"A deterministic mindset and command and control culture leads to no or limited space for learning for individuals nor for the organisation." Jonathan Smart You can't prioritise formal learning (training courses and e-learning modules), which are separated from work - and then complain about people not having the time to stop working and 'consume' your 'solutions'. (You   decided to make it that way :)

"We need to make a shift from the institutional model of scalable efficiency to a model of scalable learning."  John Hagel Five fundamental building blocks for an effective corporate Learning and Development operating model: 1. A performance and change oriented vision; a clear and compelling 'appetite statement' (beyond 'provide training material and manage events') 2. A focus on enabling team and organisational performance; (over 'fixing individuals through attending training and consuming content') 3. A solution design ethos that capitalises on how people learn - namely through their everyday work and their networks (over formal learning 'interventions', separated from work) 4.  A solution design approach focused on employees' tasks to be done and concerns to be addressed (beyond vague 'understand...' and 'be aware of...' goals) 5. Performance oriented success criteria; (beyond 'course attendance', 'conte...

"We tend to focus on snapshots of isolated parts of the system. And wonder why our deepest problems never get solved." Peter Senge We know that providing isolated formal learning interventions (usually e-learning modules and training courses) have little or no impact on individual or team performance.  It takes courage, curiosity and foresight for leaders to see beyond the training paradigm (and to stop colluding in it) and start to see enabling new capability and performance as a connected, inter-dependent system. Some new questions that can help start this new practice might include: What are the short, medium, and long term success measures for this initiative? Who has defined these success measures? Why? How effectively do this success measures link to our overall strategy and stated ' values '?  How will we create time for leaders and their teams to focus on this new initiative? (What will stop?) Where does this initiative sit in the priorities of its 't...

"Compliance is seductive because it comes with short term prizes. If you fit in all the way, it might feel a bit less frightening. The centre of the herd may in fact be safer, but the view is terrible." Seth Godin Long tenures can create blurred vision and / or blinkered vision Lack of incentives to change (discomfort, uncertainty, risk to status) Defending sunk costs  Leadership should be more than logistics management Strategy and tactics are very different things Plans are still the dominant currency (Which reinforces the training course as the unit of 'learning')  'Everything has to change' (but only if things can stay the same?) People do like to be busy (regardless) Systems thinking is feared - so status roles shape business performance instead.

"Leaders, lifelong learners, learning organisations, learning cultures ... the rhetoric is deafening. In practice this means more 'courses'." Donald Clark Most investments in organisational learning (courses and programmes) are performative theatre. To enable genuine, sustainable, performance change, shift focus towards: Creating and incentivising social structures that accelerate collaborative problem solving Defining the new capabilities now needed for the organisation to become 'future fit' Deliberately adjusting goals, incentives, rewards, structures, rules, processes and information flows (AKA 'the system') to enable the new capabilities to emerge and establish Facilitating new connections and team working Prioritising creation of more capacity for questions and reflection Challenging and supporting leaders (raised on process compliance and contracting out responsibility for peoples' development) to redefine 'learning' beyond (just) at...

"The recipe for workplace despair is having high expectations for performance in a system that erodes well-being and extracts the energy needed to "perform". Zach Mercurio Here a some ingrained organisational culture norms that are mostly invisible to leaders and prevent 'cultures of learning': 1. Worshipping individual performance (= individualising systemic problems) 2. "Performance" (really) equates to 'level of compliance and acceptance' (working with the system) 3. Hiring and organising for 'cultural fit' (reinforcement) 4. Absence of inquiry (status roles limit questions and challenge) 5. 'High potentials' ethos (special treatment for the special people) 6. Work and learning viewed as separate entities ('work' means 'delivery', 'learning' means 'training') 7. Processes organised to maintain separation between the 'thinkers' and the 'doers' (status roles).

"Your worldview determines what problems you believe are important to solve, which, in turn, points you towards certain principles and away from others. Principles get operationalised in processes which shape everyday practices (behaviours), and ultimately determine performance." Gary Hamel It's the underpinning assumptions and beliefs of the leaders (their 'worldview') that inform business models and operating models (" The business / organisation we will be! ..."). Common assumptions and beliefs that determine priorities for industrial leaders often include: 1. ' My previous experience equips me to accurately predict the future .' 2. Success comes from directing and pace setting 3. Desired results can be achieved through process management  4. High performance means high compliance 5. Change needs to be 'driven through' an organisation 6. 'Learning' (only) = 'being trained'. So organisational cultures are outcomes (thin...

"All these executives going around talking about the need for innovation and increasing agility while pushing an out-of-date command-and-control structure focusing on efficiency aren't going to get agility of innovation." Charles Lambdin OLD industrial era value-creating organisational capabilities: 1. Control 2. Standardisation 3. Incremental improvement 4. Compliance 5. Consistency NEW digital era value-creating organisation capabilities: 1. Receptiveness to continuous change (market, customer, employee contexts) 2. Connectivity across teams 3. Access to exemplary performers (internal and external) 4. Agency and autonomy 5. Inquiry and reflection

"The only people I've ever met in my 40+ years in L&D who seem to have an insatiable appetite for more and more L&D, are clients who mistakenly believe that more content will address their performance problems." Guy W. Wallace  1. Re-balance investments more evenly between 'individual worker', 'teams', and 'the overall organisation' 2. Consider the nature of the work for which you are seeking to accelerate / support learning for; is it 'routine' work? 'complex' work? 'innovation' work? (the tactics employed will need to be different)  3. Re-balance investments more evenly between 'productive' learning - to support existing processes, usually focused on ensuring compliance and / or incremental improvements and  'generative' learning - to support discovery on next opportunities - focused on facilitating new ideas, connections, and possibilities 4. Re-balance investments based on whether the intent ...

"No amount of rhetoric, training or tools is going to make a significant difference if power isn't redistributed. This means making leaders meaningfully accountable to the led, and giving everyone the opportunity to not only speak their mind without risking their career, but also the agency to make change happen." Michele Zanini In control oriented, low EQ, 'delivery' focused work environments no one wants to look incompetent, negative, or ignorant. This inevitably promotes fear based responses from employees: Don't ask questions Don't offer new ideas Don't admit mistakes Don't question the status quo. Which is why it's easier for all involved to conflate ' learning culture ' with providing and consuming training - rather than the real work of changing the system.  

"The thing upper management wants most often is to speed 'delivery'. What they don't realise is that delivery speed is a systems issues. To speed delivery, you need to fix the entire system. They are part of that system, however, and are usually unwilling to be "fixed"." Allan Holub Industrial leaders remain fixated on the (lazy) premise that the way to build more valuable / valued / differentiated / sustainable / future-proofed organisations is to 'fix' individual workers.  This default traps L&D teams in low impact work: order taking, content design, events management, and (inevitably) self justifying 'client satisfaction' tracking schemes.  This creates a common challenge: L&D struggle to achieve meaningful impact on the performance of the organisation because they are tasked with doing low-impact work.  The common solution to this challenge is to find ways for L&D to do more of their low-impact work, faster through tec...

"The older and stale a company, the more legalistic it gets and the more "rules" or processes become the gods of the company. The managers that stick around like policing these rules and then if you try to be creative you quickly get educated about how things are done." Paul Millerd Most corporate L&D is performative theatre. Events management. Investing huge budgets in trying to improve the performance of individuals without a focus on systems change is just a cargo cult. How can leaders find the ambition to move the approach to enabling learning from transactional, control focused, and projectised? The status quo persists because execs, L&D leaders, and vendors all have too much to lose. Here's to new and better.