COMMUNICATING THE VALUE OF LEARNING

An excerpt from the ASTD Press publication, Presenting Learning, this article highlights the critical role that communication plays in learning’s strategic impact.

Many learning professionals expend a tremendous amount of energy trying to generate concrete return-on-investment numbers, without recognizing that it’s equally important to make a persuasive case for learning’s overall strategic impact on an organization.

Communication is the means by which learning spreads throughout an organization, so one of the best ways learning can align itself is by heightening awareness of the strategic importance of learning and facilitating more precise and purposeful communication throughout the organization. The great side benefit of this approach is that learning’s contribution and value will be difficult, if not impossible, to dispute.

Communicating strategies and objectives in a way that everyone can understand is a challenge for many organizations. A CEO may issue a demand for “organic growth,” or “more efficient deployment of resources,” which might sound good and leader-like on paper, but to rank-and-file employees, it may mean nothing more than just another call to do more with less. If strategic objectives are communicated in vague, hollow language, even if the script has been approved by the organization’s leaders, it can take some work to sift through the verbal fog to locate a true strategy and the consequences that arise from it.