Two options
Imagine that you wake up in a house in small sea town. Sun and seagulls greet you - as usual. It seems that the day would be warm and lovely. You about to start a morning run. And here you have two choices.
You can get into a car, drive to the nearest gym and spend the next 30 minutes on a treadmill. You set high parameters of speed and elevation and it you need significant efforts to keep the tempo. However, all your efforts don't help you to get out from the gym. Nothing changes around you - all the same machine and people.
Or you can hust walk out from your house, start to run slowly. You route is close to the ocean, and you run, passing and greeting people you know and don't know, seeing seagulls fighting for the caught crab. Today is low tide. You see divers and surfers. Two people riding horses nearby. The weather becomes a bit chilly, and after finishing your run, you walk in into your favorite cafe, order a drink of your choice and relax and enjoy it for a while.
What option would you prefer for your run: gym or ocean route? Most people would choose outdoors.
When it comes to corporate training, people prefer diversity and new impressions to the dull surroundings of gym facilities. The situation in professional sphere is different. Most people prefer "treadmills" of their professions. It makes them less effective and unable to see new horizons. It also makes their companies ineffective.
Treadmills change, everything else stays
The problem with leadership training today is similar to the situations with two choices we described - most people that should offer the solution are "inside the gym" and can't offer anything that would differ from their experience. They can offer something according to the latest HR-buzzword - VR, gamification or microlearning with the same content.
As Albert Einstein said, "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." HR and L&D professionals should think outside the box and show the world of opportunities for employees eager to learn.
Find your way
In the near future only companies that can tap into creative potential of its employees would thrive. In 1957 Peter Drucker in his book "Landmarks of tomorrow" predicted that society would move from the notion of progress to that of innovation. And education should prepare for the work that "not yet exist": "Tomorrow everybody - or practically everybody - will have had the education of the upper class of yesterday, and will expect equivalent opportunities. That is why we face the problem of making every kind of job meaningful and capable of satisfying every educated man".
But it is hard to identify and develop those employees who could contribute to the success of organisation the most. The efforts and creative energy of many-many people is wasted because nobody explains them the way learning can help people find they unique way.
Too often the carrot of corporate learning is linked to career progression. In our opinion, it is wrong. Learning should have more noble goals.
The objective of corporate learning is to help every employee to find their own unique way. Everything is are just different means to an end.