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.
