"And remember, it's a collective devotion to conventional thinking that send organisations over the cliff of irrelevance." Gary Hamel Three reflections on conventional thinking: If you're a leader who is benefiting from operating a control based hierarchical system, then you're probably not interested in ways to operate a less control based hierarchical system. If your vendor commercial model - or internal 'L&D strategy' - relies on training as the 'solution', it's unlikely you'll be interested in acknowledging organisations as complex, connected systems. As Clay Shirky one wrote, 'institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.' The underpinning magical idea in the industrial, commercial 'L&D' model (including 'learning technology' vendors, conferences, awards programs, consulting, 'maturity models', podcasts etc. etc.) is that we can 'fix L&D' whilst everyth...

"It is the very fact that we find it difficult to motivate ourselves to become curious about systems - and work on listening to and understanding systems - that hinders us from asking and seeing what is really needed for transforming the health of systems." Josh Colchester The unmet opportunity for corporate 'L&D' - or (probably) some other team or group - is to help enable and facilitate the conditions for continuous learning that builds organisational adaptability.  This is a leadership challenge for the team - as it sets a fundamentally new expectation for the function: as facilitators of systems with and for the organisation.

"Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets." Donald Berwick The idea of corporate learning (education) operating as 'shop keepers' is not new ( Andrew Jacobs talks about it frequently). The basis if the corporate learning 'shop keeping' model is simple: 'We develop interesting learning products' 'We fill our shelves' (Learning Management System / Learning Experience Platform / SharePoint site etc.) 'We market our products to potential consumers' 'We ask them if they enjoyed our product' 'We ask them what they want next and develop new products' 'We keep the shelves full'. Etc. When we see this self-perpetuating bureaucratic model its impossible to 'un-see' it.  The roles, overheads and performative routines that grow up around the 'shop keeping' model in corporate learning reinforce its detachment from the work systems that actually enable or limit performance.