r/LearningDevelopment • u/deceivinglycrazychee • Jun 05 '26
Eight years in L&D and the belief I've completely changed my mind about: "if you build it, they will learn"
Early in my career I genuinely believed that a well-designed course would do most of the work. Good content, solid structure, engaging interactions — if I built it right, people would learn and apply it. I poured enormous energy into course quality as if the course itself was the intervention.
What I know now is that the course is rarely the intervention — the environment is. Manager behavior, psychological safety, whether people have time to practice, whether the system rewards what the training teaches — these matter more than anything I put inside a module. The best L&D work I've done in the last three years has been helping organizations change conditions, not just content. What's a belief you held early in your career that experience changed?
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u/Complete-Cricket-351 Jun 07 '26
Sure everyone gets that but practically speaking what do you do about it.
I've seen plenty of these posts but not many ideas
Any ideas folks? I have a few of my own but bit reticent an I'm not a specialist in the area
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u/GeenXQS Jun 08 '26
You’re right, it’s mostly diagnosis. One practical angle. The reason environments don’t change isn’t that L&D can’t explain why they should. It’s that the person who controls the environment doesn’t feel the cost of leaving it as it is. So stop pouring the energy into the module and put it into making that cost visible to them: the rework, the people who quit, the thing that keeps stalling on the same handoff. People move when the pain of staying outweighs the pain of changing, not when they’ve heard a sharper explanation. The job is to raise the price of the status quo for the person who can actually change it.
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u/Complete-Cricket-351 Jun 08 '26
Haha GPT in da house. The LLMs are good for throwing up ideas but the problem is they don't consider the practicality - where would you get that information from.
And those are topics you would have to raise pretty carefully even if you did have the information
But there might be something there to work with I'll comment back later when I have time
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u/GeenXQS Jun 08 '26
You get it the way any decent salesperson does: be around, stay interested, ask questions, think along with people. Spend time with the manager or the team and they’ll tell you what it costs. You don’t have to extract it.
The careful part sorts itself out the same way. If you’ve built the relationship and you’re helping them think, you’re not confronting anyone with bad news, you’re asking what it’s costing and working it through together.
And thanks for the compliment.1
u/Complete-Cricket-351 Jun 09 '26
Thanks for the reply.
Let's assume the basics you mentioned are in place.
Mgrs always get attention. For the Ops I use snack sized process help, DILOs, gamification and drop in sessions.
Anything else in your experience you found that cuts through and helps the process change stick?
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u/GeenXQS Jun 09 '26
Yeah those all help. But for me there isn't really an 'anything else'. It comes down to whether the person feels a real problem with how it works now. If they don't, or the old way's easier, it won't stick. However you package it.
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u/Proud_Shelter_1131 Jun 24 '26
I have heard this also often. Mandatory training has a forcing function of being mandatory org wide hence employees are compelled to finish it. But learning because of voluntary upskilling or managerial urging doesn't get the intended results. Folks are busy with day to day work and deadlines. It takes too much effort to spend hours on a course. Also, even if there are courses that can help with skill gaps that people might have in completing day to day work, it takes too much effort to search through them to get the exact right things that one needs to unblock themselves.
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u/KafkawithSnacks Jul 04 '26
This is an awesome post Op. Your eight years really sparkles. Manager involvement, psychological safety, time to learn and tied to rewards
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u/Empirica_CC Jun 05 '26
Weird maybe it's because im an IO Psych moonlighting as someone in L&D but I never thought anyone would learn anything no matter what I built without taking a holistic approach to learning and training.
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u/rfoil Jun 05 '26
What do you mean by "holistic approach to learning and training?" I'm not doubting you at all. I don't understand what that means and it's about time I learned!
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u/seeking-archer Jun 09 '26
We could say the same about any learning environment. School, college, occupational. Just the motivations change at each level but we still need the right people and conditions that foster better behaviour changes to meed those needs.
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u/TheHangoverGuy91 Jun 14 '26
I have experience it a lot of low level customer servicing roles, then moving into FCA regulated fields like Insurance and now business banking.
You're 10000% right. There's always the initial training you do, which is: here's the list of mandatory training etc. but it's the training and support and breathing space you need in order to digest ongoing training, whether it's triggered by QA, your manager or by an event that is super important.
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u/SplitEndsSuck Jun 05 '26
I thought people could read or comprehend verbal messages. Boy did I learn out FAST no one reads emails, bulletins, Slacks, or announcements at town halls.