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What do you believe in that almost everyone disagrees with? L&D edition

  • Microlearning by itself is pointless. Unless micro learning is preceded by skill building, supplemented by opportunities to practice in a safe space with opportunities to receive feedback, microlearning is about as effective as watching ads.
  • If content has to be more and more condensed because peoples attention spans are reducing, then Netflix would not be making series, people would not be playing games for long hours. That is an engagement or interest question . So, if your content is not good enough or your learners do not find it interesting enough, well, you have to solve for that first. 
  • Learning metrics will not give you causation by and large. By and large it will be correlational. As an L&D professional, your job is to build better correlational metrics. Going after causation is not going to work.
  • Investment in content platforms almost always will not give you great returns or great adoption. Especially if you are a start up. So invest wisely. Unless, of course, you have money to throw and you want to use L&D for engagement.
  • L&D as an engagement tool is for service companies, captives or workplaces where you have good amount of slack time. Notice that I am not saying every service company or captive has slack time - but it is a good lever if you have slack time - like bench, waiting for projects. This will not work in fast growing start ups. 
  • Build learning in companies on simple building blocks of values, competencies or something. This is especially true in startups where you are building culture. It is important for people see all of these as interlinked with one leading to the other. Do not complicate. 
Thought I will write a few of my thoughts in this space...

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