With tighter budgets and ongoing economic uncertainty, many learning leaders are being asked to do more with less. Managing training functions with limited resources requires creativity, strategic prioritization and strong stakeholder alignment.
In this episode of The Business of Learning, brought to you by Synthesia, we sat down with experienced L&D leaders Lauren Olson and Harry Colangelo, CPTM to explore how L&D professionals can maximize impact even when resources are scarce.
Tune in now to hear insights on:
- Making the most of existing tools, platforms and content
- Engaging subject matter experts to stretch training resources further
- Skills L&D professionals need to stay resilient during uncertainty
More Resources:
- [Article]: Maximizing Leadership Training and Development With a Minimized Budget
- [Podcast] Bonus Episode: L&D’s Role in Leading Sustainable Change
- [Certification] Certified Professional in Training Management (CPTM™)
To learn more about CPTM, download the brochure below:
The transcript for this episode follows:
[Ad]
What if creating a training video was as simple as writing an email with Synthesia? It is. Just write your script or upload any text document. Choose an AI presenter and get a polished video in minutes. No cameras, no editing, and no production costs. As a special thank you to our podcast listeners, we’re offering an exclusive 30-day free account. Use the code BL30 to claim this exclusive offer. If this offer doesn’t come around often, visit http://www.synthesia.io/businesslearning to claim your free account. That’s synthesia.io/businesslearning.
Sarah Gallo: Hi, welcome back to The Business of Learning. I’m Sarah Gallo, a senior editor here at Training Industry, along with my co-host Michelle Eggleston Schwartz, editor in chief.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz: Yes. Hello there. Today we’re diving into a very timely topic. With economic uncertainty and tighter budgets, many training teams are being asked to do more with less. We will explore how to manage your training function when resources are limited, whether that’s budget, talent, time, or access to technology and tools. Joining us for this conversation today are two experienced learning and development professionals. Lauren Olson and Harry Colangelo. Lauren and Harry, thank you so much for speaking with us today.
Harry Colangelo: Thanks for having us.
Sarah Gallo: I had love if we could start off by having you both share a little bit more about your own experiences managing training with limited resources, and are there any lessons that you’d like to share with our listeners that you learned along the way?
Lauren Olson: Yeah, I’m happy to kick us off. I mean, I think first and foremost, I don’t think I’ve ever managed a training department and thought, “Man, I have way too many resources,” throughout my career. You learn pretty early on in the world of L&D, that flexibility and creativity key …. I’ve had to get creative with limited budgets and lean teams in several roles throughout my career at PNC Bank, for example, I led training across four states with only 10 facilitators, which meant maximizing trainer flexibility with cross training, implementing virtual delivery when possible, and trying to customize that content. So it was reusable across the different regions. Most recently at Ulta, I built a new corporate onboarding and project training program during many transformational initiatives without any increases in headcount. So I think the lesson I’ve learned is that constraints can spark innovation. You focus on what really matters. You simplify wherever possible and leverage existing tools in smarter ways.
Harry Colangelo: Yeah, so very much the same answer I have. Never in my career have I ever said, “Yeah, I’m good. I have everything I need to make all this happen.” But what I have learned is that my time management and my identification of goals has made all the difference, right? I have to evaluate the team that I have and where the strengths are, where, where the areas of need and improvement are. And then I, I, I know that there’s 1,440 minutes in a day. How am I going to use those minutes? And every time somebody knocks on the door and says, “Hey, do you got a second?” Or every time somebody shoots me an email or sends me an instant message, it’s taken away from what I’m trying to get to. So me identifying what the goal is, what is the most important thing right now? There’s a whole … I love to read, and there’s a whole host of books out there that tell us how to do these things and to, to build off of some of the, the, the great information, the great experiences that other people have. And so, again, I go by what is most important? What do we need to accomplish right now? how do I leverage my time to get there?
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz: Definitely that’s great advice because only in a perfect world where we would have all the resources and tools that we need to get what we want to get done., I’d like to dig in a little more about how we can make the most out of our current existing resources. I’d love to hear how l and d teams can basically make the most of the tools, platforms, and content that they already have in house. Do you have any tips there?
Lauren Olson: Yeah, I would say I found that a lot of organizations underutilize what they already have. So it’s important to take inventory of all the different tools and platforms and content that they have, and then work to keep it updated. What you have access to is really that first step in maximizing the use of those assets. I would say take a deep dive, um, into additional capabilities that those different platforms may have. A lot of tools make updates periodically, that often bring newly available functions. So, for example, during the pandemic, instead of buying new platforms, I was able to repurpose existing LMS tools and created eLearning modules to quickly roll out health and safety training. key is. Auditing what’s in place, your LMS, your job aids, your templates, any internal expertise, and then adapting them before you start looking at investing in new technology or platforms.
Harry Colangelo: Yeah. So, in many ways we’re, in the world that I that I work in, the greatest need or the greatest discussion has always been the data-driven decisions. So in my current role in the IRS, I had found out in the leadership training department that there hadn’t been any metrics they hadn’t been measuring whether the training was effective or not. And so a man named Richard Koch, he wrote a book, “The 80-20 Principle.” It was based on the Alfredo Pareto’s idea about 20% of our efforts go into 80% of our results and, and how to manage our time better and how to really identify what is most critical. And so to make a data-driven decision, you have to have data, actual data, right? And so I’ve written some articles on that in this past year on how we can go about doing that, even getting to return on investment or return on expectation in non-profit organizations like the government, and so what we, what I like to do is, again, I keep harping on the idea of managing our time. We have these, these pitfalls, or these pits of time wasters like emails and meetings that are absolutely not necessary. We need to identify what is most critical to us, right? And so when I identified that we need to have a metric, we need to have metrics so that we can make decisions. How many courses do we need? How many of our instructors are being successful? How much are they applying on the job? What kind of benefit is that making to the organization? I can then look at the team that I have and identify who are my [employees] who are, who are strong in analytics, who’s strong in be bringing people together, who are my connectors? And they know [which] subject matter experts that I can bring together to make these things happen. When I start identifying the core of what exactly needs to get done, when I use that principle that, that Koch talks about, it helps me to get to the successes that the organization needs as a whole. And again, it doesn’t have to be all of our time. If we’re spending all of our day on these things, it’s a drain. We need to focus on what is most critical that’s going to get the biggest bang for the buck.
Sarah Gallo: Definitely. That’s so true. And Harry, we’ve heard time and time again from our audience that determining those metrics and also actually measuring impact is still so challenging, you know, even though we know that’s so essential. That goes into my next question for you both sort of a two-pronged one here. What steps can L&D leaders take to try and secure greater training investment, which again, another common challenge that we often hear, and then also how can they demonstrate ROI to leadership when funding is limited?
Lauren Olson: I would say one way I’ve approached this is by tying training outcomes to business metrics that leadership already cares about. So, for example, way, way back at the beginning of my career at Target, I could directly connect new hire training and service metrics. To increase red card adoption rates, which went from 55% to over a hundred percent of goal. Within my first six months in the role while I was at Ulta, I was able to show how WalkMe reduced error rates and increased productivity, which really did help to position training as a cost saver using ROI frameworks like Kirkpatrick, and I actually did a certification in proving learning impact through NovoEd that really has helped me to translate learning into business results, which makes for a much stronger case for that investment in my experience.
Harry Colangelo: Yeah, so again, I say I read a lot, right? And I know I keep referencing authors, but they, again, there’s so much information out there, there’s so much good information out there. Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book on tipping point, called “The Tipping Point,” and he identifies three different types of people. One of them is a maven, right? They’re the knowledge people, the connectors. They’re the ones that bring people together, and you’ve got your salesmen who make the pitches for you, in my experience is people don’t buy products unless they’re brand loyal. They don’t. They buy people, which is why we see celebrities in commercials or when we see in the pharmaceutical commercials, we see people who are healthy and running around and outside and doing things, right? They’re trying to get us to see the life that we could have and or maybe identify with somebody that’s in the screen in front of us. I think the same thing applies when we’re in the workforce, for us to get the point across to others. They want to know if they can trust me, can they, do they understand what I’m trying to get to? And sometimes I might not be the salesman. I might have to be the champion and I have somebody else that I’ve identified as the salesman of the team who has the reputation or has the collateral among the leadership or among their peers to be able to sell what I’m trying to get moving. Right? And so when I have to come in to bring in a new initiative … I worked for the Federal Air Marshal Service. I wrote the curriculum there. I worked with some of the most incredible, incredibly talented people that you could imagine in the world. [I know] nothing about firing a gun. I’d probably kill myself if I had to hold a gun, but yet I’d had to make, I had to make training on that, or I had to lead the training on that. Getting the subject matter experts in the room to vent and then use the information that they have to provide the opportunity, and to ask the right questions so that they could present the material that I need to present to leadership to show that I can make this work and why it would be good is critical to the success. I don’t have to be the salesman every time. It’s good if I am, but if I’m not, then, I’ve got to build that reputation to get there. And then in the meantime, I’ve got to identify who is. One thing I brag about all the time is I’m not the smartest guy in the room, I promise you I will know who is the smartest person in the room, and I will use them for that situation to help us to accomplish what we need to get accomplished.
[Ad]
The Certified Professional in Training Management credential, or CPTM, is designed to convey the essential competencies you need to manage a training organization. When you become a CPTM, you gain access to alumni resources like monthly peer roundtables, and a full registration to the Training Industry Conference & Expo. If you start today, you could earn the CPTM credential in as little as two months. To learn more, visit www.trainingindustry.com/cptm.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz: Definitely. I love that, really leveraging your internal network and knowing who your champions are and who to go to, to help push your efforts forward. So you definitely don’t need to be the smartest person in the room. You just need to know who to reach out to. Love that. So as learning leaders, our to-do list is ongoing, never ending, and training requests are always coming in. So I’d like to touch on prioritization here. What role does prioritization play in managing training with limited resources? And how can l and d leaders decide which programs to prioritize?
Lauren Olson: Yeah, I mean, prioritization really is critical and key, right? So at PNC when we were managing multiple, um, branch rollouts simultaneously, my team and I, we created a must-have versus a nice-to-have matrix, right? That aligned our training priorities with the company strategic. Similarly at Ulta, during our large scale transformations, we couldn’t train every role on everything all at once. So I really took partnership with our leaders to identify, okay, what are the critical change impacts that are happening? What do people need to know for that day one readiness? And then we sequence the training accordingly. And really the guiding principle is this: Focus first on initiatives that carry the greatest risk or business impact, and then you can kind of layer in the rest right into that overarching plan.
Harry Colangelo: Yeah, I a hundred percent agree with that. What we focus [on] is critical, right? There’s, there’s another author, his name is, is Jake Knapp, and he talks about focusing on what matters every day, right? And so when I was at the school level, when I was in the public school systems and I worked as an assistant principal and as assistant superintendent. And I made it a point as an assistant superintendent to visit a building every Monday or Friday to be at the ground level, because what was most important was the kids. The kids are the most important thing when you get into the adult world. We have to identify what is the most important thing and then get past these things that drain us. I had mentioned the emails and these unnecessary meetings are drains for us. They’re not necessarily changing anything. How many times have we been in a meeting and we’ve said that, well, that could have been an email? We get there and we treat them as social situations. I try to break that. I make sure that I read my emails. The first thing in the morning and at the end of the day. So I spend about an hour in the morning and about a half an hour at the end of the day to read emails and to respond and delegate and to do my follow ups. After that, I’m intentional on what I’m trying to focus on for that day. I have a goal. I have a planner. I go to my — it’s an e-planner — but I go to my planner every day to determine what, to identify what I’m going to accomplish today. Now, it can be the same thing as I was doing yesterday, but it’ll be an increased step in what I did, and I make sure that I can document it so that at the end of the week I can go back and look and say, okay, this is what I did well. This is where I need to improve upon. [There] was a cool movie in the nineties called “City Slickers.” I don’t know if you remember, it was Billy Crystal and Jack Palance, Crystal was struggling in his life and he was … he got sent, him and his buddies went out there to go become cowboys and to drive these steer, you know, across the land or whatever, and he was struggling, like I said, struggling in his life, trying to figure out what, you know, where’s his life going. And Jack Palance said something cool to him. He said, “This is what’s the most important thing.” He goes, “What is that?” And he goes, “Well, that’s for you to find out.” And Billy Crystal felt, you know, upset by the character, felt upset by it. But as the movie went on, there was a baby cow that he helped deliver, or baby steered. He helped deliver, and it got caught in a flash flood. And he said in that moment, the only thing he cared about was saving that cow. That’s how we have to be in the job, right? Like, we need to be focused on, this is my priority, this is what I’m trying to get accomplished today. Like I said, in the IRS when I was there, it was trying to get that evaluation program going. And once I got that successful, there was a whole bunch of other things I was able to do. I, I won a commissioner’s award for my. For a taxpayer first act response to Congress and, and writing, writing the measures and metrics piece to that, right? So when you focus, when we focus on what is most critical, everything else just falls into place. Our priorities are easier. Our goals are easier. We’re, we’re measuring what we do well, what we need to improve upon. Everything in our life changes we just keep what is most important in the front.
Sarah Gallo: Yeah, it’s a great reminder. I mean, you can’t be strategic if you’re not prioritizing the right things. It’s really true. I want to sort of circle back to a point we made earlier about really engaging those subject matter experts and champions in training. Specifically, how can engaging internal subject matter experts really help stretch training budgets further? And do you have any advice for engaging them in training in the first place?
Lauren Olson: Yeah, so internal experts are an incredible resource for when I was at PNC, we would train high performing managers to co-facilitate different classroom sessions, which helped to cut cost, and it built credibility with the learners. When I was at Ulta, I partnered with IT project leads as SMEs to co-create content, which greatly reduced dependency on vendors. And really when it comes to engaging SMEs, I always focus on making the process as collaborative and rewarding as possible. Really trying to position them as thought leaders, giving them facilitation support, and really just showing how their expertise directly accelerates our organizational success as a whole.
Harry Colangelo: So, you remember when I said earlier that Malcolm Gladwell had written a book, at the tipping point and had mentioned three different people, right? You have your, you have your mavens, your connectors and your salesmen. When you have your subject matter experts, they’re your mavens, right? But we as leaders, we need to identify what do I even have in front of me? Who, who do I have in front of me? What, what are the strengths and weaknesses that I have? Because if I don’t identify that, then I can’t identify what I need, I can’t identify how I’m going to be able to push this forward or what kind of, um, what kind of additional resources I’m going to need to make these things happen. I automatically look at any subject matter expert as a major. Right. You know what? I don’t know, and I’m going to kind of … I’m going to utilize that. I’m going to capitalize on that to the fullest. Steve Jobs had said something that was very cool. He says it doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do. We hire smart people to have them tell us what to. So I make sure that we, when I identify, I use my connectors. I use the people who are on my team or a part of my social network to identify who my subject matter experts are and to bring them together for me. Because my connectors make that happen. And then I use my salesman to kind of sell that pitch. So sometimes, many times when I identify subject matter experts, when I put together a curricular team, I would say that never go above eight on the number, right? Never more than eight people, because then it starts getting too convoluted and there’s politics that get involved. So for me, so if I have, I have eight in there, I’m going to try to identify who the voices are that are well respected and I use them to make the sales pitches going forward. This is why this is good, this is why this is going to be successful. And that, and I use that, that kind of information for, for. Supervisors above, and I use that for the people who this is going to apply to in the field. So now I have voices, I have marketing happening from these salesmen who are brought together by connectors. And the connectors are bringing to me, the subject matter experts. I guide the process for people. I tell them, this is where we need to go with a program. When I was at the Federal Air Marshal service, like I said, we could do a training program that, that had training for the entire world. we could punch something out like that in two months, right? It, and it’s possible when you identify who your strengths are and what areas you need to fill based on, on the team that you have already there.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz: Definitely, it’s, it’s such good advice, especially for, for teams of one or, um, the really lean, um, training teams in leveraging your network and identifying those SMEs and realizing you’re not alone. You may be a team of one, but, but you can build your team across your organization, being strategic in that way, is really good advice. So when we think about the development of learning leaders themselves and looking ahead, what skills should L&D professionals develop to be more resourceful and resilient during times of economic uncertainty?
Lauren Olson: Well, based on my own journey, I would say adaptability and agility are truly essential. Earning certifications in Agile for HR and L&D last year really reinforced how to pivot quickly in uncertain times. I know we’ve already talked about the data, right? So data fluency is another critical skill, being able to measure the impact and tell that ROI story. And then I think the last thing for me would be creativity, with digital tools. During the pandemic, for instance, I used eLearning authoring tools and virtual platforms to keep that learning relevant and accessible when all of our in-person options disappeared. As long as you remain, you know, agile, flexible, adaptable, the, the rest will, you know, eventually fall into place.
Harry Colangelo: Yeah, so I, I agree with Lauren, and I would also add a couple other things in there that I have seen among two different types of two different women who have been sensational leaders in my life over the last couple years. Both are at very different points in their career. One is in very much in the beginning of career. And one is just retired. The first one that retired is Kimberly Block. I worked with her at the IRS and she was absolutely sensational. I’m going to explain why these two came out. And the other one is Alice Lee and I worked with her in a, a company called Aptive Resources, [which] was a contractor for the Department of Veterans Affairs. In that they, they were humble women who were not afraid to embrace challenges. As a leader, I think that we need to do that. We need to see that these, these are the hard things. A lot of people avoid the hard things. We’re going to jump into them. And both of them were … it impressed me how willing they were to jump into the hard things. And I think that the reason they were able to do that is because they were humble enough to own mistakes and they weren’t afraid to face failure, which is something that I live in my whole life, right? Like I keep trying to preach that and promote that to everybody that I come in contact with. Don’t be afraid to fail. You’re going to make mistakes. You have to embrace the challenge, but then how do you embrace the challenge? And you have to practice. I live by this idea of practicing. You have to practice everything, right? So you have to practice, making problem-solving decisions, and you have to do that every day. You’re going to make mistakes, and that’s okay. The idea is to document where that mistake was, to learn from it, to go back to see it right? And to be humble enough to say, all right, I’m going to make a mistake. This is going to go wrong, but I’m going to keep trying. There’s an ancient proverb that says that I’ve seen something under the sun, among other things the wise don’t always have food, nor did the intelligent always have riches, right? It’s 3,000-year-old saying. Why doesn’t the wise have the food or the intelligent have the riches? Well, because many times people give up or they avoid what’s hard. We teach, we should be working hardworking. We should develop perseverance. We should develop socialization levels. We should be working to be engaged with other people a lot. When we go to these gatherings where we, you know, conferences or whatever, they shouldn’t be these social things or, or what, what can I buy next? But making these connections, what, what have you learned? Not telling your story all the time, but hearing their story. How, what did I, what can I glean from these people because they’ve done so many things that I probably haven’t done and then take a chance in, in, in practicing problem solving, a chance in embracing challenges, persevering through the failures. That’s where I think that we, we, we, we have our, our greatest need. That’s where I think that leaders lack because everybody’s trying to hold onto a job rather than trying to make the world a better place.
Lauren Olson: And you actually just sparked something for me too, Harry. I think the other piece of that that ties very close is [that] we as a society, as a profession, whatever, like we have to come from a place of curiosity, right? When it comes time for us to learn from each other, we can’t go in with our mindset on. You know, X, Y, Z, if something isn’t going the way we thought it would, or if somebody wants to do something a different way than what we had planned, it’s trying to ask the questions to understand the why and realizing, you know, people, they don’t get out of bed in the morning and say, golly gee, I sure hope I suck at my job today. Right? Like, it’s, nobody does that, but it’s like, but to your point, people make mistakes, failures happen. And so rather than jumping to the conclusion of, oh, well they just don’t know what they’re doing, or, you know, what have you, it’s, we’ve got to ask those questions thoughtfully. And as I always say, it’s come from a place of curiosity to really understand the whys behind it. Then that can help inform, you know, making those critical next decisions as you move forward.
Sarah Gallo: Yeah, I love that. And really also like that role of modeling that it’s okay to make mistakes, even as a learning leader. Like we all do it, and it’s just part of the learning process. And if you’re not failing at some point, you’re probably not learning and growing. So remembering that too. Well, we’ve covered a lot of ground today. Before we do wrap up, I wanted to see if there’s one final tip or takeaway piece of advice you’d like to share.
Lauren Olson: My advice would be to see these different constraints as an opportunity to innovate, limited resources. They force us to be sharper, more creative. More focused, on our business outcomes. So if you align training directly within your organizational goals and you make smart use of your internal assets, you can have a really huge impact without having a huge budget.
Harry Colangelo: I would recommend mastering time [and] identifying your objectives. And then show why it works. Show why following, going for this objective or putting this time toward this initiative works. And if you can’t be the one to sell it, then identify the one who can, is always … if you’re new to an organization or if you’re new to L&D, look around your team to find out who does everybody go to with a question? Who does the, who’s the one that speaks up a lot in the meetings. Those are the ones that have the ear of others. That could be the one that sells whatever initiative that you identify is going to be good for people. And I honestly think that if we start focusing on what is good, take the hard and identify what is good for people, everything else falls into place. I’ve never really worried about work, right? Like, I know that what I do and what I’m trying to do is, is good for people. And I’m going to make that work. But the founder of Costco, his name is Jim Sinegal. He said something that was really funny. I heard it just the other day. He said that if you’re in a job that’s in drudgery, then just run for the exit. Run for the exit, right? Like, if, if you can’t make a change in the world around you, then find another place that you can. But I know that people are really nervous right now, and everybody’s concerned about, well, you know, the market’s hard and all that. If we’re trying to make a difference in the world, everything else seems to fall into place. It just does. If I can identify where there’s a need where I can be of help and not have to worry about who, you know, looking over your shoulder, I guess. Everything else seems to, I think I can be helpful to you in this area based on what I’ve seen in your job description, what you’re telling me when we get here. I think I could be of help and here’s how I can help you. I think that would be the first advice I’d give to somebody who’s getting into this field.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz: Awesome. Well, on that note, thank you both so much for speaking with us today on the podcast. How can our listeners get in touch with you if they like to reach out?
Lauren Olson: So I’m on LinkedIn, Lauren Olson. They can also, if you want to email me, my email address is LaurenOlson82@yahoo.com.
Harry Colangelo: I too am on LinkedIn. So Harry Colangelo and my email is harcola — it’s the first three letters of my first name and the first four letters of my last H-A-R-C-O-L-A 21@gmail.com. Harcola21@gmail.com.
Sarah Gallo: For more resources on this topic, check out the episode description or visit the show notes on our website at trainingindustry.com/podcast. And don’t forget to rate and review us wherever you tune in to The Business of Learning. Thanks for listening.
