This week I met up with an executive from a Calgary-based elearning firm. Though we had connected on LinkedIn, this was the first time we had met in person, so our conversation meandered through a number of topics: our respective career paths, how we typically find clients, our pricing structures for projects, and some of the more interesting projects we have encountered.
I asked my colleague about his experience of change management in the context of elearning. I have always assumed that learning and development was an integral part of the project team for change initiatives; I was surprised to hear that has not been his experience.
My colleague said he is often unaware of the larger change initiatives taking place within a customer’s organization, for a couple of reasons. First, much of the work his firm does is won through a formal RFP process, which means the customer provides exactly as much information as is needed to begin the project, and no more. Second, the firm clearly establishes itself as an elearning rather than a management consulting firm; it does not provide consulting services because of the increased liability associated with it.
I asked my colleague how he handled situations where customers requested elearning services that were clearly not the right solution to a business problem. He admitted those projects were challenging. While he tries to educate his customers on what makes for effective elearning, his hands are tied when customers insist on instructional design and development parameters that are not best practice.
My colleague said the best change/elearning projects he has worked on were part of a larger change initiative. Elearning was not seen as the solution to a business problem but as one intervention of many needed to make a change successful.