Making the business case for L&D to the C-suite with Donna Verdi, Head of Learning and Talent Development at Kroll

Dan: Welcome to L&D in 20, your go-to resource for all things workplace learning. Brought to you by Go1. I'm your host, Dan Hayward, Chief Customer Officer, and industry veteran. Today we're going to be speaking to Donna Verdi, Head of Learning and Talent Development at Kroll, an independent provider of risk and financial advisory solutions with more than six and a half thousand professionals worldwide.

Donna is an award-winning Head of Talent with over 24 years of experience and a proven track record in transforming learning functions to support organizational goals and spearheading successful global multicultural initiatives to drive organizational effectiveness. In her current role, she collaborates closely with senior leadership and business units to ensure that learning initiatives are aligned and effectively executed.

Donna, welcome to the show.

Donna: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here, Dan.

Dan: So, I'm really excited. Today we're going to be discussing lessons learned, how to make the L&D case to the C-Suite, and prove ROI quickly. So, Donna, you've worked at three very large organizations. Can you share the types of issues that you've found when you stepped into your L&D roles and what you identified early on as real opportunities?

Donna: Absolutely. And, you know, 25 years working across three fantastic organizations has been a real privilege, but there has been some consistency in those roles that I've stepped into where you start to assess what's being done. And some of that has been where have we gone with what could be the best learning solution rather than the best to meet the business need and strategy because we've got so caught up in what great learning could be, we've actually forgot to meet the business where they're at and take them on that journey and deliver that need. And as such, we're off building something that isn't quite going to drive a business impact, isn't using business language, and actually from an employee experience, it's going to take far too long for us to deploy, and the business is going to have moved on and off and onto something else.

And so that for me has been consistently repeated in quite a few jobs, where teams have just forgotten fundamentally, why are you there? You are there to service the business and the employees and help them unleash their potential.

And whilst the best thing may be to do, isn't necessarily always the right thing to do and drive first and foremost.

Dan: Yeah, that's really interesting, that disconnect between kind of the role of L&D and the overall objectives of the organization. So if we can just dig in there a little bit. So, if we take that topic, what was your strategy for quickly addressing those issues?

Donna: For me, that was building relationships with key partners in the business as quickly as possible, understanding the business, the language, their priorities, their measures of success that they would be driving through key leaders, and then looking at what is it we do to integrate that into the way that we operate. Then looking at what is it we could do as baby steps? I call it small quick wins, to demonstrate that delivery and those opportunities of where, rather than taking six months to build something, where is it you can run in an agile sprint and turn something around in four weeks and drop it back into the business? And where is it you keep those continual conversations going with the business, so it feels co-owned rather than, People, HR, human capital, done to the business because, that has the best impact is where something is driven out from the business, for their employees to make a difference to the work that those employees do that then has measurable impact versus HR learning has said you have to do.

Dan: And I love the, the idea of L&D being far more strategic and aligned to the organization. One of the things you said there, I'm going ask just another question on, so you talked about kind of maybe the solutions that were there were the best solution. Quite often they've been chosen for the right reason at the right time, but certain executives or certain teams are really kind of, you know, really prefer a, you know, one solution over another.

And I, I assume, you know, that's something you've had to deal with. So talk to me a little bit about, you know. How do you, yeah, how do you influence the, those teams and those leaders to make that change to, to trust you at such an early stage?

Donna: I would say data is king. When you are having conversations with teams, leaders, and you are unpicking what it is they're delivering, even if they're wedded to it, um, how is it you are then asking those questions that give you, um, measurable impact or data to be able to show whether that actually is the right thing versus something people are just really invested in.

And so if I use an example of a training program that in one of my roles, the, the business was really invested in, it wasn't a small investment. You know, we would, we're talking about a couple of hundred grand, we were talking about a couple of hundred people going through two or three days worth of training, and they had done it twice a year, every year for the last four or five years. Same vendor. But when I started to unpick the data and we started to see things that were actually, your target audience was this, and it only turned out that 20% of the target audience went on it. The other, uh, 80% were individuals that weren't invited. They got hold of the link, they weren't the target group, and they were doing it for their own professional development or personal development, but that wasn't money that was allocated towards them and wasn't going to be able to be replicated as impact into their jobs. And then when we also played with some of the evaluation results out of the training, that at the start individuals were rating in at 95% competence to the topic. So why were they then going on three days of training if they were already 95% competent in the topic to be able to do it? It started to validate a business case that whilst yes, invested in the program, whilst yes, invested in the vendor, whilst yes, invested in our people, the actual deployment mechanism and content wasn't hitting the mark for us to go back to an alternative proposition that was for that target audience of 600. Actually, this is what we need to do, and this is what we should be deploying, and this is how we can actually protect and ring fence so we don't end up with 80% of those who shouldn't be on it, being on it.

Dan: Yeah, that's great. And I know the topic of ROI is a, you know, perennial discussion point amongst the L&D professionals, and so I, that's a really good example. Do you have any other, you know, uh, kind of go, go-to ROI metrics? So when you kind of, you, you are, uh, onboarding into a new, new organization, what are some of the, you know, the levers or the data points that you regularly have used?

Donna: So I would start with culture survey. And so looking back as far as you can, as to what are the, uh, metrics on, um, engagement, uh, psychological safety, uh, understanding of the strategy, uh, leadership buy-in, uh, those type of, and in most culture surveys, there's normally a couple of questions someone's baked in that is around professional development, and do you feel that you, and so, so those become quite nice ones that give you some level of insight.

But more importantly, they give you insight into trust within the senior leadership. Uh, trust within their line manager and understanding of the strategy. Um, because sometimes that can actually be only at a particular level. And when you start to break that down, you can start to see where I call it cliff edge, is there's, there's a point where all of a sudden the data doesn't normally flow consistently down.

There's normally a point where you get a massive drop. That becomes the, okay, that's where we probably need to focus on doing something. Performance data is always an interesting overlay. So, you know, what is it that you see as potential trends in performance data to certain grades, target audience groups and, and geographical locations.

Promotion data, always another interesting one. Because again, I normally find there's a cliff edge where all of a sudden you tend to see a squiff, especially on gender, where it just doesn't start. Keep growing as to the number of individuals that get promoted being on a part of the actual pool that they've, they've come from or they're going into, and so that works.

Financial metrics. Understanding the way that your company is earning money, where it's losing money, where it may be paying fines for things that they shouldn't have done because they've lost a license breach or have been caught out on, very important, because you can then understand some of the other conversations that come into play with the business on where they may be going through a, uh, revised budget review and reprioritization for you to understand where is it you would stack the money in and should you be stacking it into where they actually make the most money as the priority.

Because that's what's keeping a company driving at this, you know, a moment in time. So, that's where I'd probably start is those metrics. Because it gives you a really interesting insight and that obviously goes without saying, I'd look at my learning data as well. But I'd look outside of that.

Dan: Yeah, that's great.

And then obviously you are operating at a C-suite level, so, you know, I'm very interested to understand, starting in an organization, very large organizations, how do you build that trust and rapport kind of early on? What are some of the, the ways that you've done that?

Donna: It's always interesting when you start within a new organization and, I've had it where I've started under the banner of somebody else who's been there. And so when they introduce and they say you've worked with them previously, that is a very different level of sponsorship on the relationships you get within into an organization versus when you come in cold. And you don't have that, that someone has hired you in and you are having to build from almost a, a lower position. In both cases, I would say the sponsorship of somebody in those initial conversations is really, really important.

And so I would never go in cold to a number of those senior stakeholders and do introductions. I actually let one of my peers or my boss do those initial introductions and provide the context of why I'm here and what I'm here to work on, and then I follow up that, again, plays to that sponsor sheet piece and also that, that, that introductory context setting for you to see how their relationships working, how their conversations are going. For you to go, what is it I need to learn? Because each individual is slightly different. So the way someone introduces you to one person's different to the way they introduce you to somebody else, because they all have a slightly different um, behavioral approach on how you deal. And then I would say get to understand their business as quickly as possible. And so if you don't, you've got no credibility with them from day squat on anything that you say and you talk to 'em about because they won't believe that you are providing them solutions that align to what they need because they won't believe you know their business. Work through who is it in their business. They should be. You should be working with, hold those conversations and hold those conversations continually. Observe the business. Be part of business meetings, seeing how they work, and then be continuing the conversation with that C-suite on a regular basis whilst referencing back to those connections so that they can see that credibility and that understanding is there.

And then the second bit for me would be the, these guys aren't stupid, right? They, they've been around long enough. They've got their badges. They've got their badges more so in the organization that you are working in. So, they know the complexity of operating more than you do. And so, when you are saying you are going to do, you need to follow up with evidence of doing it and very quickly where you are saying, we're going to produce, don't over commit. Don't say you're gonna solve world hunger within the first month of doing something. Actually bring it all the way back to something that's really simple, really achievable, and you can then show those small improvements to what they're after and what they're talking about and what they're needing quite quickly, what's building towards that bigger picture of what you should be doing because that'll then show that you can actually maintain momentum as well for them and delivery.

Dan: Yeah, that's, uh, some great tips, and I think kind of the, the theme of L&D leaders becoming far more commercial seems to be something that's coming through, you know, several of the guests.

So now we're going to move on to our second segment. This is the 60 second budget breakdown.

It's a toughie. Okay. So what are the three most important things that you'd recommend L&D leaders spend their money on?

Donna: I'm not sure it'd be three things. If you are coming into an organization, and, and I think it would depend on the maturity of the organization, and so if I think about one organization I came into, they were very, um, mature in their setup of a, uh, centralized approach and the investment that I made, there was actually a maturity assessment of the L&D, benchmarking it externally, um, as to what could be the recommendations and what could be the recommended cost save, um, and opportunities for efficiency and optimization that we should be considering against our peers.

And that was because we'd got a lot of behaviors, a large team structure that had been doing things the way they've been doing things for a very long time, and a lot of embedded relationships into the business in doing those things the way that they wanted them to be done, that needed to be unpicked for them to meet their future strategy requirements in a kind of VUCA environment.

But that was a mature organization. I would say for a more immature organization, I would invest in my team. I'd invest in my team in making sure I've got the right individuals in play. And that could mean shifting them around as to not having who you originally have within your team doing what they're doing, but actually you are upgrading those skills and competencies with new individuals potentially.

And then secondary, I'd invest in my team for them to be able to deliver training to the business that meets their business needs so that you can show commercial impact and value really quickly. Um, because that gives you time, whilst also giving you a really quick win on something that they would've paid to be done externally.

So whether it's team offsites and psychometric assessments and um, facilitation of those offsites, you know, whatever it might well be that's within a, a, you know, kind of a, a requirement of that organization to do and they're currently spending a decent amount of money on it. Where is it? You can actually go in, upskill your own team to do that and you're showing commercial value really quickly.

Which builds that credibility and trust.

Dan: Thanks for sharing, Donna. So moving on to our next segment, Lifelong Learnings.

Donna, I'd love for you to describe a time situation turned out differently than you expected. Could be more positive or more negative, but most importantly, you know, what did you learn?

Donna: There’s lots, I think that's the nature and the brilliance of, of working in the space that we do. We don't have all the answers.

It's very rare for anything to run the way that you expect it to run. The one that I'm thinking of that pivotally shaped my, um, outlook on the work that I do was actually a, a really big training deployment for one of the organizations that I worked with. And within that training deployment, myself and my team were trying to squeeze the way that we'd always deployed training out to this organization and to this company, and trying to squeeze them into that box of deploying.

In that same approach that we'd always done, the way we'd always done it, it was just continually meeting up with challenges and resistance and problems and. In hindsight, the outcome that we came to was we let them run the training the way that they run from front to back of administration, operations, execution, evaluation, and it ran seamlessly through them in that approach versus us trying to squeeze them into a process and a way of working that we had deemed fit for purpose.

Because we'd have to tidy up so many things and do this with so many, to be able to capture consistent MI and to be able to give a consistent user experience and all the rest of it. But it was a reality moment of working with a trusted partner and realizing what we had learned and what we had experienced through over the years as bad.

They were playing at the same level we were playing at, and we didn't need to handhold as much and we needed to step it back a level. And so that allowed me to actually go, where is it in your initial stages, you should do a better understanding and test run. You can get comfort in doing that versus waste weeks trying to fight it and in the end, turns out we should have gone with that approach from the outset and it would've been so much easier to do and deploy.

Dan: That's a great learning. Thank you so much for sharing. And now we're gonna move on to our final segment, self development hacks.

So I would love to hear from you, what's your favorite self-development hack learning resource? Where do you go to grow?

Donna: So I'm hands-on. I have two things that I will do either on any new system. I'm, I'm hands in playing, doing it. My tech lead it, it panics at the level of activity that I can actually do on our tech platforms because I'm self-taught on editing our LMS, LXP and even one of content providers.

I've got the editability to be able to create pathways on it. And that, and that's because it was something new, I'd never played with before. Something I was like, if my team's gonna be doing it, I wanna be able to do it because I wanna be able to understand the process and the pain that we have to go through to be able to do things to deliver whilst also knowing that if they're not online.

If it's something that can take 30 seconds, I'll do it myself. I don't need to send an email and it take a day and more time in the communication back and forth versus open something up and, and, and change it. But my secondary place that I love to go to is TikTok. I love a good TikTok, especially where there's a little dance involved.

I, I really do like that as well. But in all seriousness, I found TikTok really fascinating on these, you know, kind of 60 second, couple of minute bite-sized pieces on topics. There's a couple of really good leaders that, or, or individuals that I'm following, like hack your HR 30 day leader. They have some really great tips that they're posting that just give you that moment for thought.

And then the final one, is I love Steven Bartlett's podcast. I also love ADHD Chatters podcast as well.

Dan: Well, Donna, thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing your insights with us.

Donna: No, thank you so much for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Dan: Thanks for tuning into the show.

I'm Dan Hayward, Chief Customer Officer, and that wraps up another episode of L&D in 20. We hope you found today's discussion as engaging as we did. Whether you are listing on the go or at your desk, we'll catch you on the next episode. And until then, keep learning.