Transforming learning starts with a transformation of L&D

CEOs highlighting that their organisations are not developing skills fast enough should be a rallying cry to L&D to take a look at itself.

Here are five thoughts to help that process:

1. It’s about performance, not learning

By looking past ‘learning’, refocussing on ‘performance’ and throwing off the shackles of a ‘course only mindset’, L&D can focus on activities and outcomes that impact the work itself, embed learning in the workflow and help people grow in line with the organisation’s strategic goals. Start thinking resources before courses.

2. Influence the performance of everybody, every day

Create the opportunity to potentially influence the performance of everybody every day by exposing people to resources that are designed to help them access what successful people already know and do as well as carefully curated resources with content from outside the organisation.

3. Create your in-house Google of learning

If people are finding their own resources and developing themselves online, L&D must create an environment and platform that does this better than the outside world to prevent creep in the way things get done.

4. Empower employees to be self-sufficient and to contribute

The internet of things means that many people are better connected when they go home than they are at work. It’s easy for us to access a network that ranges from celebs to professors resulting in a ‘personal learning network’. This concept can be cultivated by L&D to support the creation of a personal learning network to support professional development.

5. Lead so that others will follow

It’s likely that a traditional training approach will be deeply ingrained in the organisation so bringing about change will be a challenge. This is a journey worth initiating and there will be advocates along the way whose influence can be leveraged. Any approach to change should be qualified by the state of readiness. Donald Taylor, Chairman of The Learning and Performance Institute created this model to recognise the dynamics in play.

Remember ‘If not you, then who’ — are you on a path to learning leadership?