Cannot see the forest for the trees...

To say the idiom "cannot see the forest for the trees" means that?a person or organization cannot see the big picture because the focus is too much on the details. Well, if you've read my work you know that detail for me is "learning."

Why? Well I'm probably just echoing my community of front-line L&Ders, but "learning" is not the primary focus. "Learning" gets time, but our focus is on a bigger picture of performance outcomes, workflow ecosystems, and talent development; the forest.

But even the forest we see is not as it appears. The forest we see is really two forests comprised of the performance needed today to continue achieving desired outcomes as well as the capabilities needed tomorrow for continued success.

You read that correctly, we still need to ensure outstanding performance today while developing the capabilities for tomorrow. This is where it gets interesting because those new capabilities have to turn into competencies and performance outcomes at some point and with those will come changes to workflows, team dynamics, leader dynamics, and more.

For example, as many of my peers see new equipment that are more digital and dynamic entering the manufacturing plant, we have to address what this means for future performance.

And while we're doing this we still have new employees joining our organizations that need continuous learning and performance support for current operations; so we have one eye towards future performance while determining the impact of that on the performance needed today.

So if learning outcomes is the measure your organization wants, you should be "all in" on learning. But if it's not, and I suspect it's not, I encourage you to start talking with your L&D peers regarding how much more valuable you would be if you were able to present comprehensive solutions based on the forest instead of a few trees?

Thanks for reading and until next time, Happy Birthday Guy W Wallace , the real performance expert.