Building a Successful Learning and Development Business

Many learning and development teams seem to have a bit of an identity crisis.  Our overarching mission and vision changes annually and no one can quite seem to remember what they are.  Our teams are often stuck in silos supporting different areas of the business.  Our hiring practices vary by hiring manager.  Our annual review scores and incentives are based almost solely on the opinions of supervisors without having consistent, quantifiable performance metrics.  We use the ADDIE Model to design training, but each team seems to have a slightly different twist on it.  We each use different tools to create our training modules, design our graphics, and build our storyboards.  We even have separate learning management systems for different areas of the same company.

Any of this sounding familiar?

This blog is about sharing some simple solutions to these issues and their ilk - it’s about creating a foundation for building a successful learning and development business.  Whether you call your business learning and development, organizational effectiveness, training, or some combination thereof, I think this will be a useful series for you.  In the following series of articles I’ll help you figure out how to set a clear and consistent vision, hire the best talent, select the right technologies, manage instructional design projects, and more.  I’ll outline the high-level steps of establishing your business, provide you with some tools and templates, and (hopefully) generate some great discussion.

With this in mind, if you have particular topics you’d like to see covered in this series (or if you have a completely different question entirely), I’d love to hear from you and see if I can help.

Next time we’ll kick things off by answering the question “What Value Does L&D Provide Anyway?”