Engaging with Global Stakeholders
Hello We have multiple business stakeholders based in countries all around the world. It's important for us to engage with these leaders in each country to understand their needs, engage with them and demonstrate the value we can add as a learning team even though we can't meet them face to face Does anyone have any best practice in terms of global stakeholder engagement they'd like to share? Thanks very much Nick
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Hi Charles,
I absolutely empathise with you're concerns. Competing short term business priorities, and a 'quick win' culture, often lead to short-sightedness in this area. I am currently having similar challenge myself. There is a tendancy to look for all singing all dancing platforms then shoe horn in solutions around that, rather than the other way round, which in my mind is to address the business needs (both internal and external), assess the 'future proofing' and 'flexible upscaling' potential, then choose technology to suit.
However, in saying that....if we keep the fundamental learning and engagement pricipals in mind, we can often work around ill-concieved technology implementation choices. Not ideal of course. The thing is...in the main...people in organisations tend to want the simplest solution. They don't want to log into multiple applications if at all possible. I have had some success in improving conversations in this area. I attempt do this by selling the benefits of good upfront ananlysis of business (and Client) need, and iterating and re-iterating how enhanced capability to be responsive to organisational and client needs gives competetive advantage. It doesn't always make me popular I admit :) I'd be interested to know how you progress with this.
I've been doing some work recently on learning infrastructure to support the extended enterprise and would appreciate people's thoughts and plans about the challenge.
I have some concerns about the HR-focus of learning infrastructure (and LMS technology in particular) and tight integration with enterprise talent systems and HRIS technology.
My rationale is this:
- Organisations are 'flattening and extending'.
- There will be increasing needs for all organisations to work more closely across their value chains (with suppliers, distributers, clients and other groups).
- Smart organisations already do this, many don’t
- With this in mind, it will be vital that L&D supports capability development across the entire value chain.
- A few HR/L&D departments have learning infrastructure in place to support their extended enterprises. Many don’t.
- Although consolidation of Learning, Talent and HR systems makes sense from an HR perspective – with single vendor offering – it isn’t in the best interest of the overall organisation.
- Consolidation of these technologies reduces the flexibility of learning services and is counter-productive from both individual employee and partner workers point-of-view, and from the organisational learning point-of-view.
There is a white paper that Constantin Ohanian and I published – with the title of “White paper: New Ways of Learning Inside and Beyond the Organization” – on the Certpoint website http://www.certpointsystems.com/en/resources/white-paper.html
I would be interested in talking with anyone, or any organisation, struggling with this challenge.
Then please come along to the ‘large private sector org’ industry group SG3 at 15:20 in the sector group room, details of which you can find here:
It will be a roundtable type session and a chance for you to share and discuss your objectives and challenges for the next year so we can surface common themes and potential solutions. And no powerpoint – that’s a promise.
Don’t miss it.
Nick
At Oxfam GB we're hosting a small conference over 17-18 June, looking at the particular issues, opportunities and challenges for (e)learning and organisational development in international relief & development NGOs. I'd welcome contact from folks in this group (whether in global corporates or NGOs) who are interested in some reciprocal knowledge sharing on strategies, approaches, successes, failures(!)...
Drop me an email at choughton at-mark oxfam dot org dot uk for more info.
regards
Cynan Houghton