TJ - The Publication for Learning and Development

Stakeholders in learning

By Andrew Mayo (July 2005 Issue)
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One way in which we distinguish between learning and training is to emphasise that learning is an internal process that the learner goes through, and training is an external input that stimulates and helps that process. Since attendees on a training event come with different motivations and starting points of knowledge and skills, we cannot guarantee that any learning takes place unless we have been able to tune the input to meet individual specific needs. Sometimes we can do this but often it is beyond our resource. Learning has to be managed by the learners, and here are some thoughts as to how we can help them to do this.

A lot of learning is private. We learn things every day, either planned or emerging as the day progresses, and it shapes our understanding and our judgement as to what to think and do. We may store some of our learning only for use when needed; it may not be obvious to anyone else that we have learnt new things unless we actively choose to share our experience. We could say we are the only stakeholder in the learning process; that is, the interest and benefit is primarily to us alone.

When an organisation is paying for the learner to learn, it is normally different. Sometimes a person will be funded for some purely personal learning, but normally the investment is aimed at a visible return – an increased capability in the workplace. There are others who are stakeholders in the process. New knowledge and skill is to be applied for the benefit of those working around the learner. Suppose I have been attending a course for sales managers. My boss hopes that I will be more productive, understand procedures better, manage my people more effectively, and need less guidance from her. My colleagues look forward to my efforts enhancing the results of the overall team. Those that work for me perhaps have expectations of improved 1:1 management and better coaching in their own roles. My new capabilities are a hub which radiates out benefits to those who I work with.

One way to picture a learning organisation is to use this concept of the hub of a wheel, in which the professional L&D function sits. If it revolves happily just as a hub it won’t do very much for the rotation of the wheel – it needs to be connected to the outside of the wheel through its spokes. Each spoke leads to a major stakeholder in the overall culture of learning in the organisation. It includes senior management, line managers, the IT function, perhaps HR partners, suppliers of learning, external customers, and of course ‘learners’ themselves. Each group has a specific role to play in the effective functioning of the wheel.

For example, senior management has a role in determining the principles that will govern people development, in allocating budgets, in communicating the importance of learning, in being role models themselves and in the support they give to key activities. Each role has a set of capabilities – knowledge and skills – that go with it. One of the foundational building blocks of a learning organisation therefore is to map these stakeholders, with their roles and capabilities. We then need to ensure that each member of the organisation is given the necessary capabilities. Since the category of ‘learner’ actually applies to all, the fundamentals of ‘learning to learn’ is a requirement for everybody.

Going back to the level of a particular learning need, the same picture can be used but this time the hub of the wheel is the learner and his or her learning objectives. We ask who is going to benefit, we hope, from successful achievement of the objectives? Secondly, we can ask how they will experience the benefit.

In practice, this is a simple discipline that the learner should go through. Forget putting the onus on the manager to sit down with someone due to go on a course and talk about what they hope to gain from it: the initiative should be with the learner. He or she thinks through carefully why they are going through the learning (whether off the job or planned job-based), and who should benefit from it. Beneficiaries will almost always include the person’s boss and their colleagues, and may include customers or other departments. The discipline of doing this helps the learner focus on putting the learning into live action, and by doing this exercise in advance it channels the way they approach the learning activity itself.

It will already be clear that by going through this exercise we have built an evaluation system in advance. ‘Happy sheets’ as we know only measure the surface of the experience people have been through, and they take no account of learning application. Seeking the ‘Level 4’ bottom line benefits is often a bridge too far in achieving a direct line of sight with the learning. Change in behaviour – including knowledge utilisation – is the realistic end goal of most learning activities. This stakeholder approach will give us the checklist for assessing our success. More importantly, it will give us the means to analyse where learning is not succeeding. These instances may in fact be due to one or more of the stakeholders constructing barriers – such as the manager not providing opportunities for the application - rather than the nature of the learning activity per se.

Peter Senge is often (wrongly) regarded as the father of the learning organisation. His book The Fifth Discipline was seminal in our understanding of the concept.1 The fifth discipline he named ‘Systems Thinking’, which is exactly what this concept of stakeholders is about. It is recognising that no-one is an island in an organisation – and every new learning experience has a sphere of influence beyond the individual. The more we recognise and understand that, the more effective our investment in learning will be.

Reference
1. Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline, Doubleday, 1990.


Andrew Mayo is a consultant, speaker, writer and facilitator in international HR management, with specialisms in people and organisation development. He can be contacted on +44 (0) 1727 843424, at andrew.mayo@mayolearning.com or visit www.mayolearning.com

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