Learning & Development: An Organisational Blueprint for What Comes Next

Over the last few months I’ve been looking at some of the challenges ahead for L&D; new skills that L&D professionals might need, a shift from courses to resources, and the importance of design thinking. But this falls short of an organisational blueprint, so I thought it might be useful to pull this thinking together into a single (simplified) diagram.

Considered as a whole, the diagram below reflects a fundamental shift in our overall mission: away from learning and development and towards performance improvement & employee experience. These are two profoundly different (even opposing) ambitions: if we think of performance improvement as encompassing ‘organisational usability’ then it is clear that often we will be looking to improve performance without building capability – so that relatively inexperienced employees can quickly perform at a level comparable to a colleague with many years’ experience (through resources and guidance).

This requires a shift in overall philosophy, organisational structure, professional capabilities, process and outputs.

The diagram above may look familiar in some respects, so perhaps it's worth highlighting some key differences that may not be immediately apparent:

• Challenges not capabilities: organisational unit are set up around key performance challenges rather than capabilities. In part, this is because building capability may be the least effective way to help people perform. Instead, we ask 'how can we help employees tackle this set of challenges?'
• Design for transitions: linked to the above, most learning happens at transitions (for example joining an organisation, becoming a leader or taking on a technical role). A focus on transitions will also deliver much of the in-role guidance.
• Audience (not SME) centric: content creation shifts to a user-centered design process which helps front-line people to do their jobs, rather than a mechanism for dumping content from SMEs. SMEs should still be involved in design.
• Focus on performance (not content): the starting point for design should be a thorough understanding of the desired performance outcomes and context (rather than a set of learning objectives).
• Focus on UX rather than organisational structure: much learning technology is used to ‘push’ content derived from organisational silos at the user, resulting in a fragmented and irrelevant user experience. A better solution starts with the performance journey and integrates guidance drawn from various parts of the organisation.
• Iterative not static development: performance support is continually evolving, not a process of finalising content. Overall the system gathers feedback and spreads best practice.
• Product not programme: as we become user-centric rather than organisation-centric, the focus shift to the product which delivers the intended user-experience, rather than the programme which delivers the organisational message.
• Content strategy not curriculum: linked to the above, content producers are tasked with developing the content specific to a set of challenges. This requires an active content strategy, driven by user data – together with strategic inputs.
• Open to all: the system defaults to allowing all users to access all resources, though they are directed to relevant material via personalisation and contextual information.
• Digital first: the vast majority of our learning is informal, and today much of this comes via technology. An organisational performance strategy should prioritise digital, in order to provide effective, just-in-time performance support (and also to drive efficiencies in delivery).
• Experiential, not instructional: where we wish to change mindsets, or give people opportunities to practice, we should undertake experience design (and not instructional design). In other words, live events should not be ‘content dumping’ sessions.
• Resources become guidance: the shift from an app that delivers resources to AI-driven guidance happens quite naturally as more contextual information is added to resources. This is similar to GPS, where the resource (a map) becomes guidance (turn left) by virtue of the addition of contextual information (your destination and location).

It is, of course, often difficult for organisations to shift from the current state to something like this - but it may help to picture the future more clearly, and of course there are occasions where even large organisations have a chance to start again from scratch.