David James is CLO at 360Learning, host of The Learning & Development Podcast and former Director of L&D for The Walt Disney Company.
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The global learning technologies market is currently worth over $300 billion and is expected to exceed the $1 trillion mark in the next five years. It’s clearly a significant growth area for business owners and investors. In my opinion, this should come as no surprise—after all, the holy grail for organizations has got to be upskilling and reskilling at scale in a way that can't possibly be achieved solely in person. The problem is, how much of this spend is driving actual upskilling and reskilling and seeing the impacts leaders want? This is clearly up for debate.
As huge as the investment may be, the claims of learning technology vendors are often even bigger and bolder. Whether it's the common claim that consuming learning content can’t help but build new competencies, or the wilder claim that a meaningful skill can be developed in just a few short minutes, I've seen vendors often stretch credulity with their promises.
As long as people buy into claims like these, credibility as a learning and development professional can suffer. That’s because these claims don't stand up to scrutiny. But in my experience, L&D professionals do know, deep down, that simply offering generic suites of content, no matter how vast and comprehensive, cannot predictably or reliably give them the impact we’re looking for.
Your expectations are too low.
For as long as I’ve been in learning and development—since the late 1990s—there has been an implicit (though sometimes explicit) expectation that the only way we can truly develop skills is in the classroom. With this belief, online content has been seen as merely supplementary—a way of providing something before an employee attends a classroom event where they will hone their skills. Alongside this low expectation is the idea that there just needs to be something on a topic—a short e-learning module on time management or a set of resources on communication skills. In short, you may not expect much.
With such limited belief in digital solutions, how can you hope to upskill and reskill at the scale needed to stay competitive and survive in a tough environment? Instead, you may be simply measuring the success of your investment in tech by clicks and more clicks. If people seem satisfied, then the job is done. Investment justified. Right?
But are people actually learning anything? Are they upskilled? Are they reskilled? How could you possibly know? Maybe that's why so much time is spent trying to change the conditions in which people will or won’t click or trying to develop the learning culture—because if you have a learning culture, then consumption could be more likely to lead to competence.
This might sound like a compelling idea, but in reality, I've found it’s just a distraction—a distraction from the impossibility of demonstrating that your ingrained habits of buying and implementing learning tech have failed to offer any proof that you’ve made any meaningful impact.
I believe it’s time for L&D leaders to try something new.
Go direct or go home.
What if you spent less time on nebulous concepts and more time on recognizing and understanding the actual problems that employees and departments are trying to address? It’s a novel concept, sure, but it’s a concept that can directly address anxieties around impact and return on your investments while also showing exactly how you’re making a meaningful difference. You don’t need to change the culture or gain buy-in from high above. You just need to hold yourself accountable to ask better questions about the impact you’re trying to create.
You can probably start doing this with your current tech stack or with free or cheap tools. That’s because this shift isn’t about tech to start with; it’s about uncovering the real problems people are experiencing that are either preventing them from working effectively or efficiently now, or problems that are costing the organization money, time, opportunity or talent.
If you were to list some ways in which you know—or think—your organization is losing out on customers, money, time, opportunity or talent, what would they be?
• Do you have a problem retaining employees across your organization, or in any specific areas? In what departments? At what tenure? At what level?
• Is your organization disproportionately hiring from outside because you aren’t giving internal candidates the support they need to grow?
• Do your new first-line managers detrimentally affect productivity or retention anywhere?
• Do you have teams that are underperforming and costing the organization?
Some of these questions naturally fall into the remit of L&D, and some may require some maneuvering and repositioning to draw a meaningful link. But the point is, every organization has problems that detrimentally affect performance. If you can recognize and understand these problems, you can work to make a difference almost immediately through conversations, exploration and using digital tools to collect and disseminate useful information and know-how at scale.
But where’s the tech? And where’s the impact?
In my experience, the key step in making an impact with digital tools is applying them to actual quantifiable problems.
By working alongside people responsible for the work and outcomes, and by seeking ways to develop and surface highly contextual tools and resources that speak to their actual work, you can make a real impact. You might make a big difference or a small one. Either way, being focused and specific about addressing actual problems can see L&D leaders move at pace and with purpose.
This pivot is agnostic to any one platform or format because there isn’t a single digital tool out there that will provide solutions to undefined problems. But there is more and more smart technology that can help you to upskill and reskill at scale if you use it in a more focused and intentional way.
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