Obtaining and maintaining buy-in

- Intuitively, it seems to make sense. The stronger the learning and development initiatives within an organization, the stronger and more profitable the organization becomes. It should be case closed. Unfortunately it's not. Obtaining buy in for a training program can be a long and difficult process. And once you get the buy in for launching the program, you might then need to get buy ins so that you can grow and expand. Let's start with gaining initial buy in. First, you need to determine how the learning and development initiatives you are proposing are going to support the strategic or operational goals of the organization. Leaders don't want to hear about the inherent value of learning or how it makes people better and more productive in general, no, instead, they want to hear about increases to the productivity of their specific employees. Or increases in their sales. They want positive changes to the key performance indicators for which they are responsible. If you can show that your learning and development efforts will improve the bottom line of their department or division, you've taken a big step toward buy in. Next, you need to do a little campaigning. You need to talk to the department heads and explain how learning and development solves their specific problems. You need to talk to executives and explain how learning and development helps them reach their goals. You want to slowly build support by having one on one conversations and building a slide deck that makes a clear case why L&D initiatives are valuable. It won't be easy, because often, learning and development efforts are seen as a cost and not an investment. You need to reframe the conversation and have an investment focus and not a cost focus. Finally, you need to include a plan to measure the effectiveness of the learning and development efforts. Gather critical data about your efforts. I've found that you don't need to measure all of your learning and development efforts, but you do need to pick one or two key programs and show how they directly impact the bottom line, or support key strategic drivers, and then share that data widely within the organization. But unfortunately, even if you follow these three ideas to create initial buy in, it's no guarantee that support will remain forever. To sustain support, you need to continually meet with leaders to reinforce the value of learning and development efforts. From day one, put into place a plan to continually share data and the results from your efforts that illustrate what L&D has achieved. Work to be part of early discussions of new corporate initiatives and continually highlight improvements, safety records, and other results that can be linked directly to L&D. Remember, not only must you obtain buy in for an L&D effort, you must also sustain buy in. If you use these techniques, you'll be well on your way to obtaining and maintaining the buy in you need to have a successful L&D organization.