In corporate Learning and Development its easy to love what you do, but...

I played in a pub band for a few years. I joined the band because I loved the instrument, rock songs and the sound I could make. It was the classic dream, built on years of listening to music, collecting records and going to 'real' gigs. The other pull was the idea of the band. The team. The tribe. Being with people who loved similar records, the same bands and the same sounds. And by playing together we became the only ones who really know what it took to get good enough to do your hobby in public. So being in the band was about me and us.

But in reality, the band was only there for other people. The pub owners who needed new bands to help bring customers in. The bar teams who organised the bands. The customers in the pubs on the night we were playing. The band who had played there the previous week that people had liked more. The people in the pub who only wanted to hear a certain kind of band or certain songs. The people in the pub who didn't want to hear any band that night. The people in the pub who hadn't planned to hear a band that night but actually, had a better night because of us.

So what does any if this have to do with L&D teams? Well, in L&D it's easy to love what you do, to practice your craft and to love your team. And it's easy to think it's there for you. But that's not the thing that you should necessarily take out to the rest of your organisation. It's fine to have the tools, the content, the measurement frameworks and the technologies. The terms and the words. To have your own ecosystem; your own crafted collection of solutions. But these are often aimed at us and the people in our own tribe.

The underlying business challenge I see today is helping leaders to understand how to invest differently in the people they serve. A new role for L&D is to tell the story of how doing business in the connection economy differs from the transaction economy and to be a role model for this shift. A common pain point for leaders is 'How can we make sense of this disruption so everyone is clear what's needed from them?'. What many leaders need is help with a new design for their team and their organisation. They probably need help with a new work system, based more on conversations and connections than compliance and control. They may need support on how to get more from the experiences of the people around them. Leaders are facing more new questions and opportunities than ever but tackling these with teams with some of the lowest levels of engagement and productivity.

So an opportunity for 'new L&D' is to step forward and fill this space for the organisation. Which means finally stepping away from the things at the end of the process which we like to do for ourselves.