We spend a lot of our time talking to learning and development professionals. It’s struck me recently that many of our discussions are around “how do we make learners attend the courses we want them to?” The work appears to be focused on creating standardised courses and learning paths, corralling learners into these courses, and then tracking those who didn’t attend for a stern follow-up word.

Wouldn’t it be better to empower learners to learn, and help managers to coach learners? Yes, we also need to make sure that the statutory/mandatory competencies are covered (and I intentionally talk here about competencies, not courses, but that’s a different subject). But generally, what would a learning and development function look like if it had line managers accountable and skilled to make smart decisions about employee learning?

I’m writing this post after watching talks from Tedmed online – for example this one about a systems approach to medicine. There is sooooo much brilliant learning content out there already, both online and offline, and including a million opportunities to learn in the workplace. How can L&D professionals work to connect learners to existing learning opportunties, rather than create ever-more courses and e-learning content and then corral learners towards this content?

What do you think?

About Tim Newham

Tim is the founder and Managing Director at Think Associates Ltd. He takes an active role in helping clients and has specialist interests in organisation development, process improvement and knowledge management. Tim has over 10 years’ experience of managing large-scale performance and learning processes in the public sector, and focuses on building the bridges between HR policy/process, line management requirements, and IT systems to make life easier for staff. Tim has a First Degree in Engineering Systems and a Masters Degree in Management.

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