It’s almost that time again, when we set our New Year resolutions. Do you remember yours for this year? Did you achieve them? I did some, but not many. New Year resolutions often fail because they involve behavioral changes and depending on which ones you make, very big changes. What about questionable behaviors in Learning and Development (L&D)? Should we attempt to correct those with a New Year’s resolution approach? Well, if we did, here are five resolutions we could focus on.
1. Think Performance First
The primary purpose of our existence as L&D professionals is to be performance-driven. Thinking performance will by default have us thinking about other environmental business elements beyond learning courses. Performance should always be first, even before we become “learner-centered”. Why? Because by thinking performance we naturally become user-centered. Remember that we can have people learning all kinds of stuff, but what really matters in business is people performing well.
2. Avoid Designer Ego
Designer ego is real and it means that as learning designers we will tend to favor a learning medium over another based on our skills in or a preference for certain authoring tools. For example, delivering Instructor-Led Training (ILT) versus an eLearning module or vice versa solely on the basis of our preference as designers. The same can be said about video versus a job aid. Are our creative needs more important than what the learners really need?
3. Get That Chip Off Your Shoulder
Complaining and whining due to a lack of recognition in the workplace is an easy path to follow. As L&D professionals we can easily fall into this trap and although it may help us identify with each other, it hurts our ability to build meaningful partnerships with our stakeholders. Yes, there other departments like Sales or Marketing that get all the “toys”, but guess what? Those folks get what they need because their performance results immediately demonstrate business impact. If we act like we have a chip on our shoulder all of the time, we won’t be able to think and act the way our business partners do.
4. Stop Teaching Others About Our Business
We in L&D are passionate about what we do, but that can be a double edge knife. That passion can often lead to frustration when we engage with other business units who are not as passionate about learning. The issue here is that we should focus on problem solving not validation of our efforts. Once we solve a performance problem with learning or other intervention, we will be validated. So if we hear our partners mentioning “learning styles”, we should not jump to correct them and therefore publicly embarrass people because they are not as knowledgeable. Let’s think of it this way, when we hire an architect, do we want an expert that will listen to our needs and provide a solution or one that will ignore or correct us because we are not using the right architectural jargon?
5. Embrace Digital Technology
The workplace is undergoing a digital transformation and we should be leading it, not reacting to it. L&D tends to have a visceral negative reaction to the term “technology”. The one thing to realize is that a piece of paper is technology. If our workplace is evolving into digital realms of collaboration across the globe, we should be equally capable of joining our teams in these spaces. The most important technology we can embrace in 2019 is web technology, it supports everything in business today as well as any learning technology. When we embrace web technology we can reach more people across the globe and when they need us, not when we prefer to do so.
Wrap Up
Alright, I hope these L&D resolutions get you thinking about how you can have a greater impact in your organization. If you were already doing all of these, then my apologies for you are doing awesome. I want to thank you for taking the time to read this and also send you a big hug if you are a subscriber. My apologies as I know I’ve neglected this blog this year, but no worries, in 2019 I’m coming back on a weekly basis! Happy Holidays!
