Modern learning is a lot like a team sport—when players know their role, connect as a team, clearly communicate the game strategy, and flawlessly execute on the plays, that’s when the magic happens. Achieving organizational alignment around a modern learning strategy is critical for creating an effective modern learning culture—a winning culture that makes learning and development a core component of your corporate DNA.

According to Deloitte’s Josh Bersin, companies with a strong learning culture have 30-50 percent higher engagement and retention than their peers, are 92 percent more likely to develop novel products and processes, are 52 percent more productive, and are 17 percent more profitable. The trick is knowing how to effectively rally the players within your organization around modern learning as a winning objective.

Read our road map for creating an effective modern learning culture.

The Key Players on Your Modern Learning Team

Here are some of the key people you’ll need to mobilize around your modern learning strategy and the important roles they’ll have to play to help you realize it. Imagine them as the staff and members of a professional sports team.

Executive Leadership (Team Owners)

The role of executives is to be the sponsor and voice of change. They should serve as the key advocates of your modern learning strategy and be able to outline why it’s needed, how it will support the achievement of business goals, and how it will rally others across the organization.

Line Managers (Coaching Team)

Line managers are your team leads and supervisors. Their role is to provide coaching to support the move to a modern learning strategy and help their people understand that a modern learning culture is important to the team because it opens up new learning paths. They also need to tell their team members why they should be involved, and why now.

Employees/Learners (Players)

These are the people across your organization who will ultimately put your modern learning strategy into action and be the most impacted by it—the end users. Every person across your team has a job to do, and as the world of work continues to change at a rapid pace, it’s important that they’re enabled to acquire the skills and knowledge they need to perform at the highest level possible. Securing their buy-in is critically important.

Do you know your modern learners? Watch this webinar to find out more!

Learning and Development Team (Team Manager)

This group “owns” the modern learning master plan and is responsible for enabling change. They determine what will be communicated and when, how to structure implementation, and what content and supporting tools should be released and when. They also support the other key players in their execution of the modern learning game plan.

IT, HR, Finance, and Learning Platform Vendor (Nutritionists, Trainers, Medical Staff)

There are a number of key functions across your organization that will need to support and enable your modern learning strategy for it to be successful. These folks are important partners with whom you should collaborate as you roll out a modern learning strategy across your organization.

Be In It to Win It

Achieving organizational alignment around your modern learning strategy—establishing a clear purpose and shared objectives among the key players on your modern learning dream team—will help your company improve overall performance by making learning and development a key component of your corporate DNA.

According to Bersin by Deloitte, learning and development within the enterprise is more aligned when it speaks the same language as the business, when it understands and communicates with all stakeholders, and when it is focused.

Now that you know the key players you need to rally to your team, read our organizational alignment playbook to discover the plays you can use to get them all aligned around your modern learning strategy.