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Showing posts from November, 2023

What it would take to enable '702010' to scale?

"They don't want you to maximise efficiency. They want to optimise it without altering the existing power dynamic. That is not the same thing." Charles Lambdin The '702010' model fails to scale because no one is incentivised to do so. Vendors fill the learning strategy vacuum (because they need to SELL), whilst corporate L&D leaders act as internal vendors ("comfort is the enemy of progress"). Leaders are happy with just enough PR noise around 'growing talent' and 'learning culture' - as the present model contracts out responsibility and protects their preoccupations in the current power system. So '702010' fails because the systemic prerequisites needed to embed this approach are still unpalatable: 1. Acknowledgement of the fact that working and learning are inextricably linked 2. Acknowledgement that the majority of workplace learning comes from and through the work itself; followed by learning from and with colleagues and

On content libraries

"Many vendors are tied into content-rich, context and interaction-poor learning solutions when they should be focusing on interaction-rich and highly contextual solutions." Charles Jennings Providing generic content libraries is a passive, non-strategy. You're relying on a) magic and b) luck to change people's performance. (Which is fine as enabling performance change probably isn't the goal).

What do senior leaders expect from their L&D / Capability teams?

"What you're not changing, you're choosing." Bruce Lee Most senior leaders don't have any specific, strategic expectations for the 'learning' function. Behind the disconnected, swirling soundbites of ' learning ', ' skills ' and ' talent ', the underlying status quo persists: Topic centric content production 'Set piece' events management Digital content distribution Administration and reporting based on content consumption and event attendance. These are what organisations are still choosing .

The best L&D team 'Marketing Plan'

" Engagement is a poor proxy for performance impact " Guy W. Wallace The goal of most 'L&D marketing' is to ' drive engagement with our products '. This is inevitable in a system which relies on maintaining the status quo; ('L&D' own 'learning', 'L&D' know what's best for you, 'learning' = education, 'consuming our content and events will change your results' etc.). The alternative? Replace the self serving goal of 'engagement' with the empathetic goal of 'usefulness'. Rather than 'L&D' campaigning to distract people from their work to do what they need them to do, L&D should aim to become famous for only creating resources and experiences that help people to do their jobs. (And then the people will spread the word).