Larry was in the office by 07.30am. He was feeling fresh and ready to think of some possible questions the leadership team might ask as Brian had advised. It took him almost one hour, but at the end of it he had written down six questions with probable answers. The six questions were:

1. What's the benefit of having a learning strategy? It will enable us to align investment in learning and development to the organization's strategic priorities. This will decrease ineffective learning programmes which have little or no impact on the organisation as learning and development will mostly focus on delivering programmes that the organisation needs.
2. How is it different to what we did before? Before we had a training plan or more appropriately catalogue of courses which people choose from. We had no idea whether these were useful for the organisation or not. With a learning strategy we start first with what the organisation wants to achieve and then decide on the learning needed to support the organisation to achieve it.
3. What is involved in creating a learning strategy? We will need to collect information from key stakeholders telling us what are the top priorities for the organization, these could be strategic objectives, challenges that need to be overcome or major changes happening. Once we know what these priorities are, we can then start working out what learning is necessary to support the achievement of these priorities. The most important stakeholders we need to speak to are you, the leadership team.
4. Who will be involved in creating it? My team, the leadership team, mainly for information and backing to let the whole organisation know that you want us to do it. This will help us deal with any resistance. Also any other stakeholder who can contribute appropriately to the process. We will identify them as we work along in the process.
5. How long will it take? A month to create the first version.
6. Are there any costs involved? Only indirect costs measured in people's time.

Larry was sure that his presentation would answer some of the questions, probably the first two, but it was better to be prepared than sorry. Now he was ready for the meeting which was planned for  10.00. He would have 15 minutes to present. The next 90 minutes was going to feel like a long wait.