Towards Maturity preview event: October 21st 2015

This week, ahead of the formal launch coming up in early November, I was at the “VIP Preview” of this year’s industry benchmark report.

Whilst a copy of the report was provided, much of the presentation was under a twitter embargo so I wont blog too much about the content.

Overall, as one would expect, a lot of the messages are a continuation from previous years.  Indeed the idea that it is “the time to change” is not necessarily new, as I commented in 2013, it is getting increasingly difficult to continue along old paradigms.

The scale of the report continues to impress, this year c.600 L&D professionals from 55 countries fed into the data set that has led to a 20 page report.

During the event’s presentations there were a lot of points made that were good to hear, including:

1. findings that learners are self directed but need support
2. the self directed nature of learners is not generation specific, this is not a ‘millennials’ thing
3. need a vision of the future for learning, lots of people have one but not getting there fast enough
4. the vision needs to focus on improving performance, L&D need to ensure business see this – it is not about course formats
5. silos within HR need to end, or at least have better working across them (to foster workforce engagement)
6. the ‘top deck’ of higher performers are increasingly enhancing performance through access to communities, content, technology and clear communications – all where and when they are needed
7. fundamentally, there needs to be an end to the logic of ‘business’/’learner’/’L&D’ silos [indeed the point was made that we are all ‘colleagues’ – something I’ve argued for a while].

None of the above points will really come as a surprise to people who have followed the thinking of previous reports and the move toward ongoing “maturity”.  One nice new feature, however, is a section written in a way that can be given to business leaders to challenge them to better understand what learning should be and what they should expect from their internal learning professionals.

Overall, a great evening and another interesting report.

#bethebest15

Author: iangardnergb

My name is Ian Gardner and I am interested in various topics that can be seen as related to learning, technology and information. To see what I am reading elsewhere, follow me on The Old Reader (I.gardner.gb) and/or Twitter (@iangardnergb). View all posts by iangardnergb