What do you do if your Digital Strategy professionals need training?

When our Digital Strategy team needed a skill boost, I initiated a comprehensive skills assessment. Through surveys, performance data, and comparing our outputs with industry standards, we identified key areas for improvement, including data analytics, SEO, and content marketing. This pinpointed approach allowed us to tailor a training program that directly addressed our needs, making our upskilling efforts both focused and effective.

Assess Current Skills and Knowledge: Start by evaluating the existing skills and knowledge levels of your digital strategy professionals. Identify areas where additional training or development is needed to enhance their effectiveness in executing digital strategies.

nvest in Targeted Training Programs: Look for training programs and workshops tailored to the specific needs and challenges faced by digital strategy professionals. Consider both internal and external training options, including online courses, workshops, and certifications.

Setting clear, measurable objectives for the training program is essential to ensure it meets your team's needs. Define what skills and knowledge your Digital Strategy professionals need to acquire, how these align with your organizational goals, and how success will be measured. Objectives might range from mastering specific digital tools, understanding emerging market trends, or enhancing data analysis capabilities. Having well-defined objectives helps in selecting the most relevant training content and provides a benchmark against which to measure the program's effectiveness.

An often-overlooked part of implementing training is embedding changes AFTER the course itself. Even the best training in the world won't stick unless you (to borrow from James Clear's '4 Laws of Behaviour Change'): 1) Make it obvious 2) Make it attractive 3) Make it easy 4) Make it satisfying Consider: 1) Put new tools front and centre on team dashboards 2) Highlight and praise adopters of new practices and encourage them to train/help others 3) Create clear, concise workflows/flow charts to summarise training and remind users 4) Highlight the benefits and changes brought about; 'isn't it easier now that we x?' / 'we've increased Y by Z% since we made this change'. Do this at 1 week, 1 month and 6 months to keep it fresh. Also? Feedback!

Measure Impact and ROI: Establish metrics to measure the impact of training initiatives on the performance and effectiveness of digital strategy professionals. Evaluate the return on investment (ROI) of training programs by assessing improvements in key performance indicators (KPIs) such as campaign success rates, ROI, and customer engagement metrics.

Una vez identificada la habilidad, competencia o conocimiento que la persona debe adquirir, acostumbro utilizar una plantilla para centralizar la información y dar seguimiento: - Habilidades/competencias/conocimientos - Estado de la habilidad actual (básico, intermedio o avanzado) - Habilidad objetivo (básico, intermedio o avanzado) - Oportunidad de desarrollo (se incluyen actividades por realizar, ya sea un curso, práctica guiada, entrenamiento, etc.) - Modalidad (virtual, presencial, híbrido) - Facilitador del contenido (con enlace a la información técnica) - Costo - Criterio para medir el éxito (métrica o kpi) - Fecha límite de finalización - Fecha actual - Notas (logros, obstáculos para completar, etc.)

Depending on what kind of training your team needs you should leverage the certification programs and support teams from the many digital platforms (like Google, Meta or Amazon). Of course, these trainings are very biased specifically for what the platform wants, but they are free of cost (or should be negotiated to be free) and form a great foundational layer of learning. For more advanced training, I would reach out to several of the digital training providers like Circus Street or LinkedIn Learning to understand costs.