It doesn’t matter if you are fresh out of university or a 25 year veteran of the industry, we all seek a career roadmap for staying engaged, interested, respected and employed. Business leaders traditionally choose to add three letters to their resume (MBA) and $40k+ dollars later; these people have new ways to approach business problems. For us in the IT Training business, we must not only learn these MBA-type skills, but also understand the need to go even higher and reach the top of our field: Becoming a Learning Architect.
You may have started your training career as an administrator, having responsibility for scheduling events, measuring the effectiveness of events, and reporting on attendance and performance of those events. Perhaps you moved into development, crafting curriculums or moved up to be responsible for an entire training functional area. Some of you may have even reached a senior role; Principal Consultant, CLO or a similar title with a mission to effectively manage entire training organizations! This path is the traditional and pragmatic approach to a training career. I propose though that the goal of the IT learning leader is shifting from being a program leader to a learning solutions architect and the path to get there is very different.
So what makes a learning architect? Similar to the traditional top-level learning leaders, architects interact with the main stakeholders. These are the CEO/CIOs, technical program managers, business users, and developers. What’s different is the expectation of the stakeholders. Instead of a CEO/CIO looking for the learning leader to provide summaries of students and events, the expectation is to implement a road map of the company's training vision. When meeting with the technical program leaders, they want to know how training can help their program succeed and the learning architect needs to have both the technical grasp of what the program is about as well as the business acumen to make that happen.
So the question is if someone wants to be an IT Learning Architect what career path should they take? As with any senior role, experience and leadership qualities form the foundation of the learning architect role. You need good communication skills and good program management skills. You will need good mentors, the chance to work on the right projects to access these mentors, determination and the chance to develop and mature into the role. A learning architect becomes one of the many architectural roles within an IT company but with a focus on bringing clarity to the learning requirements and road map for execution.
Training is becoming much more than curriculums, student attendance and levels of satisfaction at training events. A learning leader’s role must become more of a Learning Architect, someone who designs innovative approaches for employees to access knowledge, “when they need it, where they need and in pieces that can absorb”. The Learning Architect develops themselves as relevant to the company’s success, responsible for designing solutions not in event form, but in the form of knowledge. Not sold yet? Check out /articles/10-predictions-for-2011.aspx
In which aspiring architects can see this is a good career choice and motivate them to evaluate the career opportunities available in their organizations and chart their own path for success.
As always, I would love to hear from you and I look forward to your continued feedback. Feel free to contact me anytime at aust1648@gmail.com.
