L&D’s biggest challenge and greatest opportunity: letting go

L&D’s traditional role has been to organise, track, monitor and otherwise manage training – firstly as it took place in the classroom and more recently in the form of e-learning. However, now that it is generally recognised that modern professionals learn in many different ways, it is not just a matter of force-fitting these new ways into the traditional model of organisational Learning & development – which is essentially one of command and control. Rather, it means L&D needs to let go of their old ways of working, and instead offer a service that enables and supports all the ways modern professionals learn at, for and through work.

This essentially means moving away from the role of “learning gatekeeper” (ie controlling access to the means of learning) or the “learning police” (ie making sure people do things as prescribed and don’t do any unlawful learning) to becoming an Advisor and Consultant to the business. Taking on this new role opens up much wider opportunities to help the business thrive in this highly competitive age, and provide a service that is more valued and appreciated.

Here are some examples of how L&D departments are responding to statements about how modern professionals learn. On the left are their traditional responses, whilst on the right are examples of how L&D departments are already letting go.

1 – Modern professionals learn continuously as they do their jobs

Command and Control Enable and Support
We believe that people only learn though initiatives organised by L&D – whether it be in the classroom or in an online course – and where we can monitor and track who has completed it.

We also need to ensure everyone has the same consistent experience. Anything anyone learns that has not been organised by L&D is of no interest to us.

OR

We recognise people are learning outside of formal initiatives but we want to track and everything everyone learns (in our LMS) so that we have a complete picture of organisational learning.

We offer a variety of resources on the intranet for people to use as they wish in the way that they wish – we use lite tracking to see what is popular, but completion rates are no longer relevant indicators.

We recognise people learn more as they do their daily jobs, so we work with managers and their teams to help them get the most out of their everyday work experiences.

We think it is infeasible (and unnecessary) to try and capture everything everyone learns at work. It is more important to us how they apply what they learn in terms of job, team and business improvements.

2 – Modern professionals want immediate access to solutions to their problems

Command and Control Enable and Support
We understand the need for on-demand resources but we believe that performance problems should only be solved by performance support created by L&D. We ban access to the Web just to make sure people don’t look for their own resources. We realise we can’t create everything everyone needs to do their job, so we encourage individuals to look for their own solutions to their problems. We help those who have difficulty with this to develop the skills to quickly find useful and trustworthy resources.

We facitiate collaborative problem-solving workshops to help teams identify the most appropriate solutions to their group problems rather than force our solutions on them

3 – Modern professionals are happy to share what they know

Command and Control Enable and Support
We can’t let people share stuff as it might be incorrect. We believe the only valid content that should be accessed is the content which has been designed and delivered by L&D. We realise we can’t provide everything everyone needs, so we tap into this spirit of sharing and encourage people to share experiences and resources with one another.

We support them to do this on enterprise work systems (so it is part of the workflow) rather than in a separate learning platform (where it is siloed away).

We help to build the skills so that people are able to share what they want in the way they want.

4 – Modern professionals rely on a trusted network of colleagues and connections

Command and Control Enable and Support
We believe public social networks have no value and are time-wasters. We ban access to them. We recognise the benefit that can be had from connecting with a wide set of people outside the organisation, and therefore help people to build, extend and maintain their own professional networks of connections that bring them value.

5 – Modern professionals like to learn with and from others

Command and Control Enable and Support
We know social learning is a new trend, so we are setting up a Social Learning Platform where we we can track all the discussions taking place.

We will also make sure everyone contributes, and that they are saying the right things, and furthermore that they are learning from it – which we will measure by monitoring the number of posts and comments they make.

We know that the real social learning takes place in teams and groups as they work together, but we do recognise that there are opportunities for learning (in a more formal way with one another). However, we don’t force or enforce people to be social, only provide a framework for conversations and collaboration to take place.

We facilitate social online learning experiences in the same social platforms we use for working. We don’t measure success in social activity but in terms of improved performance that results from learning and working together.

6 – Modern professionals keep up to date with their industry and profession

Command and Control Enable and Support
We only recognise CPD programs as valid indicators of professional progress.

We do allow attendance at one conference per year.

 

We recognise the wide opportunities on the Web to help people receive continuous updates on what is happening in their industry and professional, so we are happy to curate relevant resources for busy groups of people.

But we also help out people to find resources themselves, and how to make good use of curation tools to do this, as well as help them with the skills to avoid information overload and to make sense of what they find.

We encourage our people to share what they find with others.

7 – Modern professionals thrive on autonomy

Command and Control Enable and Support
No way! We can’t let people be in charge of their own learning. How will we know if they are learning the right thing? People need to be trained to do their jobs and it’s our job to make sure they are. Anything else they do is irrelevant. Self-organised and self-managed learning is a key part of our organisational learning strategy, so we help individuals to identify their professional goals, find the resources and people (eg. mentors) to achieve them, and generally build the skills to help them become self-reliant.

We offer a Learning Help Desk service to deal with bespoke needs.

We encourage people to share the achievements (as a result of their new knowledge and skills) in networking events so that the organisation can benefit from them too.

8 – Modern professionals like to use their own tools

Command and Control Enable and Support
We only sanction the use of enterprise learning systems and tools, as we need to track and manage everything centrally. We encourage the use of self-selected tools, and the setting up of a privately controlled personal learning space where individuals can record, reflect on and make sense of their own learning.

We only use a central LMS to track the stuff we have to, ie. compliance and regulatory training. Other formal learning initiatives are delivered in more modern and flexible ways (e.g. through learning campaigns).

Want to find out more how to let go? My book, Learning in the Modern Workplace and associated workshops are there to help.

One thought on “L&D’s biggest challenge and greatest opportunity: letting go

  1. Greg DeVore

    I love the idea of being an Advisor/Consultant. The focus should be on enabling employees, not tracking which courses they have taken.

    If find that the L&D people that I talk to who take this approach feel much more excited about what they are doing – because they are really helping people.

    I also think that we can do a lot by not focusing so much on knowledge retention (quizzes etc.) and focusing more on knowledge application (real world scenarios). When we do that we become productivity enablers as opposed to knowledge regulators.

Comments are closed.