What's the Big Deal With Alignment?

This is the sixth of eight expanded articles from each of the points in the initial article in this newsletter, "L&D is Behind the Times: Here's How We Catch-Up." This article focuses on point #6: Align with the bigger picture.

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I commonly hear (and many of you commented on the original newsletter post) "L&D needs a seat at the table" or "L&D isn't part of the strategic conversation." Waiting to exercise strategy until we are asked is like waiting to lead until we have the title. We need to show we have the skills before we will be asked to regularly join the conversation.?

If we aren't adding value to the strategic priorities of the business now, why would be we be asked to join a conversation about strategic priorities? We need to go first.

But how??

In her new book, Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact, Liz Wiseman shares a story from her L&D career at Oracle. A colleague came to her to ask for advice on how to influence corporate leadership. That colleague saw Liz as someone who had mastered this skill. But Liz didn't have a magic button, she had earned influence over time by making her priorities those of the business instead of trying to bend the business to her ideas. She worked on what leadership cared about and therefore, leadership was interested in her work.?

To be truly seen as business partners, we must start working with the business, not separate from it. This doesn't happen without some time and effort. We can begin by getting out of our L&D bubble. Here are six tips to work towards business alignment that I've learned over my career. What would you add?

?ALIGNMENT TIP #1: Learn the business's overall strategy and subsequent goals/initiatives. Can you answer the following questions?

*** From the top down, how does your organization plan to carry out its mission and purpose??*** What is the plan to grow and improve over time??*** What are the top priorities of the executives??

Get your hands on documents, reporting, power point decks, or anything that can give you clues into where the organization is headed and how it plans to get there. Do some research, ask some questions, and then, put your thinking hat on. How can your own L&D role, department, or team add value and help to move those priorities forward??

ALIGNMENT TIP #2: Learn about the business of your immediate stakeholders. If you work with a variety of business units or departments, as most L&D teams do, it isn't enough to stay at the level of the executive priorities. You must follow the line down to each of the groups you individually serve. Begin by asking the same questions as you would the execs/overall strategy and then go one level deeper.?

*** How does this individual department plan to carry out its mission and purpose?? *** What are their major challenges and goals??*** What big initiatives are they working on??*** What is the cadence of the work??*** What pressures are they under and stressors are they facing?

?Ask the questions, read their reports, and then put your thinking hat on again. How can your L&D role, department or team add value to help them solve challenges in a way that works with their cadence??

ALIGNMENT TIP #3: Brush up on your business acumen. In order to make sense of the first two tips, a basic understanding of concepts such as company financials, structure, decision making, marketing strategy, customer base and competition will be helpful. As well as what those look like in your organization. I call it business acumen 101. L&D shouldn't get a pass on understanding the business.

ALIGNMENT TIP #4: Get good at facilitating collaboration and managing change (my personal favorite). I don't mean setting up meetings and running through agendas to push tasks forward. I mean listening to all the diverse perspectives in the room, trusting the expertise of others, and then getting the work done together.

L&D shouldn't operate in a silo where we do the work the business says they want (or we think they want) and deliver to them neatly with a bow on top and all the boxes checked. That only perpetuates the order taker stereotype and it isn't effective. To be truly effective, we must look at our roles as managing change through partnership with others. The best L&D projects, programs, or experiences are the result of a partnership between the business and L&D. Both sides hold ownership and both sides do work to create and implement solutions, using their expertise. Become someone who can facilitate that process.

ALIGNMENT TIP #5: Find a champion or two. There are business leaders in every organization who are excited to work with L&D. Use one of my favorite sayings and "Go where the energy is." If they are willing to work with you, take them up on it. Use them to learn as much as you can about the business, ask questions, ask for their advice, "if you were in my shoes, etc." I have several of these champions in my circles and they are invaluable! They can give you insight into the business and help you navigate politics when needed.

ALIGNMENT TIP #6: Use their language, not yours. When working with the business, don't throw all your learning terms and buzzwords at them and expect it to mean something. Business leaders don't care about rubrics, assessments, objectives, theories, blending learning, etc. They care about how the training is going to help someone do their job.

Here's a real life example from my work. We were talking about incorporating structured on-the-job training into onboarding with a particular business unit. The leaders immediately called out that they wouldn't have time to add in training on the job to their workload. The truth was, they were already doing it, they just called it "shadowing" and not "training." They thought we were adding something new to their plate, when in reality, we just wanted to help them make an existing task better. So, we swapped out our language for theirs and came back with a new proposal for "Structured Shadowing." We explained it was a way for us to help organize and create consistency in the shadowing they were already doing to make it more effective. No surprise, they were completely on board and we learned a lesson. Use language that makes sense to the business.

Let's get better at partnering with our clients and stakeholders by truly understanding what their days are like and how their business is run. Then, we can be proactive and strategic in our approach to create solutions that work for them. By working strategically, we establish our reputation as a strategic function and earn our spot at that table. ?