Learning at the speed of business

Learning at the speed of business

There is something slightly odd about learning technology.

Your business can change overnight. A new product launches. A customer need shifts. A regulation changes. A new skill suddenly becomes critical.

But changing the learning experience? That can take months!

We all know how this plays out, but humour me…

First, someone has to work out what needs to be built. Then the learning team starts designing it. Then subject matter experts review it. Then someone else reviews the review. Then there is a sign-off. Then the build. Then another review. Then testing. Then translation. Then, eventually, it might make its way onto the platform.

Lots of then’s!

By the time it gets there, the business has already moved on. And that is before you even try changing the technology itself.

What about the queue nobody talks about?

Want to change something in your LMS? Submit a request.

Need a new feature? Add it to the roadmap.

Want something configured differently? Wait for the supplier.

Need an integration? That is another conversation.

And somewhere, there is a queue. Your request joins everyone else's requests, gets prioritised against other customers, and eventually someone tells you when it can happen. Or more likely, that it cannot.

So you work around it. Because that is what businesses have become very good at doing. Working around their technology.

It is worth naming what that actually costs. Every workaround is a small tax on the business. A workaround here. A manual process there. A spreadsheet standing in for a feature the platform will not do. None of it looks expensive on its own. Together, it adds up to a learning function permanently running behind the business it is meant to serve.

What if learning could move at the same speed as the business?

Imagine being able to change the way your people learn because your business changed, rather than waiting for your technology to catch up.

Imagine being able to shape the learning experience around how your organisation actually works.

Not the other way around.

That might mean changing a learning journey. Adding a new capability. Creating something specific for a team. Responding quickly to a new business priority. Or simply making something work better because the people using it told you it was not working.

The point is not having more technology. It is having more flexibility around the technology you already use. Because speed changes what learning can do

When the barriers come down, learning becomes much more than a catalogue of courses.

• Respond to capability gaps while they are still relevant
• Build skills when the business needs them, not when the project plan allows it
• Improve experiences based on what people actually do, not what was assumed at design stage
• Test, learn and change without starting another six-month project

And ultimately, make a much bigger contribution to the business.

Because if it takes six months to build a learning solution for a capability the business needed three months ago, you have already missed the moment.

Technology should fit the business. Not the other way around. We are not suggesting every organisation needs to throw out its LMS.

Far from it.

The question is whether your current setup gives you the flexibility to do what your business needs, when it needs it.

Sometimes the answer will be a new platform.

Sometimes it will be a smarter way of using what you already have.

Sometimes it will mean building something bespoke around the gaps.

The important thing is having the freedom to choose. This is not a technology problem to fix once and forget. Capability needs shift constantly, so the flexibility has to be built in, not bolted on. A platform that fits today and locks you in tomorrow has simply moved the same problem further down the road.

At Forge, we believe learning technology should work for your business, not make your business work around it.

Because when you remove some of the friction, you do not just make learning faster. You make it possible to respond faster, build capability faster and help your people perform better. And that is a much more interesting conversation than another LMS implementation.

Contributed by Gavin Collis
Learning, Capability & Future Skills

Curious whether your current setup is helping or holding you back?

Book a Forge Discover conversation. No pitch, no platform sales pitch, just a straight look at where the friction actually sits, and what flexibility could look like for your business.

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