"Those who successfully managed a company to maturity are unlikely to be able to manage it back to youth." Russell Ackoff The work of Jane Hart can help to reposition the role of learning, and shift the focus from providing education and content to enabling performance The work of Charles Jennings can help to reframe learning away from formal, central, interventions towards the reality of learning and improving performance through work and our networks The work of Guy W. Wallace can help to fundamentally reset the way to define and align investments and design standards towards enabling performance The work of Clark N. Quinn can help to embed science based pedagogy into design strategy and principles The work of Will Thalheimer can help to fundamentally reset our thinking, approach, and delivery of performance impact oriented measurement. (To name just a few). So, the challenge isn't a lack of effective alternatives to the status quo - the challenge is how to create the ...

"We do not rise to the level of our goals. We fall to the levels of our systems." James Clear I think we are in the third (maybe fourth?) decade of " L&D need to demonstrate value ". In reality, the lack of demonstrable value is a feature of the status quo system - not a 'bug'.

"Reminder that when your leaders are primarily interested in consolidating power and building fiefdoms, they sap the organisation of its ability to optimise decision making." Charles Lambdin 'Why training still' wins is a regular theme - either directly or indirectly in my blog. I wrote on this around this time last year (see January 5th 2024 post). At this time of the year there's the perennial noise from edtech vendor sales teams and vendor CLO missionaries on how corporate L&D should ditch training and buy their platform instead.  The entrenchment of training is simply a symptom of the dominance of control based leadership. It reflects the power dynamics at play - and inevitably the status quo system continues to deliver. Here's the simple power play: Leaders believe they know best The role of 'training' is to create a standardised workforce (immediately assumes people are robots and operating on a stable, sanitised environment - both wrong, but...

"If you do not understand your role on the problem, it is difficult to be part of the solution." David Peter Stroh Internal corporate Learning and Development teams and their vendor partners are wholly unregulated.  (The 'L&D' industry awards Ponzi Scheme and paid up front, 'accreditation' deals don't count). The systemic lack of impact, enablement, and measurement in the 'L&D' industry stems from this lack of a central 'code of practice'. So, unregulated internal 'L&D' teams (often made up of ex-classroom trainers, 'HR generalists', project managers and e-learning designers) rely on external vendors (who are incentivised to serve up the expected, familiar diet of digital long-form communication). The passive acceptance of 'action' (i.e. course attendance / completion) and 'reaction' ('liked' or 'enjoyed the experience') as the only indicators of 'impact' means that sub-sta...

"It's difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon him not understanding it." Upton Sinclair Some personal assertions to end the year: Individual performance has a tiny impact on the overall performance of an organisation Overall performance is a reflection of the system - which is wholly owned by leaders It suits leaders to demand focus on individual performance rather than their system Corporate 'Learning and Development' is systemically un-systemic  When organisations say 'Learning' they mean 'education' The education model suits leaders as it maintains the separation between 'learning' and working Shifting from education requires the imagination and commitment to see learning as the work  Being "productive" would then (have) to mean, "learning better and faster" The goal of corporate 'L&D' teams (who are part of the education system) is to make better training Most trainin...

"It's difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon him not understanding it." Upton Sinclair No CEO is worried about the impact of their L&D team.

"To do more of what is not working currently, is to do more of what will not work in the future. The curious thing is that the righter you do the wrong thing, the wronger you become." Russell Ackoff The lack of progress in corporate L&D is systemic. Look at the conference agendas, keynotes, podcasts, and book titles now and compare them to 15 years ago. Almost the same issues, word for word. There's a deep rooted status quo built around doing the wrong thing righter. Four of the most common examples, if you can't / don't / dare not see them: 1. Anything related to 'making training better' (because you probably didn't need a training solution in the first place). 2. Anything related to telling workers how they need to do more of what you're telling them to do - now termed 'Marketing for L&D' (because it probably isn't directly related to helping them do their job more effectively and to get what they want). 3. Anything related to...

"In a system, the best way to treat a problem is seldom where the problem appears, because of the interaction of the parts." Donella H. Matthews The 'problems' in corporate learning are inevitably framed and defined by the people already in corporate learning. This group think leads to a familiar list of problems that inevitably can't be solved: 'We need a 'learning culture' 'We need to stop taking orders from 'the business'' 'We need to become performance led' 'We need to stop defaulting to training as the only solution' 'We need to stop creating more content' 'The new technology didn't deliver as promised.' These examples are not 'the problems' of course - they are symptoms - simply features of the current system.  Instead, we can choose to look at the interaction of the different parts of the system - that have created these outputs over time. These might include: How leaders have create...

"You can get anybody to agree anything in a workshop but if you don't change the social context, it all changes when they get back (to work)." Dave Snowden We can shift the performance of organisations and potentially the performance of the individuals within it if we focus on the underlying system.  This would lead us to put effort, time and resources against: Challenging and evolving the assumptions and beliefs of leaders who own the system Choosing to re-imagine and reset organisational goals  Choosing to reset policies, process and measurement systems to enable the new organisational goals Choosing to change the current organisational rules around incentives and rewards to align with the new organisational goals  Choosing to change the way that information, ideas and feedback flows through the organisation. However, this is demanding, politically sensitive, 'risky', long term, collaborative work. (And mostly counter intuitive to industrial leaders who benefit ...

"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...