No, L&D Can't Work Miracles Overnight
Have stakeholder expectations of L&D miracle work become the norm? How can we change this?
Have you ever been in a situation where stakeholders act like you can wave a magic wand to create and deliver a comprehensive learning/training strategy or product? It's frustrating, to say the least. They just don't understand what it takes to do our job well, do they? Consider the following examples:
L&D = Afterthought: Stakeholders have been working on a big initiative for months (or maybe longer) and suddenly someone realizes that this initiative will require a learning/training component. I envision it sounds something like this, "Oh shoot! We need training for this project. Let's get L&D in here!"
L&D = Final Piece of the Project Only: Instead of coming into a large initiative early enough to design an effective behavior change strategy, L&D is brought in late and expected to create and deliver a solution in record time. Stakeholders believe training is something that is only created and delivered at the end of a project. They don't see any value in bringing L&D in earlier.
L&D = Miracle Worker: In this instance, the L&D team is brought into the project earlier and involved in strategy discussions, outcomes and the project plan (hooray!). However, there's still a problem. All the other project components take longer than anticipated, but the "go live" date remains. Everyone else was able to extend deadlines, but L&D is expected to condense theirs. The time to complete L&D work keeps shrinking and the pressure increasing.
Have you been there? I have. I've experienced every one of these in my L&D career along with the frustrations that followed. No more! It's time to stop complaining and make a move.
Frustration Blindness
I remember sitting with my own boss one day, expressing frustrations about lack of stakeholder understanding. "They can't keep pulling us in last minute and expecting miracles! They just don't understand what it takes to do our job!" She listened and then calmly said the words I will never forget. "I can see how that's frustrating, Jess, but have we ever helped them to understand how to work with us? We need to train the business to do business with us.
We need to "train" the business to do business with L&D.
That was when I realized my frustrations (and complaints) had blinded me to the reality of the situation. I was annoyed with the stakeholders because I was making it about me. I was blaming them but hadn't considered their perspective. I had never taken the lead to provide a clear vision of how to most effectively work with L&D. I was expecting them to just know what that looked like and that meant they fell into the patterns of how work had always been done.
Outline Your Stakeholder Playbook
Armed with the realization that my frustrations were my own fault, it was time to get to work. I needed to extract the assumptions that lived in my head and turn them into clear expectations that stakeholders could understand. I couldn't expect them to read my mind. I rallied my L&D team and we went to work creating a stakeholder playbook.
This playbook wasn't something we shared with stakeholders directly. I didn't announce it or send it out to them as another process they needed to learn and memorize. Rather, it created guidelines for how stakeholders could best work with us. It allowed everyone in L&D to understand and articulate the same expectations in conversations with our stakeholder colleagues. We slowly began implementing these guidelines at various points in the stakeholder process. Our playbook had three parts.
Part 1: A Stakeholder-Friendly Intake Process
Often, the intake process is our first interaction with a stakeholder - especially in organizations where the order-taking narrative runs deep. They come to us requesting some type of training or learning solution. For us, the purpose of the intake process was to begin a conversation that would help us determine the degree to which we should act on the request. But that still didn't mean the process was about us.
We aimed for the process to be stakeholder-centric. Stakeholders shouldn't need to know our L&D language to get started. It also meant that we kept our stakeholders time and pressures in mind. The process should be simple and easy to complete. We knew a complex or time-consuming process might get us more information up front, but it also meant stakeholders likely wouldn't comply.
To create a simple, stakeholder-centric intake process, consider the following:
What is the minimum amount of information needed to determine whether to act on this request? Boil down your intake questions only to those that are really needed for the next step. In-depth information isn't needed here. Things like how this request ties to larger strategic initiatives, if there is an executive sponsor, how many people are impacted, etc. can provide insight into whether this is a strategic move, or a pet project.
What processes are commonly and successfully used by other teams in our organization to gather information from each other? If you can piggyback onto an existing process, you avoid the need for the stakeholder to engage in a steep learning curve just to reach out to L&D. This is especially helpful for those who aren't frequently working with L&D. Is there an existing software or ticketing system that you can also use?
What are my stakeholders' general tolerance/preference when it comes to providing information? This requires you to consider your audience and organizational culture. If people aren't used to filling out long forms and that means they will skip it and send you an email anyway, don't make them fill out a long form! Match your process to the preferences of the stakeholders.
Part 2: Clarity in the Overall Stakeholder Experience
Without defining what stakeholders can expect working with L&D from beginning to end, they will fill in the blanks on their own. That's a recipe for misalignment and frustration.
But, to create these expectations, we first need to be clear on them ourselves. They can't be a fuzzy idea in our brains. For many L&D teams, this is part of the "pre-work" to right-sizing expectations. Here are some questions to consider as you outline the stakeholder experience.
OVERALL: What can stakeholders expect when working with L&D? Start thinking about how your team currently operates when working with stakeholders and how you would like it to operate differently. Put yourself in your stakeholders’ shoes. What should their experience be like?
When working with a stakeholder, what type of questions can they expect you to ask and why? Outline the typical questions you like to ask, including why you ask them. Stakeholders might be thrown off (or even defensive) at first if you start asking questions they aren't expecting, so why you are asking them is important. Be sure to include whether you will need specific information to move forward.
What might be potential outcomes of your stakeholder conversations and why? Your answers should include the options that may come out of initial conversations, such as conducting a needs analysis, directing stakeholders to existing resources, asking them to collaborate with another business area working on the same type of challenge, a recommendation to outsource the project, or providing direction or support to equip them to complete work on their own.
What products and/or services do you typically provide and what's their timeline? Here is where you get specific. What is it you typically provide (when a learning solution is needed) and how long does it typically take to create and deliver it? Stakeholders legitimately don't know what it takes to create and deliver L&D products and services as they often only see the final product. So, let's tell them! Our team created a list of typical products/projects and timelines that we would share with stakeholders as appropriate.
What results can stakeholders expect to experience as a result of working with L&D? This is where you get to brag a bit. Summarize the typical results (measures) from different types of projects and be ready to share those as well. For example, our team knew that if we revamped onboarding with a chunked down, blended approach, we could reduce time to production by 50% in most cases. That was a metric we were happy to share.
Part 3: Defined Roles and Responsibilities
For most L&D teams, this is usually the easiest of the three parts. It means clearly spelling out the roles and responsibilities of everyone on an L&D project. I have found a project is much smoother when everyone is clear on the roles of executive sponsor, stakeholder(s), subject matter expert, project manager, instructional designer, etc. including what each is responsible to complete. My team explained these roles in initial conversations, included them in project agreements (with names attached), and called them out specifically in project kick-off meetings.
Stop Complaining and Take the Lead
Our complaints may be true. Our stakeholders might not understand what it takes to do our work or to work effectively with L&D. But, as is the theme in this article series, complaining about it doesn't move the needle. When we take a moment to ask why they don't understand, the ownness may very well be on us. Let's quell our frustrations by taking the lead to get clear and articulate what working with us looks like.
Related Articles
This is the fourth in a blog series focused on how L&D can get out of the complainers playground and step into the champions camp. Be sure to check out the past articles in this series about abandoning the complainer’s playground and stepping into the champion’s camp and stay tuned for one more!
Stay tuned for the final article in this series in the coming weeks addressing this common L&D complaint:
Complaint: If we push back on requests for training, no one will want to work with us any longer. They won't see us as partners, but as the team who says "no" and refuses to do the work.
