There’s a lot to like about the energy of a start-up, including founders’ enthusiasm for developing something new and its rewards, the gratification of being the first to solve a known problem by developing a valuable product or service.
Training and development outcomes and services are among those that are ripe for disruption. Despite excellence in the development and delivery of training and services, the current state of many training departments, where they exist, is that they have unrealized capacity.
Some of this is budget driven. Most internal training department budgets have been focused on traditional priorities in the last few years, namely trainer salaries, new technology, equipment, and some funds for trainer development and conferences. From the view of traditional training, that is enough, but from the view of what is currently feasible or necessary, it is far from adequate.
There is a resource gap between what training departments could be delivering and what they are focused on. In an era when the middle management focus has been preoccupation with cost-cutting, many employees and middle managers seem unaware of the accumulating pile of financial assets that are obvious at more senior-executive levels. The fact is many companies are sitting on years of financial assets and cash, courtesy of lower tax policies, and a cash reserve accumulation mindset to offset capital growth concerns.
So while the focus of most training and development departments is to rise up to meet the demand for time-consuming development with tight resources and timelines, the conversations about how to drive greater resource value for the company or organization often don’t take place. It’s easy to see why. The idea to ramp up value from the training department end, if it is linked with existing training functions and activities, would mean more pressure or the need for more trainers or training resources.
Because internal demand for training and training programs continues to be high—which is what training departments want and need to assure their value is being recognized—the result of this is that trainers and their managers often not are looking externally for solutions beyond their function. The in-sourcing of training innovation is not necessarily a priority. And for those training departments that have had a history of hovering on the brink of dissolution with every economic downturn, the last thing they want to do is take a risk that might undermine their current importance to the organization.
But times have changed the view of training and development value. Adequate training is now irreversibly linked with successful organizational performance. It is a risk for organizations to not train. And in a talent attraction market that is growing tighter and more competitive, it’s a risk not to have internal development opportunities demanded by Millennials and others.
While executives recognize the value of and often look to innovation acquisitions and hire consultants for that purpose, training departments mostly do not, except to meet resource needs for development projects. And trainer personal development agendas tend to remain the sourcing of tools, tips, and tactics to improve their skills or make their job easier rather than ramping up the organization value chain.
So should your training department start looking to in-source innovation or acquire innovation like a start-up? The payoffs may be well worth it:
- More effective coordination of management priorities and results
- Improved operational and training unit efficiency
- Increased scalable impact of training department deliverables
- Extension of functional responsibility areas to meet key growth priorities
- Become a net capital generator/profit center rather than expenditure
Here are some ways to start:
- Go after the money. All start-ups need financial backing to be successful. Your department is no exception. Make a business case for training department innovation with specifics. Create a pitch deck and pitch it to senior management and executives like a start-up would to investors. Focus on tangible value returns to the organization and get your funding in place.
- Talk to executives and managers. Pierce that fourth wall with executives, a term borrowed from live performance when stage actors invite the audience to participate and interact with the production, rather than merely observe. Start having the kind of value proposition discussions that matter from the executive point of view. Learn their language. Find their pain points. Bring them solutions, not just training deliverables.
- Broadcast your innovation capability. Once you’ve identified your capacities to innovate, start communicating these with the departments and management stream. Instead of waiting for them to come to you with requests for service, go to them first and introduce capabilities they may not be expecting you to deliver. The old car market adage applies here: “If Henry Ford had asked the market what they wanted, they would have told him ‘faster horses.’” You have to illustrate and define the new capabilities and what value and advantages they can deliver.
- Find a problem and create a solution. Design it. Create a prototype. Test and optimize it. Sell it to other departments. Get relentless feedback and respond to it.
- Acquire innovation. Look for external programs, approaches, and tools that will extend your innovative capabilities and spend the good money to acquire them and in-source it as an innovation. Investing in innovation is not an expense. It is the acquisition of a capital asset that has the potential to yield good returns.
Arupa Tesolin is a management consultant, author, innovation speaker, and National Practice Leader for Learning Paths International, an accelerated training and performance methodology that gets employees up to speed 30 to 50 percent faster on the entire job while delivering business improvement and reducing the time and cost of training. For more information, visit http://learningpaths.ca
