"A lack of transformative change cannot be compensated by working harder (or funding harder) at incremental change." Dr Elizabeth Sawin I'd argue there are only two types of 'transformative' ambition in 'corporate learning': 1. Actively working to change the environment. This means L&D leaders deliberately working and lobbying to change a current organisational system which limits continual learning and performance potential.  This is hard, (inevitably) politically dangerous, and brave work. It requires a systemic perspective and a willingness to move as far and as fast as needed with leaders who will typically resist.  (What limits continual learning in most organisations - where 'learning' is re-defined beyond education - are choices of policies, processes, incentives, rewards, and measurement).  Where changing the environment is too much, too soon - or clearly futile: 2. Actively working to re-set design standards to maximise performance i

"You can change the way people get what they want. Or you can change what they want." Seth Godin As we head into another 'strategic planing' season for corporate L&D teams, it's worth reflecting that their previous efforts have never changed what most organisational leaders want from them: Familiarity Control Certainty 'Delivered' through: Project plans Content and comms. Events A separation between 'learning' and working To ensure: No direct impact on leaders' own chosen priorities...

"The biggest obstacles are internal." Shane Parrish Here are some new questions for annual 'L&D' planning season: Are the challenges for our organisation technical or adaptive (or both)? What are the specific features of 'readiness' for our organisation? How much of the value we create for customers is from known, stable, work and processes? Is this changing? How fast? How much time and resource is invested in asking new questions and identifying new possibilities? Is this deliberate? Do people always fulfil their potential here? Why? Do we trust our employees? How willing are we to change what we do now - to get to where we say we want to be instead?

"All change must start in the heads and thinking of managers. Unfortunately, this is unusual. Systems thinking is necessary. Unfortunately, silo thinking and suboptimisation are still the norm." Jan Jensrud Most leaders view their organisation in the 'technical' paradigm. Put simply, their business is a set of processes and structures (however poorly defined) which can be improved by 'fixing' or 'changing' in some way.  In this model, leaders are (inevitably) assumed to be the 'experts' and so the focus of the work beneath them is on executing their plans. Organisational development initiatives are (inevitably) approached in the same way. This breeds the default diet of centralised programmes, a focus on individuals, compliance, 'topics' (AKA 'skills'), content creation, and 'success' measured through activity (course completions) and reaction ('smile sheets'). First fact: The choice of management model determine

"I think people in power have a vested interest to oppose critical thinking." Carl Sagan Most people in organisational learning are only busy working in the current system - doing what is expected, incentivised, and rewarded.  Every year the work is a combination of: Creating new 'programmes' and 'content' in response to new requests Finding new ways to 'market' the learning 'programmes' and 'content'  Introducing new technologies to create new 'programmes' and 'content' faster and / or cheaper Finding new ways to report on people's activity and reaction to the 'programmes' and 'content' Finding ways to run the 'programmes' and 'content' more cheaply. What would need to change for there to be appetite, ambition and capacity to work ON the system instead?

"In my opinion, you begin with understanding performance, not learning. What exceptional performance looks like and what is hindering or helping it. If we start with a learning focus, we start with the intention to create and/or add something new (i.e. content), when we should start by understanding what barriers exist to exceptional performance and how to remove them." Mark Britz In most organisations, the system ('the way the work works') results in a focus on 'Learning' rather than on enabling better performance.  The 'Learning' zone is a vague and therefore comfortable place for those who operate within it and benefit from maintaining it.  The 'Learning' zone is clearly separated from the 'supporting performance in the work zone' (which is dependant on defining operational performance standards)  and The (true) training zone (which is dependant on facilitating realistic practice and authentic ongoing feedback). The 'Learning'

"Bureaucracy is a construction designed to maximise the distance between a decision-maker and the risk of the decision." Nicholas Taleb In most organisations 'Talent' and its 'Management' are now bureaucratic terms. They typically cover one or more of the following: 'Talent': A more socially acceptable word for 'employees'. An employee defined by leaders as of more value to the organisation than other employees, based on the definitions of 'valuable' that leaders have decided to use. 'Talent Management': Acknowledgement of an employees' potential (although not currently being fully realised). Encouraging people to join the organisation (recruitment) - new people that leaders think will do the things that need to be done in the way leaders want them done. Reassigning existing employees to new roles (internal job moves) - to do the things that leaders need to be done in the way leaders want them done. Grouping employees agains

"Stop looking for who's to blam e, instead starting askin g 'What is the System?'" Donella Meadows “Productivity” - "Learning better and faster" “Efficiency” - "Ease with which people can connect with those who can help and be helped “Problem solving” - "Sense making" “ROI” - "Increase in the level of enrolment as a result of our work together" “Digital Transformation” - "Moving responsibility into the hands of those closest to customers” “Centralised / Standardised” - "Trusting people to lead collaboratively" “Business Requirements” - "Striving for new insight and reflections" “Success measurement” - "Quality of interactions and their positive impact on customers" “Solutions” - "Enabling all parts to work together creatively"  “Delivery” - "Self starting, ownership" “Being granted the authority to...” - "Choosing to take responsibility". 

'Lamentably, business remains grounded in a slow-to-change mid-twentieth century 'scientific management' zeitgeist. What we have learned from the sciences since then - emergence and complexity, network science, and behavioural economics readily come to mind - has only made the slightest dent in how businesses are run. The fact is, despite what we have learned in the last 100 years about the world and human nature, businesses are organised around the premises and principles that are, at best, arbitrary vestiges of bronze-age hierarchies, and, at the worst, mechanisms intended to coerce and control the majority for the benefit of the few. As Clay Shirky once wrote, institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.' Stowe Boyd I think this quote is such a beautiful summary of my own thinking and indirectly, the overall theme of this blog over the past six years.  A recent family bereavement and some time away have found me reflecting more deeply

"For training to work it has to match the work." Nick Lawrence Most corporate training includes everything that leaders and 'stakeholders' need to feel 'off the hook'. So, 'learning' 'products' or 'modules' will include: - Content (text) lifted from a Policy document - Content (information) already published on an internal intranet site - Process flows and procedures; (found in the Policy document or internal intranet site) - Questions with answers; (that can be found in the Policy document or internal intranet site) - Elements favoured by the 'gut feel' of leaders; (which help to get the 'product' or 'module' approved...). When choosing to invest in a formal training 'solution' - rather than exploiting more effective ways to enable people to learn - the fundamental characteristics should only be: Designed with performance improvement as the goal; (not 'completion' or, 'enjoyment') Form

"It is not an intelligent strategy to train people to overcome system deficiencies. Instead, we should design the system properly to make sure that performers can leverage all their capabilities." Klaus Wittkhun One of the key features of the (deliberately) disconnected status quo model for corporate learning is the resulting 'blind hand offs'. To recap: The approach to 'learning' remains separated from 'work' - with a myopic focus on formal courses and 'resources' (education) This separation is facilitated and incentivised by people who reply on the status quo (leaders, vendors, and L&D teams and their annual budgets) This approach is fundamentally anti-systemic. ( If we acknowledge, investigate, and commit to adjust all the connected factors that contribute to individual and team performance we might conclude that most of the formal learning agenda and investment contributes very little. ..) So the output of the formal learning agenda dev