Chief Learning Officer - January 2009 - (Page 37) T he concept of building a learning coalition is interesting. There is a fairly large body of knowledge, research and documentation regarding the composition and characteristics of a coalition. The nature of a coalition becomes apparent when it’s contrasted with a team: • A team is a group of individuals with similar values, characteristics and priorities working toward a common goal. • A coalition is a group of individuals with dissimilar values, characteristics and priorities working toward a common goal. The members of a coalition forgo their own goals for the mission of the coalition. It’s interesting that the key difference between a team and a coalition is the similarity or dissimilarity of the members. This seems academically sound but not especially useful if you’re actually trying to build a coalition. When Kathy Wojcik, manager of leadership development and learning at Gates Corp., was asked to contribute her thoughts to this article, her first question was, “What is a learning coalition?” It’s not an easy thing to define, let alone assemble. This got the ball rolling on a discussion about what a learning coalition might look like and how it might operate. The term “coalition” is most often associated with organizations that are working toward a broad and altruistic goal, such as eliminating world hunger. The word also is used when referring to a governing body that contains several factions, such as a coalition government. These all sound nice, but don’t quite capture the essence of what a useful learning coalition should be. Why would anyone build a group that by definition is comprised of members who have dissimilar values, characteristics and priorities? It seems a team approach — in which members are similar — would create less conflict and allow for quicker decision making. After all, the aim is to have a learning solution that adds value to the business. While it is true that a team would probably come to a consensus more quickly, there is an advantage in bringing together individuals with diverse values, characteristics and priorities, and the coalition actually provides two important benefits over the team: 1. The coalition generates a broader range of alternative solutions than a homogeneous team. 2. It is easier to receive ultimate buy-in and support for a solution from individuals or organizations that participated in developing the solution. A learning coalition should have the following characteristics: • A clearly defined mission regarding learning initiatives or resources. • Members who put their individual priorities aside and work in the interest of the overall mission. • Represent and solicit input from a broad range of business functions. • Evaluate a wide variety of solution options with no predetermined outcome. Thus, a learning coalition should be a diverse group of learning organizations, business units or other resources dedicated to developing learning solutions that EVENTS support the achievement of a Building a learning coalition common business goal. involves going beyond the Based on this definition, boundaries of learning, the we can look at where learntheme of the Spring 2009 Chief ing coalitions already exist Learning Officer Symposium. and where a learning coaliFor more information, go to tion might be implemented www.clomedia.com/events/ to optimize the impact of Symposiums. the learning organization. A widely used example of a learning coalition is the corporate learning council. To truly qualify as a coalition, the corporate learning council should have broad representation from many business functions. The goals and composition of corporate learning councils can vary from organization to organization, but generally they are composed of individuals from a variety of business functions. They exist to set a company-wide learning strategy, prioritize and allocate learning resources or evaluate and implement company-wide learning technologies such as a learning management system, e-learning or even a wiki. Once again, the diversity of the learning coalition members not only brings a wider variety of options but also creates a higher level of specialized expertise Chief Learning Officer • January 2009 • www.clomedia.com 37 http://www.clomedia.com/events/Symposiums http://www.clomedia.com
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