No organisation's learning and development team can possibly do everything itself; indeed it would be crazy to try. In common with any professional function, L&D delivers greater value when it focuses on a core set of strategic and operational activities and builds strategic partnerships with best-in-class external companies to work together to deliver its full range of services.
So, what should you look for when building effective partnerships that will both enhance overall provision and deliver real value to your organisation?
In my experience I’ve found that there are three golden rules for effective partnerships.
Rule 1: Find a partner who can 'scale' cheaply
Does your potential partner have a track record of understanding and responding to the nuances of local and regional variations within an organisation? Given that ability, can they scale your learning solution so it reaches right to the edges of your business, and do so fast and at low incremental cost?
"The new breed of training provider has an approach that can be scaled much more cheaply and effectively."
With traditional training methods, finding a partner to provide support across your organisation’s entire footprint (whether nationally, regionally or globally) was an expensive business. 'Global reach' meant flying trainers around the world at significant cost to the client. The new breed of training provider has an approach that can be scaled much more cheaply and effectively, whatever your organisation's size.
Rule 2: Find a partner who responds quickly to your needs
Can your partner respond at speed? Is it flexible and able to move rapidly with changing demands and requirements? Ideally, you want your partner to bring new processes and practises that increase, rather than slow down, your speed-to-delivery. For example, they might offer smarter ways of designing, developing and delivering learning solutions, or use new delivery channels to reach your audience. They may even find ways to make better use of technologies already your organisation, such as videoconferencing or web conferencing tools.
"You want your partner to bring new processes and practises that increase, rather than slow down, your speed-to-delivery."
And does the company have a track record of being pro-active, delivering ahead of deadlines, and exerting as little pull on internal resource for co-ordination as possible?
Organisations engage third parties because they don’t have the skills or resources to take on all aspects of the work themselves. They can’t afford to hand-hold, but they want the work completed quickly and efficiently. If the partner can’t take a brief and work through the minutiae itself, then it’s the wrong partner to be working with.
Rule 3: Find a partner with specialist knowledge
Is your partner willing and able not only to bring top-quality specialist knowledge to the partnership, but also to bring top-quality processes, techniques and open tools that it is willing to share freely with your L&D team? That might involve anything from sharing effective performance consulting techniques to helping you implement open source tools and technologies.
At some time in the future you may want to take more responsibility for some of the processes – whether it's content production, project management or quality assurance - and you don’t want to be locked into proprietary technologies and tools that are not based on open standards and can’t be easily transferred in-house.
"In the future you may want to take more responsibility for some of the processes... and you don’t want to be locked into proprietary technologies and tools."
If you ask these questions and satisfy yourself that prospective vendors can meet these requirements, then you’re well on the way to ensuring you’re building partnerships for success. How do you satisfy yourself that they can meet the requirements in action as well as on paper? Do what you’d do when you’re selecting a builder. Ask existing clients; get recommendations; view previous work; and check to see if they’ve won awards. There are many approaches that you can use - just make sure to do due diligence before you commit to a new partnership.
Charles Jennings is the managing director of Duntroon Associates, a specialist learning and performance consultancy business. Until 2008 he was Chief Learning Officer at Reuters and Thomson Reuters where he was responsible for learning and capability-building across the 55,000 global workforces.