Culture
From visibility to signals: What new research says about running L&D like a business – part one
L&D teams face growing demands, shrinking resources and mounting pressure to demonstrate business value. Yet many lack visibility of their own workloads and priorities. Drawing on new research, Ryan Austin explores how learning leaders can take control of incoming requests, make better decisions and strengthen their strategic influence. Last year, I wrote about how talent and L&D teams can earn a seat at the table automatically, by running the function like a business. The response told me something. Most leaders…
Stop focusing on training delivery and start driving business performance
The most valuable development opportunities don’t always happen in a classroom. Johnson Wong explores how organisations can turn everyday experiences, collaboration and reflection into powerful drivers of performance. From empowering managers to encouraging knowledge sharing, he explains why embedding learning into work is essential for adaptability, innovation and long-term success. In today’s volatile business environment, organisations are under increasing pressure to adapt quickly to technological disruption, changing workforce expectations and evolving customer demands. Yet many organisations continue to approach learning…
What if the biggest workplace risks are hiding in plain sight?
Employee disengagement rarely happens overnight, yet organisations often miss the subtle behavioural changes that signal much trouble ahead. Laura Brennan explores why traditional performance measures fail to capture emerging problems, and how recognising withdrawal, mistrust and declining collaboration could help leaders prevent costly consequences before they become impossible to ignore. In 2024, the drop in global employee engagement cost the world economy $438 billion in lost productivity. This wasn’t through redundancy or restructure, but through the quiet, cumulative effect of…
Change doesn’t need more intensity, it needs more precision
Organisations often respond to mounting pressure by adding more activity, yet execution suffers when people are overwhelmed. Dr Ravinder Tulsiani argues that effective change depends on precision, consistency and reinforcing a small number of critical behaviours in real work, helping leaders turn urgency into sustainable performance rather than organisational noise. AI is making many CEOs feel that slow adaptation is no longer a strategic inconvenience: It’s a survival risk. Move fast or fall behind. Therefore, responses become predictable. More investment,…
Is AI making your organisation’s echo chamber louder?
AI promises smarter decisions, but can it also reinforce the assumptions organisations need to challenge? Jennifer L. Bryan explores why diverse perspectives, psychological safety and better questions matter when adopting AI, and how leaders can prevent powerful technology from turning familiar biases into increasingly convincing answers that nobody dares question. Artificial intelligence is changing how organisations gather information, analyse problems and make decisions. Yet as businesses rush to adopt increasingly powerful AI tools, there is a less obvious organisational risk…
Culture is not an afterthought, it’s a commercial imperative
Culture is not a people profession side issue. It shapes retention, productivity, innovation and commercial performance every day. Sandi Wassmer asserts that leaders must treat culture as a strategic priority, role-model the right behaviours and create psychologically safe workplaces where people can contribute fully, learn openly and perform sustainably together. When leaders treat culture as an afterthought, rather than a core business imperative, they don’t just put the well-being of their people at risk, they put commercial performance on the…
The L&D playbook for building psychological safety into teams
Teams do not become safe to fail through slogans or good intentions alone. Dr Melisa Buie explains why leaders must model openness first, before teams can build stronger norms around challenge, experimentation and reflection. Melisa offers a practical two-stage approach L&D professionals can use to strengthen psychological safety at work. A senior engineer stays quiet in a design review, even though she spots a flaw, because the last person who flagged a problem was labelled “not a team player.” A…
Stuck in the middle and never trained for it – the recognition challenge facing today’s managers
Joanne Werker discusses how the manager’s job keeps expanding, and why businesses need to stop treating recognition as something people either have a knack for or don’t. It’s beyond time to start treating it as a core management competency that can, and should be learned, not just left to chance. There are 8.4 million managers in the UK, roughly one in four of everyone in work, each holding the day-to-day experience of virtually every employee in Britain in their hands…
The authenticity revolution: Why showing the real you is now a superpower at work
Authentic leadership starts when people stop performing and begin leading as themselves. Claire Brumby argues that L&D must rethink how it develops leaders, creating safer spaces for real questions, unconventional thinking and human insight, while challenging the polished behaviours and careful positioning that can suppress trust, creativity and organisational impact. Think about the leaders who have made the biggest impact on you throughout your career. I’d be willing to bet they weren’t the ones who said and did what was…
When your boss is an AI bot
David Buchanan and Steve Macaulay explore how AI could reshape leadership, from augmenting decision-making to taking over selected management tasks. They examine the benefits, risks and human implications of bot bosses, and argue that L&D must prepare employees to challenge, collaborate with and, when necessary, override artificial leaders at work. Could artificially intelligent (AI) bots take over leadership roles? What are the implications for human resource management, and for learning and development? AI can display cognitive abilities that allow it…
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