Here’s a one liner that might confuse, shock and perhaps, enrage some workplace learning teams. Building L&D products, solutions or tools (alone) won’t solve 99% of supposed workplace performance problems.

I’ve often said that 90% of the time, what a business will deem an L&D problem, usually isn’t. In the majority of cases, it’s a behavioural and cultural thing.

The role of a modern workplace learning function

Right, before the pitchforks and fire are brought out to chase me from the world of L&D, let me just say, that the following definition is just my viewpoint and not a definition from which we all must agree on.

So, here goes…

For me, (key word “me”) workplace learning teams exist to help people get better at what they need to do at work (performance) and as a human (behavioural). Adopting a coaching and consultative approach allows this function to enable learning moments, unlock new potential and guide people in the general right direction.

It’s not an instructional process. It’s an agent of change which shares new ideas, knowledge and tools to spark growth.

Ok, so why can’t my L&D team solve these workplace problems alone?

Yes, let’s get back to the reason you clicked on this article in the first place, shall we?

I would like to believe (or at least hope) that in most organisations, L&D is seen as akey part of the problem solving process. If I had my way, we’d actually stop labelling it L&D and just call ourselves performance consultants. I can dream, right?

Anyway, we are no doubt a part of the problem solving process, and rightly so. However, in the grand scheme of organisation change and transformation, we play a much smaller part that the collective business might imagine.

Let me provide an example to illustrate my point, with a classic narrative you might be familiar with.

The “L&D” problem…

It’s a bright sunny day, you’re fresh from a good night’s sleep, with a warm cup of good old tea making you feel all warm inside. You’re inbox is quiet, the calendar is unusually clear and people are naturally accessing that LMS you love to hate. (Is this a dream or reality?, who knows, bear with me).

But, out of nowhere, your team receives a request from the powers that be. They decree that the organisation has a widespread cultural problem with unconscious bias. Thus, it seems logical, that the whole organisation completes a compliance type resource to make sure they recognise and challenge any future bias.

That tea doesn’t feel so warm and lovely after all now.

Ok – there’s lots here which booths me already. Let’s unpack this:

1. It seems like the identification and solution to the problem have been agreed upon with no discovery phase whatsoever. This is a case of instruction rather than, could you help us with this problem?

2. No data has been quoted or shared – does this mean this is actually a problem? Or something, someone made an observation on once in a meeting? From what we know, it can be assumed this “problem” is largely opinion driven and influenced by recent industry movements. The classic case of “x” company is doing this, so we should too.

3. A “compliance type resource” has been specifically identified as the solution, (because it always is right?) which roughly translates to, we need to tick a box and have a stat to share as part of our employer brand campaign.

4. The problem has been identified as cultural but only involves L&D in the solution.

5. Compliance awareness and education resources rarely, if ever, make humans recognise and challenge anything. We have been perfectly programmed to beat the point and click challenge rather than consume any meaningful content.

Now, having these requests and conversations, sucks. Mainly because we all know the instructed solution will not work on it’s own. For true change and adoption of new behaviours, it needs to be role modelled, ideally through leadership, discussed in meetings and continual reflective points throughout the workflow.

Instead, as with the example I shared, it turns into a tick box exercise to gain an output which allows an organisation to appease its people and brand proposition.

If you want to solve problems that enable real change, we must consider the following factors.

People

First off, what’s your community like?

How do they naturally operate in the daily workflow? What’s their view of said problem right now?

When working on any problem, we must understand the people across our workplace. Where are their thoughts, feelings and know-how today? Where do we want them to be

Ask more questions to get meaningful data.

Culture

A big one – what does the culture of your organisation look like today?

What are the belief systems and values you encourage? What are the ones that specifically represent your community today?

Solving any problem becomes more complex if you don’t recognise and understand the organisational culture right now. Not the want that the leadership wants it to be and refer to at every company meeting, but what it actually is right now.

The culture of your workplace plays an essential part in people recognising a problem and wanting to act upon it.

Remember, culture rules all!

Behaviours, habits and mindset

With this factor, I recommend you know the ingrained behaviours of your people, e.g how they’ve dealt with change in the past and what approach have they most engaged with?

There’s a lot to be explored in established behavioural programming of your workforce too. If you’re doing something that threatens the existing programme behaviours, then it’s highly likely it won’t work.

Another key component of this factor, is what your senior leaders role model?

You can roll out resources, courses and tools all year long, but if the large population of leaders don’t role model the desired behaviours, habits and mindset, then why will the rest of your people?

Curiosity

An often overlooked and undervalued component of the organisation problem solving process – being curious.

They say curiosity killed the cat, but for humans, it might just be the key to unlocking growth.

To evolve a culture, it’s people need to have a certain amount of curiosity for that subject. For me, it’s the magic ingredient in making change stick. Yet, it’s not easy to influence and isn’t exactly something you can build.

I don’t believe curiosity is a skill one develops, it’s more like a behaviour. One we can encourage through the workflow cycle.

You could say, curiosity is like the trendy terminology of fixed vs growth mindset. It’s helpful to once more understand and recognise your people’s thirst to grow. Again, you can sum this up to ask more questions to get more meaningful data. It will make you better prepared to help create something which peaks your people’s curiosity.

And back again

Now, if we revisit my problem solving map image one more time, you can get the final visual of what it really takes to solve problems across the organisation.

Yes, L&D plays a part. We’ll usually deliver a mechanism to support in challenging people to recognise potential problems and guide the evolution of behaviours, habits and mindset in the best direction.

And this is where so many organisations get it wrong.

They often equate an organisation problem (which as we’ve explored it affected by much more than your latest compliance offering) to be something that must be solved by L&D.

And that is all I have to say about that really.

Before I close this out, let me share a few ideas on how you could change this as a workplace learning professional and/or team.

• Build trust and strong relationships with marketing, internal communications, senior leaders and those who form a key part of nurturing the employee experience. Help these people recognise it’s a team effort.
• Ask your people questions more often. Get a feel for the culture today – not what you want it to be, but what it is. Gather data and evidence, try not to be opinion led.
• Look to examples and case studies from other organisations. What are they doing? What can you learn? The right external data can certainly help influence your internal audience.

So, remember, L&D won’t solve any organisational problems alone.

Next time you find yourself in the predicament of somehow being landed with and accountable for solving a problem that L&D alone cannot, reflect on the thoughts and ideas I’ve shared here.

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