September 9, 2021
TIME: 5:30 - 7:30 pm
IN PERSON!
From ‘Order Taker’ to Stakeholder: How L&D can earn a seat at the table
Despite best intentions, many L&D teams find themselves brought into learning needs conversations too late to provide value. They become “order takers,” building learning solutions that were already scoped for them by other stakeholders. This is bad for business: training is developed without the benefit of understanding the learners’ needs or environment and without the clear line of sight needed to align with organizational goals. The end result is a lot of L&D resources devoted to creating a product that fails to resonate with learners or help the organization meet KPIs. In the meantime, instructional designers get burned out creating programs and products that they know aren’t going to make a difference. They lose their motivation, and some might start looking for other opportunities.
In our session, we’ll show you how becoming the valuable performance enablement component your team was created to be starts with establishing your identity as a learning experience design (LXD) team that is focused on your learners, not your learning product.
We’ll explore how you can use tools like learning personas, learning journey maps, and empathy maps can help you realize this mindset by giving you a deeper understanding of your learners, so you can meet their needs in ways that are natural to them.
We’ll demonstrate collaborative mission and vision crafting exercises you can use to build consensus within your team about who you want to be and what influence you will have on your business partners and the rest of the organization, while truly showing love to your learners by leading with empathy.
Next, we’ll discuss who you will want to bring in from the organization to help communicate and evangelize your identity as a stakeholder in performance improvement and reaching organizational goals and KPIs, and discuss how to respond to pushback you might receive.
Finally, we’ll give you some ideas for how to advocate for your team by showing how your early involvement in gap analysis and scoping discussions will benefit your learners, your stakeholder partners, and the organization as a whole to all achieve their goals.
In this action packed session, we will discover:
- The difference between a traditional product-first L&D mindset and a learner-first LXD mindset
- How crafting a mission statement and team goals helps your team to define an LXD mindset
- How incorporating learning personas, learning journey maps, and empathy maps can help realize the change to an LXD mindset
- How to identify key organizational allies for evangelizing your team as stakeholders
- How to communicate that by becoming an early stakeholder, the LXD team helps partners in performance enablement meet their goals
Agenda:
5:30 - 6:00 pm Dinner & Networking
6:00 - 6:15 pm Welcome & Introductions
6:15 - 7:15 pm Presentation & Practice
7:15 - 7:30 pm Learning Wrap-Up & Meeting Close
Location:
Please note that this is a NEW LOCATION!
Office Evolution (link to website)
455 E. Eisenhower Pkwy. Suite 300
Ann Arbor, MI 48108
Free, on-site parking is available.
**To avoid the spread of COVID-19, every attempt will be made to social distance and masks are required for all attendees.
We will be serving individually boxed meals. We intend to eat outside at the event location. Accommodations will be made in the event of bad weather.**
Registration:
- Chapter members = $15
- Student members = $10
- Non-member guests = $20
Registrations are not considered definite or confirmed until payment has been submitted.
Cancellations & Refunds:
Cancellations will be accepted until 5 pm the Friday before the event
- Cancellations received prior to this time/date should be requested in writing and sent to finance@a2atd.org.
- Refunds will be issued either via original payment or transferred to the next scheduled A2ATD meeting date.
- Refunds after 5 pm the Friday before the event cannot be issued, but we will gladly accept a substitution should you wish to send someone in your place.
About the Presenters:
Laurel Schulert and Dave Kerschbaum
Laurel Schulert is the Director of Learning Experience within the SAP Concur Global Enablement team. Laurel holds a Master of Science in Education in Learning Design and Technology from Purdue University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Education from Eastern Michigan University. Laurel has also earned the Master Performance Consultant certification through the Association for Talent Development (ATD), and has served as the President of the Ann Arbor Association for Talent Development.
Dave has been designing and building learning experiences for the past 12 years. He’s had the opportunity to help build and define several learning experience teams within that time. His mountain top experience was winning the 2019 DevLearn Demofest Best Video Solution award, which he strategically places on his bookshelf in view of the camera for Zoom calls.
