It’s that time of year when most learning leaders tackle their strategic planning for the learning function.  The clients I work with tend to fall into one of two categories: they approach strategic planning with hope and excitement, or they are cautious about tackling what is perceived to be an overwhelming task.  In either case, my role is not to build the plan for them but rather to help them navigate the planning process, challenge their status quo, and support them as they make difficult tradeoff decisions.  Then, I cheer for them when they crystallize the plan.  While it is a mentally taxing facilitation session for me and them, it is one of the most rewarding!

As I reflect on the recent planning sessions working with clients, I wanted to share seven tips to consider as you embark on your strategic planning:

1. Involve Your Team: If your department is large enough to have directors and managers, include them.  Also include anyone on your team who has specific knowledge or responsibility that is important to have in the discussions.  Anyone invited to a working session needs to bring their A-game-- tell them that. I’d shy away from inviting your whole team unless it is small (five people or less).  The extended team should be involved but probably not at the beginning; while you don’t want to make decisions in a bubble, too many voices can make it difficult to create a good plan.  If you want a scan of the current state and what the team envisions for the future, send out a short survey to everyone and collate the results – it's a great way to start the live planning session.
2. Anchor to the Business Objectives: Whether it’s the entire organization or a single business unit you serve, find out the business objectives and strategic initiatives, then align to them.  Put them on a slide and refer to them as you go through the planning process to ensure that your plan not only supports the business but enables the business to achieve the results it has declared.
3. Ruthlessly Prioritize: This is a tough one and it is the time when I challenge clients the most.  Once priorities and tactics are identified, a prioritization activity should occur to determine which ones will be included in the plan.  This is tough, because we tend to think that everything is important.  It may very well be.  However, there’s a limit to our time, resources, and budget.  In many cases, learning teams are ‘building the plane while flying it’.  Ideally, your prioritization yields a mix of quick wins, near-term, and long-term tactics.  Reach out to me if you’d like a copy of our Prioritization Activity to use with your team; just be prepared to moderate with tough love!
4. Consider Learning Team Capabilities and Gaps to Address: As you identify priorities and tactics, think about the current capabilities of you and your team.  Does your team have what it will take to implement the plan?  If not, team capabilities must be part of your strategic plan.  For example, imagine that you desire better alignment to the business objectives, yet the training team has been acting as reactive “order takers” at your organization. To address this gap in communicating with business partners to understand needs, the team will need up-skilling in a capability: in this case, performance consulting.
5. Cut the Training Jargon: Ever see a business leader’s eyes glaze over when you start talking about personalized learner journeys, blended learning, or gamification?  While near and dear to us, you’ll want to minimize using terms like these, as the strategic plan should be understandable to anyone in the organization who reads it. 
6. Market Your Plan: Now that you’ve avoided the training jargon, prepare a focused and visually appealing “walk-around deck” so you can communicate your plan with your team, key stakeholders, and even your learners.  Take the time to proof the deck and consider graphic support needs.  Then, set up time to talk with everyone about it.  Make sure you think about any questions or objections that may arise and give thoughtful answers.
7. Create a Workable Plan: Sounds like common sense, right?  I’ve seen learning organizations stumble here.  They create a plan that is too complicated to execute, overfilled with tactics, or lacking in clear timelines.  Make sure to list out each tactic with a description, resources needed, a specific start and end date, and the people responsible for implementation.  A note about timelines: try to be more specific than “complete in Q4”.  It’s important to project the timing of your plan in detail, so you can overlay its different tactics and see where there may be too many things happening at once.  Remember, you are probably building that plane while you are flying it.
8. Consider the Culture: Is your organization an enterprising new startup? A large global biotech? Is the organization risk adverse or welcoming of new innovations?  Imagine the looks on the faces of the business as they hear about your plan.  The culture can serve as your guideposts for creating a realistic plan that everyone can rally around.

The learning function is often thought of as the opposite of strategic, and in fact, many elements of what we do are tactical.  A solid strategic plan can help you and your learning team incorporate strategy into your work and better serve as strategic business partners.  Now it’s time to tackle that plan; I’m cheering for you!

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When to consider preparing a business case?

There are a number of times when you should consider preparing a business case. Having a business case will help you hear the magic words “It’s approved!”. Here are several situations to consider a business case:

• You don’t have any resources
• You need more resources
• You identify a key organizational or performance need that would drive business outcomes if addressed
• The stakeholder expects it
• Presenting to senior leadership

Elements of a business case

Business cases can get pretty detailed and elaborate. The size and scope of the business case will depend on how large your learning initiative or project will be. 

There are three key elements of a great business case. 

• Background and Business Need - This is a really important element as it conveys the challenge or performance problem that your initiative will address. This may be the most difficult section to write, since it isn’t always easy to capture and articulate the need. However, this element is critical as it sets the stage for your solution. If your request gets shared with others in the organization, it should be clear for anyone reading it, why you want to implement your initiative. 
• Project Overview - As it states, this should include key elements:
  • Deliverables and Objectives
  • Timeline and Key Dates
  • Project Team
  • Estimated Cost
• The Impact and The Ask - This element outlines the importance of developing the proposed solution and highlights your ask(s) of the audience. To help demonstrate the importance of developing the proposed solution, it can be helpful to illustrate the consequences of not acting. When you do make your ask, be specific! What will you need from each stakeholder to make this successful? 

In summary, knowing how and when to make a business case will help you get your new learning initiative approved. In addition to following this structure, be sure to use supporting data to make your case bulletproof and it always helps to know your stakeholder(s). Being able to adjust to their personality and communication style will help your business case be better received.

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Saying yes might "miss the mark" even when we're pleasing the stakeholder.

We need to know when to say no and when to say yes.

When to say no

Well, it’s easier said than done. Here are some times when a performance consultant says no:

• It’s not a training solution 
• Their plate is already full 
• The timeline is too short
• Resources aren’t there
• The need is actually different than what the stakeholder wanted

All of these situations, there’s a good reason to say no. Saying yes won’t give you the result your stakeholder is looking for. So even though saying “no” feels confrontational, it can actually be a key part of working as a team.

How to say no

It’s possible to say “no” without actually saying “no”! Here’s 4 ways to say “no” and scenarios when you could use them:

1. Scenario:  When you’re asked to do something with an exceptionally short deadline.
   Saying No: “Sounds like a really quick turnaround. Under normal circumstances, this would not be a problem. With this deadline, I’d like to explore other options that may meet the need.”
2. Scenario: When you’re asked in a meeting for an estimated timeframe for a complex project.
   Saying No:  I’d like to think about it so I can provide a more accurate estimate. Could you send me more information so I can review it carefully? Then I’ll be in a better position to discuss it with the team. 
3. Scenario: When people ask you to do something instead of the appropriate person
   Saying No: I think that Steve in HR would be more equipped to meet this need. Do you know Steve, or would you like me to connect you?
4. Scenario: When a business unit head asked you to tackle a new high priority project, but you are already working on another important initiative and can’t do both.
   Saying No: Wow, thank you for thinking of me! I am already working on another important project, but this sounds important too. Let me discuss with my leader and see how we can support. 

Performance consultants know when, and how, to say no. It is a differentiator between how order takers and performance consultants operate.

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Mr. Wright’s professional background spans 27 years, with robust experience in programming, application design, and information technology consulting.  His previous work experience includes Microsoft, as well as applications programming roles at Research Triangle Institute and NetCentrics.  For 7 years, Jim Wright served as Director of IT Applications for Campbell Alliance (now Syneos Health Consulting).  For nearly 13 years, he operated his own independent information technology consulting firm.

Throughout his career, Jim Wright has developed information technology solutions in a range of industries.  However, a large percentage of his efforts have been associated with the life sciences.

“We’re very excited to have Jim join the team,” said Nathan Pienkwoski, PhD, a founding partner of Bull City Learning and its Head of Solution Delivery.  “We have worked with Jim on various projects over many years.  He is far more than a talented applications developer, he’s an extremely creative problem-solver.  Whenever there is a technology-related problem to tackle, he will find a way to overcome it and meet the business objective.”

Jim has a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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“Our management team has decades of experience leading and providing services to life science training and development organizations. Through Bull City Blue we harness that experience to help learning leaders improve the effectiveness of their teams—so that they are capable of delivering greater value to their internal customers. We also directly assist training and talent development organizations by creating innovative learning solutions that cater to the needs of today’s demanding learners,” said Garry O’Grady, Bull City Blue president.

Bull City Blue will help companies align their training strategy with their organization’s business needs and create compelling custom learning experiences that speed the learning process, increase retention, and generate positive business outcomes.

“Bull City Blue is different than many learning agencies. Beyond effective custom learning solutions, we can also provide consultation,” explained O’Grady. “Now more than ever, training and talent development organizations need to deliver results that meet the strategic needs of the companies and teams they serve. We can provide the roadmap to make this possible.”

The agency brings expertise to its clients to build relevant custom solutions for many topics including disease and product knowledge, new product launch strategy and content, reimbursement and access, selling skills, coaching skills, account management, medical science liaison business acumen, and learning leader effectiveness. They additionally offer a ready network of subject-matter experts, discoverable at www.bullcityblue.com.

“Today’s demands on life science learning leaders are more challenging than ever. The industry is changing as quickly as the needs of the learners they support. Our goal is to provide them with relevant expertise that can be trusted to deliver results,” added O’Grady.

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May 31, 2016 – Durham, N.C. – Bull City Learning announced today that life science industry veteran Sue Iannone has joined its subsidiary, Bull City Blue, as Vice President. Iannone brings more than 20 years of experience as a learning leader, delivering high-impact learning solutions for small, mid-size, and large pharmaceutical and biotech companies.

“While our team is already seasoned in the delivery of consulting services and training solutions in the life science space, we are extremely excited to add Sue’s perspective as an industry learning leader. Her experience and expertise will translate into value for our clients,” said Garry O’Grady, Bull City Blue president.

Iannone has led the design and implementation of global and US learning solutions for more than 20 new product launches, as well as multiple co-promotions, realignments, and expansions within Immunology, Respiratory, Women’s Health, Fertility, Neuroscience, Cardiovascular, Diabetes, and other therapeutic areas. She has held executive- and director-level training positions at Celgene, Merck, MedPointe, Organon, and Schering-Plough.

“Bull City Blue represents an opportunity for me to leverage many years of learning strategy success for the good of the life science industry. Companies in our industry face constant change, financial demands, regulatory restrictions, and pressure to deliver positive patient outcomes. I look forward to helping our clients transform their learning organizations and generate positive business outcomes through better learning solutions,” said Iannone.

Iannone has influenced learning and development practices within the life science industry in various capacities, including three years of service on the Board of Directors for the Life Sciences Trainers and Educators Network (LTEN), most recently as Vice President. She is a Certified Professional in Learning and Performance (CPLP) and author/collaborator of many industry articles, papers, and presentations, including Your Career: Along for the Ride, or Taking the Wheel; Surviving and Thriving in a Volatile Industry; The Training Director’s Playbook; and Staying Strategic:  Maintaining Situational Awareness in a Dynamic Environment.

“Mentorship is part of my responsibility as a professional learning leader and I love it wholeheartedly. My leadership role at Bull City Blue will enable me to extend my reach and help many organizations and their learning leaders succeed. To me, that is both very exciting and rewarding,” added Iannone.

Connect with Sue by visiting www.bullcityblue.com or directly at www.linkedin/in/sueiannone.

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The organization will showcase its Future Learning Organization Assessment Tool to help learning leaders instantly evaluate how their organization compares with others in the industry across six critical areas. Attendees can participate at Bull City Blue booth #213. The results of Bull City Blue’s LTEN assessment will culminate in a report with insight aimed to help learning leaders understand how to transform a training organization from its “current state” to its desired “future state.”

On Tuesday, June 6, at 4:15 pm, Bull City Blue President Garry O’Grady and Vice President Sue Iannone will deliver “Order Taker or Change Agent? How to Become a Performance Consultant.” Part of LTEN’s Career Success track, the workshop is designed to help learning professionals become change agents and be viewed as valued business partners within their organizations.

On Wednesday, June 7, at 12:30 pm, Alice Bumgarner will present “Six Strategies for Engaging the Modern Learner.” The learning lab will highlight six proven strategies and innovative approaches that organizations can use to align their training needs with the needs of the modern learner whose perceptions, expectations, and ways of interacting with the world are rapidly changing.

“We’re excited to bring several resources to this year’s LTEN conference designed to help training leaders keep pace with rapid industry change and improve the value and effectiveness of their training organization,” said O’Grady.

Bull City Blue will also exhibit at the LTEN annual conference. Executive-level consultants will be available throughout the conference by appointment or in the Bull City Blue booth #213. Learn more at http://bullcityblue.com/lten2017.

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May 31, 2018 – Durham, N.C. – Bull City Blue, a life science learning agency based in Durham, has announced its plans for the 47th Annual Life Science Trainers and Educators Network (LTEN) Conference held in Phoenix, June 11-14. An LTEN Preferred Industry Partner, Bull City Blue will lead two presentations and host several activities at the Bull City Blue exhibit.

At Bull City Blue’s exhibit booth (#338), attendees can meet Blue Bull (Did he prevail?!) and Bull City Blue executives. Attendees can also pick up a snapshot of findings from Bull City Blue’s Future Learning Organization survey, highlighting key focus areas for training organization evolution.

On Tuesday, June 12, at 12:30 pm, Bull City Blue Co-Founder Nathan Pienkowski, PhD, will present “What is wrong with this training. 5 common mistakes to avoid” in Learning Lab #1. During this interactive Learning Lab, participants will engage with real training examples to uncover five common mistakes that people make when designing training.

On Wednesday, June 13, at 2:00 pm, Bull City Blue Vice President Sue Iannone and AbbVie Global Learning Director Ray Kopcinski, will deliver “Global Product Launches: How to Evolve a Global Learning ‘Apparatus’ into a ‘Learning Launch Machine’” in Grand Sonoran H. This session will highlight a leading life science organization’s approach to designing a sustainable process to deliver solutions for new product launches and set up local markets for success.

“LTEN is a pivotal time for leading agencies like Bull City Blue to interact with the learning leaders we serve and discuss the challenges they’re facing,” said Co-Founder and President Garry O’Grady. “We’re coming, locked and loaded, with solutions and perspectives to help training organizations keep pace and evolve,” said O’Grady.

Learn more at http://bullcityblue.com/lten2018.

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Ms. Torgerson’s professional background spans more than 15 years, with robust experience in curriculum design, instructional design, instructional writing, and strategy.  She has worked with all learning modalities, but has a focus in eLearning, mobile learning, and microlearning.

Carla developed MILE, the MIcroLEarning Design Model^© and is author of The Microlearning Guide to Microlearning.  She has taught courses for the Association for Talent Development (ATD) on instructional design for eLearning, mobile learning, and microlearning for more than 10 years.

Her previous work experience includes over 10 years as a consultant providing a wide range of learning and development support to Fortune 500 clients.  She has worked as an instructional designer and senior instructional designer for Allen Interactions, as well as a senior instructional strategist at Maestro, in addition to working as an independent consultant.  Carla was also the Founding Director and Educational Consultant at the Center for Teaching and Educational Technologies at Penn State Erie.

“We’re very excited to have Carla join the team,” said Nathan Pienkwoski, PhD, a founding partner of Bull City Learning and its Head of Solution Delivery.  “We have a fantastic instructional design team here, and Carla is a great addition.  She will complement our current capabilities, as well as help us expand them,” he added.

Garry O’Grady, President of Bull City Blue and Bull City Learning, added that, “Carla is well known within the learning and development arena.  We’re looking forward to working with her to introduce Bull City Learning and Bull City Blue to a lot of great new people.”

Carla has a Master of Education (MEd) focused in technology-based education from the University of Alberta in Canada and a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) from St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, MN.

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June 7, 2016 – Durham, N.C. – Bull City Blue, a life science learning agency based in Durham, will participate in the upcoming 45^th Annual Life Science Trainers and Educators Network (LTEN) Conference in various capacities.

Sue Iannone, Bull City Blue vice president and 2013-2016 LTEN board member, will co-facilitate the LTEN Learning Leaders Forum. The group will convene on Tuesday, June 14, from 2:00-3:30 pm, to guide exploration of learning leadership needs, the LTEN vision, and future considerations for LTEN for the guidance and support of the learning leader community.

On Wednesday, June 15, from 8:30-10:00 am, Bull City Blue’s Sue Iannone, Garry O’Grady, and Nathan Pienkowski, PhD, will present “The Future Learning Organization: Are You Prepared?” The presentation will illustrate the most pivotal trends shaping biopharma, and how these trends will impact clinical and commercial organizations. The team will characterize the future learning organization and help learning leaders take practical steps – away from traditional approaches – toward the fluid, integrated learning delivery needed to optimize performance and outcomes in tomorrow’s learning landscape.

“As the industry pushes to keep pace with rapid change, we appreciate the opportunities that LTEN provides to network, share ideas, and identify resources that will help life science learning organizations thrive in the future,” said Garry O’Grady, Bull City Blue president.

Bull City Blue will also exhibit at the LTEN annual conference. Executive-level consultants will be available throughout the conference by appointment or in the Bull City Blue booth #113.

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By Sue Iannone

A struggling L&D organization can exhibit a range of characteristics. Maybe its staff feel overworked and under-resourced. Perhaps it operates as a reactive organization instead of proactively pursuing strategic initiatives.

If this sounds familiar, it's time for a strategic reboot.

That's where our latest white paper comes into play. In Building an Organizational Strategy for L&D, we outline a four-phase process for articulating and achieving a guiding strategy that can radically improve your team's effectiveness.

To illustrate what that can look like in the real world, I'm sharing a few examples of recent projects Bull City Blue has tackled where we applied our org strategy process to challenges like product launches and gaps in training delivery:

Example #1 Needs Assessment for New Role - In anticipation of a specialty product launch, a biotechnology company opted to introduce a new Field Reimbursement Manager (FRM) role that would address access and reimbursement challenges. The organization needed to move quickly to define onboarding and foundational learning requirements. BCB partnered with commercial leadership and the L&D team to identify initial and ongoing learning needs, design the new hire curriculum, and facilitate the inaugural new hire training program.

Example #2 Competency Model Design – Soon after the launch of a specialty injectable product, this pharmaceutical company desired competency models for three of their customer-facing roles—sales representatives, virtual hybrid representatives, and field access managers.  The company’s goal was to clearly articulate performance expectations and give the learning organization and front-line managers the tools they needed to align the teams to them.  BCB partnered with key stakeholders to identify and map key behaviors and establish performance levels within each behavior—thus defining role-specific competency models.

Example #3 Strategic Planning - The L&D organization of a large pharmaceutical company was experiencing challenges when trying to meet the needs of its internal customers and key stakeholders.  These challenges included gaps in delivering effective training, curriculum design, resource management, and trainer capabilities.  BCB partnered with L&D leadership to define a new organizational strategy that prioritized critical needs, established a more effective organizational structure, and ultimately, transformed the learning function, making it more effective in supporting the business needs of the commercial organization.

To learn more about our process and recent work we've done, feel free to reach out or check our Org Strategy white paper.

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By Carla Torgerson

Do you believe in unicorns?  It’s a safe bet that you don’t.  After all, unicorns are a myth, and everyone knows it.  But what about “learning styles,” the idea that each person is a certain kind of learner, and learns best when material is delivered to them in their own preferred style of learning?  The concept of learning styles has been around since the first half of the 20^th century.  It has had its ups and downs in terms of popularity, but it still hangs around despite the fact that the vast majority of scientific research on the topic has pretty soundly debunked it.

In this article, we’ll provide a quick overview of the learning styles concept.  We’ll also take a look at what can be useful—and harmful—about it.

The Learning Styles Concept

Over the years, different versions of the learning styles concept have been developed.  The one that has gotten most of the attention in recent decades is known as VARK, developed by researcher, Neil Fleming.  In short, it posits that each person can be grouped into one of four different types of learner:  Visual, Auditory, Reading, or Kinesthetic.

As you might expect, Visual learners supposedly learn best when information is presented to them visually, with heavy use of pictures, diagrams, demonstrations, etc.  Auditory learners supposedly learn best by using their ears.  Reading-oriented learners allegedly do better when they can read information.  And finally, kinesthetic learners supposedly like to get their hands on things, learning best when they can get physically involved by manipulating objects and so on.

According to this concept, instructional designers should develop programs that cater to each learner’s individual preferred style of learning, providing options that are matched to each style.  Doing this, the idea goes, will result in more effective instructional programs.  Unfortunately, the research does not support the idea that teaching in different ways for different people produces superior learning.

The Reality

Here’s the reality:  Assuming that we’re literate and that all of our 5 senses work correctly, we are all Visual, Auditory, Reading, and Kinesthetic learners.  Each of us has the capacity to learn in each of these ways.  While it’s true that some people have greater reading comprehension skills, or perhaps a preference for receiving information visually, these abilities and/or preferences do not represent different learning styles.

In fact, the most effective method for teaching new material doesn’t depend at all on the learners’ alleged individual learning styles.  It actually depends on the nature of the material being taught.  Furthermore, using a combination of methods is usually the best approach (Visual, Auditory, Reading, and Kinesthetic), even though one of those approaches might be dominant in any given case.

For example, if you want to teach someone the difference between classical music and hip-hop, you’d probably let them listen to multiple examples of each type of music.  You might also provide the learner with some reading materials and show the learner some pictures of famous classical and hip-hop artists.  However, auditory learning will factor most heavily in this situation.

In another example, training someone to service the brakes on a car might involve verbal instructions (auditory), the use of diagrams and demonstrations (visual), and written instructions (reading).  However, letting the person actually get their hands on the car will be the primary—and most impactful—approach.  In this case, the kinesthetic approach is where the magic happens.  We are all “kinesthetic learners” in this sort of situation. Of course, that approach is best when supplemented by all the other approaches too.

Key Takeaways for Learning and Development Pros

Given all this talk about learning styles, what are some key takeways for people who develop and deploy learning programs?  Here are a few that we think are useful:

1. People do not have preferred “learning styles” – Each person can learn in a number of different ways. People may have differing abilities or preferences, but no person is beholden to any single learning style.
2. It can be harmful to tell a person that he or she has a learning style – Telling someone that he or she is a “Visual Learner” (for example) might actually hold them back from a learning standpoint, as it can encourage them to pigeon-hole themselves and not take full advantage of their ability to learn in multiple ways. You never want to hear someone say: “I’ve been told I’m a Visual Learner, so I just don’t learn very well by reading things…”
3. The nature of the content will dictate the dominant approach – Per the examples above, the content itself—and not individual learning styles—will determine the best teaching or training methods.
4. Most learning programs should use a combination of instructional approaches – Even though a given topic might work best with a given instructional approach, a combination of approaches is almost always the way to go. Make full use of learners’ abilities to absorb content and skills visually, auditorially, via the written word, and kinesthetically (if possible).
5. To achieve a given learning or performance objective, one well-designed program is usually best for all learners – The idea that each learner requires a program customized to his or her “learning style” is just plain wrong. A well-designed program that uses a mix of approaches (with the content dictating the dominant one) is usually best for all learners.

So, that’s the story of learning styles.  It may be true that here are elements of the idea that can be useful.  On balance, though, we’d like to firmly enshrine the concept in the Book of Myths, right between elves and unicorns.

As a parting gift, we thought you might like this article on learning styles from The Onion.  Maybe you’re a nasal learner!  Until next time!

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