Three steps to building a better ecosystem

No question, you know that you need to implement digital learning. Your employees and your leadership look to you to develop that learning culture, to make it easy for people to find what they need and to respond to the demands of today. So, how do you get there? Just the basics: there are three steps to driving to your goals.

Step One: Make it easy

Everyone of us is busy. Whatever we do needs to be easy and intuitive. That means one place to go with a great user experience and an user interface that needs no introduction. Bring in all the resources into one place: internal, external, formal and informal. Integrate them all into the front door of both learning and knowledge. Provide simple tools for leaders, subject matter experts and L&D to develop clear solutions.

Today, employees go to multiple LMSs, portals and third-party apps to find answers. Resources are hidden and it is easier to Google a question than to look internally. And who knows if what they find is either correct or best suited for your industry or company.

Bring on the Learning Experience Platform. The front door to learning and knowledge that integrates the resources you want people to find. Users can be organized into groups to provide personalized, role specific data. Content can be set up into paths by anyone and social tools enable peer and leader interaction. Easy.

Step Two: Utilize your tacit knowledge

For years, L&D has had command and control of learning. We have been hampered by low budgets and challenges of how to scale across the organization. We have been limited to what we can do within an LMS and formal learning. Today, with Digital Learning, we have access to more content, more tools and easier integrations. But best of all, we can bring in our Subject Matter Experts and leaders to create content, provide social learning. New tools exist to make that simple.

Peer to peer and leader to employee content is more popular and engaging. A short video from a SME on how to do a task or a short note from a leader will drive more views and improve engagement. Use your L&D team to mentor and coach them. Partner with them to communicate and build content. Champions drive engagement.

Step Three: Marketing

No question, you need to communicate to all about your ecosystem. Driving engagement is critical and it takes many facets. First, find and market to your champions. Build up content with them and use them to create excitement. While not an easy step at first, it is critical. Work with your leadership development team to find leaders who care and believe in learning. If they have a communications person, work with them. Some will take help by ghost writing content. Look for events and announcements that will matter to their teams.

Once champions are on board, continue to nurture and grow that resource. There is a constant care and feeding of these experts. They bring fresh content and ideas.

Secondly, start to socialize and “leak” announcements of the ecosystem to build excitement. Build a partnership with your corporate communications team. They can help with the initial roll out as well as work with you to drive content matching their calendar of events. Make your ecosystem work with the strategy and initiatives to communicate corporate programs.

Lastly, focus on communications to various groups. Look at how portfolios need updating, how new programs are being rolled out, and how organizations are driving adoption of new ideas. Partner with businesses, regions and local groups to make the ecosystem the go to place for knowledge.

What is measured is done

Ongoing marketing of the ecosystem means partnering, mentoring, and working with the business to drive engagement. Your learning metrics will change and your dashboard will show new data. Measure engagement, content usage, content creation and group effectiveness. For that you need a good business intelligence tool ties to all of the resources. You will need to know what is working and what is not. Who is responding to what effort? Make sure your ecosystem can measure all actions and resources.