Building Bridges

Plant and Cultivate Your Garden (and Your Learning Solutions!) this Spring

I’m willing to bet at least some of my readers love gardening, especially this time of year when the emergence of warm sunshine, sweet-smelling blossoms, and busy bees fill hopes for our gardens! Or, if you don’t garden, perhaps you have someone to help you with the yardwork and maintenance. But what happens when you are ready for a larger project to make over your entire yard?

Do you hire a renowned landscape architect to create a plan? Perhaps she completely reseeds the grass then plants flowers, strategically chosen to bloom throughout the season, adding rich, green bushes and artfully putting down cedar chips. Constructing a rock wall and adding a koi pond complete the vision.

Perhaps, though, that design includes more than what is truly needed or what is within your means. You may not have enough money for a landscape architect, never mind a koi pond, or the time or patience to construct a rock wall, or enough space for a lavish garden. Instead of hiring a landscape architect, you could buy a book written by a knowledgeable author to inspire a do-it-yourself project. You may be able to achieve a great look for your property simply by cutting the lawn, treating existing flowers, and adding some bulbs to sprout next spring.

Or, you could try something in-between. You could ask a knowledgeable friend to review your garden and recommend changes that you can make yourself. He might suggest a particular blend of grass seeds, share a resource to purchase an easy-to-install small koi pond, and give you a list of flowers that bloom throughout the season. This still requires your time and some yard space, yet it is more budget-friendly than hiring a professional. Sometimes, advice to take you from vision to reality is really all you need.

So, why not apply that same concept to your learning & development program? Sometimes you want, and need, a full-service solution provider who can give you the garden — I mean, learning solution — to meet your exact needs and wants. You may need someone who can analyze the audience needs, the organizational culture, and current learning offerings, then develop and implement a suite of learning experiences to enhance employee performance.

Sometimes you just need a little help and you can do the rest yourself. You might ask an expert in the field to review what you have and recommend enhancements to a learning experience that you can make yourself, perhaps with a little guidance. This is why we added our suite of services to build self-reliance to our full-service offerings.

Or, for a new learning experience, where your subject matter expert is tasked with developing the training, you might need someone to guide him through the process while checking in with him periodically. We call this our BRIDGE (Build Rapid Instructional Design Guided by EnVision’s experts) Solution®. With this service offering, EnVision’s consultants guide the skills of your subject matter expert, potentially shortening the project’s timeframe and minimizing its budget.

Perhaps someone has already developed training and you’d like to have it reviewed to receive recommended changes that you can make yourself. This is where our Course Audit service fits in.

So, don’t just toss seeds into the ground and expect them to flourish, or content into your organization and expect employees to learn and grow! Get help with planning and resources (or with trimming or cultivating) so that you can create a stronger, even more vibrant garden of learning.