With the way we work — and learn — transforming at an unprecedented pace, building Agile learning programs is more important than ever. However, creating adaptive and flexible programs that can shift alongside business priorities isn’t easy. We spoke with Marjorie Van Roon, a Certified Professional in Training Management (CPTM) and senior manager of learning and development at Best Buy Canada, to learn how learning leaders can build Agile learning programs that set their organizations up for success … no matter what roadblocks lie ahead.
Listen now to learn more on:
- The skills training professionals need to drive Agile learning processes.
- How Agile learning benefits individual learners and the business at large.
- Why Agile learning should remain a top priority for businesses today.
Listen Now:
Additional Resources:
- Course: Agile Certification for HR and L&D
- Infographic: 3 Ways Agile Learning Can Improve Your Training Design
- Article: What is “Agile,” Anyway?
- Magazine: Agile Learning
To learn more about Training Industry’s Agile for HR and L&D Certification, download the program brochure.
The transcript for this episode follows:
Sarah Gallo:
Hi, and welcome back to the Business of Learning. I’m Sarah Gallo, a senior editor at Training Industry, here with my co-host Michelle Eggleston Schwartz, editorial director.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
Welcome. This episode of the Business of Learning is brought to us by Training Industry’s Agile HR and L&D Certificate program.
Ad:
Business is moving faster than ever before and organizations are looking for agile processes and solutions to keep pace. Training Industry’s Agile for HR and L&D certification will help you transform both learning and development and HR practices by creating adaptive and proactive systems of change that withstand even the most disruptive shifts in how we work and learn. Set yourself and your entire organization apart in the market by becoming an agile certified professional. To learn more about the program, check out the notes for this episode. Where will Agile take you?
Sarah Gallo:
Today, we’re discussing a topic that is relevant to learning leaders, business leaders, and really anyone who has ever been tasked with navigating change. We’re talking about agility, and specifically, how learning and development can help companies remain Agile so they can succeed no matter what roadblocks come their way. We have Marjorie Van Roon, a Certified Professional in Training Management and senior manager of learning and development at Best Buy Canada, here with us to help us learn more. Marjorie, welcome to the podcast.
Marjorie Van Roon:
Thank you so much for having me.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
Yes, welcome Marjorie. To get started, if you could, could you just define Agile learning for us?
Marjorie Van Roon:
Sure. When I think of agile learning, I think it’s basically any approach that your team takes that really focuses on speed, on flexibility, on collaboration, wherever you can get those efficiencies to get your training out quickly and in time for the needs of the business.
Sarah Gallo:
Perfect. Now that we’re all on the same page in terms of what agile learning is, I’d love for us to dig into the why here? Marjorie, why is it so important that learning leaders are able to adapt their training programs as those business needs shift?
Marjorie Van Roon:
I think it’s super important that learning and development teams stay strategically aligned with the business. And we’re here for the business and we need to be seen as supporting the business. And if we don’t do that, we could actually become irrelevant where we’re training things that don’t necessarily align with the business. So I think it’s really important that as the business shifts, that the learning and development team shifts along with it and we need to be able to respond quickly to different business needs.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
Yes, it’s so important, that the idea that training needs to shift with the business to ensure that the business remains responsive, and so training also needs to align with it. I’d love it if you could provide an example of a time when you had to adapt a training program due to either let’s say COVID, changing business priorities, or another unexpected circumstance. Can you kind of share kind of the most difficult parts of this process, and how did you overcome it?
Marjorie Van Roon :
Yeah. I mean, I’m sure with all learning and development teams, we had a similar experience where once COVID hit everything changed. And initially, we wanted to make sure that our team was really focusing on the safety aspects of COVID. So where we had the whole team developing other training, we kind of had to bring them all together to collaborate and create training around COVID safety, so around masks, hygiene, and then that even led to other things around dealing with discrimination, dealing with all kinds of other things as well that were coming up as COVID progressed. So, again, our learning team had to quickly respond to any of these business needs. We definitely had found it hard at first because we were all suddenly working from home where we weren’t doing that before. And we had to collaborate in a way that we hadn’t had done before as well and work really closely with any of the stakeholders to get our training content out very quickly. We found it really hard at first, but we found our niche. And we found ways to do job aids, followed by an E-module, followed by video. So we did things iteratively to try and help the business immediately and then came up with our kind of flashier resources once we got the initial needs met. So we, at times we were creating content in real-time with our subject matter experts while we had our course authoring tools up on the screen with the stakeholders and the subject matter experts and just creating the training live because this stuff had to get out really quickly. Another example I could share is with our leadership program. So we actually used the fact that we’re going virtual as a way to improve the program that we hadn’t done before. We found ways to be able to deliver the program virtually, but because of the virtual space we were able to do a few things that we hadn’t tried before, like with discussion groups and being able to spread out the training. So the nice thing with the travel restrictions is it saved our company a lot of money, as I’m sure a lot of other companies found as well, but it also made it so that we didn’t have people coming in for their leadership training for a three-day bootcamp and then going away and forgetting a lot of what they’ve learned. By us being able to do it virtually, we were actually able to spread out the training and really get better adoption of our leadership principles that we were trying to teach out and able to use things like discussion groups and cohorts and things in a way that we hadn’t done before.
Sarah Gallo:
Yeah. That’s great. I love what you mentioned about really having to adapt that leadership development program. I think a lot of leaders had to develop new skills during the pandemic. I mean, it’s definitely not something you learn in business school, that’s for sure. Do you have any tips on how other organizations can build adaptive leaders in their companies?
Marjorie Van Roon :
I think it’s really staying connected with the business needs like we talked about earlier. If the business needs something quickly, we need to find ways to get it done for them quickly. Sometimes within learning and development departments, our internal processes get in the way of us being agile and sometimes we don’t have time for a formal needs analysis. That’s fine. Who can you partner with to figure out what the needs are for this upcoming training and what’s the key things that they need to walk away from? So it’s really being able to flex and be agile with your own processes so that you can be more responsive to the business.
Sarah Gallo:
Yeah. That’s some great advice. Thanks for sharing. I’m sure many of our listeners are in the same boat for a lot of the challenges you talked about, so it’s great to hear those strategies. Marjorie, do you have any other advice for our listeners out there who are struggling to develop and deliver adaptive training across their organization and how they can really get started?
Marjorie Van Roon :
So I think with learning and development teams, that strategy pieces is so important. Again, it’s that strategic alignment, being able to prioritize with what the business needs and what your projects are, being able to iterate and be okay with maybe a product going out that’s maybe not 100% the way that you want it, but maybe it’s 80% there and then you can iterate and make it better, and then getting the team to collaborate in ways that you haven’t done before so that you can really get effective training from your best players with their different skills and have them all collaborate together.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
Yes. Those are all some great tips to keep in mind. I really like what you mentioned earlier, Marjorie, about how sometimes our processes can get in the way of being agile and how we really need to ensure that those processes along the way, that we can kind of ebb and flow and kind of be okay with using a product that’s 80% there and we can iterate along the way. I think that’s really, really good to keep in mind. I think it’s also important to recognize that building adaptive training is a skill that takes practice. Marjorie, what specific skills do learning leaders need in order to drive agile learning processes?
Marjorie Van Roon :
So skills for learning leaders, I think it’s great partnerships. So partnering with your stakeholders, with your subject matter experts, finding ways to really make an impact in the business, find the gaps that are happening and find ways to be able to fill them with training when possible. That takes a lot of being able to understand the business. So I think for learning leaders they should really understand what’s going on the business so when they have multiple projects going on, they know which ones to prioritize, they know which ones are really important. So being able to prioritize, I think, is another skill.
Being able to get your team together to collaborate is something as well. And in order to do that, you need to have a good team that recognizes each other’s skills and our strengths and what you can draw on from each other when you are collaborating. And again, it’s being okay with something maybe not being perfect, but have it being able to go out and meet the needs of the business right now and then come back and fix it with any of those gaps that you’re seeing and make it even better. I think our standards sometimes get us in the way of being able to quickly help the business.
Sarah Gallo: Yeah, for sure. I think kind of when talking about, well, for a lot of these conversations, the elephant in the room is really we know what we need to be doing, but how can we get the resources and buy-in that we need to actually do it. Do you have any tips for learning leaders out there who are struggling to gain buy-in for adaptive training and how they can go about getting that buy-in from their stakeholders?
Marjorie Van Roon :
So getting buy-in from your leaders, I think when you think about getting that buy-in for resources, I think you need to start with good partnerships with your stakeholders and your subject matter experts. And that’s built over time. It’s not something that you can suddenly go from a struggling learning and development department to being super effective and tuned in. It’s building those small successes and building on them time and time again and being able to show that you can deliver training a lot more quickly perhaps than you have before and more effective.
And for us, that was a journey as well. I mean, we went from being sometimes even not involved with any of the strategic conversations or anything because they felt that maybe we couldn’t deliver the training quickly enough to slowly start getting some wins. And now, we’re definitely part of those strategic discussions so that we can be a lot more proactive with our training than reactive. So I think it’s building that trust with your stakeholders.
Sarah Gallo:
Yeah. Definitely. Well, Marjorie, we’ve talked about the skills that learning leaders need to really build these adaptive programs and how they can gain buy-in needed for them. But how can learning agility really position companies for success during times of change? I’d love to hear your thoughts here.
Marjorie Van Roon :
Yeah. I think when you’re really in tune with the business and where the business is going and they’re changing needs, you can help out what the business needs, not only right now but also be in tune with what they need in the future so that you’re helping to develop those skills before they’re even needed. And I think that that will really help the workforce of the future and what we’re looking at there. But it’s being way more proactive when you can have that learning agility.
Sarah Gallo:
Yeah. It certainly, seems like agility is not really nice-to-have, but a necessity for companies looking to succeed. Definitely.
Marjorie Van Roon :
Absolutely.
Sarah Gallo:
Looking more at the individual level, how do you think that adaptive learning and really these adaptive programs can position individual learners for success in today’s uncertain future of work?
Marjorie Van Roon :
Well, like I mentioned about upskilling for the future, I think that that is really important. And that is one of the things that you can do as a learning and development team is look at where the company’s going in the future and make sure that the skills you’re teaching out are really preparing your individual learners for that. And many of the skills we teach out are very transferable. When you’re talking about either diversity training, emotional intelligence, even the COVID safety, these skills are going to benefit a learner wherever their career takes them, whether it’s within the business here or a business elsewhere. So I think there’s a lot we can do.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
Definitely. Those are some great points. It definitely looks like agile is a future-forward skill for sure and we should all work on developing it. So before we wrap up here today, are there any other key takeaways you’d like to leave our listeners with.
Marjorie Van Roon :
Just talking about that alignment piece and that strategic alignment and about how crucial that is. If it’s important to your company and your company’s senior leaders, it needs to be important to your learning and development team. And prioritizing that learning and skilling up your workers to be able to meet the needs of the business right now and the business in the future is where learning and development needs to go.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
Definitely. I could not agree more. So on that note, Marjorie, thank you so much for speaking with us today on the Business of Learning. How can our listeners get in touch with you after today’s episode if they’d like to reach out?
Marjorie Van Roon :
I’m on LinkedIn. Happy to reach out to anybody on LinkedIn.
Sarah Gallo:
Perfect. Thanks so much, Marjorie. For more insights on agile learning and to learn more about Training Industry’s Agile HR and L&D certificate, which can help you develop many of the skills we talked about today, check out the show notes for this episode at trainingindustry.com/trainingindustrypodcast.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
And as always, don’t forget to rate and review us on your favorite podcast app. We love hearing from you.
Sarah Gallo:
Until next time.
Speaker:
If you have feedback about this episode or would like to suggest a topic for a future program, email us at info@trainingindustry.com or use the contact us page at trainingindustry.com. Thanks for listening to the Training Industry podcast.
