Successful commercial training organisations require a clear strategy and business execution plan in order to achieve, monitor and control the attainment of their goals and objectives.

This chapter looks at a typical approach to this, including the associated components and activities required to develop the strategy that can be used to develop an executable plan.

USING STRATEGY TO SENSE AND SEIZE OPPORTUNITY

Morris Chang (General Instruments, Texas Instruments and Chief Executive Office (CEO) of TSMC) once said: ‘Without strategy, execution is aimless and without execution, strategy is aimless.’¹ This is another way of saying that strategy and business execution need to be in harmony in order to succeed.

Spending time strategising market opportunity based on knowledge, intuition, innovation and potential is fundamental to business success, and this is of equal relevance in the world of technical training.

Intuition or sensing training opportunities plays a key role in distinguishing a leader and the team from other organisations that simply provide solutions in line with generic offerings. Learning has changed and accelerated since the heady days of the burgeoning IT world of the 1980s.

Being able to understand and relate to these changes, be it learning technology, commercial demands on the time allocated to training or millennials who have grown up with the internet and smartphones in an always-on digital world, drives a new mode of business thinking.

Building a business plan of merit, confidence and expected results requires a strategy based on a structure that factors in strategic intent, market insight and innovation, leading to a business design that can be converted into a set of executable critical tasks.

CREATING STRATEGIC AND BUSINESS ALIGNMENT

Strategic and business alignment is achieved when strategic output in terms of business design is aligned with critical task execution. Various models abound on how to approach this, which in essence will be similar to the one shown and described in Figure 2.1. The model comprises two main sections: strategy and execution. Each section consists of four individual components and is supported by leadership and organisational values to drive the expected business results forward.²

Leadership

‘The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things’ – this quote from Ronald Reagan,³ although stated 30+ years ago, still holds true today.

In order to achieve the desired business results from strategy and business execution alignment, a strong employee experience is critical. Certainly, from the leader’s perspective, hiring to the needs of the strategy is vital.

Leaders need to work with employees to establish a climate of responsibility, accountability and active engagement. They need to ensure that employee feedback and commentary on their own and the entire training group’s results are heard and acknowledged.

Figure 2.2 illustrates a strategy and execution closed loop environment where each individual attribute has an impact on the others. These need to be monitored and assessed in order to define the team’s values and social interaction. On the subject of interaction, it is vital that the rest of the company outside the training team is included. One major danger is the training team operating in isolation, which can seriously undermine its corporate value.

Training organisation values

Organisational values guide an organisation’s thinking and actions. When it comes to culture and values, actions speak louder than words. All organisations have values that assist in defining their actions for planned success. Establishing an agreed set of values can assist a training organisation to define its culture and beliefs, which helps in unifying its approach to dealing with various business-related issues. These values assist training groups and employees to decide what works and what doesn’t.

Strategy

The four components of strategy are:

1. Strategic Intent, which sets the main focus for the organisation by setting the overall direction and goal for the training organisation, establishing priorities for the achievement of strategic advantage and factoring and combining training strategic intent with that of the overall company, is essential for solid market insight and business design generation.
2. Marketplace knowledge, which focuses on understanding the needs of the customer base (in terms of training, services and product), training partners, key competitors and their actions, market trends and current technology developments.

   It is a fact-gathering, analytical exercise, with the objective to specify in detail what is happening in both training and company marketplaces, how commercial success factors are shifting and their implications for the business.

3. Innovation Focus, which challenges the training group to actively explore and try new modes of working. This is achieved by reviewing and asking questions on the design and implementation of the strategy, how training can be designed and delivered (including idea generation) and creating pilot projects all aimed at shaping change for continued growth and success. Innovation focus should not only be about new training offerings, but also include operational and business model innovations.
4. Business design, which interprets the strategic intent in terms of how the training business will go to market by answering five key questions and incorporating the focused innovation and marketplace knowledge output:
   1. Customer selection: what industry segments (categorised according to the nature of the business sector they are involved with: finance, manufacturing, etc.) and size of customer should be selected?
   2. Value proposition: what training offerings should be provided and why would customers purchase or engage with the offering?
   3. Value capture: given the answers to the first two questions, how will money be made or strategic advantage be gained and measured?
   4. Partnerships: what can be done internally and what activities will the business rely on through partner engagement?
   5. Sustainability: how will profitability of offerings and investments be protected and grown?

The above five key go-to-market elements, along with the innovation and strategic intent recommendations, form the input into the execution stage, which is assessed and converted into key critical tasks and subsequent organisational needs.

Execution

This phase involves the assessment of the strategy and conversion of it into four tangible executables to form a practical and tactical interpretation of the training strategy.

1. Critical tasks and interdependencies: to execute the strategy, the critical tasks required to achieve the business design output need to be defined and any interdependencies highlighted and listed. These tasks need to be measurable and achievable.
2. Talent: assess and define the requisite employee characteristics, capabilities and competencies needed to execute the critical tasks, including whether employees and support partners are motivated and engaged.
3. Formal organisation: consider the explicit structures, metrics and rewards required to direct, control and motivate individuals and groups to perform the training group’s critical tasks.
4. Climate and culture: in order for the critical tasks to be achievable, there needs to be a definition and plan of action regarding how people and the training organisation need to behave and operate.

CASE STUDY: STRATEGY TO EXECUTION MODEL

To assist in the understanding of how to apply the strategy to execution model, the following scenario will be used as a case study.

Scenario

An established global IT (software) company has been providing instructor-led training at centres in the main geographies of the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific. With increased pressure to maximise its employee per head revenue in core product lines, the training group has been requested to reduce its training (service-based) headcount and expand its footprint and technical coverage via third parties while sustaining current monetary profit contribution levels.

Proposed solution

The proposed solution will comprise two stages. The first is definition of the strategy and the second is the conversion of the strategy components into an executable plan.

Define the strategy

Defining the strategy requires four separate activities to be undertaken: first, definition of the strategic intent; second, an assessment of the marketplace; third, consideration of any innovative approaches or activities; and, finally, the development of the business design based on the key points and implications from the three previous activities.

Step 1: Define the strategic intent in terms of bullet point-based statements:

• Reduce headcount across the following training-based disciplines: sales and marketing, operations, delivery and infrastructure.
• Establish training delivery partners in all geographies using market-leading providers with strong sales and marketing presence.
• Expand training coverage via a subscription-based model.
• Migrate from function and feature content provision to business outcome-based provision.
• Improve and grow monetary profit contributions year on year.

Step 2: Assess and define the marketplace in terms of bullet point-based statements:

• With the exception of Asia Pacific, all geographies have established third-party training delivery and sales teams in main target countries and cities of interest.
• Asia Pacific third-party training delivery coverage is inconsistent in terms of mainstream players. Universities do specialise in the company product at local country level.
• Product growth is strong in the Americas, moderate in Europe and slow in Asia Pacific.
• Two product competitors have successfully launched training subscription models.

Step 3: Assess any requirements around innovation focus to address the strategic intent points and implications, and factor in any engagement considerations regarding marketplace knowledge:

• Assess the existing company product-based subscription model and technical support portal. Consider relevance to training and suitability for adoption and modification.
• Develop role and task-based training offerings to align with the need to provide business outcome-based training.
• Adopt a distributed learning model to maximise training delivery headcount productivity.
• Investigate and initiate adoption of an integrated cloud-based solution to automate current labour-intensive operational and administrative procedures.

Step 4: Develop the business design based on the key points and implications from the strategic intent and marketplace knowledge activities:

1. Customer selection: which customer segments should be selected and which ones not?

   1.1 Focus to be directed on customer industry sectors currently targeted by the product sales teams.

   1.2 Responsibility for training delivery and sales in the Asia Pacific region to be covered by authorised training partners.

   1.3 Training delivery and sales in the Americas region to be divided on a 60/40 basis between the training team and authorised training partners.

   1.4 Training delivery and sales in the UK, Nordics and Netherlands to be covered by the training team. All other Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) countries to be covered by authorised training partners.

2. Value proposition: what training offerings should be provided and why would customers purchase or engage with the offering?

   2.1 All new courses developed and published based on role and task-based principles:

   • Function feature-based training no longer relevant to customer base. Customers are organised around job roles and require training to be relevant and specific to their needs.

   2.2 Existing courses modified to fit in with distributed learning methodology:

   • Customers requiring role-based training will benefit by being able to select training in line with actual need at a modular level, modality preference and on a timeline that maps to their deployment profile rather than a fixed duration course.

   2.3 Subscription model introduced:

   • Aligns the selling of training with the existing product subscription sales model. Customers prefer point of sales service (training) inclusion. The training subscription model provides customers with a more flexible financial solution.
   • Will include role-based and distributed learning solutions.
3. Value capture: given the answers to the first two questions, how will money be made, or strategic advantage be gained and measured?

   3.1 Realignment of the delivery and sales activities regarding the use of authorised training partners will provide:

   • Improved coverage in terms of:
     • closer alignment of training with product sales activities;
     • ability to deliver training in local language;
     • measurement by number of product sales engagements and training volume.
   • Revenue and profit contributions based on agreed percentages between the training team and authorised training partners.

   3.2 Introduction of role-based training expands training relevance and opportunity:

   • On the customer side of the business it provides:
     • broader opportunities to expand training market penetration;
     • the ability to supply training solutions and develop longer-term customer relationships;
     • measurement by increased training spend per customer and greater return on content developed, because it is modular.
   • Improved opportunities for authorised training partners to engage customers with broader training solutions, because it is measured in terms of revenue and profit growth.

   3.3 Introduction of distributed learning provides:

   • customers with greater choice and flexibility regarding their ability to purchase training at a modular level and in accordance with their modality preference and desired timeline;
   • training and product sales teams with the ability to sell to actual customer need;
   • measurement in terms of number of engagements, revenue and profit growth.

   3.4 Introduction of subscription model provides:

   • training to be aligned with the existing product subscription sales model;
   • customers with a flexible financial solution;
   • both role-based training and distributed learning to be purchased as a subscription offering;
   • a regular and reputable revenue stream;
   • measurement in terms of the number of subscriptions, revenue and profit growth.
4. Partnerships: what can be done internally and what activities will the business rely on through partner engagement?

   4.1 Training IT infrastructure will be transferred to corporate IT for them to run as a shared service.

   4.2 Cloud-based infrastructure will require approval and support from corporate IT.

   4.3 Enablement programmes will need to be redefined to accommodate the selling of role-based training, distributed learning and subscription models.

   4.4 Sales commission and incentive plans will need to be reviewed and costed by finance.

   4.5 Authorised training partner programmes will require additional enablement and revised contractual terms to reflect changes in delivery and sales models.

   4.6 Executive support will be required to ensure that product sales in all geographies engage with authorised training partners to assist in the selling and inclusion of training.

   4.7 Training-related marketing will be transferred to corporate marketing as a shared service provision.

5. Sustainability: how will the profitability of offerings and investments be protected and grown?

   5.1 Cloud-based infrastructure integrating administration bookings, registration, invoicing and content distribution with multi-language support:

   • assists in reducing operational and administration headcount and costs;
   • is scalable without associated headcount increase;
   • has costs based on actual consumption;
   • improves profitability;
   • ensures financial risk is low as costs are related to consumption and minimal capital expenditure required.

   5.2 Introduction of distributed learning, role-based training and subscription model:

   • supports reduction in instructor headcount and costs;
   • reduces instructor travel and expense costs;
   • minimises the need for instructor-led courses via the use of eLearning;
   • improves the potential for market and revenue growth via alignment with a product subscription model;
   • retains financial risk at medium to high, as it requires investment in new content development methods and skills – risk can be minimised by executive commitment to include training at point of sale and the introduction of strong governance.

   5.3 Authorised training partner programme expands market coverage and reach by:

   • improving revenue and profitability contributions;
   • keeping financial risk at low to medium because current authorised training partners have strong regional product sales relationships – new regional partners will need to be accepted and adopted by the local teams;
   • considering the reputational and quality risks of new training partners to ensure they share the same values and alignment with the strategy.

   5.4 Marketing and IT infrastructure needs transferred to respective corporate groups. Service level agreements (to be established) will result in reduced costs due to headcount reallocation.

Develop an executable plan

The previous steps relate to the development of the strategy. The final step is the development of an executable plan. This stage entails interpreting and converting the business design via the four steps:

1. critical tasks and interdependencies;
2. talent;
3. formal organisation;
4. climate and culture.

For clarity purposes, only the critical tasks and interdependencies are shown below; the other three steps relating to this example can be found in the Appendix at the back of this book.

Step 1: Develop critical tasks and interdependencies.

Table 2.1 represents an extract of critical tasks by business functional area based on the strategy example developed above. In reality, there would be others based on normal training business requirements.

Table 2.1 Critical tasks

SUMMARY

Commercial training organisations require clear strategy and business execution plans in order to achieve, monitor and control the achievement of their goals and objectives.

There are many models that can be used to achieve this, which all, in essence, comprise two main stages: strategy definition and development of the execution plan.

The first stage of strategy is based on a structure that factors in strategic intent, market insight and innovation, which are then interpreted and presented as a business design blueprint covering customer selection, value proposition, value capture, partnerships and sustainability.

The business design blueprint is then used to form the executable plan. This contains four tangible executables to form a practical and tactical interpretation of the training strategy: critical tasks and interdependencies, talent, formal organisation, climate and culture.

Having an executable plan enables an organisation to monitor and control its goals and objectives more efficiently. Any issues can be addressed by regularly reviewing the four tangible executables and implementing appropriate actions.

Changes to the overall strategy should only be considered if there are significant changes to the business design due to internal or external influences that cannot be addressed via the existing business execution plan.