Beyond Stakeholder Q&A: Smart Ways to Learn the Business

If you're relying on a stakeholder meeting to understand the business, you're already behind.

Building a robust understanding of the business where you work is critical to operating as a strategic business partner vs. a transactional order taker. Without strong business acumen we lack the context needed to show up for our stakeholders as an equal in problem solving, ask insightful questions, and work strategically. This, in turn, keeps us smack in the middle of the order taking box.

When I ask L&D pros this question in workshops, inevitably the majority of answers surround asking stakeholders directly. Sitting down with them to ask about their goals, challenges, business processes, biggest expenses, revenue sources, and more. It’s true that this can be a great way to learn but, for many L&D pros, this vision of a lovely Q&A meeting to learn about the business and the reality of that meeting actually happening aren’t the same. There’s a major roadblock standing in the way.

For this Q&A meeting to occur, stakeholders must be available and willing to meet with us. That means setting aside time on their calendar for a non-urgent conversation which, for many, is a luxury.

how can we learn more about the business without Q&A?

On the one hand, we shouldn’t take it personally. Many of the stakeholders I’ve worked with in my career have overflowing inboxes, a daily calendar packed with back-to-back appointments for the entirety of the workday, and zero time available to meet proactively with L&D. They are working as quickly as they can to respond to the pressures of their role and solve the problems that will keep customers happy, improve the performance of their team, align spending to limited budgets, and fill in the gaps from staff turnover. Just like L&D, many stakeholders are stuck in the reactive hamster wheel lacking the time for any type of strategic work. In other words, it isn’t about you.

On the other hand, we could be the partner they need to escape some of this reactive work. We have the skills and expertise to solve talent challenges and enable improved performance. But, without the business context to do so, we can’t get ahead either. Does this mean we both destined to be caught in an infinity loop of reactivity? What can we do?

It’s time to step back and move past the obvious solution. Even without a single meeting with us, our stakeholders are regularly telling us what they value and how to improve our work with them. We just need to pay attention differently to hear it.

When I was conducting research for my upcoming book, L&D Order Taker No More! Become a Strategic Business Partner, I interviewed dozens of learning leaders across industries and company sizes. I was curious to know, if they were able to work as strategic business partners, what did they do differently?

Learning without stakeholder Q&A

Throughout the interviews, a clear theme emerged. Yes, these leaders ran into the problem of overworked stakeholders with little time for meetings with L&D outside of urgent training requests, which is why they didn’t rely on meetings to improve their business knowledge. Instead, they used alternative proactive strategies that didn’t require a separate meeting. The four most common strategies were as follows.

 1) Learning by overhearing

The clues to learning more about the business are all around us. In fact, they are encompassed in every communication with and from others in the business. Every email, every informal conversation, and every meeting is an opportunity to pick up pieces of the puzzle and continue building the picture of the overall business. Instead of rolling their eyes when the town hall update invite came into their inbox, the eyes of these learning leaders lit up. They saw this meeting, not as a waste of time, but as an opportunity to listen strategically and gather insight into what was most important.

That same attitude went for every interaction. Hopping on a virtual meeting first to lead some of the chatter while waiting for everyone else to join meant a few minutes to ask, “how’s business?” Those who worked in physical locations learned from others informally in the cafeteria, hallways, or at the water-bottle filling station.

All employee email announcements were not to be immediately deleted. There were clues there too. If someone took the time to craft a mass email to the company, the information behind it must be important.

What opportunities do you have to pay attention to every communication? How can you find out more about the business through informal interactions?

2) Detective work

There’s a good chance important information about the business is located in places you can easily access combining mouse clicks with a bit of detective work.

Where do teams or leaders in your organization announce or store information? Intranet pages, a SharePoint site, shared folders, Slack channels, Teams sites/messages, and even the external-facing internet site are all sources to scour. Look for key documents like strategic goals/plans, regular reporting dashboards, standard operating procedures, project charters, and more. Even team specific onboarding materials can be a great source of information.

While the documents themselves can be helpful information, don’t forget about communication channels like Slack and Teams, or other places where information is regularly posted and discussed – even cafeteria posters can be a clue. In these instances, paying attention to announcements can give you a sense of what’s important but so can discussion threads. Are there topics that seem to regularly surface? Are there questions that come up repeatedly? Pay attention to the information, but also the themes.

Where is information stored or shared in your organization? Where is it announced? Where is it talked about digitally?

3) Insert yourself

Another strong theme that emerged from the leaders I interviewed was that they didn’t sit around waiting for an invitation to meetings and events. Instead, they spoke up and requested to sit-in/attend team meetings, business meetings, or other gatherings where business insight could be gained.

Interestingly enough, they reported rarely getting pushback from meeting organizers. If they got questions as to why they would want to attend, they responded with something like, “In order to be the best partner I can for you and your work, I really want to understand your business better. Thus, I’d like to sit in and listen to learn.” This type of response was almost always sufficient.

While listening to the meeting banter, they paid attention strategically. Both what was being said and what wasn’t. They watched for who spoke up the most in the meeting (indicating influence or unspoken norms), whether there were topics that got more airtime than others, and what process the group was using to make decisions. They wrote down questions and made note of acronyms they didn’t understand to research or ask others later (maybe even in the informal pre-meeting chit chat or next to the water cooler).

What meetings might be worth inserting yourself for the sake of learning?

4) Go to the gemba

The gemba (also spelled genba is a Japanese term that means to go to the “actual place.” In business, this means visiting the locations where the work is being done like retail sales floors, construction sites, office desks, contact centers, etc.

If it’s possible, regularly going to the gemba provides a depth of insight that goes beyond written reports, documents, and formal meetings. There’s no better way to get a feel for what it’s like to do the work, the challenges frequently encountered, and the resources that are used most often than to observe it for yourself (either in person or virtually), even if it’s for only a few hours. Like inserting yourself into meetings, this may include a request or pre-planning for access, but the reason to attend is the same – to learn more in order to be a better partner.  

I have a colleague who set aside time to go to the gemba four hours each month. I have sat in on sales presentations, listened to phone calls from the contact center, observed a day in the life of a construction project manager, and more. Without a doubt, every time I spent even an hour at the gemba, I learned more than I did in many meetings with stakeholders.

What’s your gemba? How can you spend time there?

The clues are all around us

For L&D pros working as strategic business partners, learning about the business is a continuous endeavor. No one gives us a handbook that includes everything we need to know (from the formal documentation to the informal unwritten rules and patterns) in one swoop. Thus, those who are learning the most about their organization’s business are incredibly scrappy.

They pick up clues everywhere they go, and they are proactive about finding them by doing their own research, inserting themselves, and going to the gemba. In other words, they do much more than wait to get on a busy stakeholder’s calendar for a Q&A session.

What can you learn today without waiting for that stakeholder meeting?

more insights in the book!

Practical insights like this and many others can be found in Jess Almlie’s book, L&D Order Taker No More! Become a Strategic Business Partner published by ATD Press. Order your copy at Amazon, ATD online bookstore, or wherever books are sold. Let’s all work together to move this profession we love forward!