#19 🎮💡💎 Podcast notes: Being connected to the pulse of value (10/14)
Recently, I've had a nice conversation with Liz Ștefan, the host of the L&D Spotlight podcast. Here's the part where we discussed about being connected to the pulse of value (min. 38:20 in the podcast episode).
Liz: I realize now that practically impossible for any L&D function to genuinely be a strategic partner, or have a strategic role in the organization if they don't spend time with the people that they help.
The reason I'm saying this is I've frequently seen those situations where the L&D function interacts only occasionally or based on some sort of calendar of tasks with the people, with the organization. And then they retire back to their L&D bubble and they do the work there.
And I'm thinking here of those yearly needs analyses or those employee performance reviews or whichever sort of traditional people process, and then outside of these traditional people processes, the L&D function just behaves like a sort of administrator, or a scheduler, an organizer of stuff, a curator of resources, but not necessarily being that intimately connected to each business functions' objectives or metrics or goals.
And I think this is quite bad actually. It's almost like: What is the point of having an L&D function if it doesn't intimately connect with value and positively, constructively influence behaviors and "contribute" basically is the word I'm looking for.
Bülent: Yes, and there's this principles that's being used in other parts of the organization that create value by design, like product development. The fact that you need to be connected, you need to have this pulse of value, in order to be able to create value for the beneficiaries of your work.
If you don't have this pulse, if you're not connected to the reality of your, in the L&D case, of your colleagues in the rest of your organization throughout the year, maybe week by week, month by month and not necessarily formalized like the Quarterly Learning Review.
Ok, it might be a good habit to have put in place this kind of a more thorough review and ways of exploring together with the colleagues what else we might do to enable you to learn and so on. But there are multiple, multiple ways of being connected and getting this pulse of value, I think I would phrase it.
And having this pulse of value will help you intuitively, analytically, using your experience, expertise, connecting with the partners, vendors and so on, create more value for learning and development in the organization.
That's why I really believe in this repositioning and maybe redesigning the ways of working in L&D to be more connected to this very complex and rich life in the organization, of creating value in business. It's not something very simple, that once per year, or once per quarter we get the inputs, we analyze and these are the deliverables that if the others don't use, ok, it's their fault.
When you're connected, and you don't have to live in the sales world, you don't have to live in the marketing or product or tech or all the other worlds that are inside the organization and outside. But when you're connected, it's easy to make sense of what would it be valuable, from your perspective, from your experience and expertise, to amplify value, to create new types of value, to basically innovate in terms of how learning and development happens in your organization.
Bülent Duagi is a Sr. Strategic adviser for Tech companies and a lifelong learner. He works at the intersection of Strategy, Foresight, Leadership, Org Design, Product and Capability Development. Connect on LinkedIn and learn more by exploring his professional one pager.