"This allows executives to claim a focus on systems while still penalising individual contributors, thereby circumventing any meaningful systemic interrogation. This also conveniently negates leader responsibility for the very system they are in fact responsible for, simply by virtue of happening to be the ones in charge." Charles Lambdin Commercial vendors in corporate learning (inevitably) trade in improving individual parts on the system: 'Improve your 'Learning needs analysis'' 'Stop taking orders' 'Provide more performance support' 'Stop creating e-learning modules' 'Improve your measurement - no more 'happy sheets'' 'Upgrade your Learning Management System to a Learning Experience Platform' 'Use the right data' Etc. Etc. Etc. The reality is these individual interventions are usually incompatible with the existing system and so fail to take hold and scale. If we can step back from allowing vendors to...

"Those who successfully managed a company to maturity are unlikely to be able to manage it back to youth." Russell Ackoff The work of Jane Hart can help to reposition the role of learning, and shift the focus from providing education and content to enabling performance The work of Charles Jennings can help to reframe learning away from formal, central, interventions towards the reality of learning and improving performance through work and our networks The work of Guy W. Wallace can help to fundamentally reset the way to define and align investments and design standards towards enabling performance The work of Clark N. Quinn can help to embed science based pedagogy into design strategy and principles The work of Will Thalheimer can help to fundamentally reset our thinking, approach, and delivery of performance impact oriented measurement. (To name just a few). So, the challenge isn't a lack of effective alternatives to the status quo - the challenge is how to create the ...

"We do not rise to the level of our goals. We fall to the levels of our systems." James Clear I think we are in the third (maybe fourth?) decade of " L&D need to demonstrate value ". In reality, the lack of demonstrable value is a feature of the status quo system - not a 'bug'.

"Reminder that when your leaders are primarily interested in consolidating power and building fiefdoms, they sap the organisation of its ability to optimise decision making." Charles Lambdin 'Why training still' wins is a regular theme - either directly or indirectly in my blog. I wrote on this around this time last year (see January 5th 2024 post). At this time of the year there's the perennial noise from edtech vendor sales teams and vendor CLO missionaries on how corporate L&D should ditch training and buy their platform instead.  The entrenchment of training is simply a symptom of the dominance of control based leadership. It reflects the power dynamics at play - and inevitably the status quo system continues to deliver. Here's the simple power play: Leaders believe they know best The role of 'training' is to create a standardised workforce (immediately assumes people are robots and operating on a stable, sanitised environment - both wrong, but...