"Add up the sum of our days and that's who we are. We get what we repeat." Seth Godin "59% of Learning and Development organisations have trouble connecting learning to business outcomes." Bersin by Deloitte 2017 "Only 25% of Learning and Development professionals feel clear on what their role is and should be within their organisation." Knowledgepool (part of the Capita plc group) "How to solve a problem like L and D" report 2019 "Only 36% of learning leaders are confident in the area of learning strategy." Emerald Works "Back to the Future" report 2020 "29% of learning leaders feel overwhelmed and under equipped." Towards Maturity report 2019 "Only 11% of organisations report their learning culture as 'Excellent.'" Deloitte Human Capital Trends Report 2019 "Only 52% of learning leaders report that their team understands the strategic goals of the organisation." E...

"It's interesting that often human-made systems are based on accountability and control. The fear and power are always present. Alignment is valued over experimentation and learning.  Are we able to create systems based on different assumptions?" Hermanni Hyytiala I'd argue that all of the institutional, culturally ingrained, tactical perspectives in corporate Learning and Development (" no   seat at the table", "lack of time for learning", "leaders don't prioritise learning", "no-one uses our content", "how do we create a learning culture??" ) stem from this underlying systems challenge. In reality Learning and Development teams are as well placed as anyone in the organisation to choose to lead and role model a new system based on different assumptions. There's a simple choice: control or learning? Paul helps Learning and Development leaders to identify and accelerate the most valuable and differ...

"There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" The two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and says "What the hell is water?" David Foster Wallace Here are some common signs of tactical, 'cost centre' positioning from my experiences of working alongside corporate L&D teams:  A lack of understanding of business goals / strategy / brand strategy / commercial differentiation No compelling vision for the indisputable role of 'learning' in the context of achieving the business goals No connected, aligned L&D strategy, tactics and success measures which enable the business goals "Traditional" expectations from "senior leaders" of the work of the L&D team A focus on "learning" as the goal - rather than work performance ...

" When you change what someone pays attention to, then you change the conclusions they come to. " Annette Simmons Many L&D leaders will making the annual pilgrimage to the Learning Technologies Conference this week. If you're considering an investment in a new technology my list of ten questions for vendor discussions might be helpful. In my experience its critical for L&D leaders to keep a firm grip on the context inside their organisation - and reflect on how a new tool  will actively contribute to your own specific learning strategy and goals. (Don't get side tracked by features and subscription tiers...) 1. What is the big change your learning technology business is seeking to help make / facilitate / accelerate in the world of work? 2. What is your 'worldview' on the role and priority for 'learning' in business settings today? 3. Who is your technology not for? 4. Describe how your organisation interprets the terms "tra...

"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...