Corporate L&D is mostly stuck in management mode at a time when organisations need inspiration, disruption, and new ideas. The work of L&D should provide new opportunities for people to participate, contribute and take responsibility. I see three common characteristics in L&D teams that have limited impact on changing the organisation:

1. An ‘order taker’ positioning

The basis of the work of most L&D teams is ‘content’. Developing content, managing access to content, curating content, ‘marketing’ content, tracking consumption of content. Inevitably, this work orientates towards project and program management, tracking, reporting, governance, and administration. A 'content as the strategy' philosophy and the mindset and infrastructure that grows up around this inevitably reinforces an ‘order taker’ positioning.

2. ‘Tactics first’ approach

There is often interchangeability between ‘goals’, 'strategy’, and ‘tactics’ in corporate L&D. Linked to the point on ‘order taking’ positioning above, there’s a natural default to lead with ‘solutions’ first.

The work of L&D should provide new opportunities for people to participate, contribute and take responsibility

3. ‘Aim to please’ mindset

This is a fundamental challenge, and a driver of the other two characteristics described above. The work of L&D remains predominantly 'delivery' focused, allied to a sense of ‘needing to demonstrate its worth’. This is an increasingly risky combination as leaders now need ‘critical friendships’ that challenge current thinking, enable reflection, and help accelerate systemic change. So what if we imagine a new focus for the contribution of corporate 'L&D' – to become an indispensable accelerator for new ways of leading, connecting, and working by enabling leaders to prioritise what is now valuable and differentiating for the organisation?

How can L&D leaders enable this change?

The following  two questions can help L&D leaders to reflect on whether the L&D function is playing on 'defence' (fixed plans for fixed roles, content led, reactive) or 'offence' (enabling constant learning, performance led, proactive):

1. How much of your L&D investment is currently driven by:

• The business reacting to external events
• Cost reduction initiatives
• Digitisation of existing business processes
• 'Process standardisation' projects
• Compliance audit action points

2. What proportion of your L&D priorities are enabled through these strategy choices?:

• Standardising fixed skills for individual roles
• Ensuring consistency and consolidation of learning programmes
• Digitising 'learning solutions'
• Scaling access to 'learning content'
• Optimising and tracking 'learning content', 'engagement' and consumption

These questions help you to reflect on and challenge the priorities that currently inform your L&D goals and strategies. If the answers are mostly ‘yes’, the L&D team are probably still operating in ‘defence’ mode and so less likely to be enabling and accelerating significant change.

What if we imagine a new focus for the contribution of corporate 'L&D' – to become an indispensable accelerator for new ways of leading, connecting, and working...?

Taking a proactive approach in your L&D team

So what might a more proactive, (‘offence’) approach to L&D look like in practice? L&D teams:

• Prioritising support for the pockets of individuals, managers, and teams where learning from and through work is already actively encouraged
• Working with managers and team members to understand and agree on the work that needs to be improved and why
• Encouraging teams to identify and define the gaps in 'performance'  - not ‘learning’ - that need to be closed and why
• Enabling and facilitating people to take responsibility for their own continuous, self-managed inquiry and learning
• Accelerating new opportunities to bring individuals and teams together across their 'functional' silo boundaries
• Enabling and accelerating new connections and introductions in and across teams
• Cultivating and role modelling the environment for better questions and reflection
• Finding and testing new ways for knowledge, ideas, information, and good practice to move faster between teams
• Developing platforms where exemplary performers can discuss, share, and accelerate their experiences and approaches so others can benefit
• Removing all the current 'KPIs’ related to ‘enabling access to…’, ‘providing content’ and ‘increasing engagement with…’
• Stopping using the words ‘learning’ and ‘learners’. (Reflect on how this shifts the focus and tone of your communications and interactions)

Strong, sustainable businesses focus on finding new ways for individuals and teams to connect and share their experience, ideas and opportunities

The true meaning of high performance

Strong, sustainable businesses focus on finding new ways for individuals and teams to connect and share their experience, ideas and opportunities. The L&D team should facilitate and enable this point of difference. Organisations need help to define what they now mean by ‘learning’ – beyond ‘training’. In many organisations the conditions and expectations for learning still aren't prioritised or nurtured. This is not a 'content', 'tools', or 'learning technologies' challenge. The L&D team should enable the organisation to acknowledge the new challenges being faced by its teams and the new capabilities needed to move forward. ‘High performance’ now no longer means ‘highly compliant’. Shifting the impact of the L&D team depends on agreeing and communicating what the team will stop doing, and why.

If you enjoyed this, read: Sustaining a genuine culture of change readiness