This is the fourth and final installment of TrainingZone’s series ‘Leveraging AI transformation to tackle L&D legacies’. In the previous article we explored how ‘colleague AI’ can help L&D on assessments, skills and metrics. Here, we’ll look at what AI means for the learning team as a whole and, more specifically, how you can disrupt your learning function with AI – before somebody else does.
This is about who you can be now, for the business and your learners, in ways you may not have been able to make happen so far. This is about your value proposition, how you go about delivering it, and what you need in terms of skills and resources.
This transformation goes a lot deeper than playing with new shiny AI tools. For that, you need to get your head out of the day-to-day weeds and start thinking on a much more long-term strategic level. At this stage, we don’t have all the answers. But we do have a lot of provocative questions that you should be asking yourselves.
Here are four ways to get started.
1. Revisit your value proposition and create an AI-powered learning strategy
Make time for this. We are serious. Otherwise the transformation and all its noise may cause you to lose control of the conversation. The business and your key senior stakeholders need to see you commit time to this (involve them!). Your business will likely be transforming too, so do this together in the strong strategic partnership you envision for your future. This isn’t ‘just’ about learning.
Start with the basics: Who are we, why are we here, and what are we doing for whom. This is what some folks like to call a value proposition. How can AI help you add value?
- What parts of your current landscape would you redesign completely with ‘AI first’ in mind, if you were to start from scratch?
- What is the business case for you and your team? (We are not suggesting you adopt an AI-first approach completely, but it is a valid question to ask so you can better lean into your human niche.)
- How do you envision your new (likely closer) relationship with the business? How will AI be able to augment how you add value? How can you be more proactive now in ways you weren’t able to before?
- What do you want your new portfolio to be – reimagine content modalities to best serve what this intervention is looking to achieve (enabled with AI). And what are your plans for the ‘old’ parts that no longer serve you?
2. Consider how organisation design will support the new learning strategy
It is also time to look at the future of the learning function – its skills, roles and embedment in the organisation. Who does what in the organisation and what is your niche? How will your ecosystem look? (Consider internal comms and tech roles here)
With your new portfolio, who are the people and what are the skills you need? What do you want to build, buy, borrow (outsource)? Similar to the shift to online, you might want to find a good expert partner to support you with this. You will also want to revisit your vendor list as your expectations sharpen. They aren’t sleeping either so make the most of this.
At this stage, involve your close cousins from Internal Comms, HR, and tech. This might feel vastly uncomfortable. But the need for learning in an organisation will not go away – if anything it will become an increasingly crucial business imperative. Be open to where these conversations lead you and keep thinking of your ‘value-add’.
Organisational hierarchies
The seniority structure in your team will likely shift, too. As with many other functions, a lot of tasks commonly grouped into entry-level jobs will most likely be automated over time (or outsourced or in shared service centres).
You will probably need fewer resources in mid-career roles. Your contribution to the business will be more strategic and consultative than operational. And you will still need to create meaningful development paths for talent to move in, through and out of your function. Make friends with your HR and Talent teams, who are likely to be already looking at this.
Learning tech roles
Learning tech roles will likely be absorbed by IT. The fluidity of tools and data sources will merge into one large Retrieval-Augmented Generated (RAG) system, while an AI interface can be laid over the top of more clunky learning tech. That is good news (if possibly a large transformation).
Data roles
Data and analytics roles (which might not have previously existed) will be automated and augmented. These will have a dedicated learning focus, helping demonstrate the added value of Learning.
Learning operations
Finally, learning operations could be largely automated over time. But this would require sufficient clarity in systems, structures and processes for AI to work with. With the emergence of fully personalised learning, the number of cohort-based, live training events is also likely to decrease.
3. Explore the skills your team needs
This isn’t just about AI upskilling. (Let’s assume that if you’re supporting this effort for the business then you’re also developing yourself in this space.)
This goes deeper into your sharpened role within the business. A lot of learning teams have always been permeable with other functions and few people ‘grew up in learning’ professionally. That is a strength you can build on.
Think about skills like:
- Performance consulting with even stronger business acumen.
- Instructional and experience design.
- Strategic thinking and stronger use of data and evidence.
- Innovation.
- Critical thinking.
- Understanding of science and evidence-based practice in learning.
- Change and communication, stakeholder management and engagement – to push boundaries with this AI-powered transformation.
- An ongoing practice (also within your whole team) of keeping up to speed with evolving learning tech and industry practices.
- The ability to keep reinventing and constructively disrupting yourself. Things will never be calm again.
4. Out with the old? Final thoughts on content and events
A different approach to content
Notice we haven’t mentioned content so far. There will be less of it (at least in a ‘created form’). It will be more dynamic, created differently, and might sit elsewhere. This is one to think through with brutal honesty as you think about your value proposition and strategy.
You might have an AI-powered content creation tool that includes good enough instructional design guidance, and you might have learning(ish) people in the business who are able to use it.
What role do you want to play in this? For example, you could run a loose Community of Practice, or provide expert guidance and performance consulting, with the business owning the rest. You probably won’t be the shopkeeper you might have been up to now.
Events – fewer but better
In the learning world of old (certainly pre-pandemic), a large part of your work, budget and team was, in fact, a travel and hospitality business under a different name. Yes, we mean all those events – however you called them.
Be candid as you look at this. We aren’t proposing to drop events – quite the contrary. You might have fewer of them, and they will need to be better designed and premium. They will no longer be a default outcome as you didn’t have any other way to ‘bundle things’ to ensure they happen. You will need a much stronger experience and learning design lens on this. This is likely a step up from where you and your team are right now – and it might warrant a look at your facilities too.
Human interactions and gatherings will be at a premium, so make them worth it. Use the full mix of modalities available to create seamless, blended experiences in ways you couldn’t before – and be bold. Make friends with marketing here, there is a lot already happening in the consumer space that you can learn from.
This brings us to the end of our series ‘Leveraging AI transformation to tackle L&D legacies’. You now have a lot to reflect on. Start prioritising and take your first steps. Continue sharing and networking with your peers, and keep your eyes peeled for useful presentations or articles. Be as generous as you can and as curious as you can.
Explore the rest of the content series:
