E-learning initiatives can (and should) accomplish valuable results for individual learners, organizations, and society alike. Yet, the implementation of e-learning courses or programs in no way guarantees the achievement of valuable results for any of these interdependent groups. Nor can organizations wait until after e-learning investments have been made to define and
assess these intended results. Organizations that apply the “fire, aim, ready” approach to e-learning implementation when they hear about the latest technology are unlikely to accomplish useful results. The successful accomplishment of valuable results requires proactive planning and decision making from the earliest phases of the development process.
You cannot assume, for instance, that analogous e-learning efforts as those that have been successful in other organizations (whether they be Fortune 500 businesses, regional school districts, or Ivy League universities) are going to work for your organization. Each organization has some combination of unique strategic objectives, history, learners, culture, motivation, and other factors that may or may not contribute to the success of their e-learning efforts. As a consequence, your success hinges not on the success of others but on your ability to determine and define the results that must be accomplished for all three groups (i.e., individual learners, your organization, and the shared society) and then decide if e-learning is going to achieve those results.
Planning for the accomplishment of value-adding results requires that we focus on the contributions that will be beneficial to all the individuals and groups that are principal to our success. Groups such as suppliers, organizational partners, clients, community members, and others should each benefit from the e-learning opportunities we offer; their success is tantamount to our success. After all, a successful system of e-learning (just as most any other organizational initiative) extends beyond the products delivered to the learners or direct-clients to include the subsequent performance of learners in the workplace, the safety of product they deliver to clients, the long-term success of client organizations, and the value learners can add to our shared communities.
As a consequence, there are several useful perspectives that can be used to consider the groups that are essential to our success. From generations of clients to varying roles in the supply chain, differing ways to consider the groups that are essential to our success should be used to ensure that our planning is truly systemic. One practical framework for categorizing our organizational partners is to examine the expected results of both internal and external groups to our organization. That is to say, what are differing results expectations of internal clients (e.g., individual learners, teams, divisions) versus external clients (e.g., suppliers, client organizations, organizational partners, community members)? And, can e-learning provide the necessary results for all of these partners to be successful?
The internal partners of an organization include the individual learners, colleagues, teams, units, divisions, and others that we work with each day to produce valuable products. An internal partner is also the organization itself. Defining and assessing the results that we contribute to each of these groups within our organization provides for the essential internal alignment that is necessary for success. For instance, an e-learning development team in the training department has many internal partners that include the technical support staff, the network administrators, the human resources department, graphic designers.
In addition, the learners who will complete the training, the supervisors of those learners, the divisions in which learners will perform their newly acquired skills, as well as the organization itself which will benefit from the performance of employees are also essential internal partners to the success of e-learning. Only when working together and toward the same objectives can all of these interdependent groups effectively deliver the products and/or services that make the organization successful. Hence, proactive planning efforts should start by defining the results that each of these groups requires and later determine if e-learning (or some other initiative) is the best tool for accomplishing those results.
The members of the second constituent group are the direct and indirect external partners of our organization. These external partners typically include members on both ends of our organizational processes; (a) the supply-side partners that contribute to the success of our efforts (e.g., suppliers, consultants, development partners), (b) the product-side direct clients that purchase our organization’s products or services, as well as (c) the product-side indirect clients that are the clients of our direct clients and the other societal members that benefit from our organization’s contributions.
The external partners similarly play an important role in the success of any organizational initiative. The external partners are defined by the direct and indirect relationship that each has with our organization. For example, external partners may include direct-clients who purchase online training curriculum for their organization, learners from other organizations that take an e-learning course, and/or the organization that supplies our learning management system. Each of these groups is a first-generation direct-client of the products and/or services you provide, yet they reside outside of your organization.
Correspondingly, the indirect partners of an organization can also include the second generation clients (i.e., our clients’ clients) who receive goods or services from direct-partners, third generation clients who are the end-consumers of the products that are delivered, as well as the external society in which our organization (and our organizational partners) operate. As much as any other partners, these external indirect clients of our organization play an essential role in defining what results are necessary for our organizations to be successful, and subsequently what is required of e-learning initiatives (see Figure 1).
Effective planning for successful e-learning incorporates the necessary results for all of the partners in the system to be successful. By starting outside of the organization and moving inward you can effectively plan for the achievement of valuable results that will benefit all of the internal and external partners (e.g., individual learners, organizational units, your organization, client organizations, clients’ clients, and even society at large). This planning for the accomplishment of useful results for all stakeholder and partner groups is the first step in determining if e-learning is the “right” tool for achieving useful results. And when e-learning is the “right” tool you will know in detail what results must be achieved by the efforts in order for all of the system partners to be successful.
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