#10 🎮💡💎 Podcast notes: Being strategic about learning (1/14)
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 strategic about learning (min. 1:25 in the podcast episode).
Liz: What does it mean to have an L&D strategy or to be strategic about learning?
Bülent: This strategy topic is something that I'm really passionate about and one of the things that I'm trying to do is to get strategy down from the ivory tower.
So usually strategy is perceived as this usually very complicated thing that is being done by very few people at the top of the organization, which in fact is very far from the reality of strategy.
Maybe it helps before jumping into L&D Strategy and how L&D could be strategic to discuss a bit about what strategy is, in some simple, plain words.
For me, based on my explorations and my experiences with strategy, it is actually about finding some ways forward. So, you are in a context. That context can be business context in a market, in a business ecosystem, or it could be an organizational context, with some colleagues, with some stakeholder groups and so on. Or it can be an individual context, your career, your professional life.
So, in that context, how can you find your way forward?
Sometimes you might have something like a vision, something to aspire to. At some time in the future we want to get there.
But other times, you don't need necessarily this type of aspirational things from the future, but it's rather: ok, I'm here, I've been evolving on the path like this. Or we have been evolving as a team, as an organization like this. What's next? What's our way forward, going further?
With this in mind, I hope this "strategy" word becomes less scary and less from the ivory tower, and strategy is something that you need to continuously be aware of and to continuously adjust.
Because in how we navigate through uncertainty in life, whether it's the individual's life, the team's life or the life of the business, you constantly ask yourself: what's our way forward? What are we going to do from now on? What are we going to prioritize from all the options that we could have?
And, of course, there are various metaphors, like climbing a mountain and let's say the vision is on the top of the mountain and there are various ways of getting on top of the mountain, various strategies that you might pursue, like for example going on the beaten path, on the path that has been walked by others before you. Or taking a helicopter, or going from tree to tree. There are many ways.
And that's why you can connect this down to earth idea of strategy as a viable way forward, you can connect it to L&D. Out of this intersection between L&D and Strategy, it would be: Ok, what's the way forward for the learning and development in an organization?
In order to get to answer this way forward question, there are various activities, tools that might help, like: being aware and making sense of where you are, what are your capabilities, what you can rely on, on your path. To ask yourself what might be some possible options, some strategic directions that you might invest in.
And if you would invest in that specific path, what would the path bring, as upsides, downsides, and various other enabling activities, to answer this simple question of what's the way forward for this context. Specifically, what's the way forward for the learning and development of the 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.