Opinion
AI should enable your L&D goals, not hijack them
AI will not transform learning through technology alone, warns Gaurav Gupta. For L&D leaders, the real value comes from aligning AI with strategic goals, engaging practitioners in experimentation, and addressing employee fears. Success depends less on the tools themselves and more on the human behaviours, decisions and culture surrounding them. The race to adopt AI has hit L&D with full force. Organisations are investing heavily in AI-powered platforms, chatbots, and learning management systems. Yet, the return on these investments has…
Reviewers don’t become advocates, co-designers do
Ben Satchwell argues that review rounds create judges, not champions. Sending a near-final capability framework for comment builds critique, not ownership. Co-design brings influential practitioners into the room early, at key moments: framing the problem, shaping the structure, and testing reality. Shared authorship fuels advocacy, accelerating adoption more than perfection. Most capability frameworks go through a review round. The team drafts the framework, then sends it to a group of stakeholders for comment. The feedback comes back, some of it…
From mistakes to momentum: Building a company culture that learns
Organisations unlock innovation when they stop punishing mistakes and start learning from them, reasons Paul Sloane. From Post-it Notes to Slack and vacuum cleaners, failure can spark breakthroughs. Paul explores how psychological safety, intelligent experimentation and honest post-mortems help teams take smarter risks, adapt faster and build lasting competitive advantage. In a traditional corporate landscape, failure is disdained. However, forward-thinking organisations recognise that innovation is a numbers game. If you aren’t failing, you aren’t taking the risks necessary to stay…
How L&D can build the agility that AI adoption demands
As organisations race to adopt AI, Tristan Boutros argues that technology alone is not enough. Real progress depends on agile learning cultures, adaptive talent and psychological safety. For L&D leaders, the task is to build human capability that helps organisations experiment, learn quickly and turn AI into long lasting value. Artificial intelligence is advancing faster than most organisations can comfortably keep up with. New tools promise efficiency and scale, but many AI initiatives stall, underdeliver or even quietly disappear. For…
Let Them theory: The case for trusting people to try, fail and grow
As Let Them theory gains traction, Steve Macaulay explores what it really asks of managers. Empowerment can reduce micromanagement and build trust, but only when expectations are clear, individual development is supported and communication stays open. Letting go works best when leaders stay purposeful, involved and committed to team growth. Let Them theory has become an important talking point amongst managers and management theorists. A book on the subject has been flying off the shelves: some 8 million copies have…
From intention to action: Designing behaviour that makes change stick
Don’t demand just willpower! This article draws on two Make Your Brain Work podcast episodes with Amy Brann and Dr Jessie Gulsin to explain why change snaps back to old habits. Learn how biology drives ‘resistance’, why environments beat motivation, and how L&D can use cues to make change stick. Most organisational change programmes fail not because people are lazy or resistant, but because they are human. Despite good intentions, behaviour often snaps back to familiar patterns, leaving leaders frustrated…
Designing resilience training that supports people, not broken systems
Resilience training needs better design if it’s to help rather than harm. Stephan Lendi writes that L&D teams should stop treating resilience as an add-on. Instead, Stephan promotes that we build programmes that strengthen individual capability, expose structural pressures and feed honest organisational insight back to decision-makers for meaningful change. In many organisations, resilience has become the default extra module in leadership and learning programmes. New conflict‑management course? “Let’s add a short resilience session.” Change workshop? “Can you teach people…
Is your organisation’s leadership judgement built by design, or by damage?
Helen Routledge argues that leadership judgement is rarely built in classrooms or reviews, but in high-pressure moments where the stakes are already real. She explores why relying on live exposure is costly, how the practice gap forms, and why organisations need safer ways for leaders to learn before consequences hit. Most leaders don’t struggle because they don’t know what to do. The problem tends to show up later, in the moment where they have to decide what matters most, with…
Your capability framework’s completion rate is a vanity metric
Ben Satchwell warns that completion rates make capability framework rollouts look healthy while masking failure. Logging in and self-assessing proves compliance, not impact. Instead, measure one behavioural signal that completion can’t fake, e.g. development conversations, hiring decisions, plans that reference capabilities… One honest metric beats dashboards that only flatter activity. When a capability framework rolls out, the first number anyone reports is completion. 92% of staff have reviewed the framework. 85% have completed a self-assessment against it. The dashboard turns…
The anxiety of automation: Redefining human decision rights in an AI world
Access to AI tools does not guarantee adoption from your people. If employees don’t know where their accountability ends and the algorithm’s begins, they can freeze. Dr. Ravinder Tulsiani argues that the key to AI culture isn’t just upskilling and blanket training, it’s establishing the psychological safety of clear decision rights. Walk into any organisation that has recently rolled out a generative AI pilot, and you will likely find two distinct groups of people. The first group is enthusiastically experimenting,…
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