In football, there exists a philosophy called “total football.” Popularized by Dutchman Johann Cruyff, total football is a strategy whereby all players in the team are not only familiar with each other’s roles, but are also able to replace teammates when they are out of position.
This framework has provided the blueprint that enabled football clubs such as Ajax Amsterdam, Barcelona and Manchester City to dominate their respective leagues over the current and past decades.
In the world of learning and development, the different roles we play as practitioners are also becoming less distinct by the day. Gone are the days where instructional designers would only work on the drawing board while facilitators only run training sessions exclusively.
Today, each segment across the L&D value chain is expected to have clarity over the big picture strategy and be able to string the different parts together to effectively provide a meaningful end-to-end learning experience.
In its 2023 Workplace Learning Report, LinkedIn highlighted that 77 percent of L&D practitioners surveyed indicated that their roles have grown increasingly cross-functional to also expand into talent management, talent acquisition and employee engagement, among others.
As ideal as it may sound, this vision of versatility can be realized when each member of an L&D team thinks like a chief learning officer.
Nurturing customer centricity
The idea behind thinking like a CLO is derived from the importance of fully understanding what the customer wants. For the longest time, this has been done through a learning needs analysis which explores organizational and individual goals and workplace challenges as well as competency gaps.
This exercise need not go away. What is needed, however, is a deeper appreciation of the overall enterprise targets and industry landscape. In doing this, L&D teams should be able to obtain a more wholesome context of the challenges at hand.
In its 2023 report, Gartner highlighted the need for L&D professionals to build and own a “learning advisor model,” which complements traditional L&D expertise with emerging business requirements, including analytical skills and business acumen.
This mindset shift among L&D practitioners requires us to move from being functional to strategic. Expertise alone is not enough these days for us to become a true learning partner to the business.
Creating a meaningful experience
Here is a brief survey that facilitators can ask participants at the beginning of any training session: “How many of you are here because you want to be here? And how many of you are here because you have to be here?”
As much as we want the majority to be the former, there are instances when most hands are raised in response to the latter. Especially when it is year-end and people are rushing to use up their training budget.
In its 2022 Workplace L&D Trends Report, the Society for Human Resource Management highlighted the common frustrations among employees during training including low motivation, lack of knowledge retention and limited content relevance.
Regardless of the demography, a facilitator who thinks like a CLO would aspire to be aware of these common frustrations and meet the expectations of those who signed up voluntarily — while converting those who were “forced” to be there to want to be there.
This involves investigating the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations of the participants, and curating the content to be as close as possible to their business and individual pain points — which is a lot of work beyond facilitation in itself, but a worthy cause nevertheless. Business focus and acumen are key to make this happen.
Bringing value back to the client
One of the biggest mysteries of L&D is in quantifying returns on investment on learning. No matter how you shape it, there are often points for contention — given how complex and convoluted learning evaluation effectiveness can be. The big question among employers who invest in training remains, “What’s in it for me?”
The literature on the subject of learning effectiveness reveals many models that are both conventional and modern in nature. A CLO would be curious enough to expose themself to the variety of models and frameworks in the market while being able to clearly articulate what it means to the clients.
Adopting this mindset across the L&D spectrum can be advantageous especially when everyone is on the same page on why and how different evaluation instruments or technologies are chosen. This alignment can also help people in design to think of those in curation, and vice versa.
Conclusion
Thinking like a CLO is no walk in the park. It requires strategic awareness, visionary foresight and an appetite for innovation — none of which can be acquired overnight. Most importantly, it requires more listening than talking.
When each member of the team thinks and behaves more like a partner than a vendor to the business, the working relationship will be more transformational than transactional.
At the end of the day, the success of this journey is a matter of progress over perfection, and it begins at the top. The responsibility is on the CLO to set an example for others to emulate.
