More thoughts on L&D strategy

"The reason why we don't see the source of our problems is that the means by which we try to solve them are the source."

David Bohm

A shout out to a tweet from the always inspirational John Cutler on this blog...

I’ve used these questions before giving L&D teams advice:

Is there a ‘learning strategy’?

Is it reasonable?

Is the strategy explicitly or implicitly communicated?

Is the structure of the L&D team aligned with the strategy?

Sometimes you get lucky. There’s a reasonable learning strategy. A reasonable structure. The key issue is to make the strategy explicit.

The hardest to unpack is actually an implicit, not-great strategy with a tightly coupled (“optimised”) structure…

An interesting situation is when the learning strategy is in flux...

The L&D structure is aligned around the “old” strategy. Which was implicit.

The new strategy is understood at a high level, but the details are murky.

This is SO confusing. It is uncomfortable.

To start ... is it a learning strategy?

Next, does it make any sense?

Next, is it coherent?

Next, are the people in the business and in the L&D team able to crisply explain their assumptions?

Next, does it acknowledge uncertainty?

Next, can they acknowledge a valid counter strategy?

I benchmark, refocus and reinvest how transforming businesses enable learning.