"We love diving into solutions, don't we? We've been trained to think anything else is waste. As a result, the work we do is often confined to whatever was top of mind. We end up focusing on our speed of delivery of the obvious." Charles Lambdin This quote summarises beautifully the thinking that still underpins industrial corporate Learning and Development. 'We only have a hammer so everything must be a nail' still prevails - as this benefits and reinforces the position of both the L&D function and its enabling vendors.  So the path of least resistance prevails, and there can only be four possible explanations: Group-think Apathy Lack of capability - to seek, develop and enable  anything different Wilful blindness.

"Nothing you do will improve a relationship with an accountability averse person." Nathalie Martinek PhD The inability to shift focus from 'Learning' to enabling performance is the basis of corporate L&D's failings. There remains a comfortable convenience in holding firm on the vague notion of 'Learning' (reduced accountability, top down budgeting, familiarity, community, people pleasing). Adopting a posture and intent of enabling performance improvement fundamentally changes this perspective. Then the work of 'L&D' becomes accountable, collaborative, participative, and output focused: Collaborating with leaders and team members to define the performance standards required - using their language and goals Collaborating with leaders and team members to understand barriers that prevent this level of performance Distilling and validating the tasks and processes that can contribute to achieving the performance standards Observing and connectin

"Long-term thinking eliminates a lot of poor behavior." Shane Parish The opposite of overthinking is under-thinking. Under-thinking is the bedrock of the status quo in corporate learning and development: Leaders' ideas shape our priorities Received priorities are fundamental to our plans 'Topics' are our currency Content is a 'strategy' Providing more content is the goal  Consuming content (alone) changes performance Familiar things satisfy and so that's good enough Activity is a helpful measure Positive reactions from 'users' justify our approach People need help to stop their work and to start 'learning' Technology helps the L&D team get what it wants.

"All too often, managers surround themselves with people whose life experiences mirror their own. Over time, the gene pool becomes a stagnant pond. Year after year, it's the same people having the same conversations about the same issues, often in the same beige conference rooms. That has to change." Michele Zanini The economic model of large scale L&D conferences relies on perpetuating old mantras. The familiar themes don't change as the formula is always the same: 1. Position outputs as inputs (Example: ' We need a new approach to learning ...') + 2. Position new technologies as a shortcut + 3. Distract people from systems change. Some typical conference hall tropes that can't change in the present system: (Tick them off in the conference programme...) 'Moving to a performance focus' 'Creating business value' 'Creating more 'pull' for our 'learning products' 'Aligning learning to the business' 'Building