We talk a lot about creating L&D strategies, but we don’t see enough examples in action. That’s why we’ve created this series. We want to dig into how other top L&D leaders approach strategy in their organizations, from start-ups to global giants.
In this article, we sat down with Joachim Kohlbacher, the Director of People Development & Organizational Learning at PUMA.
For more case studies like this, read our piece on how Foodora built an L&D process.
Where Joachim’s career journey began
PUMA is a global sports and lifestyle company known for its quality items, innovation, and strong values. It has a people-first culture that encourages personal development and lifelong learning.
Joachim began his journey with PUMA 16 years ago in retail operations. After eight years, he transitioned into his first training role as the “Retail Training Manager (Europe),” where he spent five years building and establishing the Retail Training Network for the region, and switched to the role of Global Retail Training. At the beginning of this year, he advanced to his current role as "Director People Development & Organizational Learning."
Organizational context
When Joachim took over the role of Director People Development & Organizational Learning, two separate departments existed with very little collaboration: global retail training and corporate learning development.
In terms of structure, the Corporate Learning department comprised two managers who were responsible for learning activities and communication with external providers, as well as corporate eLearning content and vendor management. The team had a low level of global collaboration with four regional learning partners.
The Global Retail Training department was made up of Joachim, a Manager of Global Digital Learning, and a Junior Manager of Global Retail Training. The department had high levels of collaboration with 25 regional retail training managers, with a dotted line reporting to the Global Retail Training Manager.
Despite both being top-performing departments, they weren’t yet reaching their full potential.
As a result, the Vice President of People & Organization, Dietmar Knoess, made the decision to merge the two departments for better alignment, impact, and synergy.
“There was always one big password, and it was synergies. So this was always the North Star that we tried to follow", says Joachim.
With the decision to merge the departments, Dietmar and Joachim anticipated the following improvements:
- Improve impact with learner activation
- Better alignment between learning programs and content
- Enhanced measurability and ROI of learning activities
- Faster, more flexible responses to training requests with a larger focus on their customers
- Stronger alignment with global stakeholders
The merger triggered the need for a new L&D strategy that would be pivotal in supporting this big organizational shift.
Since the merge, the Global People Development and Organizational Learning department now includes the following functions:
- Implementation lead by Felipe Ferreira, Sr. Manager Global Training Implementation
- Digital Design lead by Polly Ivanova, Manager Global Digital Learning
- Content Design lead by Sabrina Rüger, Manager Global Training Content Design
- Global Retail Training lead by Justin Ng, Manager Global Retail Training
- Europe Retail Training lead by Yulia Lysenko, Teamhead Europe Retail Training
This wasn’t an overnight transition or an ad hoc initiative. Joachim had six months to prepare for the new department.
The process of creating the L&D strategy
Now that the context is clear, let’s break down how Joachim and his team built PUMA’s L&D strategy.
Step 1: Do research and choose the right team
The first step for Joachim was divided into two key actions: research and choosing the right team.
Here’s how Joachim approached the research stage:
- Since he was building the strategy on top of his current role, he put measures in place to make sure his work doesn’t suffer (delegation, automating tasks, etc.)
- He immediately started thinking about the best time to communicate the change and how to make the announcement without causing fear or anxiety for his colleagues, especially for the business areas with strong historical backgrounds such as Retail Training
- He did individual research by reading articles and getting advice from his colleagues and people in his network
When it came to choosing the team, he started by asking himself two questions:
- Who will be the key players for this project?
- How can I bring them in?
As we’ll see, doing the work to choose the right team members paid off massively when it came to the next phase of strategy building.
Step 2: Align the team around identity, vision, mission, and values
One of the most critical steps in the L&D strategy for Joachim was to create a unified vision. He wanted to understand what the team hoped to get out of the change. For instance, his goal was to move from being just an L&D department to being one that influences P&L and supports the business in a measurable way.
Building an identity
Joachim wanted to create an early sense of belonging within the team. To do this, he realized very early in the strategizing process (before he even assembled the team) that they first needed an identity. This became a major talking point during his initial conversations with future team members, stakeholders, and line managers.
That identity ended up being summarized in a single word: “growth”.
But what exactly does “growth” mean for the team? For Joachim, it means growing as individuals and also as a business. Ultimately, the team wants to contribute to PUMA’s further growth.
“Now “GROWTH” has become more than just a word to us as a team - it was the beginning, and it is leading us together as a squad”, says Joachim.
So, although the team’s official name within PUMA is the “People Development & Organizational Learning” department, the squad is now unofficially known as the “Growth Crew”.
Having a clear sense of identity from day one laid the foundations for building the team, identifying team values, and defining guiding principles.
Aligning on mission, vision, and values
The next step was an offsite in Istanbul to build a joint vision with the new team members. Over the course of three and a half days, the team came together to define who they were, what they wanted to achieve, and what they stood for. That included spending a full day working on their values. By the end of the offsite, they had a North Star for who they were as a team.
On top of this, they used the results of an employee survey (conducted by another team) and a team retro as a basis to build on more operational aspects. For instance, how to collaborate and who their future stakeholders would be.