Dani Johnson’s Post

I hope the lack of haters thus far indicates that people perpetuating the issues are at least embarrassed about it. That would be a start. I will never cease to be amazed at how entrenched these tendencies are and how protective some practitioners are of their outdated ways of working.  The one area where I might take some exception is in singling out the intake process. I don’t think having such a process is necessarily the issue. Failing to establish that the outcome of that process can be a “no” very much is an issue and is often where the order-taking behavior manifests. On the flip side of that, IMO, the order taker framing may actually understate the problem. I’ve seen many requests that don’t even rise to that level. All the stakeholder really wants is ground cover. I also don’t think the problem is lack of customer/client/stakeholder-centricity, but rather the wrong *kind*.   Overall, spot on and I’m glad to see a little in-print skepticism about ROI, which in most cases would be better expressed as “BS.” 

L&D professionals need to stop thinking about themselves as crafts people. We are business people with a specialist expertise related to growth of human performance and the actualization of human potential. At the end of your days, do not pat yourself on the back because of the widgets you created or served (training content) or the use of that specialist expertise (adherence to discipline or dogma). Consider it a good day when you contributed to the growth of YOUR business, full stop. A related note: There a few more unfortunate and unhelpful titles in modern organizations than "business partner," be it of the HR or Learning variety. It says all the wrong things, as Dani so forcefully explains. The business is not separate. The business is not your customer. You are not an internal vendor. You ARE the business.

How do I vote? 20 out of 10! Agree!!!! L&D must align with the organizational strategies, goals, and priorities. It's not about how many people attended, but how it grows the organization. Ultimately, how are you driving revenue in L&D by providing the necessary development for those on front lines to better serve the customers, and those internal teams to better support those who support the customers. (including all the leadership involved) It is also saying "no". No, I will not put your sales team through a 3-day workshop learning 20 different concepts. Because they will implement exactly zero of those. I will provide valuable, focused learning that can be immediately put into practice to drive results. If you want 3 days together once per year to build comradery, we will 1. Have fun 2. Share best practices 3. Learn 2-3 new concepts 4. Practice those concepts 5. Set goals and follow up. This post is my favorite soapbox of the day! Maybe the week! It's still early, so it could become my favorite February post.

I have to disagree on something, otherwise it's not really a discussion... :) If you have a consulting mindset, I think you can call other functions customers/stakeholders/clients, whatever. Your role is not to please them or tell them what they want to hear (that's the politicians' job). Your job is to make sure they can make informed decisions, and once the decisions are made, support them to execute on those. This involves saying "no" in a consultative way and proposing more effective solutions (not learning objectives). If you don't have the consulting mindset, and you think like a service order or product maker, then it doesn't matter what you call other functions. I might be wrong but language and mindset are important together. I agree with the other points. That doesn't mean I'm not guilty of breaking the "business" reference, though. Mostly for operations. One point I would add is sharing what worked for your organization is great. But HOW you made it work would be even better. Because just the "we do this and works for us" may not fly in a different situation where the conditions are totally different.

It’s such an odd one isn’t it! Two things that are worth unpacking more is language and a point that might be missing here, which is L&D capabilities. In terms of language, couldn’t agree with you more Dani Johnson, L&D folk do a huge disservice to themselves by being learning-centric when discussing with departments that simply don’t care, don’t have the time to care, or don’t know how to care – they want to see meaningful results that make sense in their context, and LANGUAGE is a huge barrier most of the time. It stops L&D practitioners breaking down silos and have meaningful conversations. The question then becomes – why hasn’t this happened yet? I suspect it has to do a lot with the internal capabilities of L&D teams and recruitment in this area. Here’s a graph of the least prevalent capabilities found in L&D teams. Guess what the top capability has been for L&D over the past 20 years or more? In-person classroom delivery / facilitation. While important, delivery is only part of what L&D does. Basically, It is very hard to achieve aspirational goals when your hands are tied, let alone when you are tying them yourself! 

It's fascinating to see the many comments that support the post (I fully agree as well by the way). But if we all agree (and many of us for many years), why is it then that L&D is still very much an order taker? It looks like we do not know how to make the change... So, I'm taking the challenge to write down my 2 cents later this months in a blog post. For now, here's an initial list of thoughts: - Understand the company strategy and prios - Focus on what matters and can be measured (and if the business has no data to back up their perception of a problem, kindly say NO) - Analyse what works and what not and bring that to the table as evidence of your strategy (that which works), or to say NO with backup (that which does not work) - Be serious about L&D upskilling in consulting, business and data analysis, science and technology - Build processes & structures to deliver quality at speed and low cost (not re-invent the wheel all the time) - Go deep in critical area's and move beyond the hype. You want upskilling? Great, now let's think how people develop skills (hint; not by watching video's). You want AI? Then get yourself skilled (you now know how to do it;-) and have real conversations with IT and providers.

Lots of comments to catch on. I will drop my bit n Processes. While processes might make it look as transactional, no one questions that they are needed in Talent Aquisition, nor in Sales or Product Development for example. They give ground, facilitate control, handovers, onboarding for L&D employees etc. What I consider important is shifting the focus of those processes to position L&D more as a business partner, able to contribute, guide and coach "the business" on solving problems (be it trough learning solutions or not). Processes should dictate or help us develop automations that get us time to do more of that coaching and less of that admin work that is reeatable adds little to no value. So instead of no processes, I vote for more automated processes for operational stuff which also exists in L&D and needs to be done, and more elevated processes that help us professinalize the L&D capability as much as any other capability in our organizations.

Dani Johnson This was a delightful read! I've sometimes considered the perspective that part of the cause here is treating L&D as a 'thing'. As you say 'YOU ARE NOT A SEPARATE ENTITY' and I know of many L&D functions that would have far larger impact if they were 'dissolved' as a function and replaced with something more impactful. As an example, skill and performance development can be supported by a senior sponsor (E.g. Capability Director) to set the strategy and direction (aligned to business strategy) of how to enhance capability, working with agile teams of People Partners/Consultants, Functional leaders and skill experts (internall and externally) who, instead of focusing on 'L&D solutions', come together to conduct meaningful analysis of performance barriers and collaborate to 'fix the problems'. Most of which I could confidently assume are primarily related to business operations and culture. This can then create conditions where learning happens naturally in most cases and is supported by interventions people actually need, instead of those that serve to simply justify the existence of an L&D function.

Thank you for saying this. 98% agreed, with a very minor nitpick about the client issue, probably just a semantic one. (I'll address in a separate comment). The one tool, more than any other, that helped me overcome this predicament is the Business Model Canvas. It gave me a simple lens through which to quickly understand how a business works and therefore speak the language that internal clients care about. It helps me understand the business as a whole, individual departments, and my own learning team (which I also think of as a business). And of course it showed me how L&D fits into the overall business. Proud Plug --> I'm talking about this tomorrow for an hour. It's free and open to any L&D professional who wants to join. Because we need to elevate L&D and I want more people to be able to use this tool to do just that. https://www.linkedin.com/events/howto-speakbusiness-forl-dprofe7160677440099377154/

Dani Johnson - great thoughts. I went from being a director on the operations side and moved to the talent development side. It was interesting to experience both sides of the "coin." What I learned is that oftentimes those on the talent development side try to push a cookie cutter solution to all divisions/departments without truly listening to their individual needs. It was frustrating for the operations side because they felt that TD never really listened to them. I also realize that not all TD teams have enough resources to customize programs for everyone, but there has to be some place to meet in the middle. The other thing I learned is that if TD has not used the systems from an operations perspective, they may not understand how logical or easy they are to use. Managers are so busy they don't have a lot of time to figure out complex systems. My point is that it's a great idea to bring an operations person (or team of people) in to give honest feedback that can help create a more efficient and impactful structure!