Welcome to Provocative Peers

A few months ago we launched the Provocative Peers section of our website with a look at how technology is reshaping workplace practices and decision-making, to begin sharing what we call, "Thoughts from the Learning Edge". (See the Provocative Peers Archives.) This month we offer an in-depth look at developing and adapting your enterprise eLearning strategy. Lance Dublin of Dublin Consulting outlines nine steps to achieving a successful and integrated eLearning strategy. Please enjoy this contribution. Your comments and ideas are always welcome: provocativepeers@designmedia.com.

Many of us were brought up with the famous Alice in Wonderland story. We were enthralled and amused, and often quite taken with the antics of the Cheshire cat. He seemed so crazy yet made so much sense! Well, I believe the Cheshire cat was indeed on to something that has meaning for us in the real world, our world.

Organizations today are faced with many e-learning choices: synchronous or a-synchronous courses, blended or self-paced, virtual or instructor-led classes, bulletin boards, discussion groups or blogs, courses or job aids, hosted or in-house, LMS or LCMS. The choices go on and on. It's often difficult to separate fact from fiction, leading edge from bleeding edge, and myth from reality. Therefore, decisions are often made for the sake of having made a decision. They don't reflect a strategy. They are happenstance. The road taken is often the one that is easiest to get agreement on, the cheapest in cost, or the most effectively sold option.

Successful organizations take heed of the Cheshire cat's insights. They stop, or at least pause. They think, collect information, reflect and analyze. They follow a process.

As important as the strategy development process itself, successful companies understand the overall context for their strategy. An e-learning strategy can't exist in a vacuum. It can't be disconnected from the other learning and performance support activities, or separate from other business strategies in the organization. In fact, it must be aligned with them in order to be successful.

Alignment
What do I mean by aligned? The Cheshire cat certainly didn't mention this. And, I'd venture to say this may well have been an oversight on his part! Your organization has a business strategy. This strategy draws a direct line between the desired future business results and today's business issues. It spells out the specific business and organizational initiatives and activities necessary to achieve the business results. In order to deliver on this business strategy, your organization most likely has defined a number of supporting strategies (i.e., technology, marketing, and financial) and hopefully, a people strategy.

A people strategy, however, often includes far more than learning and development. It typically includes recruitment, assessment, development, leadership, and succession. But first, it's important to specify the learning and development strategy of your organization. Then you are ready to develop your e-learning or 'e' strategy to include e-learning, e-performance, learning^e and performance^e.

You should then be able to draw a straight line from the business strategy to the people strategy to the learning strategy to the 'e' strategy and ultimately, to the desired business results. This is alignment!

Pitfalls
What happens when your e-learning strategy isn't in alignment or you don't really have one? Is it really that bad? Your organization will certainly be faced with higher costs. It will also suffer from lack of coordination and focus. There will duplication of efforts and inefficiencies. There will be internal skirmishes, if not full-on battles. And often, the most significant repercussion is the costs associated with not being able to support your organization in achieving its business goals.

The Nine-Step Process
Strategy development is as much an art as it is a science. Since every organization is different in many ways, strategy development cannot follow a one-size, one-method fits all, lock-step approach. Instead, it must be approached as an iterative process; as a road to be explored with twists and turns, side excursions, and bumps along the way.

These are the nine-steps or stops and a few key points to remember.

#1: Discover How it Works Today
It's imperative that your e-learning strategy support the overall business or organization strategy. To do this, you need to discover how your organization works and what's important today, as well as in the future.

Take the time to understand your organization's vision, its goals, and its purpose. Learn about key business drivers and what is most important in the eyes of senior management. Are you in the innovation, service, or product 'business'? Is your goal less cost or more profit? Put on the hat of a cultural anthropologist to understand your corporate culture. What makes your organization accept change or resist change? Think like a business consultant or MBA candidate. Analyze the business system of your organization and how the business processes, technology, management systems, people capabilities and culture work together. Identify the critical business initiatives that make up your organizations business strategy. Make sure to learn about all of the e--learning and technology--enabled learning initiatives currently in place.

Once you've looked at your organization today, then step back and think about what it will look like in the future. This is the fun part. No one knows for sure what it will look like, so your speculations are as good as anyone's. What will be the vision of your organization in three to five years? What will be the business drivers then? What might the corporate culture look like; what will it need to look like? And do the same for the business systems. Think about what critical initiatives will need to be in place. Let your mind roam freely to imagine what role e-learning will play in its broadest definition. In fact, think learning^e or performance^e!

#2. Envision the Future
In order to generate support and enthusiasm, you need to define a compelling vision that everyone can connect to and feels a part in. It needs to be tangible and understandable. It needs to offer inspiration, hope and something to aspire to. The key to an effective vision is that everyone can 'see' themselves in it and what it means to be living that vision. Vision statements like: 'On-time performance', 'Right Knowledge at the right time in the right way' and 'Learning-at-the-speed-of-work' are all good examples.

In order to create this vision stop and think about the attributes or characteristics of the future you are envisioning. Is it 'convenient', 'responsive', 'flexible', 'fast', 'easy', 'broad', 'focused'? Please note cost reduction alone is not a vision. Cost reduction is a benefit and not a feature or a vision. It does not inspire or excite. Everyone wants things to be as cheap as possible, but your vision should be more encompassing and forward-looking.

#3. Analyze the Gaps
It's important to analyze the gaps between where your business or organization is today and where it plans to be in the future. There are general categories such as: culture, technology, governance and leadership, processes and systems, as well as content. In business school this is simply called doing a 'gap analyses'. So, put on your MBA 'hat' and talk with people, conduct focus groups, analyze reports and data. Do your homework.

back to The Nine Step Process

#4. Understand Your Options
Every day there are more and more choices. New technologies come to market. New suppliers appear. New tools are available. It's important to understand your choices and make informed decisions that both work for today and are aligned with your future directions.

This is another fun part of the process. Meet with vendors. Read. Surf the web. Go to conferences. Be a learner. Explore. Imagine.

Be careful to not let your past define your future. Maybe now you are a course-based organization and e-learning is really e-courses. That doesn't mean your future should remain the same. Based on the discovery of your organization's future requirements, you should be thinking about what learning and e-learning needs will be to make that future a reality. Will it be m-learning? Or knowledge management? Or desktop performance support? And, what technologies and services will these new directions require?

Once you begin to make choices, it's time to conduct a SWOT analysis on the major ones. It stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Basically, don't just take the word of vendors, colleagues, or friends. Do your own due diligence.

#5. Define Your Strategy
You must define your e-learning strategy based on a scaleable architecture. A scaleable architecture allows you to meet your needs today, as well as into the future. If your IT Department has been doing its job, this is their approach as well. So, visit with them. Review their strategy.

In all likelihood, the initial focus of your strategy will be on increasing the efficiency of what you are already doing, and on saving time and money. You'll look for ways to deliver the same courses in a blended or e-learning approach. The next stage typically, will focus on being more effective; on ensuring the learning is tied to business needs and metrics, and that it makes a business impact. In this stage you'll look for ways to improve your e-learning and blended learning programs by extending your use of technology (i.e., chat, bulletin boards, search) and applying some new technologies (i.e., communities of practice, knowledge management, content management). And in the final stage as your strategy evolves, you'll focus on how to leverage learning to create value in your organization, to ensure competitive advantage, and to do things that were never possible before.

#6. Enlist Support
No matter how motivating your vision and well thought out your strategy, you will still need to enlist the support of senior decision-makers and key influencers. You will need to develop a business case, written in business language, that addresses the business (or service) benefits of your strategy. This business case must address, at a minimum these three questions: How does your e-learning strategy or learning proposal further the business strategy?; What are the measurable business results?; and, How will this create or sustain a competitive corporate advantage?

Since you most likely will need to build a consensus among key stakeholders, you'll also need to develop a marketing plan to make sure your strategy is well presented and understood. Draw on the marketing resources inside your organization to help you structure this plan. Marketing is marketing. You need to provide the thoughts, the content, and the words, then the marketing 'experts' will help you form these components into a plan.

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#7. Plan to Communicate
No strategy implements itself. The truth is quite the opposite. E-learning is significant because it represents a change that ripples throughout an organization. And change is always a big deal. Most of us react to change using 30% logic and 70% emotion. Implementing e-learning will change the process of learning in your organization. And, by definition, the technologies, management systems and structures, competencies and culture will be changed. Our choice then is either to try to actively manage these changes, or to ignore them and just let events happen. An effective e-learning implementation plan is a critical success factor to your entire learning strategy.

Critical to successful implementation is focusing on both the individual learners and the organization as a whole. Yes, learners count but, so do a much wider range of people within the organization. Stakeholders also include the 'C' level types (i.e., CEO, CIO, CFO, EVPs), middle and line managers, and Human Resources/Training staff (i.e., trainers, instructional designers, training managers). Add all these people up and you realize this is a large number to communicate with, influence and sell on your e-learning strategies and plans.

The good news is that you don't have to get all of them on-board and embracing your e-learning strategy at the same time. Through the work of Everett Rogers we have learned that people adapt to new innovations (and change) along a bell-curve. There is some percentage of each stakeholder group who are 'innovators' while others on the other end of the bell-curve are 'diehards'. In between there are 'early adopters', the 'early majority', the 'late majority', and the 'late adopters'.

The fact is, it only takes 5% of each stakeholder group to embrace your e-learning program, for it to eventually become imbedded in the organization. And, once you get 20% of each stakeholder group - the early adopters - supporting your e-learning efforts, the momentum increases and your implementation becomes virtually unstoppable!

The American Heritage dictionary defines communication as, "the exchange of thoughts, messages or information". The key word in this definition is 'exchange'. Exchange implies a two-way process not a one-way flood. All too often organizations develop communications plans which in reality are marketing communications plans. Their purpose is to tell a story in a convincing way rather than foster true two-way exchange.

To effectively implement e-learning you need both a change communications plan and a marketing communications plan. A marketing communications plan needs to tell all of your stakeholders about the vision and mission for your e-learning initiative. It needs to clearly communicate - in all forms - the messages you want your stakeholders to hear.

A change communications plan is necessary to support your change management efforts. Its purpose is to support the learners and the organization as a whole as they move through the three phases of change adoption: awareness, engagement and involvement. For each of these phases, the plan must present specific activities, messages and timing for each key stakeholder group and a feedback mechanism to receive their ideas and input.

#8. Implement and Integrate
Getting your e-learning to work - completing the installation - is really only the first stage in being successful. And, it is the easiest. It's the next two stages - implementation and finally integration - that are the really difficult ones.

You know you've succeeded at installation when you e-learning runs error--free. You know you've succeeded at implementation when your targeted audiences are accessing what you've developed.

But, getting to the next stage, integration, is the hardest. You know you've succeeded at this stage when your e-learning is invisible. You are no longer absorbed with the technology or even talking about e-learning. Your focus is on your organization and e-learning is just another part of any business process. That is to say, your e-learning has been absorbed into the fabric of your organization.

#9. Evaluate Again and Repeat
To be successful you need to be in continual and over-lapping cycles of preparing, launching and sustaining. And, within each of these cycles you must be in the process of learning - planning - developing - implementing - supporting - and learning, again. Almost as soon as you have done the preparation and launched Version 1.0, you should begin the preparation for Version 2.0. And, in parallel, you need to be working within the organization to sustain the initial momentum. This is then repeated with Version 2.5 or 3.0 and on and on.

Think of e-learning, as if it is organizational software that is in a continual process of improvement and refinement. Plan regular reviews and conduct what I call, 'tune-ups'. In these tune-ups, you might decide to look at some, or all of, the following: learning/e-learning strategy; business case (including ROI, if established); e-learning architecture, components, and delivery mix; content and instructional design; tools, technologies, and infrastructure; marketing; change management; evaluation and metrics; supporting organization and processes; sponsorship and governance; and, roles and responsibilities.

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Conclusion
Clearly, being successful with e-learning is not magic. There isn't one strategy that fits every business or organization. e-Learning enables you to not only change your current learning processes to be more efficient and more effective, but also, it enables you to transform the performance of your workforce and your organization as a whole. This is big stuff and therefore requires the best thinking, from the best people, inside and outside your organization. And, it means you need to heed the sage advice of the Cheshire cat. Good luck!

Adopted from: "If You Don't Know Where You're Going, Any Road Will Take You There: Lessons on e-Learning Strategy Development from the Cheshire Cat". Published by ASTD

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