L&D there is a world outside, innovation

June 16, 2022

If you read or heard the most interesting people of Learning and development last time, you will find the concern of results. We are in the fight between formal education and real learning. Try not to be an order taker as an L&D partner. You add value when you work with managers and SME in real need of training. You have to be focused on performance and results. But let me add that SMEs, stakeholders, and managers are not right always. Furthermore, I ask myself why nobody talks about external validation. Most of the time, we all need to learn from outside, to advance. Because we learn when we are challenged. Sometimes we get trapped, and we are working with materials, contents, and processes, not enough. The company is just looking at itself when it is a dead walker. A bunch of CEO biases on their beautiful companies:

Dead Companies Walking: How A Hedge Fund Manager Finds Opportunity in Unexpected Places

The L&D role focuses only on the company. And quality is good. But if you bet on people’s growth you have to look outside too, bring new things, challenge people and make changes real. We may be aware of industries related and understand what is classic, what is new what is working and what is old-fashioned in our business. You become an expert of your business. The famous curve of innovation (image header), by Everett Rogers, makes me think of it.

When someone asks for courses, and it doesn’t make sense, you say it. But you have to encourage managers to look outside their fences and grow. We heard thousands of times that if you don’t embrace the change, soon you will be erased. Your boss and the managers have a strong bias on how perfect is his/her company. But they need to understand L&D is not a perfect mirror for the company, some volunteer resources, or courses to have a good time together. It is about change, and change will be needed.I think it is our responsibility to suggest new content, and new views, or at least to participate in the benchmarking of WHAT we need to learn next. What are we missing now?

It is easy to cut off learning when things go wrong, we are a good shield, and some managers ask for learning easily as an excuse, no justification is needed. So now that we are aware of how we learn and the results, we need to look outside and be sure we have better content than our competitors and that we are up-to-date and ready for the challenges.