How Healthy is Your Learn >> Change >> Improve Results Value Chain?
All organisations have a reason for being. Smart organisations are clear about what that purpose is and have strategies in place to achieve it, and measures in place to tell how well they are doing.
Some organisations engage in Organisational Development (OD) – aligning all of the elements of the organisational system; purpose and strategies, culture and climate, structures, leadership and people, systems and processes.
Some organisations engage in Learning and Development (L&D) – understanding the skills and behaviours the organisation needs for success and developing these in their leadership and people.
Some organisations provide Training - pragmatically filling skills and behaviours gaps for some of their people.
Whether an organisation engages in OD, L&D or Training, it’s all done for the same reason – improving the capability of the organisation to achieve its purpose. If OD, L&D and Training are not serving the organisational purpose, they are simply waste and need to be fixed, fast.
At ODI, we view OD, L&D and Training all as part of the Learn >> Change >> Improve Results value chain. Learn is about accessing new ideas, tools and methods. Change is about applying those at work to step out new skills and behaviours. Improve Results is about the positive impact on the organisation’s outcomes.
In our experience this is a very fragile value chain and for many businesses the links are broken. Some of the symptoms of problems with this value chain look like this:
- No frameworks or organised needs assessment; self-nomination for training sessions
- Internally provided training – no new tools and methods brought in to the mix
- No training follow-through; no expectation of change from training
- Limited or no workplace support for application efforts
- No evaluation of application success or improved results; nothing measured
- Lack of coaching expectations and skills among line managers
- Cost focus, not value focus, on training budget
Organisations that have a healthy Learn >> Change >> Improve Results value chain have these in common:
- Competencies frameworks that align to organisation purpose and strategies
- Performance management programmes that identify development opportunities
- Integrated custom solutions; learning with application support
- Evaluation processes that measure and prove value
- Dynamic programmes; pilot, review, modify
- Value focus to budget and decision-making.
If your organisation looks like the first list, we can help you to look like the second list. Contact us to discuss how.