I recently ran a round table session for Filtered’s CLO Coffee Club titled “Deploying an LXP with your eyes wide open”. The aim of the session to give L&D leaders a realistic understanding of the change management and governance inputs needed for success in LXP implementation. Whether you are buying the LXP or have inherited one, start with the foundation – get very clear on your organisation’s rationale for having an LXP. I suggested that there were 9 typical rationales (some good, some not so good) and was surprised by the ones that were most popular…
Here were 9 possible reasons why your organization would want an LXP:
- LMS has poor UX/ reputation
- Liberate IP from LMS (SCORM, lockstepping)
- Unlock the power of knowledge communities
- Address the long tail of learning requests
- Create a learning organization
- A clear destination for ‘pull’ learning
- Free up time for L&D to work on strategically important work
- Reduce spend on bespoke learning through curation
- Identify organizational learning needs
Whilst a well-implemented LXP goes a long way to achieving the last three, I argue that for the rest, the LXP will only solve part of the business problem and in some cases may distract from solving the real problem.
Not so good reasons
- LMS has poor UX/ reputation – A more direct approach would be to improve the user experience by upgrading or changing the LMS, rather than putting another system in front of the problem.
- Liberate IP from LMS (SCORM, lockstepping) – Whilst there is significant IP house in your LMS, it being SCORM-wrapped makes it hard to find. Lockstepping makes it hard to use as an aide-memoire or performance support, because a user has to unlock/click through lots of screens to get to the screen they need. If the content doesn’t need to be thoroughly tracked for compliance purposes, it will be more discoverable if hosted outside the LMS and has the lockstepping removed.
- Unlock the power of knowledge communities – Communities are powerful because they provide trusted and contextual knowhow for problems people want to solve. Although an LXP may help, the critical success factor is how the members of the community interact and their willingness to share, guide and question each other.
- Address the long tail of learning requests – An LXP that can surface several thousand items holds the promise that it will service low frequency requests. However, no catalogue of content could cater for every possible learning need. It’s ok for L&D to challenge the business to justify that a learning need is real not just perceived.
- Create a learning organization – Whilst an LXP is an enabler, creating a learning organisation involves a fundamental change in organisational culture and ways of working.
- A clear destination for ‘pull’ learning – If the LMS is seen as the destination for mandatory compliance learning, having a separate LXP offers the promise that learners can enter the platform with a more positive mindset. This needs to be balanced with the user experience of “yet another platform to search for what I want”. Is it going to be obvious to a learner which content is defined to sit on each system?
Better reasons
- Free up time for L&D to work on strategically important work – The LXP provides at least something helpful at point of need without L&D having to design or sherpa learning. This frees up L&D time to focus on closing the strategically important performance gaps which need more than a ‘shot of content’.
- Reduce spend on bespoke learning through curation – Yes there are significant overheads involved in creating and updating content which isn’t specific to your organisation and its ways of working.
- Identify organizational learning needs – Whilst you probably already do regular organisation-wide surveys and targeted activities to identify needs, the search terms in your LXP will give you a new ongoing source of data which you can harvest without having to ask the business to give you more of their time.
The rationale that resonated best with most of the group was #1. Whilst this is an easy angle for an LXP vendor to pitch (I have yet to meet any sane L&D leader who feels delighted with their LMS), you risk setting yourself up for failure if your only rationale is #1. As the LXP market matures, buyers will get more sophisticated about selecting LXPs. In the meantime, I can help.
