Guest Editor – Jeff Hartzler
Get creative with your solutions
Training generally sits in a unique position within the business. On the commercial side, it may work with both sales and marketing, helping to optimize business execution. On the medical side, it may work across clinical operations, biodata statistics, clinical medical affairs and even some of the commercial teams (as with a launch). One of the benefits of sitting between these various functions is the ability to identify opportunities that can drive business outcomes.
I am sure you have experienced this mindset from your stakeholders: Training is often seen as something important, but never a priority. This is why some teams are so quick to cancel or reduce training time for their teams when critical business needs arise (such as the big fourth quarter push to hit the sales goal).
The challenge that we often face as learning leaders is freeing up resources (time, people, money) to take on new projects. Most training budgets are tight to begin with, and those resources may already be allocated to defined business needs.
In these situations, there is little or no room to reallocate, and the only other solution is to ask for more – more money, more headcount, etc. This is never an easy task, yet there are some creative ways to deliver that you could try:
- As learning leaders, we enjoy developing others. If you need additional headcount (for a specific duration of time), partner with your stakeholder to develop someone from their team on a rotation or shared time approach. This provides you with additional headcount while developing others, gaining insights straight from the business and building your talent bench for future
internal mobility. It’s a win-win! - Find hidden talent and passions within your organization, yet outside of learning or your stakeholder’s business unit. Utilize your internal communication tools to post a need to see if anyone has the skills and capacity to assist. This may be creating a short video, a module (I just had an administrative assistant who had a passion with Articulate create an amazing interactive module on interviewing … who knew until we asked!), translation, etc. This can assist in identifying talent and passions within your organization with zero or minimal cost.
- Establish a true partnership with your stakeholder when prioritizing from a people, dollars and time perspective. If you have a deep partnership and this is a high priority, there is a good chance they can find a portion, or all, of the dollars needed to engage with an external partner and create an amazing deliverable. Your next opportunity is to be sure they have more than just dollars vested in the project. How will they show support and pull-through of the project once executed? This is true partnership and not just you or your team waiting “to take the order.”
- Check across your business units. While some organizations operate with minimal “silo effect” (not sharing content or needs across business units),some are extremely siloed. This could be local to a country or globally. So many times, our teams believe they must start from a fresh slate without checking with peers and counterparts that may have something that fits 80%of the need. Needing to adapt 20% requires much less time, money and other resources than starting from scratch. Have you ever heard “I wish I knew you had that…” when it’s too late?
While the above are not in any set order of attempt, there may be an opportunity to blend the approaches to secure the additional needed resources. Many times, it starts with the candid conversation of the true need, where it sits on the priority list and if your stakeholder finds true value in the task at hand.
Have you ever had a stakeholder come to you and say, “we need training” and you respond with “that’s great, what do we need to train on?” and they look at you like they have no idea what they asked you? This is the opportunity to have that deep partnership discussion on the specific need and what will be required to deliver something amazing in partnership with them and their team.
Jeff Hartzler is head of U.S. learning and development for UCB Pharma and a vice president of the LTEN Board of Directors. Email Jeff at jeff.hartzler@ucb.com.
