L&D? That's not what I do.

A few things over the last couple of days have inspired me to re-think what I'm trying to achieve professionally. In reading the December issue of Harvard Business Review, a lot of articles in their resonated strongly with me about the need to look at the way a business functions and building the right support networks to help those needs. Be it a wellness programme, how to use social media to engage with your customers, whether or not your staff are allowed to use social media, or looking at what leadership looks like in your organisation, there's clear discussions that need to be had about the best ways to enable any and all of those.

I shadowed an external trainer yesterday to gain an understanding of what he was helping a group to understand and achieve. The topic matter was straightforward enough and in fact we are well placed as a business to deliver this same topic ourselves internally. He used a few models and exercises to provide context and direction, but it's nothing new or licensed to the trainer, he just saw a few good models from his career and is using them in training. Nothing wrong with that.

And I watched a video post by Nick Shackleton Jones about Affective Content and how we're really only open to training when the right motivations are in place. This is a fascinating post about how ineffective learning is - be it traditional stock and trade, or be it e-learning. True learning for most people takes place when the emotional need is highly motivated. For example, when you start a new job, we often describe it as a steep learning curve, because we are literally engaging the brain to learn a new way of behaving. After a given amount of time though, this will plateau and any learning after this point will most likely come from on the job experience.

So what is it I need to be doing? Become a business consultant and advise how an organisation should be structured? Hunt down external trainers who charge obscene amounts of money for training that could be facilitated internally? Wait for employees to self-realise that they need to engage in some learning and then come find me?

Although facetious, those are serious and searching questions. L&D is now no longer about training, or about developing courses, or about how good a facilitator you are. It's about sharing knowledge. Businesses are so busy in this day that a lot of departments have become siloed and worried about staying alive. Businesses have always been guilty of that in fariness, there just seems to be a greater lens on it at the moment. And that's where L&D needs to really come into its fore. I don't know everything, and I shouldn't know everything, but I do know how to get the knowledge from Bob to Bert. And that's what I do.

L&D to the rescue!

In one of my earlier posts I mentioned something about a crack L&D team. From a meeting today I have been inspired to talk more about this ninja trained team of L&D professionals.


So first thing is to be clear about what is an L&D professional. In my experience it's someone who has been exposed to a wide range of training topics and can deliver training on those topics. This takes time. It's not enough for an L&Der to be a time management trainer. A trainer is someone who does exactly that - trains. An I.T. trainer is pretty restricted to I.T. training. They will be knowledgeable about their specific topic and be mostly restricted to that. But in essence, they are not developing a behaviour, they are developing a technical skillset. Because of that, they will be restricted to being a trainer; unless they of course venture to the L&D side of things. Oh and don't let the title confuse you. An I.T. consultant isn't an L&Der. They're just a fancy trainer.


The other thing to be wary of is to be fooled into thinking that a good trainer can make a good L&Der. No sirree. It is very possible to have someone train well but not make a good L&Der. They can present the information well, answer questions thrown at them, even make it amusing and relevant to your work. But that's not what L&D is about.


L&D is about a culture of learning and development that is facilitated by the L&Der. That sounds good but what needs to happen? Well you have to have someone who has experience of the learning and development cycle and knows how to make it a reality. That is someone who knows how to carry out a learning needs analysis, how to design an intervention, able to deliver the intervention and finally understand what evaluation is needed to measure the success of the intervention.


In order for that to be a success the L&Der has to have an infectious personality. The last thing you need is someone who believes in L&D but has the personality of a dead toad. I've known people like this and for all the money in the world they will never be like Jonathan Ross. So this L&Der must be someone who is able to do the following things well:

1) develop your business acumen - quickly. L&D can only be effective if you truly understand what are the important factors in business success? What is the company strategy? What do the different departments do? What processes are already in place that support L&D? Who are the key supporters of L&D? Who are the ones who just need to be introduced to L&D to be your supporters? Who are the cynics that you need to build rapport with? What are the objectives of the business? How can what you deliver help the business?

2) build rapport with a wide range of people. This is important in so many ways. You're only going to have a successful L&D function if the business knows who you are, what you're trying to achieve, and give you the support to do this. As an L&Der it's vital to be able to deliver an intervention that is received well by the people you're working with.

3) be knowledgeable about a range of L&D interventions. The beauty of being an L&Der is that you're not limited to delivering training courses. You have at your diposal other interventions such as workshops, meetings, focus groups, PR & marketing, lunch and learns, and the list can go on. A good L&Der will know how to use a different intervention in order to meet different needs.

4) be a good facilitator. This key skill of an L&Der was taught to me by my first boss. Facilitation skills can help with everything from project management to meeting management to delivering a programme. It's highly important to be able to understand the subtle nuances of being an effective facilitator and to be able to adapt this skillset for any daily interaction.

5) always seek current trends. As good as an L&Der may be, they have to seek out what's hot in the world. This is not only true for skills as an L&Der but also to keep aware of what's happening in the business world, economy and industry. All these things influence what you do as an L&Der and how successful you are likely to be.

Broadly speaking then these are the key things any L&Der should be able to do. I think I rank fairly well across those 5 points. I've still got a lot to learn to be better, and that's something I'm always conscious of.

Business 101

In a range of interactions today I was made aware of the importance of a little something called business acumen. The bread and butter of any successful organisation is to understand what business acumen is all about. I still don't know if I get it. Not really. I get enough to understand a range of factors associated with it. You know, things like ROI, portfolio of clients, customer identification strategies, marketing, PR, R&D, finance, cash flow, profit and loss, revenue streams, new business pipeline. You do know, don't you?

And that's where things start to get interesting. How many of us actually understand all of that jargon I've just thrown out there? More importantly, how many of the fresh talent coming into the workforce understand any of those things? We have high expectations for graduates in particular but anyone starting their career in a company. But what are we doing to help them understand everything that's expected of them? And I don't mean the work they're doing, but the important things of running a business.

So how do you do these things? Well a study by the CIPD showed that most learning and development in the workplace happens via information passed on and coaching done by the manager. In the first instance then, you have to know your stuff. You will always be the first port of call for a new recruit. You're the one with the answers. You're the one who can explain the meaning of life. The buck starts with you. It doesn't end there though.

You then need to have in place a process or programme that helps your new recruit gain business insights. Huh? For example, arrange weekly/monthly sesisons where you discuss what's been happening in the business and why any of that matters. When everyone was being asked to cut back on their spending, were you able to articulate why? When the recession meant redundancies had to be made, were you able to help the team see the business case for this? When Bob took sick leave every Monday consistently for 2 months were you able to discuss the impact of this and give appropriate feedback?

There also needs to be in place a session of sorts delivered by a senior business leader explaining what these things mean to give the business overview. In that session you need to also explain the jargon you use on a daily basis. What's a TSV? What does cash flow mean? What is a revenue stream? How do we find new business? What does ROI actually mean? And R&D?

Then you're looking to ensure you keep this activity up. Improve the quality of the conversations so deeper and more significant learning and development takes place. Send them on conferences where they can talk to other people about these things. Send them on an external course to interact with other industry people. Arrange discussions with other business units to help them understand how the business as a whole works.

And when you have all that in place, after about 2 years, they'll be ready to move on and get promoted. 2 years I hear you scream? Absolutely. If you want your new recruit to be a high flyer, and if you're serious about their career development you'll invest 2 years of your own time and efforts to get that person up to scratch. And 2 years is a good target to aim for.

So, are you ready to teach Business 101?