Why did your professional development program fail?
If you’ve ever invested time and money in designing and delivering professional development, then you’ve also, at some point, experienced failure. Of course, failure can be a good thing when you can isolate what went wrong and then learn to fix it. So what went wrong? Non-excellent professional development programs and initiatives can often look like this:
Unrealistic Timeline
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”
Expecting that an intervention should produce immediate results is just plain silly. We need to remember that real growth takes time. Your initiative may have succeeded in checking a box on implementation but failed to make an impact because growth takes time.
Lack of Effective Learning Design
According to the Centre for Creative Leadership, it’s reasonable to expect that your learners will upgrade their skill set if an effective learning framework is applied. How much impact should you expect from your online learning module? 10% of learning can be attributed to the actual course. The rest of the learning happens through experiences and people.
People vs. Program
Impersonal, out-of-touch, and overly corporate learning fails to inspire. And yet, organizations collectively spend almost a billion dollars a day on learning, training, and professional development. So many companies get learning wrong because they’re stuck in a “just get it done”, or “make the program happen” pattern. In our model, learning happens at the intersection of people and strategy. Most companies fail to think through and plan for the emotional and interpersonal dynamics of their professional development. With disengagement at all-time highs, this is the biggest opportunity for improvement. Put your people at the center of your learning and professional development program. Think about your people goal first, and ask yourself, “What do I want the learner to know/feel/do differently after this program?”. Most companies will never ask the feel or do question in their planning stage.
