Link #26 🌱🌿🌳 Positioning of the L&D department
Series: Links between L&D, strategy and value creation. Part 2
Recently, I've had a nice conversation with Liz Ștefan, the host of the L&D Spotlight podcast. Here's the part where we discussed about the positioning of the L&D department (min. 5:53 in the podcast episode).
Explore the other parts in the series here.
Liz: Is the L&D department a follower, when it comes to organizational strategy? Is the L&D department a contributor, a trend setter? Meaning, if a company wants to set a goal, growth, sales, a new geography, a new product line, what's the position of the L&D team and the function itself, in relation to that particular goal?
Bülent: In my experience, it depends a lot on the business, on the history of that business, and, of course, on what the perceptions about L&D are, in that organization.
To give you an example, if we think about the lifecycle of a business. How it evolves and expands and provides more value for many customer segments at some point through diversification, you might think: Ok, on the people side, what the business leaders value, so the people making the decisions. They might prioritize first talent acquisition.
When finding that product-market fit, as a startup let's say, we discover and manage to develop a product or offer a service that's valuable for a specific niche in the market that we're connected with, then they might need to ramp up, to onboard, to attract talent to be able to fulfill the mission of that business, to be able to create the value proposition.
Usually, in my experience, on the people side, what gets prioritized as the business grows is the talent acquisition, hiring activities.
Going forward, of course people that are part of the business need to develop. And here, there's an intersection with the culture of that specific business, which of course, at the beginning, it's an extension, it's a manifestation of the culture of the founders, of the founding team.
Then, as people join, everyone brings new perspectives, new experiences to the common table.
And, of course, it might be very relevant to be aware of the perceptions these initial people have about L&D. So that's why, in some scale-ups for example, so the businesses past the startup phase, there are cultures, there are organizations that prioritize L&D more. Because of how the people currently in that business perceive the value of L&D.
At the same time, in other contexts, in other cultures, in other organizations, it might not be perceived as such a valuable area to invest in. Where the mindset is: we can always hire, we have the capital to hire people that are already experienced, developed in the areas that we need. We have the capital to pay good salaries to attract senior people and all that.
There are lots of variations. And, of course, the L&D team that usually starts with one person that takes on this, maybe initially part-time, and then full-time role as the L&D person that supports the whole organization at that point in the lifecycle. This person can position themselves taking into account the organizational context.
So, if L&D is valued by the colleagues in the organization, the L&D person might be in a position of more influence from the get-go. Where they can build on this momentum and on this perception of value of L&D.
Other times, when the initial L&D role is created more like: Ok, we need to organize some trainings for our people and we need somebody dedicated to this. So more like an L&D admin type of role that needs to connect to various learning providers, do this matchmaking and organize some learning sessions, it might be harder. Because the start was like this, from an admin perspective, it might be harder to position themselves as the anticipating, strategic, trend-setter type of positioning.
So it varies a lot, as the starting point.
Explore the other parts in the series.
As a strategic adviser and lifelong learner, Bülent Duagi works with Directors in 🇷🇴 Tech companies to help them make more impact with better strategic thinking - which usually translates to:
🧭 having a clear strategy that enables better and faster decision making;
🤝 organizing better to both run operations and implement strategy with the available bandwidth and budgets;
🚀 implementing strategic initiatives and programs in an efficient and effective manner, paying attention to the people side of change;
⚡️ intentionally developing proper internal capabilities that are sustainable in the long run.
