How do you bring all these entities together? You work towards creating a common thread. A common thread is a tie that binds all teams together. While each department has their own distinct priorities, these priorities all generally flow down from the company mission and CEO’s priorities. What the CEO wants then flows down to executive leader’s objectives which then flow down into management’s objectives.
This cascade down is key. It is how leading organisations pull together to deliver on the mission of the business. In order to establish a common thread, you need to swim upstream and find one that binds you all together. It might be things like double digit growth, reducing employee attrition or increasing efficiency and productivity.
Once the common thread is known, you then need to sell how the LMS you want will help support it. To do this well, you’ll also need to understand the questions (and the intent behind each) that will likely get thrown your way.
Why do we need a learning management system?
All stakeholders will likely ask this one. Procuring an LMS isn’t a cheap investment, and each will want to sanity check that the investment is necessary and valuable to their function. As the custodian of good buying, the procurement team will be concerned with a competitive price, social value and de-risking the business through contract terms.
On the other hand, IT will care about privacy, data and security. Here you want to be armed with relevant information on things like network security, secured connection, user access, third-party certification and data recovery. IT need assurances and evidence that the LMS will help deliver on compliance, efficiency and digital automation.
What is the budget for the learning management system?
Whether consciously or subconsciously, each department lead will feel that you are competing for budget. As such, you need to seriously consider if your initiative should be prioritised over priorities, and how you can sell the value of that choice. Work with Finance to build a business case that outlays expenditures against value.
An LMS is an enterprise purchase and should therefore be valuable to everyone. Some universal benefits include employee engagement, better understanding of training needs, upskilled and reskilled teams, and reduced attrition. Departments will want to know not only the benefits but how it delivers them, as well as the challenges the LMS will help mitigate.
What expectations do you have?
Having discussed the promised benefits and challenges to be mitigated, stakeholders will have their own ideas of success within their departments. This is where good expectation management comes in. Both parties need to ask and set expectations on what is and will be required.
Expectations are much more easily managed when they are monitored. An LMS rollout plan will create ever more lofty expectations amongst stakeholders. Building a requirements change template will help ease any concerns that an eLearning platform may not quickly adapt to internal changes as well as helping with risk response in future.
What are our roles and responsibilities?
Department leaders are busy people, and each will likely need to lend some of their time during LMS implementation. Given they don’t report directly to process owners, they may not be inclined to offer their input voluntarily.
The key is to clarify scope. Set milestones to help demonstrate the value of another team’s involvement, but ensure they are considered subject matter experts for certain touchpoints rather than being responsible for their entire project. Creating milestones on a defined timeline will help all department leads understand their input is crucial but limited to a select few moments.
For a more in-depth look at how to build LMS consensus in your organisation, have a read of the full article.
