Stretched thin, HR and learning and development leaders are doing their best to maximize every dollar and hour. When it comes to resource investment, one of the most important decisions is making the call between off-the-shelf content and custom content.

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Today, we’ll explore the pros and cons of different approaches to this decision in the context of leadership development programs. Because many aspects of good leadership are applicable across industries, leadership development can seem like an obvious area to opt for off-the-shelf content.

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Before we dive in, for more tips on building great leadership development programs, be sure to check out:

• Our guide to creating world-class leadership development programs, for any size team
• Our Emerging Leaders Program for upskilling your early-career talent
• Our recorded webinar on building adaptability for L&D, HR, and people leaders‍
• Our own personal leadership journeys at Next Shift Learning: Tina’s story and Sergio’s story

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Why Focus on Leadership Development?

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There are lots of resources out there to help learning leaders navigate the off-the-shelf vs. custom content decision. We want to focus specifically on leadership development. First, because it’s an area where organizations can opt for fully off-the-shelf content. Not only that, it’s also a really important area for L&D teams to invest today.

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Increasingly, data is showing that the skills and capabilities needed to be a great leader (sometimes called “soft skills,” though we prefer “human skills” or “enduring skills”) are a crucial area for learning teams to focus their resources.

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The World Economic Forum lists creativity, resiliency, and self-awareness among the five most sought-after skills today, while this year’s In-Demand Skills Report report cites communication, teamwork, and problem-solving amongst its top ten. And in a LinkedIn report on the future of work and AI, 92% of US professionals say they believe “people skills” are more important than ever. Bottom line: today’s workplace calls for collaborative problem-solving and complex decision-making, and a wide swath of employees need the skills—and training—to support this.

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Off-the-Shelf Content for Leadership Development Programs: Benefits

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Building your leadership development program around off-the-shelf content has several key advantages. For “small but mighty” teams (we’d describe ourselves that way at Next Shift Learning, so we can relate!), this is a way to efficiently roll out or uplevel leadership development at your organization without creating content from scratch. 

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Pros of off-the-shelf content for leadership development programs include:

• Price. Custom content can be prohibitively expensive for L&D teams without a large budget, making off-the-shelf a more practical option.
• Timeline. If you’re looking to deploy a leadership development program quickly, out-of-the-box content is a fast way to get up and running.
• Breadth of topics. Off-the-shelf content often covers a wide range of leadership topics, providing exposure to various concepts and skills that might not all be immediately relevant, but could prove useful in different scenarios or career stages.

Finally, in the case of leadership development, opting for off-the-shelf content may allow your team to focus on in-house content creation in areas where customization is non-negotiable, such as onboarding or technical training related to your product or proprietary software.

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Custom Content for Leadership Development Programs: Benefits

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On the other hand, there are a wealth of benefits to creating custom content that’s tailored specifically to your organization.

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If you do have the resources to create this content, there are many ways it can boost the impact of your leadership development program, including:

• Specificity. Creating content in-house allows you to focus on the day-to-day challenges your learners face and hone in on the skill areas most important to their success.
• Control. With bespoke learning content, you’re able to customize every element of the learning, from the length of each module, to the tone, voice, and medium of the content, to the number of interactive elements throughout.‍
• Relatable stories. Custom content allows your learners to see themselves more vividly in the stories, case studies, examples, and discussion prompts you use throughout the learning
• Engagement. Creating content in-house is a big investment, but we’ve seen this reap serious returns in learner engagement, with learners feeling much more connected to an experience that feels custom-made for them.

This ultimately results in more effective skill acquisition. With content that feels engaging, relatable, and relevant to their experiences, learners are more quickly able to put their new skills into practice in their daily work.

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Off-the-Shelf vs. Custom Content for Leadership Development Programs: a Middle Way?

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This section is where we show our cards a little bit!

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When we partner with clients to implement our Emerging Leaders Program, we work with them to determine the best answer to the “off-the-shelf vs. custom content” question. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing scenario!

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In fact, for most organizations, a combination of both out-of-the-box and tailored learning is going to be the best alternative. It provides a cost-effective solution that still fosters engagement and impact, giving you content that is informed by the specific realities of your organization and vetted by experts who understand the science of skill acquisition, learner engagement, and great design.

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You can easily mix off-the-shelf content together with customized elements to get the benefits of tailored materials without having to create everything from scratch. For example, the sections that feature more high-level academic insights can draw from off-the-shelf content. Meanwhile, case studies, stories, and other specific examples that illustrate how learned concepts apply to the “real world” can come from scenarios within your company.

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Custom Content for Leadership Development: Interview Checklist

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So, if you’re taking a combined approach, how do you determine which parts of a foundational leadership curriculum you need to customize?

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We love doing interviews with learners to understand where to best leverage custom content and spark ideas for what to include. These conversations can help you get a sense of what's truly unique to the organization and what can stay the same.

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Here are some of the real questions we use to guide these discussions.

In Conclusion

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It may be a complicated time for learning and HR leaders, but it’s also an exciting one. The organizations that empower their people with evergreen leadership skills—skills that will help them succeed despite uncertainty and rapid change—will ultimately rise to the top.

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There is a huge opportunity here for the organizations who are willing to invest in leadership development. And we’ve seen firsthand that it doesn’t require an “build-it-from-scratch” approach to have a serious impact!

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At Next Shift Learning, we’re always asking: What does it look like when we prepare our workforce like we truly believe in them?

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Taking a strategic approach to combining off-the-shelf and custom content is a way to ensure you’re reaching your learners with world-class content that reflects your belief in them—while still using your team’s resources in a smart, scalable way.

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Are you looking for ways to help leaders at your organization cultivate evergreen skills like adaptability? Get your free copy of our practice-forward guide on how to create an effective leadership development program, built around skills like adaptability––the evergreen capabilities that will help leaders thrive, no matter what the world throws at them.

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Want to learn more about bringing Next Shift Learning’s Emerging Leaders Program to your organization? Get in touch here. We look forward to speaking with you!