The adoption of e-learning in an organization should be the responsibility of business managersnot training or IT managers. This might be in operations, sales, or some other function that focuses on business problems and solutions. In certain cases, a cross-functional teamincluding operations, finance, training, and marketingmight be involved in the effort.
In any case, all participants must understand that deployment is a business function. In terms of business process improvement, the building blocks related to creating an e-learning effort are similar to those required for creating any new Internet business initiative. The skill demands on a team for deploying Internet learning in an organization are similar to those for any business process improvement. In essence, the champions of e-learning deployment should be familiar with change management.
The BearingPoint approach to e-learning engagement offers a useful illustration of the process. At BearingPoint, a program management office of professionals with expertise in a range of skills identifies needs and delivers solutions in the area of e-learning for the organization. The program office served as the change agent during the adoption phase of e-learning at BearingPoint.
Hindsight Is 20/20: Got It! What Next?To start, you must have a general understanding of what needs to get done mixed with a dose of reality of what you can do. The first big step is to select a project. This is the most difficult part because picking a project represents the beginning of the action, visibility, and controversy that will be the hallmarks of your next 6 to 24 months. Initiating an e-learning project, if you've not yet taken that step, means you have to do something you might have little or no experience with, take some significant risks, be willing to explore the unknown at full speed, and generally be courageous in the face of known and unknown dangers. One tool that can help you pick the project is the familiar quadrant chart. (See Figure 11-1.) Although the chart is somewhat intuitive, it suggests that it makes sense to pick a project that will be relatively easy to implement and that will also make a business impact. Easy might mean not complex, or might mean fast, or might perhaps mean cross-organizational teamwork is not required. The meaning of easy changes with each organization's variables. If you pick an easy project that has little or no visible business impact, you're not taking a big enough risk, and your success will be dismissed as an experiment that won't work in the real world.
Figure 11-1. Selecting a ProjectRisk/Performance Grid
The point of the first project is to make a splash, gain some experience, develop some processes, and brace yourself for what follows your success: the expectation that you can do it againbigger, faster, and with much more complexity woven into the goals. To pick a project, you must understand who your real customer is. This sounds easier than it is. The person or group asking for your help (and sometimes funding it) is not always the one who will use or benefit from your solution. Customer support can ask for help for a specific customer, or a manager for help with employee technical or leadership training, or an operations group for their internal constituency. You must know what the real problem is, and you get that only from the real customer. |