Blind Spots

One of your biggest blind spots as a learning leader is killing your credibility with the workforce as well as hampering your ability to deliver results. Learning and development is rarely learner-centered, for example. Once we get past the executives who get five-star concierge-like support, study after study finds that most in the workforce are not getting the tailored learning and development they so desperately need to excel.

HR and IT are not working together in ways the workforce needs, and L&D professionals are hard pressed to demonstrate the impact of their efforts on individual performance and bottom-line results. The professionals of the incoming generation, Gen Y, are demanding a complete overhaul of how you connect with them, coach them and teach them, but only about one-quarter of new managers get the effective coaching or training they need when assuming their new role.

What do your learners find outside of your company? They find that IT and training play together quite well. For example, Apple’s store has over 300,000 apps, thousands of which deliver on-the-fly tutorials plus developmental and assessment tools tailored to every need, many of which are free.

Through coaching portals, the expertise of world-class coaches and how-to gurus like Ram Charam, Marshall Goldsmith and David Allen is available for peanuts. With social networking, most everyone can reach out to peers for advice on most any how-to, and Google is now every employee’s adjunct professor.

Of course, all that carries a big caveat emptor: learner beware. The quality of any individually designed L&D effort could leave a lot to be desired. But what can’t be denied is that you have already lost the battle you’re still waging with the workforce — that, for budgetary reasons, you can’t possibly tailor enough to meet its needs.

Between one-third and two-thirds of your employees are meeting their needs by working around you.

Some examples we found:

• Raveena is a corporate trainer who confides to her trainees that because of budget constraints, much of what she provides is mediocre at best. So she sends them to free online sources outside of the company. After testing them on what they learned, she validates their certificates in required courses they never attended.