It’s Time For Something New

We’ve been talking about this for years. Why is it that after two decades, Learning and Development is still struggling to deliver unmistakable value? Some things have changed. Technology, just emerging when the original book came out is now at the core of the learning organization. The tools for practitioners have improved. Yet the same problems that stirred the need for the for the book continue to challenge Learning and Development organizations around the globe. Recent research by Bersin by Deloitte indicates that, while employee development has never been as important, faith of the organization in the L&D function to deliver value has also never been so low

Another thing that has changed are the organizations that L&D serves. Companies of all sizes, once comfortable in their place in the market, have been disrupted. Innovation, once a source of competitive advantage, is now a business requirement. With all these changes to the business, how has L&D evolved? Most would say not very much. The use of outsourcing, controversial at the time of the book, is fortunately now a widely accepted solution for many functions of L&D. Thanks to the migration to digital learning, measurement data, formerly difficult to collect beyond “smile sheets”, is now readily available. But in many ways L&D hasn’t changed at all. As stated by Bersin, business leaders and employees often cite little or no value coming from the learning organization.  An organization that is arguably more important today than ever.

With this as our backdrop, we might consider that running training like a business today could mean running training like a startup. We hope you will join us in exploring and discussing the best practices of startups and how they can serve learning organizations to deliver the unmistakable value that we all seek. We thank you in advance or your comments feedback and ideas.

Ed and J.

Author: J.

J. Miguez has spent the last 25 years designing Learning & Development organizations and the service offerings that support them. Learning domain explorer. View all posts by J.