Tag: #LearningAndDevelopment
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The Retention Audit Question L&D Skips
Retention Diagnostic I was coaching a leader recently, and I asked a question that stopped the conversation cold. Do you know where your people actually go when they opt out? Not why they left. Where they went. Most leaders can answer the first question in a sentence. Almost none can answer the second. And the…
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The Metric L&D Should Actually Be Tracking
Organizational Learning Most feedback forms get the same four words back. Good. Helpful. Enjoyed it. Learned a lot. I have read thousands of these, and after a while they stop telling you anything except that the room was comfortable enough for people to be polite. Then, every so often, one comes back different. I ran…
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The Structure of a Hard Conversation
A few years ago, budget cuts forced me into a reduction in force. I had to let go of team members who weren’t failing. Some were among the most effective people I had. I did the parts I knew mattered in the room. What I wasn’t prepared for was what happened after the room emptied.…
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The Metric That Predicts Behavior Change
Organizational Learning I walk into a lot of rooms. For any given event it is full of people who have chosen to attend or who have been told to attend. As a result, I’ve learned to read rooms fast. This one was easy. The group was attentive, engaged, taking notes. When we opened it up…
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The Intersection Most Fixes Never Go Looking For
Framework I wrote earlier this week about low-hanging fruit. The fixes that feel like progress because they’re visible and fast, while the real problem sits untouched underneath them. I want to go one layer deeper, because naming the trap isn’t the same as knowing how to avoid it. Here’s the story again, slower this time.…
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Why I’d Choose One Rigid Process Over a Flexible Menu Every Time
Case Study Flexibility feels like the safer choice. It isn’t. It’s usually the choice that quietly loses. I got asked to weigh in on a redesign recently, a large training program I’ve advised on, rebuilding a fixed block of team time that happens once a year. Five hours, one shot, real budget behind it. Two…
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The Cost of Activity Metrics
The slides were moving fast. NPS scores were up. The chat was full of fire emojis and congratulations. Someone typed “incredible work team” and it got fourteen thumbs up before the next slide appeared. I was sitting at my desk thinking one thing. Will any of this change what I see happening with our partners?…
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The Medium is the Message
Leadership + Adult Learning Design A participant in a three-day training I led recently had a realization at the very end, one I think about more than almost anything else from that week. The training was built around helping teachers develop students’ capacity to read, write, think, and speak. For three days, we modeled every…
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You Can’t Train Your Way Out of a Systems Problem
Leadership + Organizational Learning When I opened Murphy Junior High in 2012, I inherited something I didn’t fully understand yet. About half of my new staff transferred from other schools in the district, and most of them came from a single building. They brought their experience with them, which is exactly what you’d want; except…
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The Reframe
A participant wrote something in her closing reflection that I haven’t stopped thinking about. She wasn’t a learning and development professional. She was a classroom teacher, sitting in a two-day professional learning session, answering a routine end-of-training prompt: What are your key takeaways? She wrote this: “Increasing rigor isn’t about making the course harder. It’s…