5 reasons Learning and Development Program fails (and how to avoid them)

Planning and executing an outstanding learning and development program is not an easy job.

We need to

• Understand the need of the stakeholders
• Ensure great learning experience for the participants
• Deal with the budget constraint from finance

No wonder, most of learning and development programs fail.

When the programs fail, the learning organizer is often blamed for poor job.

In reality, the cause of failed L&D programs is way bigger than that.

In the past 11 years, I have been playing multiple roles in the field of learning and development ranging from learning organizer, learning facilitator, and also L&D Manager. From that experience, I see the same pattern on why L&D programs fail

Reason 1: Using L&D to solve the wrong problem

Sometimes, we prescribe L&D as the solution for a problem

Without understanding about the root cause of the problem to begin with

In one occasion, a manager reaches out to me and requests a training session about Asana, work management tool.

He asked that because he saw low adoption of the tool in his team.

I was tempted to directly deliver a workshop with the team

I decided to refrain myself from going down the logistic hole and asked

Turned out the team did not have a standardization on how to use the tool

resulting the team to use the tool as they wanted to

Given this is the problem, the next step should create the SOP first then evaluate if we need an training after that

Action item: clarify the problem and its root cause before prescribing L&D as a solution

Reason 2: Misalignment of the learning outcomes

When we ask a business leaders, which outcome they want to get out of an L&D Program, they expect getting the return of investment

It can be increasing revenue or decreasing cost.

While this is a great aspiration, we need to be careful to use this as the indicator

Why?

Increasing revenue and decreasing cost might require a more complex approach than a training

Moreover, most roles aside from sales don't have a direct influence to the bottom line

If the team is really serious to use bottom line as the measure of success, then we recommend create at least one year program with series of workshop, mentoring, and real projects to see the ROI

Action item:

Align the learning outcomes upfront and invest the time and resources accordingly

Reason 3: Poor learning experience

No matter how small, there is a knowledge transfer between the learning facilitator and the participants. However, this process is often flawed because we did not design the deliver well.

Some tips to radically reduce the likelihood of poor learning delivery:

• Choose the right facilitator : the right facilitator is the one that is most relevant to your participants. Refrain from selecting people only based on their credential.
• Deploy the right material delivery : on one end is pure lecturing on the other end is pure discussion. Depending on the crowd, choose the right amount of discussion
• Have the right group of participants: group participants with similar learning needs. Mixing senior managers and fresh graduates will risk your program not relatable for all participants

Action item:

Step into the learners' shoes and ask, "what kind of learning experience do we want to have?"

Reason 4: Minimum incentives to learn

In every organization, we will have three type of people

• Self driven learner - they have the inner drive to learn
• Deadwood - they just do the bare minimum not to get fired
• Swing learners - they want to learn if we make it easy for them

Let's focus on the swing learners. Make it easy for them to participate by:

• Providing learning programs that will help them progress in their career
• Giving them access to learning resources
• Making learning as a prerequisite to unlock higher career milestone such as promotion

Action item:

Brainstorm with the team how we can make learning rewarding for the participants

Reason 5: Weak learning culture

This is where we need to have a longer conversation. As a People Leaders, we want our team to consistently improve themselves. But, how about us? Do we really make time to learn and grow ourselves as well?

Encouraging our team to learn when we are not actively doing that makes learning and development futile. Our team might lose hope that the organization really prioritizes learning. So if learning and development programs keep being futile, we need to take an honest look to ourselves if we are part of the problem.

As a starter, start by reading few articles per week and share the synthesis to the team. It takes less than 30 minutes but it's important for our growth. At the same time, we install the importance of learning to our team.

Action item:

Do the smallest action that we can to become a role model of a learning culture

In closing

Let me leave you with two questions

• Aside from these 5 reasons, what else do I miss?
• Out of these 5 common reasons of failure, which one should I discuss further?

If you want to answer both, that's great. That would add more color to the discussion