Competitive Advantage

Create Continuing Education That Is Profitable, Sustainable, and Impactful

Tracy King

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781642793697
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Organisational Behaviour
• Index: Business

Competitive Advantage helps leaders create a reliably profitable and sustainable learning portfolio that generates the sought-after impact.

Based on a proprietary 25-driver Scoreboard created by Tracy King CAE, Competitive Advantage helps clients develop a profitable and sustainable business that makes a measurable impact on the industries they represent. Workforce disruptions, new technologies, and tight budgets place enormous pressure on professional association continuing education teams. Old learning formats and pricing models are failing. The risk of irrelevance is imminent as competitors step into the market, creating targeted learning programs faster and cheaper. Not to mention that learner expectations are changing: what they want, when they want it, and how much they are willing to pay for it.

Competitive Advantage serves the professional association industry's leadership. Tracy helps leadership determine what investments to make with a limited budget, learn the common mistakes associations make managing their learning portfolio, find key investments that differentiate a program from competitors, identify partnership opportunities that result in passive revenue streams, and so much more. Quick fixes feel good, but never produce lasting results. Competitive Advantage focuses on the things that do produce lasting results and the commitment required to develop a successful learning design.

Chapter 1:

Internal & External Forces

“One thing is for certain: Change.”

HERACLITUS

Cascading Failure

It was a gut-wrenching crunching sound. Not good. Cars should never make that noise. My imagination went wild with what the issue may be and how much it would cost me.

It had started out as an occasional squeak in the carriage. I had no problem coming up with reasons to procrastinate taking my Rav4 to the mechanic: stacked work schedule, kids finishing the school year, business trip prep. Also, it probably was nothing and would work itself out, right?

Turns out, I had a cascading failure on my hands.

“A cascading failure is a failure in a system of interconnected parts in which the failure of a part can trigger the failure of successive parts.” – Wikipedia

This messy and expensive problem can happen in any type of system: computer networks, bodies, bridges, power grids, and learning portfolios.

There’s a tendency to hear a squeak and a grind in a learning portfolio, like our annual conference or our eLearning program, and respond with a quick fix we hope will buy us time until we have the resources to really dig in with a good SWOT. That’s just like me feeling good about getting routine oil changes but not taking time to find out some factory original parts on my car were busted and causing a mess of other problems not at all associated with where I heard the noise.

Because a system and same-old is not sustainable.

Sure, sometimes we’ve got a headlight out and just need to change the bulb. Easy. Done. But the squeaks and grinds portend more.

Your learning portfolio is comprised of all the ways members can learn with you: conferences, regional meetings, virtual events, eLearning, mobile learning, textbooks, workbooks, webinars, workshops – whatever you’ve got that runs on learning objectives. Because of the tendency to manage these programs in siloed teams that do not collaborate or coordinate, we think when we hear a squeak it must be located within that program. We may even do a study on that program or invite a consultant to evaluate it. But when we do not acknowledge that our programs belong to the larger system of learning we offer to our constituents, our quick fix could trigger a cascading failure.

Check it out from this angle: Your members don’t see (or care) that different teams support different learning programs within your organization. Your portfolio of learning opportunities culminates within their total experience with your brand. So, if members have a rotten experience with a webinar series package they may share their experience with colleagues and collectively decide not to invest in a new virtual workshop offering hosted by the events team in the same online learning portal. You may see alarming decline in virtual workshop registration. Evaluating your virtual program will not solve that problem.

Another example: Say you’re introducing a pop-up talk format at your annual conference but the logistics team is tapped. You pull talent from your eLearning team to fill the gap. But leadership is disappointed a few months later when the online course development schedule is way off track. There’s now board pressure to look into what’s wrong with the eLearning team. But that’s ultimately not the source of the problem.

How do you diagnose your squeaks and grinds?

What the Symptoms Mean

The pain you’re feeling is legitimate.

• 
  The board wants new programs, but the budget doesn’t support the personnel to fulfill these requests without deep cuts elsewhere (but where?)
• 
  Members are clamoring for on-demand online learning, but selecting and managing that technology feels overwhelming to our already lean team
• 
  Members say they want webinars, but they aren’t buying them or attending them if they do register–so do we keep investing in that program?
• 
  The revolving door of leaders passing through our committee and board asking for new things keeps us on the reactive mode hamster wheel
• 
  Our leadership says they want innovation, but implementing change is prohibitive–someone is always unhappy
• 
  We’re tweaking so many little things it’s hard to know what conditions lead to success or failure–so we can succeed more than throw spaghetti at the wall
• 
  It’s challenging to find the time to take a breath long enough to be strategic and intentional with everything going on and all the hats I’m wearing in the organization
• 
  We know we’ve got work to do to ensure programs are engaging, but where to even begin?
• 
  Registration and revenue are not where we need them to be–and I’m responsible for finding a solution

Quick fixes won’t solve these pain points. These are systemic issues, and the diagnostic tool is in your hands.

But first, it’s important to understand the context we are operating within.

One Thing Is for Certain

The continuing education (CE) industry is rapidly evolving and increasingly competitive. Let’s take a quick scan of the business environment with Strategyzer’s¹ four lenses framework.

Market Forces

While each industry will experience pinches due to market shifts, there are several factors that comprehensively impact the continuing education market.

The first is the increasingly complex stratification of market segments. The constituents of our continuing education programs represent a spectrum of groups with diverse wants and needs. Some segments may be growing while others we’ve long served, and are presently heavily represented in our volunteer leadership, may be in decline. New markets may be emerging, but whether we remain an attractive option for their CE dollars will depend on whether our programs specifically address their needs.

A second market force is the shifting notion of a career. Instead of describing careers as a pathway, we now conceptualize them as “lattices.” This allows for multiple entry points in and out of an industry and any variety of lateral, vertical, and diagonal steps to grow within a profession. Describing who fits into early, mid- and advanced career boxes so we can offer meaningful programs and services is more challenging now than ever.

Additionally, the budget pressure our target market segments feel within their own organizations has prompted many professional associations to consider the person possessing the buying power for members as a constituent. To influence buying choices, new communication channels, messages, and sometimes services are warranted for constituents who may never become members themselves.

Finally, the modern learner’s expectations have significantly shifted. What they want, when they want it and what they’re willing to pay for it requires a new consciousness about the value proposition each of our market segments is looking for.

Key Trends

Trends are tricky. Instead of being The Thing, they are signals of The Thing. For example, microLearning is not a trend. It’s a learning format that has been around for a long time. The trend is 24/7 access to educational content at the point of need. And that arises from these key trends that we do need to pay attention to.

1. Freelance Economy. Results from Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends² report indicate that eight out of ten respondents believe demand for skills is driving a trend toward greater use of contingent workers. And the US is leading the way. A recent report from the US Government Accountability Office³ estimates that just over 40 percent of the country’s workforce is made up of contingent workers and this is expected to grow to 50 percent by 2020. Not all freelancers are full-time independent contractors. Many manage contract work on the side to supplement their income while some seek to gain necessary experience to make their next career move. The New York Post⁴ reported one in two millennials have a side hustle. The freelance economy is changing how organizations form teams around tasks, and it’s changing how individuals think about themselves as professionals. New types of skills are required to maximize freelance flexibility. Do your education programs address the needs of gig pros in your industry? Or assist leaders with managing talent networks?

2. Generational Shifts. The rising and falling tides of generations impact our market segments noted above, but the key trend we need to be concerned about is leadership continuity. While Generation X is amazing and assuming leadership in organizations, there simply aren’t enough of us demographically to fill the vacancies boomers will create. Millennials desire to step into leadership well before years of trial and error have chipped off their rough edges. They’re hungry for it. How are you helping them prepare? How will the risk inherent in not planning for succession within the leadership team and the promise and pitfalls of multigenerational leadership impact your industry?

3. Technological Advancement. Because of technology, the nature of work is changing. How we define a job is changing. How we collaborate with computers–not just use them–is changing with AI on the rise. This not only impacts what training is necessary for our members to thrive, but it has shifted our members’ expectations for how they desire to interact with us. For example: If the professionals in your industry are accustomed to using technology every day, they are going to have sophisticated expectations for your learning management system (LMS). If the younger professionals in your industry are accustomed to both producing and consuming content daily (e.g., YouTube or Snapchat) – and they are – they are going to have expectations for contributing and interacting with you and the content you offer digitally. See how this means we need to step up our game? Also, human skills (once called soft skills) are now in as great of demand by employers as technical skills. The US Chamber of Commerce Foundation⁵ has declared a “soft skills gap,” calling for a partnership between businesses and educational institutions. How is technological advancement and the resulting skill gaps reflected in your education offerings?

4. Pace of Change: I heard a rumor there used to be downtime at work. That we could anticipate busy cycles and slower cycles througho...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Internal & External Forces
• Chapter 2: A New Value Proposition
• Chapter 3: Education Strategy
• Chapter 4: Setting Your Strategic Foundation
• Chapter 5: Portfolio Perspective
• Chapter 6: Don’t Feed the Silos
• Chapter 7: Learning Design
• Chapter 8: Paper Airplane Potential
• Chapter 9: Pivot Pain
• Chapter 10: Strategy to Action
• Acknowledgments
• Thank You!
• About the Author
• Endnotes