"Management was designed to solve a very specific problem - how to do things with perfect replicability at ever increasing scale and steadily increasing efficiency.  Now there's a new set of challenges on the horizon. How do you build organisations that are nimble as change itself?" Gary Hamel A late invitation to participate in an " Annual Business Plan " project team remains the holy grail for many corporate L&D teams. A common challenge with these plans is that they remain fundamentally control orientated and reductive by nature. " Annual Business Plans " often share a common vernacular that has been refined over time to meet the expectations of a specific circle of senior people within the organisation. This inevitably runs counter to the more pressing challenge of investing in a new work environment in which everyone can safely participate and learn through their work and relationships. Some examples of this 'red flag' ...

"Bureaucratic interventions are not well equipped to deal with novelty, diversity and complexity. They want to measure things in simplified or condensed ways, develop standardised responses and centralise authority to control and coordinate them." Sidney Dekker I think there are three connected steps that can enable L&D teams to move on from their traditional training programme management role. (If they are choosing to do so in 2020). 1.  Acknowledge and embrace the work of 'L&D' as leadership work. Actively and openly seeking to make change happen in the organisation. 2.  Re-balance their investments (of time, effort, money and relationships) away from the industrial goal of developing compliant workers on behalf of Management. 3.  Re-balance the default focus on education ("school at work") with enabling people to learn through experiences and exposure. Linked to this it's helpful to think about the spread of investment by L&D...

"Management was designed to solve a very specific problem - how to do things with perfect replicability at ever increasing scale and steadily increasing efficiency.  Now there's a new set of challenges on the horizon. How do you build organisations that are nimble as change itself?" Gary Hamel The ideas in this blog, shared throughout 2019 have aligned to this. How can corporate 'L&D' teams start to see new opportunities that are open to them? The opportunity to move from serving the industrial mindset of developing compliant workers - to enabling organisations that recognise their employees as independent actors with unique contributions to make. The opportunity to re-balance a focus on reacting to existing problems with the real work of shifting the underlying cultural norms of the organisation and its leaders. The opportunity to put connections, relationships, participation and questions at the centre of our strategy and tactics. The opportun...

" You can change the way people get what they want - or you can change what they want " Seth Godin Inside inward looking, reactive, politically charged bureaucracies the work of L&D is diluted down to training solution order taking, project management and reaction tracking. This stems from the past - when centralised business models were the holy grail. Management control through standardisation and compliance was the prized goal. These features were difficult to achieve, scarce and therefore differentiating and valuable. Not anymore. There is an urgent new goal for L&D leaders and their teams. I describe this as the leap from management to leadership. We can choose to re-balance time spent on packaging the results of someone else's priorities with setting out new paths and goals of our own. The basis of these goals can include: Moving focus away from developing compliant workers towards building adaptability in the organisation Putting 'the work ...

" Create environments that nurture uncomfortable connections. " John Atkinson Much of the work of corporate L&D teams continues to maintain the status quo. The same industrial era dogma underpins the endless buffet of new tactics on offer:  Align fixed skills and predetermined management goals to "learning content" "Drive" workers towards this Attempt to link access to content to useful performance change Repeat Meanwhile, the urgent challenge in many '20th century' organisations is how to re-orientate themselves. As fixed strategies and plans become more brittle and employee expectations accelerate, much of the prevailing L&D approach based on control and standardisation falls short. L&D teams can choose to refocus their efforts. There is a clear opportunity to lead and role model a change in the underlying system of norms and priorities in their organisations. Ideas could include: L&D teams identifying where e...

" For almost 100 years management has been associated with the five basic functions outlined by management theorist Henri Fayol: planning, organising, staffing, directing and controlling. " Joseph Pistrui and Dimo Dimov " Generative organising is about shifting the focus from planning of outcomes to participation in inquiry." Jan Hoglund I think there is a simple choice for corporate L&D as it struggles with the increasing speed of change in business models and expectations of workers. Choice: Continue to align with industrial management priorities defined by Henri Fayol a century ago: Train in the fixed skills required to execute static job roles. Develop content and interventions that (inadvertently?) reinforce the command and control model. Search for new ways to link access to programmes with meaningful performance change. Serve as grateful contributors to the existing business plan and culture. Choice: Step up with a new focus: To lead...

"Busyness is a major problem in business. Everyone is busy. Oddly, we also have a problem of conservatism and lack of ambition." Simon Terry Here are some ambitions that L&D could adopt for the organisations they seek to change: Purpose, autonomy, mastery, empathy, safety, belonging, clarity, connections, reflective, diversity of thinking, responsibility, relationships, latitude, confidence, participation, enrolment. Paul helps L&D to contribute to adaptable, human, future ready organisations

" Over the past several decades, the business world has relentlessly pursued efficiency-driven business process re-engineering, seeking to integrate, standardise, and automate tasks in ways that can reduce costs, increase speed, and deliver more profitable outcomes.  As the landscape shifts, perhaps it's time for organisations to expand their focus beyond business process re-engineering to pursue business practice re-design, help front line work groups to learn faster and accelerate performance improvement, especially in environments that are shaped by increasing uncertainty and unexpected events." John Hagel   Much corporate L&D 'practise' continues to focus on maintaining control. Farming of fixed skills for fixed roles, predetermined capabilities and catch all learning programs remain the goals. These entrenched approaches are driven by a narrow focus on executing process. As a result, "learning solutions" are inevitably shaped by: Reac...

Maintaining bureaucracy? "Leaders say they want transformation, engagement, innovation, creativity and agility ... but their actions and the environments they create say otherwise: what they actually value are the status quo, sameness, safety, certainty, busyness and consensus." Sonja Blignaut Max Weber (1864 - 1920) developed the theory of bureaucracy. He described an ideal bureaucracy as containing six central elements: 1. A clearly defined division of labour and authority 2. Hierarchical structures and offices 3. Written guidelines prescribing performance criteria 4. Recruitment to offices based on specialisation and expertise 5. Office holding as a career or vocation 6. Duties and authority attached to positions, no persons Sound familiar? The challenges for businesses and workers are now to complex to be addressed by the old bureaucracy model. The new leadership formula for success in the digital era means mastering context, communication and enro...

"The frogs that fell into the well now think that's the universe" Jim Harrison I was grateful to spend the day at a brilliantly organised event for L&D leaders in London last week. This annual gathering reinforced some well-worn themes for this audience: The "future of work" is already here for many organisations - just unevenly distributed A "seat at the table" always was (and still is) the wrong goal for 'L&D' "Learning" and "performance" are two completely different things Change is slow... These themes reflect much of my own work to support L&D leaders facing new challenges and shifting priorities, which I'd summarise as follows: The role, priority and focus of workplace learning still needs to shift from the industrial mindset of producing standardised workers to fit specific roles. This change is urgent because the 'bureaucracy model' no longer guarantees businesses stability and...

"When someone proposes something like "redesign the Files section" that's a grab-bag, not a project." Jason Yip Much L&D time continues to focus on the latest 'grab-bags' and not the real projects. A real project is redefining what now constitutes 'high performance' and why for leaders and workers in the digital era. A real project is helping leaders to stop describing everything using just industrial era metaphors. A real project is coaching leaders to start to keep score of what really creates value for workers today. A real project is actively helping to break down barriers that hold back organisations: i.   A lack of understanding of context ; (how are we creating value, for who and and why?); ii.  Inconsistent communication ; iii. The barriers to connection and participation . These real projects present a new opportunity for L&D to step up, to step forward and to change the conversation . (Meanwhile L&D...

"Don't define your success using the measures preferred by the system you're trying to change." Jason Yip Assuming 'L&D' are trying to lead change? Most organisations have lots of infrastructure around problem identification and cost management but very little around continuous learning. Set repertoires and processes. Short term fixes. Tools and solutions. Content. How can 'L&D' shift from only identifying problems, creating 'solutions' and a focus on 'proof measurement', to enabling the evolution of the organisation and improving the quality of interaction and learning throughout? Paul works with L&D teams who seek to redefine the success measures in the organisations they serve