Groundhog Day?

Is learning stuck in a perpetual Groundhog Day cycle? I’m of course referring to the 1993 Bill Murray hit “Groundhog Day” where his main character relives the same day over and over till he gets it right. I don’t know, it may just be me, but it seems like Learning & Development conferences continue to recycle the same content year after year and everyone continues to be surprised, year after year. When will we get it right, or at all?
What started this whole thought was when I was reviewing a 2019 prediction article I wrote earlier this year. The predictions were actually pretty close in what I expected to see this year, particularly after the HR Tech Conference. But then I started thinking not just about the past year, but the past 10 years. That took me to the notorious bottom drawer of my file cabinet. That’s where I’ve kept notes, agendas and my own curated library of knowledge from conferences I’ve attended over the years.
I began reading my handwritten notes from 10 years ago talking about much of what we discuss today in Learning and Development circles. For clarity, the notes covered a series of conferences I attended in 2009 & 2010 that made some interesting predictions and had “cutting edge” thinking. There was the importance of “User Experience,” “Collaborative Learning” and “Crowd Sourced” content to name a few. Sound familiar? I’m not going to call out any one particular conference, as I attended many of the major events. But this was not limited to just one event, it was consistent across all. But how can this happen?
I do think there’s a certain cadence or recycling that happens in this industry for a couple of reasons. First, there’s definitely a turnover/refresh of talent that has occurred. The best example of this is Elliott Masie’s “30 under 30” that just celebrated it’s 10th year. Second, I think what is more so the culprit is theme based topics that have seen minor incremental advances year over year. Third, it’s my belief that organizations overall have been laggards to many of the concepts that Learning & Development has pursued over the years. Only now are we seeing changes in attitudes as well as technology that CAN deliver on these concepts.
Now, if you really don’t agree with me at this point I can understand. Let’s take a trip in the “Wayback Machine” and look at two leading experts and their predictions in Chief Learning Officer Magazine for what will be coming in the year 2009. First, we’ll see what leading industry expert Josh Bersin predicted were his Top 8 items:
- Further integrate learning with talent management
- Bring centralization back to corporate training where appropriate
- Bring learning on-demand into your organization
- Embrace new rich-media tools and approaches
- Maximize your LMS by integrating it into a complete employee or customer portal
- Take a leadership role on the implementation of corporate social networking
- Think, act and organize for global learning solutions
- Build a learning culture
Now for a bit of balance, here’s what Brandon Hall was also predicting:
- Mobile Learning
- Do-it-yourself (DIY) Learning
- Flexible Learning Environments
- Virtual Worlds
- Games and Simulations
It’s worth noting that in my 2009 notes, a common theme was the “Great Recession.” Many of the articles and notes focused on aligning Learning & Development initiatives with business outcomes to justify and validate value to the organization. Still a challenge today. However, I find it somewhat bizarre that as an industry we continue to discuss and promote so much of the same talking points and never seem to get to the point of moving on. Maybe I was right in that they are themes that just move ever so slowly. Maybe it’s our industry has parameters that we can’t seem to go beyond.
I really think we’re at a point today with 2020 on the horizon where we can revisit a lot of the enthusiasm and ideas that were put forth a decade ago and actually execute and move on thanks to new perspectives in organizations about the role of Learning and Development. Just last year I saw the awareness happen with C-Suite Executives, almost like a switch had been flipped, as to the significance of providing real development opportunities to employees. I AM bullish on where the next ten years will be in Learning & Development.
My hope in the New Year is that conferences and thought leaders (including me!) will move beyond the talk track of the past decade and introduce new ideas and concepts (beyond the list above). Today’s emerging workforce is less patient and more apt to move on to the next concept than to further debate one. Organizations are primed to promote learning cultures and employees expect to hold them to such. Technology can finally deliver in a way that doesn’t require modern day miracles to configure and execute. It might just be that the stars have finally aligned in 2020 and (fingers crossed) we’ve found our way to February 3rd!