Overview
Learning investment underdelivers not because the programme was poorly designed, but because the system people return to is more powerful than the programme.
An organisation already produces the behaviour it has, reliably and often for years, through its rewards, its unspoken norms and what its leaders notice. A two-day programme is asked to compete with all of that, and it rarely wins. The article gives an example from our own business: encouraging a colleague to work more collaboratively changed little while the reward that colleague watched most closely paid for individual revenue.
It names forces that seldom reach a learning design meeting, impatience above all: impatience that compresses timescales, crowds out reflection and explains why behaviour changes in the room and reverts in the corridor. Drawing on Senge's work on mental models, it argues that people often do not resist change; the system they work in rewards not changing.
Its advice for anyone commissioning learning: before designing the next intervention, ask which system forces currently produce the behaviour you want to change. Sometimes the most valuable contribution is not a better programme, but helping the organisation see the system it has built.
Read the full article in TrainingZone
Sean Blair is the founder of Serious Outcomes and SERIOUSWORK™, and the author of The Systems Synergy.