In the final of his six article series, Jonathan Kettleborough concludes his look at the key ingredients for ensuring flawless execution within a successful L&D department.

Returning to the earlier facts, businesses can’t just stop sending emails or storing data but it’s definitely possible to turn waste into value. Perhaps your business doesn’t actually need a printed booklet of all the courses it offers employees. Perhaps employees can be booked electronically onto courses or manage these bookings themselves, as is now becoming more widespread in large companies as self-service people products are increasingly rolled out. Even the simplest change could save you thousands of pounds per year. 

Here’s an example: Two of the professional institutes to which I belong issue membership certificates. One issues your certificate at the time you’re accepted as an associate, member or fellow and only updates the certificate should your membership be upgraded. The other issues a certificate every year. That’s thousands of pieces of paper, all colour-printed and posted out to thousands of members in specially stiffened envelopes - EVERY YEAR.  Add to that the cost of postage, labels and the physical manpower required to make this happen and the waste is sizeable. If ever there was a great chance to save money, reduce waste and reduce manpower then here it is.

Small steps perhaps, but steps that will make a real difference to your business. L&D professionals are legendary for wanting increases in their budgets each year, or pushing back and moaning when budget cuts loom. Actively reducing waste is a great way of showing that you’re aligned to the business, ‘doing your bit’ and actively working towards flawless execution.

Here’s a question for you: How long does it take to make a can of Coca-Cola? When thinking about the answer you’ll need to include everything needed to make the product, from mining the aluminium, to making the can, to actually getting the product into the supermarket. Here are four options for you to choose from and I’ll give you the answer a little later.  So, the total time taken to make a can of Coca-Cola is:

• 19 days
• 119 days
• 219 days
• 319 days

While you’re thinking about that, turn your mind to your own profession. How long do you think it takes to develop a piece of elearning or to design and implement a management development programme? Again, that’s everything from initial request to final delivery. Does it take hours, days, weeks, months?

I realise that the answer depends on hundreds of variables, but let’s take a moment and walk through what might be a typical route for developing a new elearning course. I appreciate that only some of you reading this article will actually develop elearning, but the basic approach will suffice for whatever requests are placed upon you. Here’s a typical route:

• receive the request
• conduct a training needs analysis
• demonstrate that the request is actually a business requirement
• decide on the overall approach and development
• gain approval
• gain budget approval
• decide whether to develop the elearning internally or externally
• if using an external organisation then develop an invitation to tender (ITT)
• send ITT to external companies
• review submissions
• make your choice of development partner

You could end up with dozens of separate steps which may also include deciding upon technology platforms, assessment criteria and integration with internal systems and so on.  Just take a few moments and look at the list above. As L&D professionals, what do you think you could do to reduce waste and make processes such as this faster and better?

Now back to the earlier question of how many days it takes to make a can of Coca-Cola. Did you guess correctly at 319 days? That’s right, from mining the aluminium ore to putting the can on a supermarket shelf takes 319 days for a can of Coke. That’s almost a year.

Reducing waste from any of the stages to get a can of Coca-Cola to the customer will have a major impact. Perhaps there are processes within your business that can be trimmed down, simplified or even removed altogether. As an example, being able to cut recruitment or induction time would mean that new people could be up to speed and making a contribution faster than ever before. This would produce visible and measurable benefits which would be felt across the whole business; a real demonstration of flawless execution.

Summary

Most of us waste vast amounts of resources every year – we don’t intend to, but we do. As L&D professionals you’re in a fantastic position to streamline your activities, to reduce waste and speed up operations, to demonstrate real alignment and value to your organisation and to help with flawless execution and delivery. Your business and customers will notice the difference and will thank you for it.

Conclusion

Good intentions account for nothing if you fail to deliver. As Benjamin Franklin said, “Well done is better than well said.” Flawless delivery at all times should be one of the key mantras and focus areas of every L&D professionals. The 'doing' part of your role may not always be the sexiest, but it’s the part that can deliver major benefits for your business. Focus on delivering the very best that you can at all times, reduce waste and empower your teams to deal with issues rather than passing them up the management chain of command.

Flawless execution can take years to achieve - indeed, for some businesses it may be a goal that’s never reached - but you must never stop trying to make the necessary improvements.

Jonathan Kettleborough has over 25 years’ experience in the learning and development profession. He has held senior positions and worked with clients in the nuclear, retail, financial services, stockbroking, business and technology services, telecommunications, government and integrated learning. Jonathan can be contacted via email, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Jonathan’s new book, Seeing Eye to Eye is available via Amazon and a number of other major online booksellers in hardback, softback and all major electronic formats

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