Learning means change - for individuals, for leaders, for teams and for organisations. Change work is by definition leadership work; shifting the culture, bringing new perspectives, connecting people and their ideas. "L&D" started from a different place of course. "L&D" was a tool for Management, a small cog in the bureaucracy. Maintaining and ensuring the system and reinforcing the status quo. The role and objective of workplace learning was to scale the levels of compliance required to ensure efficiency. Helping the operating model to run, keeping the corporate boat on its predetermined course fuelled by fixed skills and processes. Business leaders and L&D are understandably wrestling with the depth and rate of disruption of these traditional hierarchy led structures. Business models can no longer rely on production and supply chain efficiency as value no longer means only costs and price. The new platforms for business growth and sustainability (...

According to the Havard Business Review 2018 " Leaders Guide to Corporate Culture " only 7% of the 1,300 CEOs interviewed were intentionally developing a culture of continuous learning. The remaining 93% confirmed that a culture of "Results focus" remained their number one or number two objective... This crushing insight presents a stark survival choice for 'L&D' teams stuck in a (supposedly) "Results focus" organisational culture: Option 1 "If you can't convince them, join them" Continue to work to convince busy senior people who are striving their way to the "Results" first culture desired by their boss that L&D are also in fact "all about results, just like you". They can rest assured that we have the "resources", "platforms", and "methodologies" that can definitely "help".  In short, be on hand to take requests for "solutions" that "ensure...

"If all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail" A long held criticism of 'L&D' is that it is "full of solutions looking for a problem". This often links to an inability to reflect the business context within which they are trying to facilitate change. Some helpful questions to understand the context and cultural norms in an organisation could include: How do people describe "high performance" around here? How is the performance gap(s) to be tackled articulated? What is the nature of the work to be improved? 'Standardised, repeatable' work?; 'Complex' work?; 'Discovery' work? Are we currently a 'learning organisation'? If yes, then why and how? How easily and quickly do information and ideas move around the organisation? How low in the organisation's team structure can decisions be made? How important is compliance and efficiency to the organisation? How outward looking is the or...

"Leadership is about doing the right things ... Management is about doing things right" Here's my list of L&D leadership and, L&D management thinking: L&D leads when it: Helps leaders to understand and engage with the features and benefits of a continuous learning culture; Defines the role and the priority of learning for the organisation; Collaborates to agree the capabilities required to execute the business strategy; (not, just individual skills for individual jobs); Works with team managers to coach and support them to lead and role model a continuous learning culture; Facilitates new and better connections within and across business teams and functions; Creates opportunities for the organisation to look outside itself, to grow its networks and to find new ideas and opportunities; Enables and accelerates new ways for individuals and teams to share their own continuous learning; Measures success by the quality of its partnerships; Lead...

"Strategy is turning the resources you have into the power you need, to win the change you want." Marshall Ganz "If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there." Lewis Carrroll I believe the biggest challenge facing the 'L&D' industry is to define the change it actually wants to make in the world. For work. For organisations. For leaders. For teams. For individual workers. What's the context? What are the problems to solve? What are the strategic choices? What impact will we make? The default 'L&D' narrative remains focused on training delivery, operations and logistics. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow seems to be affirmation and acceptance from the industrialists. The overriding objective? - to land contributions to 'business critical' projects. Seemingly, there is little ambition beyond reinforcing the 'on time / on budget / on spec.' mindset required by status quo or...

Lots of noise on the topic of L&D being more like the marketing department. This seems to mean using new broadcast tools to interrupt busy workers and try to convince them they should do what L&D thinks is good for them. For L&D teams determined to lead real change, it can be helpful to apply some marketing 'brand building' rigour to sharpen the focus: In four simple statements, define: The current context of work and learning in your organisation; The current problems for employees and managers that need to be solved and why; How the L&D strategy helps to provide solutions to their problems; The impact of successfully implementing the strategy (and not) for the success of the organisation Hone this until it is unmistakably clear and sharp for everyone who needs to understand it (Next, what and who needs to be aligned in your organisation for your L&D strategy to start to drive change?) Paul helps L&D teams to connect the disconnecte...

True - to support today's disrupted world of work. But the basis of 'L&D' comes from the traditional, industrialised model of work: Success in the 'Build > Sell > Cut costs > Build cheaper' era required efficiency, compliance and conformity; Stakeholders and leaders needed certainty of output and results; "Training" and measurement fast tracked the idea of control in the system; Responsibility for "Training" could easily be sub-contracted out to a "Business Support" function; (whilst leaders got on with the really important stuff...). Much current L&D focus and investment still links back to this industrial mindset of driving efficiency and standardisation across an organisation. I believe this is revealed by: 'L&D's ongoing battle to demonstrate 'value' to senior people The need to find acceptance from the organisation The need to create and manage 'resources' that provide ...

It's a truism that you get what you measure in a team or a business. When L&D acts as just an optional support function, it's "success measures" include: Number of participant days Number of courses / new courses per year Course rating evaluations Number of 'visits' to 'it's' 'platforms' Number of 'log ins' and 'page views' Number of 'training days' invested per employee Average investment cost per 'learning resource' Average 'training investment' cost per employee These measures reinforce a primary role to serve only speed to compliance and control over training. When L&D chooses to lead the culture and capability to solve problems in an organisation, it's value could be measured by: The alignment of business goals and performance expectations in the organisation How deeply the L&D team is embedded across the organisation Their contributions to progress on the busines...

There is a familiar cycle for the way that many L&D teams operate in corporate organisations. The common recipe includes: 1. The organisation hasn't defined the role and priority of 'learning'; (i.e. to accelerate change, move the work culture, improve individual and team performance, enable the business strategy) 2. The L&D team (who are unable to influence the'Why?') get stuck as reactive training order takers 3. Ideas get watered down through rounds of 'pleasing the teacher' meetings resulting in 'Learning programs' and 'Learning solutions'; (interchangeable words for ease of political passage) 4. 'Learning programs' are a drain on time / costs / interest for everyone; (especially for 'busy people' on the 'front line' doing the 'real work') 5. Measurement of benefits from 'Learning programs' is difficult / negligible / hard to keep people's attention on 6. As the work performance i...

Much of L&D's time continues to be focused on 3 things: 1. Bringing control; (of 'content', 'delivery' and admin.) 2. Creating 'programs'; (which only help with the diminishing business problem of speed to compliance ) 3. Demonstrating a useful identity; (not just interrupting busy workers...) I believe there are 3 new things that L&D should focus on instead: 1. Bringing clarity ; helping leaders and teams to understand a learning culture and how they can contribute through their own work 2. Creating connections ; developing the conditions for individuals and teams to move their knowledge, experiences and ideas easily across the organisation 3. Demonstrating confidence ; providing a new leadership blueprint for the organisation to follow: curiosity, adaptability, reflection, failure tolerance, better questions, problem solving, horizon scanning and communication. Paul helps L&D teams to step up and do more of the important work that...

The need to be seen and respected. This is a perennial L&D question that surfaces every year usually around February or March. Coincidentally, the Havard Business Review released a report this February entitled 'The Leaders Guide to Corporate Culture'. Here they interviewed 1,300 senior executives to understand their leadership styles and analysed the cultures in 230 companies across a range of industries. Corporate culture types were grouped into eight different flavours. 89% of executives ranked a "Results culture" as their first or second placed aim for their organisation. By "Results culture" they defined consciously creating an environment where targets, execution and delivery is the focus for everyone. (In the 'Industrial economy' value in a business was created by producing faster and cheaper than the competition. Employees were viewed by leaders as simply interchangeable parts of the system). Just 7 ( seven ) % of the executives...

It's a sellers market. So, I've put together a list of 10 (possibly new) questions for L&D teams to use in your 'Learning Technology' vendor discussions: 1. What is the big change your business is trying to make / facilitate / accelerate in the world of work? 2. What is your 'worldview' of the role of learning in business settings today? 3. Who exactly is your proposition for and, not for?: (i.e. which work contexts and cultures does your 'solution' best support and why?). 4. Describe how your organisation interprets the terms 'training', 'learning', 'learner', 'learning culture' and 'digital transformation'. 5. What is currently the biggest challenge for leaders of teams in organisations from your perspective? 6. How do we balance support for both productive and generative learning in your opinion? 7. According to the Havard Business Review "Leaders Guide to Corporate Culture" report...