Talent development is a crucial skill for any professional who wants to align their instructional design with business objectives. In this podcast review, I will summarize and evaluate the insights shared by Kris Newbauer, Chief People Officer and Head of People and Talent at Rotary International, and author of Aligning Instructional Design with Business Goals. You will learn how to apply his eight-step framework to strategically identify business needs, define success, and design curriculum with evaluation in mind. If you want to improve your talent development skills and deliver results that matter, read on!
Table of Contents
Genres
Business, Education, Career, Leadership, Management, Learning, Development, Training, Instructional Design, Podcast
The podcast Make a Business Case and Deliver Results with Kris Newbauer is hosted by Alexandria Clapp, a content manager at the Association for Talent Development (ATD). She interviews Kris Newbauer, who has over 20 years of experience in talent development and human resources. He is also the author of the book Aligning Instructional Design with Business Goals, which provides a practical guide for talent development professionals to create learning solutions that support business outcomes.
In the podcast, Newbauer explains his eight-step framework for aligning instructional design with business goals. The steps are:
- Identify the business need
- Define the desired performance
- Analyze the current performance
- Identify the performance gap
- Determine the root causes
- Select the appropriate solutions
- Design the evaluation plan
- Implement and evaluate the solutions
Newbauer emphasizes the importance of collaborating with stakeholders, conducting a thorough analysis, and measuring the impact of the learning solutions. He also shares some tips and best practices for applying his framework in different contexts and scenarios.
Review
I found the podcast to be very informative and engaging. Newbauer is a knowledgeable and experienced speaker who provides clear and concise explanations of his framework. He also gives relevant and realistic examples to illustrate his points. Clapp is a good interviewer who asks insightful and probing questions to elicit more details and insights from Newbauer. The podcast is well-structured and easy to follow, with a logical flow of topics and transitions.
The podcast is suitable for anyone who is interested in talent development and instructional design, especially those who want to align their learning solutions with business goals and demonstrate their value to the organization. The podcast covers the essential steps and concepts of Newbauer’s framework, but it also encourages the listeners to explore his book for more details and guidance. The podcast is about 30 minutes long, which is a reasonable length for a podcast of this nature.
The podcast is also relevant and timely, as talent development is becoming more important and strategic in the changing business environment. The podcast provides practical and actionable advice for talent development professionals to improve their skills and deliver results that matter. The podcast is a valuable resource for anyone who wants to learn how to make a business case and deliver results with talent development.
Recommendation
Dive into the world of strategic talent development on this episode of Accidental Trainer with host Alexandria Clapp and guest Kris Newbauer. Newbauer explains how and why L&D professionals should communicate with business leaders and offers an overview of his eight-step framework to help talent development professionals identify and align learning with business needs. Learn how to define success metrics that ensure meaningful, measurable outcomes and build curricula that fulfill learning objectives and drive tangible business results.
Take-Aways
- Talent development must speak business leaders’ language.
- Translate talent growth into business growth.
- Define success metrics that align talent development and business leaders’ goals.
Summary
Talent development must speak business leaders’ language.
Regardless of your industry, talent development professionals must understand how to align people-focused initiatives with the universal language of business: money.
While in college, Kris Newbauer, chief people officer and head of global people and talent at Rotary International, managed a retail store. He realized that when he focused on developing and nurturing his team, the workers put more care into their jobs, resulting in more sales. The results were remarkable enough that they caught the attention of corporate leadership, who showed great interest when Newbauer explained his tactics. Newbauer’s retail experience underscores two truths: Talent development and achievement of a business’s financial goals are complementary goals; and talent development professionals should frame their initiatives in terms of how they will contribute to business objectives if they want buy-in and resources from leadership.
“But if money is what matters to business leaders, that’s the language we need to speak to them in.” (Kris Newbauer)
Start with the overarching talent development model your company employs. Ask business leaders about their top worries and priorities and then consider how to craft a new talent development model that better serves those concerns. Take the skills gap: For some companies, outsourcing could make more sense than investing large sums into upskilling their existing workforce. Other companies can’t succeed without an in-house workforce with the necessary skills.
Translate talent growth into business growth.
Newbauer’s eight-step evaluation framework can help talent developers and business leaders collaborate better. The first step is to identify a business challenge, which can be a problem or an opportunity the organization currently faces. Next, reframe this challenge into a business goal like revenue increase, cost reduction or market expansion.
“How do we turn this issue in front of us, whether it’s problem-oriented or opportunity-oriented, into a goal that’s motivating and inspiring?” (Kris Newbauer)
Then, conduct strategy conferences where you work closely with business leaders to brainstorm solutions and determine how each potential solution might get the company closer to its goal. Talent developers should manage expectations regarding the degree to which a given talent development initiative can help. In the end, everyone should agree on the criteria that will objectively determine if the initiative succeeded. The second half of the framework guides the instructional design process, ensuring the development of a curriculum that aligns with and supports achieving business goals.
Define success metrics that align talent development and business leaders’ goals.
Useful success metrics consider all relevant stakeholders’ perspectives and translate the overarching goal into concrete actions. Think, for example, about a child’s birthday party. Who and what determines it’s been a success? You must consider multiple perspectives – that of the child, the parents, the guests – and all salient factors involved – food, gifts, budget, the honoree’s feelings – to determine what success looks like.
“[The goal is to] figure out what impact we want to have and if we’re going to have that impact, what behavior change [we] need to see from people.” (Kris Newbauer)
Start by defining the business goal, then consider what new skills or mindsets the workforce needs to achieve the goal. Think about the situation from various perspectives – the C-suite, managers, frontline workers, and so forth – and then decide which criteria are most important to the business goal.
About the Podcast
Host Alexandria Clapp is a content manager for learning technologies and science at ATD, and guest Kris Newbauer is the chief people officer and head of global people and talent at Rotary International.