Strategy Consulting
What is learning strategy?
The job title “learning strategist” can mean different things in different organizations. Learning Strategy, as we use it at Learn | Flourish, entails the use of professional and technical learning and development to achieve long-term business goals. Learning takes, ideally, many forms and becomes ingrained as a value in the organization leading to continual improvement and dramatically improved outcomes over the life of the organization.
Role of the Learning Strategist
Strategists and Doctors
You don’t hire a strategist to make you feel good. A medical doctor has the duty to tell a patient when their current behaviors may have an adverse health outcome. The learning strategist, likewise, must be a trusted advisor rather than simply the builder of temporary fixes.
Training vs Culture
One of the most common errors I encounter in organizational learning is the myth that every performance problem, morale issue, or interpersonal conflict can be solved by a workshop. Training is often a valuable part of a long-term solution but is no substitute for the hard work of building a positive culture and effective processes. The role of the strategist is to be the outside-observer who can identify root cause and recommend the solution that will be best for the organization in the long run.
Generalist vs Specialist
The generalist value?
The role of strategist really requires a broad and deep range of experience to draw from for both diagnostics as well as solutions. While we live in a world of specialists, the most effective strategists will approach a problem, not as the expert, but as the learner. This attitude allows the strategist to experience the problem in a fresh way and form unbiased conclusions.
Lead with Learning
Building a Learning Culture
What if learning wasn’t an afterthought? What if you trained before the crises?
Imagine your organization if every strategic business goal was supported by a development plan to build the capacity to actually achieve those goals without burning out the teams? What if you developed your teams before you handed them that annual KPI? Imagine training astronauts after we put them on a rocket and sent them to space? We just wouldn’t. So why do we send our sales and technical teams into battle without the proper preparation? We just shouldn’t.