It's not L&D anymore, It's L&U

If you need to stock new apparels in your wardrobe you need to make space for them, which means you must let go of some old ones, if you need to add more furniture in your living room to suit your new found tastes, you must get rid of the existing ones.

This also applies for a phenomenon called 'Learning'. If you have to on-board new concepts you must let go of the old ones. Half way through my career as an L&D professional it dawned on me that the Learning function within HR must not only facilitate learning in the organization, it must also facilitate a process to help people unlearn. I realized as Learning professionals our objective along side helping people learn should also be to help them un-learn. This might sound a tad silly, but trust me this is a significant bottle neck for development. Learning and Development must herein be Learning and Un-learning.

Vidyut a high-potential associate in an research firm was also set to take on the role of a leader. The organization had got him enrolled onto a course at a prestigious B-school where some renowned thought leaders imparted 'Leadership Skills' for the cohort. The concepts dealt were pretty profound and the course was marked with case studies and simulations. Vidyut came out as a winnner and in about 3 years proved himself as a good leader. As he entered year 4 of his leadership journey he found things falling apart. His way of giving a feedback to his direct reports which he assimilated from the b-school course and which worked well so far was not firing enough. He was struggling to keep his team engaged and Vidyut was forced to believe somehow that he was handling a group of people who 'DECIDED' not to learn and grow. A 360 exercise blew the lid off and revealed that Vidyut's leadership style was not in sync with the expectations of his team. A further fact finding exposed the fact that the audience he was handling today had a very different mind-set compared to the ones whom he led a couple of years back.

Let's keep Vidyut aside for now and focus on the role of the L&D function in Vidyut's firm. Having done a fabulous job in getting Vidyut assigned for the right course 4 years back the L&D function failed to acknowledge and re-invent the behavioral attributes that were required as time went by. They were busy piling up courses and coaching programs and assessments and in the process lost track of how the people landscape was changing. What they must have also done is created and encouraged a climate of learn-unlearn-relearn which they failed to do. Cut the long story short. to ensure people learn and unlearn which is absolutely essential, L&D must embark on some methods as follows:

• Employ the power of AI and Machine Learning to track behavioral shifts the organization is going through. Use the power of DATA SCIENCE to tactfully arrive at logical conclusions on what people practices are not paying off and what needs to be built in
• Feed this data into the L&D process and ensure TNA is done in a more AGILE manner and not just the traditional way of mapping it to performance and capabilities
• Partner with specialist third-party firms specializing in ROLE RATIONALIZING exercises to understand how KEY roles in the business are transforming outside and feed it back into the Talent Acquisition framework. Let the hiring team start on-boarding more relevant talent.
• Organize OFF_TRACK fortnights once or twice a quarter. Meaning, pick up a few mission critical roles and coerce them to apply a radically different leadership style for a week and test the outcome. If it reaps benefits, convene a panel of the Senior Leadership Team showcase the findings and facilitate a top down dissemination of the new ways of working. a fair amount of risk-apetite is essential.
• Help the Talent Management team learn evolving organizational frameworks w.r.t job levels and compensation benchmarks, do the intial research for them and let them continue the learning and explore, further facilitate the outcomes to fruition.

L&D has a far superior role to play than what it is doing presently. From a mere 'learning facilitator' to a 'Learning-Unlearning' facilitator L&D must stand out as the key catalyst for the business and the organization.