JetBlue – The Importance of Business Alignment

The leaders of JetBlue U know that their success is based on the core belief that they exist to support the operations of the company, rather than simply promote and develop their department as a training organization. CLO Mike Barger compares their secret of success to the ability to manifest the true meaning of the catch phrase ‘aligning training with the business units.’ Barger states that one of the big challenges a training department has when creating a corporate university is creating a learning setting that has enough business performance focus to be accepted by the business unit leaders. Business unit leaders must trust the corporate university to produce a student, worker or crew member who will be effective following training, so exceptional alignment between the business unit requirements and corporate university deliverables are vital to success.

Being flexible in goals and deliverables has opened a lot of doors when it comes to evolving JetBlue U from a training function to a performance support organization. Mr. Barger points out that in order to truly be successful in running a corporate university, one needs to be confident and comfortable enough to tell a business leader that, “The second you don’t think this is working for you, we need to sit down and talk about it. If it does not work for you, it can not, by definition, work for me because we're not here for us, we're here for you.”

As a critical contributor to operations, JetBlue U is strategically engaged in the decision making and development process through guidance and recommendations that support: Performance improvement initiatives New products Instituting new procedures