Restructuring Learning & Education

As a human capital leader, you know that restructuring your Learning and Education (L&E) function is not only an exercise in organizational redesign; it is a strategy for how the talent in your organization will be attracted, retained and developed. You want a partner that respects your experience, brings thought leadership, knows best practices and can work with you to shape those practices to your culture, your capability needs, and your resources. Duke CE can be that partner.

Our work in L&E restructuring is aimed at helping you redesign the function with an eye to enhancing the quality and relevance of your product and your resources. It responds to questions you might be asking including:

  • How can we improve L&E’s business contribution?
  • How do we do more with less?
  • Should we centralize or decentralize L&E?
  • How much can we move to e-learning?
  • Do we have the right people in L&E?
  • What about shared services?
  • Should we outsource all or part of L&E?

Restructuring starts with your  business goals and your learning architecture – the strategy, frameworks, and set of developmental activities you have created to ensure that your people can execute your strategy. (If your Learning Architecture is out of date, it can be addressed as part of a broader project merging both Learning Architecture and Restructuring L&E work.)

Our approach

 First create a charter

A jointly created project charter ensures the team is aligned on the purpose and scope of the work:

  • Objectives – What is the business purpose of the restructuring? , e.g., reduce travel, eliminate redundancy, connect  directly to capabilities required by the strategy
  • Guiding principles – What guidance must be considered in framing the solution? , e.g. go green,  leverage knowledge management, focus on high performers
  • Project frames – What do we want o emphasize to push our thinking? , e.g., 60% of learning and development to occur in the course of work

Project Phases

  • Understanding – Gain insight into your company’s strategy and goals and how they translate to L&E. Understand how L&E is structured, staffed and integrated into the business and why.
  • Visioning – Step away from current reality and experiment with new ways of thinking. Create scenarios of new structures, practices, and methodologies that can drive change.
  • Direction Setting –Evaluate the size and nature of the opportunity for productive change under each scenario. Integrate and craft recommendations.
  • Committing – Gain leadership’s  agreement to the change
  • Implementing – Plan and stage execution
  • Sustaining – Draft guidelines to avoid slipping back.

Team

We are different from consulting firms in two ways. First our people know learning and education in a business context.  Second, we do not believe in black box consulting. We work in a joint project team with our clients. Because we work through this process together, we collectively understand why our recommendations are sound.  This eliminates the time involved in translating a consultant’s recommendations in order to achieve buy in.