As a child of the 70/80’s I grew up believing that if you wanted to be great – all you had to do was eat your frosted flakes every day. I was totally that kid that Tony the Tiger was created for! As an adult, I realize that being great is a somewhat more complicated proposition – individually and for organizations.
As leaders of a learning organization, how often do you stop and reflect on what it means to be a great training organization, and more importantly are you and your team focused on the right process capabilities to be a truly great training organization?
What Does It Take to Be A Great Training Organization?
Thankfully for our profession, Training Industry Inc. provides a framework for what makes a great training organization. Based on research that they have conducted since 2008, with input from over 1500 organizations and 3000 learning professionals, this is a trusted and authoritative body of work for learning organizations to benchmark themselves against.
In their recent research report, What Makes A Training Organizations Great, they identify the eight-core process capabilities of a learning organization as:
Strategic Alignment
Content Development
Diagnostics
Delivery
Reporting and Analysis
Technology Integration
Administrative Services
Portfolio Management
Each of these core capability areas consists of a series of processes and capabilities against which organizations can measure their performance – and ultimately identify opportunities for improvement and/or innovation in their organization. In their recent report, Training Industry found that only 25% of organizations were high performing in all of the top five process capabilities.
How Do We Go From Good to Great?
So I am sure you are asking “How do we go from good to great?”. We like to point to the words of Jim Collins (The Author of Good to Great) and his view that There was no miracle moment. Instead, a down-to-earth, pragmatic, committed-to-excellence process—a framework—kept each company, its leaders, and its people on track for the long haul. In each case, it was the triumph of the Flywheel Effect over the Doom Loop, the victory of steadfast discipline over the quick fix.”
Going from good to great is a process and a sustainability strategy that the entire learning organization must focus on. Organizations are not all the same nor at the same point in their learning journey. Whether you are just beginning or a pro that just needs a tune-up, it is important to have a trusted partner along the way. Take a step today toward being that great learning organization grounded by process excellence.
If you are not sure where to start, or if you would like to understand your readiness to take on a process improvement initiative in your organization, we would love to talk to you. We are not the L&D equivalent of Frosted Flakes – but we can be your tiger team to help you and your team build a scalable and sustainable learning organization that is great. We are all in this together, and together we learn.
