"Most corporate 'L&D' is performative theatre. Events management. Investing £s into trying to improve the performance of individuals, without a focus on systems change is just a cargo cult. The status quo persists as Execs, L&D leaders and vendors all have to much to lose." Paul Jocelyn This my 48th and final blog post for 2023. Over 9,000 people have viewed my blog this year, with the most read post from 2023 being ' Barriers to progress '.  I'm grateful for everyone who has taken time to read my posts this year, and I hope they challenged you - to reflect, re-think or choose a new approach. (That's the reason I write). Writing this blog is definitely the most rewarding thing I've done in a thirty four year corporate career (as an employee, freelancer, and contractor). Choosing the discipline to write what I think and publish into the world with no expectations has been an entirely positive experience and I can't imagine stopping. It

"The most common leadership failure stems from attempting to apply technical solutions to adaptive challenges." Ron Heifetz  The 'Head of Learning & Development' job persists and it's easy to be confused. In reality it's not just one job, it's at least five: Program management: The core work of planning, coordinating, communicating and reporting on a set of formal learning collateral. This is inevitably process oriented, 'governance' oriented, and administration heavy. IT systems management: This is the work of procuring, testing, deploying, and maintaining the choice of 'learning technology(ies)' that enable access to the formal learning offer.    Mandatory learning management: This is the work of developing, maintaining, tracking, and reporting 'completions' of an annual circular program of 'mandatory learning'. 'Marketing' management: This is the work of broadcasting the content in the program to encourage pe

"We do not rise to the level of our goals. We fall to the levels of our systems." James Clear We know 'performance' in complex systems is interdependent, emergent, and connected.  This is a problem for the regular kind of corporate Learning & Development which is based on separation, compliance and a focus on individuals.

"What you see depends on what you thought before you looked." Myron Tribus Many organisations are running towards the ' Skills ' gold rush. In reality these ' Skills ' are still just a list of topics . This is inevitable as the L&D status quo is built around providing non contextual resources and courses which are managed as a separate entity to people's 'real' work. (The status quo persists because it still suits all parties). The missed opportunity when aligning around ' Skills ' is to break these into tasks - what people will do   better - when they can apply the ' Skill ' in practice . This opens the opportunity for the L&D team to refocus on enabling people to develop task competence that can improve their performance in context. This approach also bridges the ' too busy working to go and learn! ' stand off - as the shared focus (for L&D, managers, team members) is only on what's required to perform