The constant learner

 “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!”  - Theodore Levitt "Learning becomes a solution only when it solves the right business problem" - The great one ;) A solution gains meaning only when it is mapped to and addresses a specific problem. More often than not, identifying the problem alone isn't enough, you need to accurately determine the root cause.  Many learnings fail because they address the symptoms (the problem) rather than the disease (the root cause). Let's go through a case study to learn why it is critical to identify the root cause. Note:  For the purpose of this post, let's imagine that somebody from Learn4ever is narrating this case study like a story.  The story begins ABX Corp, a reputed pharmaceutical company headquartered in Sweden, had just finished rebuilding their Sales and Marketing team for the APAC region. These were not fresh hires. They were experienced professionals with strong track records and...

 Traditional L&D is dead. Long live L&D. Now that we have written its obituary, let's get real. Learning is not going anywhere. Like change, it is a constant. Humans have been learning since the dawn of time, they ain't stopping now. Learning will only transform to meet business realities. That's it.  But here is the conversation nobody in L&D is having honestly. Imagine yourself to be the head of the learning and development division in your company. You are in a budget discussion with your CEO, who is staring at the learning budget and asking two things. Why is learning not delivering ROI? And why are we still paying for this when AI can generate courses in minutes? Fair questions. Uncomfortable ones. But fair. Here is the honest answer to both. Learning never failed. We failed learning. We measured completions, not behavior change. We built courses when the real problem was a broken process, a bad manager, or missing tools. We said yes when we should h...

 "Change is the only constant."   This saying has never been truer than today. Organizations operate in a market marked by high volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Disruption is not just an exception, it is the norm. In such testing times, Change Management — a structured approach to transitioning employees, tools and processes from the current state to a desired future state — becomes critical for organizational survival. Unfortunately, change management is never easy. Humans are averse to change, whether as individuals or as a group. Most organizations fail at change management because they don't get the basics right, or ignore the fact that for an organization to embrace change, employees need to be motivated and equipped with the knowledge and skills to transform their mindset. This is why 72% of change management initiatives fail. So, where does learning come into play? If Change Management helps an organization drive change, learning is what power...