"Evidence suggests focus on 'skills-building' at the expense of carrying out a systemic analysis analysis to determine the real underlying issues is not only wasting huge amounts of money, but also inhibiting our ability to develop high performing individuals, teams and organisations." Tulser Here are some common systemic blockers to performance that someone / a team could enable leaders to acknowledge and focus on: 1. Not defining the characteristics of 'high performance' for individuals, teams, and the organisation as a whole 2. Not gaining agreement on the 'gap' versus performance today 3. Social structures that prevent collaborative problem acknowledgement and problem solving  4. Inability to define and agree the capacity (space, time, resource) and capabilities (worldviews, systems thinking, resources) needed to thrive in a changed world 5. Intent to challenge and support leaders raised on a diet of process compliance and 'efficiency' meas

"Most of today's leaders don't 'put anything in place'. They simply adapt what's already in place without question. Hence, the holding over of the industrial model when the nature of work has changed. No skepticism about traditions or curiosity about future models." @SySTEMHabits In control based organisations, 'L&D' teams (inevitably) adopt these preoccupations, priorities and routines: 1. A fundamental focus on 'learning' over enabling (new) performance 2. Creating centralised, 'learning' 'content' 3. Scaling access to and 'delivery' of the 'learning' 'content'  4. Skills definition and standardisation (focused on 'topics' over 'tasks') 5. Ensuring project and programme consistency 6. Optimising for 'content' consumption and 'course completions' (see points one to five above).

"In complex domains, increased procedural efficiency does not equate to increased productivity." Doc Norton  In 2024 the common drivers for new 'learning' investments are inevitably still the same inside bureaucratic organisations: 1. Business reacting to external events 2. Cost reduction initiatives 3. 'Digitisation' (cost optimisation) of existing business processes 4. Process standardisation projects 5. Responding to compliance audit risks.

"I think people in power have a vested interest to oppose critical thinking." Carl Sagen The current system in most organisations forms the cultural norm that "learning" (only) equates to "getting training". Most senior leaders are passive on this as they continue to benefit.  Here's my list of reasons that ensure training is still favoured - over proactively creating environments that enable continual learning: 1. Control 2. Easy to separate from the 'real work' (and so deprioritise) 3. Easy to devolve responsibility down (which L&D teams gladly accept) 4. Easy to manage as a project checklist item (safety in the familiar plan / budget / delivery zone) 5. Fits with the 'just get people to execute!' mantra 6. Leaders can maintain their own behaviour as-is ('do as we say not what we do').