of the alignment process described in this book is to ensure a clear and measurable relationship between L&D initiatives and the strategic priorities of the organization. This book also introduces a framework for assessing, designing, and evaluating the alignment of learning and development as a functional unit by what they do and how they do it.
How This Book Is Organized
The first two chapters provide the conceptual framework for the approach to strategic alignment. While two foundation chapters might seem a bit long for some, we believe that before you commit to shifting your approach you must have a compelling rationale for doing so, as well as a clear idea of what strategic alignment is and is not. Chapter 1 describes the evolving realities and expanded context within which L&D professionals must make contributions. Chapter 2 provides a thorough discussion about how we approach alignment, and the key considerations L&D professionals face as they seek to support desirable change and consequences in their organizations.
Then you’ll go through the detailed process for strategically aligning L&D solutions to organizational priorities. Chapter 3 covers the first major phase of strategic alignment: uncovering stakeholder perceptions and expectations. Chapter 4 details the process for gathering empirical evidence to strengthen how you define problems and opportunities. Chapter 5 describes how to analyze causal factors and use those factors to select innovative solutions. Chapter 6 introduces the key elements for designing effective workplace implementation and transfer strategies.
Finally, we present the framework for aligning the entire L&D functional unit of an organization to support strategic priorities through performance-driven mechanisms and processes. The appendix provides readers with a full list of tools used throughout this book for easy reference, replication, and customization.