New Year's Resolutions For Learning And Development Professionals

Many of us are entering 2023 off the back of a more relaxed and indulgent end to 2022. It’s to be expected, right? But as we look to right the wrongs of our excesses, it may be time to dial back on unhealthy foods, get back to a level of activity more acceptable for land mammals and engage our brains in more nourishing pursuits.

For many of us, this is the time for New Year’s resolutions to right some wrongs, stop doing so many detrimental things and do more of what will move us forward.

This may be the case for learning and development (L&D), too. What have we been doing that’s detrimental—or not doing us any good—that we may need to self-correct to get us back on the right track?

Here are my New Year’s resolutions for L&D that will have us address our excesses and do more to make a positive impact while relying less on just hope.

Stop believing generic content libraries will close our organizations' skills gaps.

This is a funny one because some well-intentioned L&D professionals believe that making vast content libraries available must mean that people will be prepared for future changes to their roles. But this is largely based on hope rather than any analysis, and that’s the problem. If we don’t know what’s changing for any particular role or cohort, then how can we possibly provide a solution?

For many of us, the problem seems too big, so no real analysis is conducted, and we trust the vendors who, conveniently, tell us what our skills gaps are and who, coincidentally, have vast suites of online learning content that match up to the gaps they told us we have. One of the biggest challenges to the misheld belief that generic content libraries will close our organization’s skills gaps is: how can any of their content close a specific skills gap in our organization when it doesn’t mention our culture, our customers, our stakeholder expectations, our structure, our processes, our systems, or our products? It can’t. Then, those content suites would just be nice-to-haves if they weren't expensive and keeping L&D from doing the analysis they need to do to figure out where the real skill gaps are.

So come on. We don’t believe in Santa Claus anymore (spoiler alert if you do still believe), and we shouldn’t believe in this nonsense either. (By the way, Santa Claus is taking credit for the hard work and expenditures of parents.) It’s going to take more hard work to deliver what our employees actually need to help them be better at their jobs and prepare their skills for future roles. Don’t let vendors tell you they will deliver your presents for you. It’s a fairy tale.

While we’re at it, stop providing ‘learning solutions.’

Because we don’t always do enough analysis of what employees are in our organizations to achieve and what’s preventing them from achieving this, many of us have resorted to providing "learning solutions." If we don't know what they're expected to do and achieve, but we believe that their participation in broadly themed content will make a positive difference, we believe that all we need to do is provide and deliver high-quality content. But in this way, just giving away "learning" is a waste of time and money and makes no sense.

The only reason to provide a suite of generic content is to keep stakeholders off our backs. To head off questions like: Do we have anything on time management? The question itself should be a clue: If "anything" will do, then just have a very basic provision. If it’s important, then it’ll require more than "anything." But that’s how low-stakes L&D can be when anything will do.

We can elevate our profession by understanding what precisely people are expected to do and achieve and helping them to do that. But we can only do so with an analysis of the job requirements and tasks. It is faster, cheaper, and more effective to address a real problem for a cohort of employees at our organizations than it is to try to account for every eventuality with generic "learning solutions."

Stop believing the planets need to align before you can move forward.

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been told: "I’d love to modernize my L&D function or pivot to a performance orientation or lead with digital L&D solutions, but I need to" (followed by one or more of the following reasons):

• Develop the right learning culture.

• Get buy-in from the CEO.

• Get senior leaders on board.

• Have line managers take more ownership.

• Have more self-directed learners.

Despite this, no one I've ever met who has successfully modernized or pivots. The key is to go into the next conversation or planning session with the goal of actually changing performance to solve a real problem. To do this, we need to have a different conversation with stakeholders and the people who will be part of the development cohorts. We also need to make it our goal to define success only when the desired results are being met.

Without the intent to affect performance, then we can only hope that once one, some, or all of the criteria listed above are achieved, we will magically turn "courses being attended" and "content being consumed" into undetermined impacts. But that’s not a particularly appealing outcome and is really rather silly.

These are my New Year’s resolutions for L&D, and by committing to them, I believe we’ll make a greater impact, increase our credibility and influence, and achieve more as L&D professionals.

Original Source: Forbes