Running Learning Like a Business

Applying the principles of industrialization to developing and delivering learning can result in predictable, reliable, high-quality experiences at the right price.

When looking to improve their ability to run learning like a business — delivering cost savings and greater business impact — many learning executives have hit a wall. They may have already reduced costs by 20 or 30 percent and now find additional incremental improvements difficult to achieve.

How can CLOs take both efficiency and learning effectiveness to the next level? The answer lies in adopting broader and more sweeping approaches to the industrialization of the learning function.

Industrialization represents a relentless drive to discover the essence of how something is optimally performed — and then to do it that way every time. It breaks a task or capability into smaller components, optimizes them, eliminates redundancies, automates and standardizes wherever possible, and then drives the work itself to the most cost-effective and competent workforce available.

Some executives may resist the idea of industrialization in a learning environment. They may feel their business and workforce needs are unique and could not benefit from such an approach. Others may believe that the management of process and people is more art than science. But a number of industry leaders are finding that industrializing the learning environment is a way to reduce risk, improve quality and reliability, raise productivity, create a more agile business and even innovate more predictably.

A Blueprint for Learning
In manufacturing, industrialization begins with the design specs — an effective blueprint for a product, which then becomes one important way to standardize production. Similarly, industrialized learning is driven by what we call a “capability blueprint” — a blueprint for creating a new business capability or a new learning strategy and delivery channel. The blueprint establishes a standardized and repeatable approach to planning and execution, broken down into three dimensions: strategy, performance metrics and business architecture.