The essential toolkit for L&D Leaders

A tool to help us work on what matters to the business!

Primary TRI principle: Tuning In – Aligning together
Secondary principle: Improving – Monitoring progress

Much has been made of us being order takers – responding to requests for content and courses. For many years now I have been asking L&D practitioners the question ‘Do you analyse the problem before recommending a solution?’

Consistently, 80–90% of the top performers say yes, compared to 30–50% of the rest of L&D*

Now, L&D regularly report that they are overwhelmed and overworked which may be why this core principle of lining up might be overlooked. But it makes a difference to what we work on, how we work and how we can be better positioned to track impact.

Getting started

If you want to make sure your courses add the most value, make sure they address the real underlying problem. In reality, sometimes they don’t. Just because someone asks for training, it doesn’t mean that training is the best thing for them. In fact the standard Training Needs Analysis (TNA) conducted by larger L&D teams tends to assume that training is the best way to address a need when it might not be.

That’s where a simple, robust needs analysis process can really help. Ultimately it will save you time, and target attention and effort to what matters most.
Effective Needs Analysis is a way of systematically investigating a request for a course or content to identify and understand the underlying problem or opportunity, why it matters to the organisation, and whether learning is the best (or only) solution.

A tool to help!

As part of our Emerging Stronger work, Michelle Ockers worked on this tool for L&D professionals to improve our impact by guiding us through a simple, broader analysis process that starts with considering the need from a business perspective.

Use the Needs Analysis Tool to have an initial conversation to understand the real need when you

• receive a request for a course or content
• are engaged to support a business project or change
• identify a performance issue or opportunity in the business

A tool to help us keep relevant and be useful!

Primary TRI principle: Responding – Choosing well
Secondary principle: Tuning In – Connecting to individuals

Most of us are suffering from content overload. Offering more content doesn’t help …unless it is clearly relevant and useful.

In my previous studies with over 50,000 workers we explored what motivates individuals to learn online – to become more self directed. Without fail the top reason for workers of all tenures and seniority was ‘to do my job faster and better’. For L&D to connect with our workers, we need to be able to help them get to what they need to do their job faster and better.

That’s where curation comes in. Curation is more than aggregating all your content assets into one place with a single sign on. It is about surfacing the right content for the right person in the right context. And it is something that high performing learning teams are increasingly skilled at.

Getting started

Understanding the problem at hand was something we tackled in the Needs Analysis tool [Link]. Shannon Tipton, a co-founder in the Emerging strong team used this as the starting point – our ability to curate successfully depends on how well we can answer these questions:

1. What problem are you trying to solve?
2. Audience readiness, what should people be able to do with the information?
3. Available resources, what content sources will be used?
4. Accessibility, how will information be shared?
5. Content potential and validate content as fit for purpose.

A tool to help!

Shannon went on to develop this tool to help work through the 3 main stages of successful curation. Download and use it to help you:

• define curation goals
• source relevant content
• validate content as fit for purpose
• organise and contextualize content
• share content in a discoverable format

A tool to help us communicate, communicate, communicate!

Primary TRI principle: Responding – Engaging influencers
Secondary principle: Tuning In – Connecting to individuals

The third tool in our essential toolkit for L&D leaders is one to help you get smarter at getting the message out and getting your message heard!

Marketing and L&D is a hot topic, and rightly so. For too long we’ve expected our services just to be found and our recommendations listened to.

It’s not useful to adapt your learning offering to specific performance needs and then just hope that people will find it. For your programme to be genuinely useful and relevant your audiences need to know about it. That means you need to communicate!

Getting started

You’ve invested your time and budget in a new programme and initiative – so it’s important that it starts well.

Which means you need a plan and Shannon Tipton, as part of the Emerging Stronger team has created this plan to help you launch your programme successfully.

Your communication plan should not be an add on. You should be planning ahead and thinking about how to communicate:

• prior to program development (part of the program kick-off)
• as part of program creation and
• prior to program launch

Download and use this tool to help you

• Educate your audience
• Motivate your audience
• Keep momentum
• Plan what communication tools to use
• Plan your follow up messages

A tool to help us work within the business!

Primary TRI principle: Tuning In – Grounding in the real world
Secondary principle: Responding – Enabling learning

The fourth tool of the essential toolkit for L&D leaders helps us get out more!

Too often L&D operate in our own spaces created by our classrooms, programmes, LMS’s and libraries. But our people are gathering and working in completely different spaces and communities. Spaces where they are learning, growing and practising new things.

Getting started

The whole of the Emerging Stronger team had great fun working on this tool. We explored the evidence  with a horticultural lens to help you ensure learning thrives in your online communities.

Follow the steps to help you:

Prepare – understand  which workplace communities create the best growing conditions

Sow – what seeds do you need to sow to support learning and performance

Nurture – how do you water, fertilise, weed and prune for learning to thrive

Harvest – how to recognise and gather the fruits of your labour!

A tool to help!

Use an existing workplace community to

• share relevant content to seed learning
• build and strengthen skills
• troubleshoot problems
• improve processes
• strengthen workplace practices or performance

A tool to help us equip managers to do their job!

Primary TRI principle: Responding – Engaging influencers
Secondary principle: Tuning In – Connecting to individuals

The fifth tool in the series tackles the persistent issue of management engagement.

Year after year in survey after survey, L&D leaders claim that manager engagement is one of their biggest challenges. Manager’s opinion counts when it comes to influencing learners. They are also busy building and running their teams and few have time to take on the role of L&D manager as well.

Getting started

These plays work because they are short and sharp, prioritise everyone’s common agenda and fit within the flow of work rather than add to it. They are also evidence informed, each one links back to business success. The plays are simple ways to help us:

Engage with managers around a common agenda

Act – help managers take action within their own teams to support growth

Improve – help managers encourage reflection and continual improvement within the team

A tool to help!

The L&D Playbook for Enabling Busy Managers contains 9 new tools and techniques for you to experiment and try when you want your managers to:

• Support team conversations about learning
• Ask questions that encourage practice and learning transfer
• Build psychological safety
• Create time and permission to learn
• Encourage self directed and team learning

Check out the next tool in the series for a deeper dive: the Power Hour tool

A tool to help us equip managers to transfer learning through the rhythm of work!

Primary TRI principle: Responding – Enabling learning
Secondary principle: Improving – Monitoring progress

The sixth tool is designed for managers to integrate regular discussions about what the team has learned and what they need to do next into the rhythm and routine of work.

It’s a simple ‘meeting in a box’ for line managers to hold team meetings that bring out the POWER of their team, unlocking their team’s:

Potential– by honouring the effort and interest of the team as we each take steps to improve Outcomes– by encouraging sharing in pursuit of progress Wisdom– by surfacing what we know so that we can become smarter in addressing challenges Exploration– by providing permission and visibility to experiment and try something new Relationships– by building relationships and trust as we help each other grow

… and who wouldn’t want that?!

Getting started

This tool aims to tackle the thorny application of learning. A great place to start will be to encourage its use over a fixed time period to support  a specific skills initiative. If it is useful, managers will continue to use the format to create a psychologically safe environment.

Fun Fact: I got the inspiration for this tool from a great skills initiative at Thomson Reuters back in 2011. Kelly Thomas, Global Head of Sales and Service Learning, introduced a Power Hour as part of a new sales academy to reskill their teams. It was part of a blend designed to shift behaviours and habits over time and the tool  helped managers coach and support new behaviours back in the workplace. You can read Kelly’s original story here.

A tool to help!

Use the Power Hour Tool when you want to help managers

• carve out time and create rhythm
• build trust and create permission to learn and explore
• understand interests and create opportunity to practise
• accelerate results and create new pathways of success
• support self-directed learning – and create new habits for growth.

A tool to help us work on what matters and track if it’s working!

Primary TRI principle: Improving – Monitoring progress
Secondary principle: Improving – Sharing progress

The seventh tool in the series is to help you continually improve the impact of your learning solutions.

Driving better business value through learning requires ongoing engagement with others, particularly managers, to create shared ownership of solutions. This starts with smarter up-front conversations with people requesting support with courses and content (the Needs Analysis tool). It also involves continuing that conversation in order to maintain and track momentum.

That’s where this tool comes in.

Did you know that whilst we are more likely to be proactive in identifying a performance issue before recommending a solution than in previous years, only 55% of L&D have a process in place for tracking learning transfer and 46% have a process in place for supporting learning transfer. If the performance issue matters to business then we need to become better at ensuring our interventions hit the mark. That means becoming smarter at working with line managers because the learning transfer magic happens back in the workplace.

Getting started

This tool has been created as a simple conversation guide to help you improve the type of conversations you have with managers and the timings of those conversations:

before implementing an intervention

during the intervention to review progress and participant support

after the intervention to explore participant support, outcomes, and identify improvements for the future.

A tool to help!

Use the improving impact tool when you need to

• engage managers to share responsibility to ensure that solutions create impact
• make intelligent choices about what, when and how to evaluate
• continuously improve a learning solution
• demonstrate the impact you have created together

A tool to help us plan to simplify and prioritise skills that matter!

Primary TRI principle: Tuning In – Aligning together
Secondary principle: Responding – Choosing well

The eighth tool in the essential toolkit for L&D leaders series helps us to work smarter on the top priority for L&D today – building skills.

New tools and technologies are creating and reinventing jobs faster than organisations can recruit for them. It is no wonder that skills are a top priority for leaders and people professionals alike. But addressing the skills agenda is a big task, involving an entire ecosystem of stakeholders both internal and external to the organisation. So where do we start?

When it comes to skills – we can’t do everything. We need to prioritise!

Complicated competency frameworks that take years to develop are out of date before they are even released. Instead we need to explore ways of taking action faster on the priorities that matter today.

Getting started

Shannon Tipton from the Emerging Stronger team created this tool as a framework to help us prioritise what matters to the business.

It takes us through 4 phases of the skills mapping process:

1. Setting the stage – working with team leads to identify the business’s or team’s future needs.
2. Collecting and analysing data to identify priority and crucial skills.
3. Evaluating team members against crucial skills.
4. Rating team members’ interest in learning new skills.

A tool to help!

Use the Team skills mapping tool when you need help to

• Create a visual map of the priority skills needed to achieve the business goals

• Gain clarity and insight into strengths, gaps, and interests within the team

• Identify specialists, generalists, and how each individual’s skills can be applied across departments and across the organisation

• Discover current employees who need skills to act as temporary or permanent replacements

• Share knowledge across and within departments to help fill gaps in vacant positions

A tool to help us put on our own mask first!

Primary principle: Improving – Adapting course
Secondary principle: Tuning In – Aligning together

The ninth tool in the series helps us take a closer look at our own L&D capability.
Today L&D need to support a workforce who must adapt to an accelerated changing workplace. They need to be equipped to work smarter in existing jobs or get ready for new jobs that didn’t previously exist. Our previously successful kitbag of L&D capabilities is no longer enough and we are struggling to keep up with the demand let alone establish new roles for ourselves.
Most L&D professionals are overwhelmed and underprepared according to the latest Learning Performance Benchmark. And yet only 20% strongly agree that they prioritise the skills that THEY need to help their organisation become competitive for tomorrow. Our role is too important to neglect our own skills – we need to be equipped and ready to respond faster and smarter to the changing needs around us.

A tool to help us work within the business to navigate change!

Primary TRI principle: Responding – Engaging influencers
Secondary principle: Improving – Adapting course

The tenth tool in the essential toolkit for L&D leaders series was created not because we need to manage change but that we need to be smarter in navigating it. Many of our modern approaches to L&D involve change if they are to be accepted, adopted and embedded as part of the ‘way we do things around here’.

Whether we are trying to introduce self-directed learning, or encourage learning in the flow of work, or just include more evidence informed practices in our design – we will encounter resistance. It is no surprise that learner and manager engagement has been in the top barriers for L&D for the past 20 years. It is time to shift from inflicting change on the business to noticing the change already happening within the business.

Getting started

This tool was created by Laura Overton as a framework to think through how to support and encourage the change journey.

The journey planner explores:

Getting ready – noticing and identifying the friction points and key stakeholders
Starting strong – communicating and establishing clear action points for all involved
Progressing well – Ensuring processes are in place to continually adapt
Maintaining momentum – capturing and reinforcing new behaviours as they emerge

A tool to help!

Use this planner when you:

• do not want to leave change to chance
• struggle to engage others with new ways of learning
• feel unsupported by managers who do not make time for learning
• are frustrated by projects that start off strong and then fizzle out