Training Industry Magazine - January/February 2020 - 49

DOUG HARWARD

SECRETS OF
SOURCING

BECOMING AN AGILE
LEARNING ORGANIZATION

One of the most important responsibilities
of a training manager is to ensure
alignment between the training function
and the needs of the business. In doing
so, the organization must maintain a
critical level of agility to adapt to the
changing needs of the business as well
as the learner. As agility becomes a more
accepted business strategy, the questions
of how your training organization becomes
more agile continue to grow.

to lead an organization away from a
traditional approach to a new process
framework that focuses on speed,
flexibility and ongoing improvement.
Managing change should be done in an
agile mindset. Effective and long-lasting
improvement requires incremental
changes, flexibility to adapt to missteps,
and involvement from your constituents
along the way.

Being an agile organization is about
adopting a philosophy of speed and
flexibility. Making these concepts a
central part of how you design, deliver
and administer learning services requires
you to rethink your development process.
For example, agile design has followed
much of the software design industry's
practices by moving from a waterfall
approach to content design, to an iterative
model where content is developed and
tested incrementally to increase speed
and reduce errors by making them more
transparent earlier in the process.

BEING AN AGILE
ORGANIZATION IS
ABOUT ADOPTING A
PHILOSOPHY OF SPEED
AND FLEXIBILITY.

Agile delivery follows a similar mindset
as it involves a new way of thinking
about how learners gain skills through
experiential learning. Learning content
must be designed in the context of how
we deliver learning experiences using
repetition, reinforcement, feedback and
mentorship. The end goal is to help the
learner gain the required skills needed for
their job as fast and efficiently as possible.
CHANGE MANAGEMENT
A big challenge for many training leaders
is change management - knowing how

Change for any organization is hard but
being overly cautious and slow to react
only prolongs the process. The transition
should be rapid, iterative, incremental
and flexible. So, how do we speed
the process? How do we ensure that
we are well positioned for a shift from
conventional thinking around learning
design and delivery to an agile approach?
Here are a few ways to develop an
agile mindset:
* Seek out experts who specialize in
agile transition. There is a growing
industry of companies and consulting
professionals who have experience in
change management and expertise in
leading organizations through change.
Leverage the talent and resources
of experts to increase your capacity
to rapidly design and deliver new
content when the project requires it.

* Ensure that you and your leadership
team have the training and knowledge
to understand what it means to be an
agile learning organization. Managing
change using an agile approach
will help you to better design new
processes for your future organization.
* Recognize that change must be
handled incrementally - not all at one
time. Your training organization will not
become agile in a day. It takes time to
design and implement new processes.
* Partner with suppliers. Consider
how training suppliers can help your
organization become more agile. Using
content design and development
companies who specialize in agile
learning can help you rationalize old
content, transition delivery approaches
and minimize early mistakes.
* Leverage new technologies. Agile
organizations are excellent at leveraging
technologies. Delivery tools such as
adaptive platforms, content libraries and
content repositories provide learners
with easily accessible information to
learn more effectively on the job.
From where I sit, the possibilities are
endless and the opportunities are
great. Becoming an agile organization
is challenging, but it will allow you to
more effectively manage the changing
needs of your business by embracing
perpetual change and improvement.
Doug Harward is CEO of Training Industry,
Inc. and a former learning leader in the
high-tech industry. Email Doug.

T R A I N I N G I N DUSTR Y MAGAZ INE -AGILE LEARNING 2020 I WWW. T RAININGINDU S T RY . C OM/ MAGAZ I NE

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Training Industry Magazine - January/February 2020

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