"Fragile, defensive, low EQ people in leadership positions suck the life out of any great employees. Companies that can't hire leaders well or get rid of bad ones are doomed." Galen Emanuele 'Collusion delusion' in organisational 'L&D' is a possibility; (' What we do with leaders and their teams hasn't worked so far but at some point something (magic?) could happen to change things .'). (This is system justification). Alternatively, organisational 'L&D' could be choosing to collude with leaders and their teams to perpetuate things they know won't work. (This is system dependency). Which is worse?

"The person who takes the banal and ordinary and illuminates it in a new way can terrify. We don't want our ideas changed." Frank Herbert In many organisations leaders don't have the vocabulary to describe actively enabling organisational learning beyond, "providing training". The challenge is to find the motivation and incentive to radically reconsider how leaders think about the role and priority of continual learning in the workplace. So a critical new role for ambitious 'L&D leaders' is to actively highlight the systemic barriers to continual learning in the organisation - and then dare and support leaders to choose to address these.

"We tend to focus in isolated parts of the system. And wonder why our deepest problems never get solved." Peter Senge Most corporate training is signed off by people who don't want to know if it will work.

"I don't spend time anymore on elaborate plans or time lines. I want to use the time formerly spent on detailed planning to create the organisational conditions for people to set a clear intent, to agree on how they are going to work together, and then practice to become better..." Margaret J Wheatley An alternative way to agree where to put time and resources to enable an increased rate of continual learning: 1. Define how the organisation creates value  - and who for specifically 2. Define what is / will be unique and differentiating (AKA what is the valuable part?) 3. Identify the performance change needed from people to contribute to this; (how to maximise the valuable part) 4. Agree the type of work to be improved - that can have the biggest impact on the valuable part;  technical work?  adaptive work?  repeatable work?  complex work?  innovation work?  5. Align the most appropriate tactics and tools that can enable learning to support the ag...

"An important function of almost every system is to ensure its own perpetuation." Donella H. Meadows The work of a corporate L&D team (its preoccupations, tactics, and success measures) is part of the organisational system ('how the work works here') and so a unilateral 'L&D Transformation' is almost impossible to achieve. Paradoxically, if an L&D team 'breaks out' and starts to operate in a new way that is counter to the prevailing system, this can actually reinforce their work as 'out of sight, out of mind' of senior management. Inevitably the system will eventually correct itself and this outlier team is usually 'reset' through restructuring / redundancies / budget cuts. NB. Transforming the role, focus and approach to corporate learning is an outcome of deliberately changing the prevailing system ('how the work works here'). Changing the prevailing system depends on an openness - and excitement - by management ...

"The Enterprise Leadership wants a Learning Culture? They are going to have to explain it, demand it, inspect for it, and hand out rewards and recognition when they see it, and punish the gatekeepers who are stopping it when they don't see it. Otherwise, it's just yada yada." Guy W Wallace A  balance of ' Experiences, Exposure, Education ' is a useful framework for ambitious L&D leaders choosing to be more than just passive internal training vendors. But enabling these three strategies needs considerable pre-work to ensure they can take hold and enable new performance in practice: 1. Setting new Expectations - influencing leaders to recognise and lead a new role for ongoing learning AS THE WORK for everyone at all levels.  (As opposed to 'learning' as a lazy shorthand for 'completing training' whilst we all carry on as before). And Deliberately creating a new Environment - Influencing leaders to see their role as responsible for creatin...

"If we have a system of improvement that is directed at the parts, taken separately, you can be absolutely sure that the performance of the whole will not be improved. The performance of a system depends on how the parts fit, not how they act taken separately. " Russell Ackoff

"Consciously or unconsciously, leaders put in place structures and practices that make sense to them. These structures and practices correspond to their way of dealing with the world and means that an organisation cannot evolve beyond it's leadership's stage of development." Hermanni Hyytiala   Here are some barriers to progress that correspond with the way that many control oriented leaders deal with their world: Perpetuating a linear, directive, process oriented, bias... Maintains busyness as the key status enhancing characteristic of the system* Which reinforces an inability to create space for reflection, new opportunities and stopping 'old' things Which limits the ability to define the new characteristics of high performance as context shifts Which prevents agreement on the new conditions that need to be in place to enable these new characteristics Which reinforces the 'snow blindness' of attempting to move in a 'new direction' using the ...

"In most organisations the effort spent on ensuring conformance is is a vast multiple of the energy devoted to enlarging the capacity for human impact." Michele Zanini Systems ('how the work works here') in control based organisations aren't tuned towards continual learning and collective growth. The conditions required aren't in place because those people in a position to shift the existing system towards something new feel they have too much to lose individually or collectively to make the changes needed. This is the reason why enablers of continual learning struggle to take hold and return potential benefits. These enabling characteristics could include: Deliberately getting all parts of the organisation to work together to increase new, value creating solutions Higher quality (= more empathetic) interactions throughout (= 'up, down and across') the organisation Deliberately choosing to learn from every encounter and constantly reflecting - to evo...

"The biggest issue holding organisations back is outdated mindsets at the board and c-suite levels, ... control ... will not work in an era where people-work is ambiguous assessing, collaborating, innovating and building relationships." Rachel Happe Some common cultural inhibitors to continual learning in complex organisations: The myth that leaders have to be in control, decisive, and dominant The myth of 'rugged individualism' The comfort of familiar, safe, simplistic, 'solutions' A shared belief in managerial prerogatives; ('the divine rights of managers') A belief that power is the ability not to have to learn anything Individual achievement as the primary source of status Compartmentalisation of work from self and family A belief that 'task' issues should override relationship concerns The myth that management is about 'hard' things; (money, data, 'the bottom line') versus 'soft' issues; (mindsets, thinking, reflect...

"People are rethinking their relationship to their careers, their companies, and their leaders. What may have worked before to inspire employees is insufficient in today's environment. As a leader how are you adapting to this shift?" Doug Conant What matters most to the organisation and why? What matters most to the L&D team and why? What differentiates the business from the competition? What differentiates your approach to enabling learning? How is the organisation changing and why? How are the L&D team enabling change? How do you define ‘ Learning ’? Who agreed this definition? Who benefits most from this definition? What are the 'success measures' for learning? Who agreed these success measures? Who benefits from the success measures? How can the business learn faster? What are the barriers to learning faster? What would happen if the L&D team did nothing new ?

"Conventional thinking will fail, no matter how well conceived and executed." Kees Dorst I think there are two categories of 'Corporate Values' statements that can be helpful: 1. The organisation recognises and acknowledges the unique  and differentiating characteristics of its current system. These characteristics are distilled and 'codified' as ' Our Values '. These founding 'Values' play the role of arbitrator and guide when difficult trade offs need to made as the organisation chooses a growth path. There is a conscious decision to preserve and maintain these founding characteristics as the organisation evolves, and to continue to prioritise and nurture these 'enablers of our differentiation'. 2. The organisation recognises and acknowledges that its current system can no longer  support deliberate, and sustainable growth looking forward; (' what got us here won't get us there '). So, there is a conscious decision to...