The Wisdom of Monty Python and the Failure of Learning and Development Teams to Notice

As organizations become large, complex and distributed, the transactional cost embedded in their day-to-day operations, which at one point may have been an acceptable trade-off for getting things done, can suddenly become crippling. Still many organizations turn to up-scaling existing solutions to address growth and continue to re-purpose strategies that are no longer suitable for the size, complexity and breadth of their network.

Organizations, like the people that operate within them, will often continue to do something that has in the past proven to be successful until it becomes blatantly clear that they are now failing. Recognizing failure is difficult because companies that have invested significant effort into their current processes are likely to try to replicate approaches several times over before being open to exploring new ideas. Unfortunately, under today’s rapid change and diminishing competitive barriers, slowness is a problem.

In the Corporate Executive Board Company’s (CEB) publication Preparing Learning and Development for the Future the authors’ sentiment that Learning and Development teams can no longer focus on learning intervention is right, but lacks the commitment to do things differently. Thomas Handcock and Ducan Harris definition of “network learning” emphasizes the importance of creating cross functional teams to facilitate learning. They distinguish “network learning” from “social learning” by suggesting that the former focuses on informal, on-the-job learning and the latter implies structured learning . While I don’t support the distinction, I believe the more relevant and true point is that Learning and Development teams need to better support on-the-job learning. Still, when we consider Handcock and Harris’ suggestions for a future learning function, we can see that the paper remains on familiar ground.

Suggestions that include elevating a corporate learning strategy to the enterprise level, strengthening skills of learning practitioners to assert learning principals with operational leaders, and focusing on helping people better understand how they can learn instead of pushing learning to them, will all certainly resonate with the intended audience. Similarly, methods that emphasize strategies such as coaching will have most readers nodding their heads, professing they’re doing just that. I like the spirit of this paper, but can hold it up as an example of how Learning and Development teams and their organizations have not yet hit the level of exasperation that jars them into considering new possibilities.

Handcock and Harris very effectively set up the context for change, but their proposals don’t address transactional costs, which will have proponents screaming, “It sounds good in theory but it’s not practical”. To effectively coach a large network, for example, organizations distribute the load, making it everyone’s responsibility. Centralizing , on the other hand, often results in rigidity and organizations will ultimately return to decentralized models in pursuit of agility. We’ve seen the story played out time-and-time-again and we go on inheriting more and forever shifting responsibilities.

“One thin mint?”

“I’m stuffed.”

And for those who have seen Monty Python’s Meaning of Life, you’ll recognize the paraphrase. We know the ending of that scene, don’t we. For those that haven’t seen it, watch it.

We can avoid such a dramatic conclusion if we are willing to re-imagine what learning could look like for organizations. Our solutions need to take heed of obvious signs that organizations don’t want to be taught, but want to learn; don’t want to be managed, but want better situational awareness; don’t want more, but want to do more of the right stuff. Yes, Learning and Development professionals have a role to play, but it won’t be the role they play today. They won’t be engineering experiences or managing processes, but rather they will be engineering the network itself so that it can function without them.

What we need is a quest for a “Holy Grail”, to loosely make another Monty Python reference, that guides our direction forward. I suggest we start to think about how we can create autonomous networks that learn on their own. As a member of that network, I should be able to learn what I need, when I need it without a Learning and Development team. Every step we take forward should be in that direction.