"Dear Consultant “Change Or Die”!
“If you as a consultant do not upskill and make technology a central part of your job, I believe you will die!”
I want to contribute to guiding you through the mist of learning technologies with a simple approach…..
Imagine this:
Tomorrow you will be in front of the first cohort out of many cohorts. This session is especially important as you are starting with the “CXO´s.”
You are excited, but also nervous. This has to go well and you need to deliver value in this first face-to-face module. You need to know the program well and ensure your co-consultant and you are on the same page.
The first run of the program is the demo for the key sponsors and the beginning of the first out of 1000 people who will be going through the “Green digital transformation” program.
This is a program you have been highly rewarded for internally. You even have had a head office and the design faculty mentioning the program at the monthly meeting and in newsletters. They all point out the cool combinations and blended learning you have designed. You have a great mix of online social interactions between participants and a game called “Go Green”. The program and game include the introduction of a new project model and a new leadership model necessary for successful green production change. The story in the game is a 100% fit to the market since clients from several companies have indicated a major need. You have also played around with new learning design since you experience a pull for greener production innovations products that take advantage of recent, well-developed digital opportunities. The learning process you have designed will be running over the next 2 years and will be run by your colleagues too.
Each program even has follow-up activities so all participants will be engaged and will be able to join without you even facilitating the process. It’s a totally new world of digital opportunities and everyone seems very satisfied with the design and program.
You believe this program will take your career to a whole new level since it includes the first real global rollout for you and for your department. You have spent a lot of hours and included a lot of your colleagues.
But, just having great content for your program is not enough. In order to present the full potential of this program, you know you need to be able to talk about the capability of the digital platform. There are many elements to get a handle on:
How does the prework get sent? By mail? Or can the system send the invitation automatically?
Will there be leadership profile statics for the L&D people? Going forward, how can you build a game for the new strategy? And what about the reporting to measure units and industries, as well as the TTT options. Plus, what are all the other opportunities you haven’t added into the program yet that could be part of the upsell processes for additional impact? Could this be used to differentiate your company from the rest?
The good news is you are using the Actee platform that has amazing support and an extensive FAQ section. Actee’s support includes videos to guide you to onboard the participants and even includes a tool for building sessions. Now you only need to build the slide deck for the next cohort your colleagues will run.
Back To My Blog!
Above is what I consider as the lowest level of usages to have if you want to use technology in your blended learning solutions. You can still get away with this level of use without being fed to the lions.
To be very direct:
If “just enough” is your ambition......you are fine….
but only for a little while.
Looking at the long game plan, if you don’t level up, you are only providing the same value as you did 5 to 10 years ago. In this case, your focus remains on your models, on your knowledge of organizational behaviour within your field of expertise (change, leadership, communication or) and on ways of organizing the workforces. Within this, you are good at coming up with fun introductions and engaging workshops with the right content.
BUT…. Here is the reality……
“If you as a consultant do not upskill and make technology a central part of your job, I believe you will die!”
Technology has so much more to add to your workshops. It can stimulate totally new revenue streams and provide you with an opportunity to create more value when you are not with the participants. Technology has answers and opportunities that will make a notable difference to your work
Back in the old days when I did my Master’s degree, one of my teachers said: “you can only learn this thoroughly if you sit down and do it…..”
Meaning if you want to keep up as a consultant you need to step in and know the technology you propose to your client. You need to know the tool well enough to be the strategic partner to L&D who in my opinion already has the skills.
You also need to get in front with L&D and be the consultant who wants to be measured on the whole process from pre-work, workshop to reinforcement activities. And you need to be able to drive the process out of the workshop and offer valuable feedback to L&D from technology tools and systems like Actee.
Why do I think this is so important?
The numbers of technology in HR have stayed the same (between 19 and 21 over the last 3 years ). The technology incorporates has in general terms increased dramatically to a level of 7200 different tools in 2019. I know this is not cored HR but the HR tools within #onboarding #recruitment #engagement are some of the most rapidly growing sectors.
When AI, machine learning, tech goggles, LMS, E-learning etc. comes into our world we need to have a more sophisticated, in-depth understanding than what a simple game platform require today.
I do not believe you can hand over knowledge on the technology you will be using in your design to the admin person. I believe the knowledge of tech is your core job as a consultant.
Why?
“You will be measured on the whole process including how well you know the technology solution you are in front of. Not only on the cool content you can talk about!”
My way of getting you through the mist is simple….
Sit down and spend the time it takes to learn about the technology you are bringing into you clients learning design.
“The big shift is that content is lithely standing behind the technology. This means if you prioritize content above the tech, you lose”
We must face the fact that the technology and the content are integrated, and we must know both. Also, face the fact that to use technology cannot be learned via google! You need to practice.
My last comment: We have some pretty cool partners who are great at sharing their views on technology. They are well on their way in the process of grasping the technology. We enjoy and celebrate the collaboration between them and us. Technology constantly develops and the collaboration with our partners develops our digital tool platform in the right direction. Actee needs to be intuitive enough to allow the consultants and L&D people to onboard easily but also to challenge and co-create the Actee tools further.
Ping me with your thoughts and please share.
Thanks to my colleagues, Tamara Eberle from Traction strategies and Sune Gudiksen for shaping up the blog with me.
Some ref:
Other blogs:
Technology is important to create a performance culture.
A model to design tech into your learning.
Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash
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