Chief Learning Officer - August 2007 - (Page 35)

tactics “How can we organize ourselves to make good decisions around our learning programs and the technologies that support them?” The answer is LMS governance. It is an important part of the success of any LMS implementation, from the planning stage of the project through implementation and into the ongoing maintenance and further evolution of the LMS. Often, these LMS governance structures mature into fully functioning learning governance structures that oversee all aspects of organizational learning. The characteristics of effective LMS governance models are: • Business focus: Get the right people making decisions about learning across the enterprise. • Transparency: True corporate-level visibility into learning. • Flexibility: Rapid response capability to changing business priorities, creating a nimble model. • Impartiality: Independent status increases perception that learning priorities and standards support all groups fairly, creating a credible model. • Economical: Leveraging best practices to maximize return on investment in learning. the lines of business to deliver the actual events. • The federated model tends to incur increased costs, it diminishes best practices and enterprise coordination and it results in divergent processes and procedures in each area of business. 2. Centralized: The centralized style of governance relies on economies of scale derived from a shared-services approach to learning delivery. • Centralized models result in the reduction of overall learning costs throughout the enterprise because of a cooperative sharing of costs across larger organizations. • Centralized models also allow learning to influence the broadest set of individuals because funding and impact can take place in areas where it has not occurred previously. • The centralized model also might result in increased bureaucracy, diminished responsiveness and disconnect from business issues and challenges. 3. Blended: The blended style of governance provides a combination of best practices, relying on both centralized shared services and decentralized administration of learning delivery. I www.clomedia.com I Chief Learning Officer 35 August 2007 Growing Your Model as Your Needs Grow Depending on the size of your organization and your level of centralization of learning functions, you might move toward any of the three general governance models: federated, centralized or blended. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. 1. Federated: The federated style of governance heavily relies on local decision making for delivering most aspects of learning. • Federated models typically provide more learning autonomy to the line of business to effect changes and institute policies. • Federated models rely on small corporate teams to identify and coordinate enterprisewide learning and development initiatives while enabling individual learning units within • Blended models result in a hybrid version of operational efficiencies, as well as optimized learning delivery embedded within the lines of business. • Blended models tend to be adopted by mature learning organizations, which have effectively overcome the obstacles of governance, shared services and process automation. This evolves into a business development, service-oriented consulting and in-sourcing model of operational costs and chargeback finances. • The blended model can present challenges to companies without standardized processes, dynamic business leaders and focused learning organizations. Many enterprises struggle to achieve this nirvana while they vacillate between http://www.clomedia.com

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