Centralized Learning - Yes or No?

I’ve been in corporate learning for 23 years. Three months into my first job in learning in 1997, a corporate wide restructuring led to me moving from a contractor to a full time learning consultant. From then on out, I experienced it once every two years at least if not sooner. Because of that, my learning friends often ask me for advice. Here is what I shared with a consulting team recently regarding the disadvantages of centralized learning teams. 

What do you think? What did I leave out?

Attention to Me.  Once the move is made to centralize learning, there is a distance between the stakeholder and the team designing learning. Distance because of prioritization of resources, lack of understanding the functional problems, rapid design using templates, and missing the true need and then blaming the experts for not supplying the right inputs. Sense of urgency is also an issue. The central team often, like an external consulting team, asks for inputs and places dependencies that show they are not a partner but a nuisance to the function. The result is the functional leader building training by them-self often in secrecy so that the senior executives won’t stop it. That functional leader is frustrated because the central team and the execs can’t seem to understand the need and the functional leader needs to run their business so they support them-self in any way they can. This can be resolved by having a strong learning architect for each function. That means someone who is respected, somewhat an expert in the function, and a learning leader as well. The role of that architect is to write clear requirements, build a learning journey and design, communicate level of effort, and drive/own the results end to end. Without this role, it’s probably better to outsource all learning to an agency and allow the functions to use their own budget to get the work done. 

Selection. Centralizing learning often comes with a huge selection issue. Who do we have lead the organization? How do we assign existing resources? What if we are top heavy? What I’ve seen work best is listening to the teams and the stakeholders. Find out who the trusted advisers are; who the team members want to follow. What are the team members strengths? Get the “who” right and spend the most time on this part; have the courageous conversations. 

One size fits all.  For the most part, centralized learning creates experiences that are similar to our public education system. It’s a one size fits all approach leading to a high level broad, not deep, overview of what’s needed (by topic or role). The result is a positive impact on new hires but no impact on experienced employees. The one size fits all approach central teams do well is often great when an organization needs to focus on the basics before it can move forward. I suggest centralizing if there is a strong need to train most employees on most knowledge/skill categories. But if the burning bush is deep expertise in at least two functions, you may not be a good candidate for centralizing learning. You’ll save money in the learning function but miss the need in the core functions (sales, engineering, support) and the customers you sell to will suffer.