#GuildChat for 08/10/18: Success as a Small L&D Team

Our next #GuildChat takes place Friday, August 10th at 11am PT / 2pm ET. Our topic for this week’s chat is Success as a Small L&D Team.

The world of L&D isn’t just huge teams at even huger organizations. A large number of us do our work in a small L&D team – sometimes even as just a team of one. When it’s going well, a smaller team can offer you nimbleness, autonomy, and a chance to take on many different tasks. When it’s not going well, though, that same smaller structure can make make you feel overwhelmed from juggling all the demands on your time and having to wear so many hats to get your work done. And while the end goal for a project might be stable, the strategies and techniques you use to get it from start to finish can vary wildly depending on the size of your team.

In this week’s #GuildChat we’ll look at the unique benefits and challenges of working in a small L&D team. We’ll discuss what approaches can help you take advantage of the strengths of smaller teams and mitigate some of the drawbacks. We’ll also look at how you can find balance when you’re the one taking on many (if not all) of the tasks involved with designing and developing great learning experiences.

Prospective questions:

Q1 What do you personally like and dislike about working on a small L&D team?
Q2 When working as a small team, you can only take on so much at once. How do you triage the requests that come in?
Q3 What are some ways smaller teams can save time and or money?
Q4 How do the choices you make about how to build your skills (or what skills to build in the first place) change when you’re on a very small team?
Q5 What can make design and development of eLearning difficult when you’re a small team (or just a team of one)?
Q6 How can small L&D teams maximize SMEs?
Q7 Can very small L&D teams (5 or fewer people) meet the needs of larger organizations? Why or why not?
Q8 If someone is new to being on a small L&D team, what advice would you give them on ways to help it work well?

Missed this GuildChat? Don’t worry – you can still read through what happened on our Wakelet transcript of the chat!