Struggling to Work as a Strategic Business Partner? Remember the Beach

Turns out, this favorite vacation destination also has some wisdom to share.

Yes, you read that right. The beach.

Particularly the beach that is made of sand. The one where you go for a lovely vacation full of sunshine, waves, and water. That beach.

I talk with many who are trying to change the narrative about how they work in L&D. They want to stop working as transactional order takers and start working as strategic business partners.

They can see a preferred future. They long for it. But it just doesn't seem to be happening. They're still working primarily as order takers.

Making Footprints in the Sand

Let's go back to that lovely idea of the sandy beach. Imagine yourself standing where the water laps up onto the sand. You are barefoot and you feel the cool water and textured sand beneath your feet. You decide to create a footprint or two. So, you pick up your foot and you slam it into the wet sand below.

You are instantly disappointed. Despite the force of your foot, you can barely see an imprint in the sand. Before you can take it all in, a gentle wave laps up and any hint of the footprint disappears.

So, you take a different approach. Instead of slamming your foot into the sand full force, you stand in one spot and apply gentle pressure, softly massaging the sand beneath your foot. After some time has passed, you look down to see that you have now created a deep imprint.

A Deeper Imprint

Changing your work in L&D from taking orders to operating as a strategic business partner is much like creating this deeper footprint in the sand. It happens slowly, a little bit at a time. It requires continuous small changes that eventually add up to an overall transformation.

Yes, it's true that you can see a preferred future for yourself. One where your work has a larger impact and where you are truly a partner in solving business challenges. But your stakeholders won't see that future right away. They likely don't have time to envision it or understand it. They have different priorities. Priorities that involve solving problems, relieving pressures, and meeting goals in their respective areas of the organization.

Their understanding of how to work with L&D and what L&D can accomplish is rooted in what has always been done. It's an understanding that starts with their own experiences of education and is reinforced by a history of L&D teams who take and deliver on training orders. The jump from order taker to strategic business partner doesn't happen overnight. Instead, it is only through a series of slow, intentional movements along a continuum.

The Strategic Business Partner Continuum

The deeper imprint in the sand is a metaphor for your movement along the strategic business partner continuum where working as an order taker exists on one end and strategic business partner on the other.

 It's impossible to jump from one end of this continuum to the other overnight. What's more, the elements that impact movement are continuously changing. Think about when a new stakeholder comes on the scene that you haven't worked with before, or there's a restructuring within your organization. These factors can bump L&D leaders and teams working their way towards strategic business partner back a few notches.

What to do?

Remember the beach and keep patiently massaging the sand within your organization.

The goal isn't a forceful slam into a new reality. That type of change will quickly wash away. The goal is to continuously massage the sand, or in other words, to continuously take small actions that will move you gradually down the continuum towards strategic business partner. This is how you will form a deeper imprint that isn't easily erased by the next wave.