L&D + product = meaningful change
The fact is, product ultimately makes or breaks a company. It’s how your customers interact with you, it’s how they make their feelings known – either through embracing a product or rejecting it. So, understanding what’s of value to your customers and exactly how you’re improving their lives is crucial. And no one knows the areas that bring value better than the product team.
In my recent webinar, Driving Business Success: Dynamic collaboration between L&D and product leaders, I talked about the importance of L&D focusing on improving their organization’s system of work rather than the needs of individuals (as too many companies do), and on aligning learning goals with product goals versus solely individual goals.
There is also a need for L&D to approach learning, like change, as a continuous process. All too often, organizations understand that they have to change to reflect the shifting market, but they make reactionary changes almost for the sake of it. But in today’s world, companies need to be able to adapt quickly and survive over and over again.
It’s imperative to zoom out and see the bigger picture. Ignore quick fixes, and instead concentrate on building workforces, through good L&D, with the skills to adapt and thrive in any given climate. Increasing your company’s capacity to compete is determined by how your teams manage your products, and their ability to take ideas to market in the quickest time possible. That requires them, not only to learn how to effectively innovate and experiment but crucially, to apply that learning into their day-to-day work, supported and guided by product leaders who understand and create the environment needed to make this happen.
For organizations to successfully navigate change, it’s not about whether aligning L&D and product is a good place to start, it’s whether you can afford not to.
For further reading, I’d recommend downloading “L&D and the power of change”, our eBook which outlines a few practical exercises you can do to explore new ways of working to support your teams and your business.
Additional Insights
Unlocking team potential: rethinking learning approaches for agile work environments
How to ease the transition into a new learning model
Is your L&D helping (or hurting) culture and employee retention
