"Sometimes the prospect of operating with levity is and transparency is scarier than operating with clutter, commotion and chaos." John Cutler The work of corporate 'L&D' inevitably reflects the system  within which they operate. What is currently important to L&D teams is a measure of what is important to the leaders who own the system.  If leaders are committed to change the system  - to deliberately enable a new way of working and thinking to emerge, then the role and expectations of an L&D team would change to reflect this. Their new goal statements might then include: “To enable and accelerate organisational growth” “To enable competitive advantage”   “To accelerate the culture and the capacity to solve new challenges”   “To shift focus from learning events to continual learning”   “To build capacity and conditions for innovation and performance improvement”   “To create the conditions for personalised learning”   “To provide con...

"That is why the discipline of managing mental models - surfacing, testing, and improving our internal pictures of how the world works - promises to me a major breakthrough for building learning organisations." Peter M. Senge In most organisations the approach to enabling performance is implicit, vague, and generic. In many cases, there is a comfortable separation between work, performance, and learning.  In order to challenge assumptions and priorities on all sides, capability professionals have to put their mental models out where others can see them. Based on typical organisational capability strategies and tactics, these current mental models seem to include: 'We believe providing access to 'resources' materially changes how well people perform. This is how we measure and demonstrate this:' 'We believe attendance to training courses is the primary source improving an individuals' performance in their role. This is how we measure that impact:'...

“Important difference: Training and skills growth in organisations where the main point is to maintain the leader/led dichotomy versus in organisations seeking to collapse it.” Charles Lambdin 10 new ways to assess your current organisational learning strategy: Proportion of investment in learning with the goal of process deployment and standardisation? Proportion of investment in learning with the goal of increasing individual and team autonomy? Proportion of investment in “just to stand still” capabilities? Proportion investment in genuinely new capabilities for the organisation? Proportion of investment in unique capabilities that will differentiate the organisation? Proportion of investment in mandatory / compliance / regulatory responsibilities? Correlation between level of learning technology investment and development as a learning organisation? Strength of alignment between brand and business goals and learning goals? Extent to which ‘more access to content’ and ‘more consumpti...

"Systems are based on worldviews. That's why they cannot be changed with the worldview with which they were created." Rebecca Vehling Language is important if we are seeking to enable change in complex organisations. Sharpening our language confirms the level of our ambition and helps with accountability. If we aren't all clear on what we really mean then expectations can be miss-set and people can hide.  There are a number of common terms in the organisational learning / change space that are increasingly vague and interchangeable. This vagueness reinforces the status quo by routing people back to the simplest, most comfortable approach. In order to be a) helpful and, b) provoke challenge and reflection, I've set out my own definitions below: "Organisational Development": Common meaning: A short hand for providing a curriculum of 'courses and resources'; (digital or otherwise). What it could mean: Deliberately enabling the (new?) connected sy...

"We surrender the belief that a person must be "in control" to be effective. We become willing to reveal our uncertainties, to be ignorant, to show incompetence - knowing that these are essential preconditions for learning." Bryan Smith There is a fundamental blocker to the long standing soundbite of L&D teams now 'pivoting to performance': Industrial leaders believe that they 'own' 'performance'. This mindset is inextricably linked to status, control, and heroic individualism. This mindset reinforces and maintains the training (education) paradigm, because: Its easier to separate training from 'the real work' (and so deprioritise whenever required) Its easier to devolve responsibility for training down the organisational hierarchy Its easier to (inevitably) manage training as another programme or project checklist item Training fits with a busy, 'get people to execute' mantra And most critically: It means that leaders ...

"I seem to have conversations along the lines of:  "we want to hit ourselves on the head with a hammer, how do we make that not hurt?"  "don't do that"  "but we bought this hammer and this is the way we want to use it"  "then it's going to hurt" "why won't you help us, you're a coach?" Llewellyn Falco Organisations actively, and deliberately,   choosing  to reset the ways they enable learning are still in a tiny, niche category. When you offer new ideas to people in corporate 'L&D' they won't often embrace them. This is because the problem is not just in strategy but also in implementation .  The fundamental question is: How willing are you to change what you do - and the way you do it - to get where you say you want to go? What (most) people in L&D want to do is (just) do what they are already doing and for it to work better. (If that was going to work differently, it would have already)....

"It's easier to simply react by engaging in another tactical round that the world has presented to us. You can spend your day doing nothing but playing with tactics, and never realise you didn't even have a strategy."  Seth Godin Effective strategies to enable continual learning need: (i) precision,  and (ii) intent . Things that L&D folks love to focus on that can't compensate for a lack of coherent strategy : Instructional design standards 'Learning technologies' 'Marketing' 'Comms.' Project management Data dashboards Industry awards Sniggering at 'Learning Styles'

"You can't use an old map to see a new land." Gary Hamel Rule of thumb for 'Transforming' organisations: The level of change and new expectations in your Learning / Capability strategy should be proportional to the level of change and new expectations in your business strategy.  The same level of new ambition and new commitment is needed here too because: Most corporate learning and development priorities, strategy (and therefore) tactics are still out of sync with the challenges facing business and workers today Content led, education based, (topic broadcast, 'school at work') 'L&D' is a hang over from the industrial era - when businesses only created their value by optimising and scaling efficiency Businesses can no longer codify and transfer fixed skills fast enough to equip workers with the confidence they'll need to add value.  Competence and compliance are no longer the scarce commodities behind successful, differentiated, sustainabl...

"A sustainable, self-regulating work system is a direct threat to those who making a living off of regulating work systems." John Cutler The role, focus and measurement of workplace learning still remains stuck in the industrial age. A generation of early adopters advocating a shift from content creation to enabling learning through work and networks remain marginalised by the status quo.  The convenient collusion between corporate leaders still obsessed with control and plans, L&D teams entrenched in education and tools, and a proliferating, enabling vendor community has created an impasse. So, in most organisations L&D leaders still go unchallenged and continue to prioritise and reinforce: Content creation as 'the Learning Strategy' Self-reinforcing vanity metrics; (clicks, visits, course attendance) Bending the definition of ' employee   performance ' towards ' being   compliant ' A reductive focus on tactics over context, operating environm...

" The first law of bad management: if something isn't working, do more of it." Tom DeMarco There's still a fascinating gap between the post COVID / post hybrid working / post 'great resignation' realities and the role and focus of workplace learning.  Despite these three seismic impacts on business models, value creation, employee contribution and workplace culture, most leaders choose to stick with the same detached approach to 'learning'. Whether implicitly or explicitly, senior leaders' expectations of their L&D team and annual L&D budget remain stuck around: Developing training 'solutions' aligned to 'hot topics' Investing in new (cheaper) tools and tactics with which to develop and scale training solutions Prioritising access to training solutions over enabling performance improvement Distracting colleagues from their work to 'engage' with 'training solutions' Tracking 'engagement' with training ...

"This obsession with control gives a greater power to gatekeepers than to connectors. In a culture of compliance and competition, it is rational to avoid taking risks." Celine Schillinger Most corporate learning and development still serves a simplistic and reductive management model.  The default focus on tools, (which now includes a proliferation of enabling 'learning technologies') means that the underpinning status quo mindset remains unchallenged.  The underlying goal is still centralised control through 'compliance' - an unacknowledged  mindset that runs deeper than just the well worn 'mandatory annual compliance training' cycle. Symptoms of a control based L&D strategy hide in plain sight, for examples: A default focus on individuals' 'learning'  A default approach which reinforces a separation between 'learning' and 'working' A default focus on only productive learning; (based on improving 'what we already...

"Advocates of bold and ambitious strategies too often find themselves on the sidelines, labeled as losers, while the rewards go to those to those more skilled at working within the system." Kenichi Ohmae Some things that aren't your ' Learning Strategy' : The 'Annual Training Plan'  The 'Learning Offer' An 'Academy portal' where colleagues have to go to access the 'Learning Offer' A collection of L&D team 'to-do' lists for the year ahead The prioritised list of 'orders taken' from senior stakeholders by the L&D team The new 'learning technology' implementation and adoption project plan The 'L&D Marketing and Engagement Plan' for the current training curriculum Approved ' Instructional Design Standards '.