Professional Development
What to Do If…? – book review
From those difficult conversations to everyday leadership challenges, navigating workplace dilemmas takes confidence and reflection. Steph Charlesworth reviews Anne-Maartje Oud’s practical guide to handling everyday professional challenges, exploring how its bite-sized advice, relatable stories and flexible strategies can help readers develop new skills and find solutions throughout their working lives. Book: What To Do If…?: How to Handle Any Situation at Work and Come Out WinningAuthor: Anne-Maartje Oud Anne-Maartje Oud has distilled her extensive career on workplace behaviour into 268 pages…
The business of training: What gives training providers the right to exist?
AI, changing customer expectations and increasing pressure to demonstrate value are challenging traditional training business models. Reflecting on the Business of Training Conference 2026, Jo Cook explores the importance of understanding customer needs, designing learning for workplace performance and identifying what makes training providers genuinely distinctive in a competitive market. What gives your training business the right to exist? It’s a provocative question, but it’s one that stayed with me after attending the Business of Training Conference in London on…
L&D was not built for this speed of change
Traditional learning models struggle when roles, knowledge and context shift faster than training can keep up. Dr. Ravinder Tulsiani argues for a two-layer capability model combining structured preparation with real-time support, helping organisations strengthen decision-making, reduce costly errors and position L&D for improved performance rather than content delivery and completion. Learning and development was not designed for continuous, high-velocity change. It was built for environments where roles were stable, knowledge had a longer shelf life and change was episodic, not…
Why instructional design needs an open industry learning lab
L&D teams should look beyond their organisations and use open course contests to sharpen professional judgement, argues Tanya Galton. Comparing real instructional design work across industries can expose stronger practices, recurring weaknesses and fresh ideas, helping practitioners turn external feedback into concrete improvements in how learning is designed and reviewed. The iSpring Course Creation Contest, now a global annual event for instructional designers, started out with a traditional competition format: people submit their work, experts judge it, and the strongest…
AI in Learning 2026: A day built for sensemaking, not just adoption
Slow down, question the hype and reclaim a voice in workplace AI decisions. Julie Drybrough explores why L&D and HR professionals need space to make sense of fast-moving technology, examine its practical and ethical implications, and shape how AI is adopted rather than simply implementing choices made elsewhere for them. How much AI information can any of us actually process before “keeping up” starts to feel like drowning? That was one of the questions that prompted Fiona McBride (Fiona McBride…
The hidden cost of hybrid work: Rebuilding informal learning for early-career employees
Early-career employees need more than formal training to build judgement, confidence and practical their skills. Hybrid work and AI have made every-day learning less visible and more important. Don Spear explains how organisations can recreate observation, coaching, practice and feedback to help people move more quickly from potential to performance. Companies face a talent-development challenge that many leaders overlook. Early-career employees still need the learning that happens around the work, not just the training that organisations assign to them. For…
Mindset under pressure: Making better decisions in a noisy world
Information overload, AI and relentless workplace change are putting decision-making under pressure. Martin Fairn argues that mindset development can help people pause, regain perspective and think more clearly, strengthening resilience, improving judgement and supporting better decisions when demands mount, uncertainty grows and the pace of work becomes difficult to manage. With the possible exception of the agricultural and industrial revolutions, no event in human history has so quickly and irreversibly changed our lives as the birth of our digital world.…
What is helping or holding back your L&D impact?
Impact depends on more than measurement. This reflection asks whether you have the access, data, permission and support needed to act on what you learn. Use it to sense-check your current reality, spot what may be holding progress back, and add your perspective to TJ’s wider research this year too. It’s easy to talk about L&D impact as if it is mainly a question of measurement. What are we tracking? What data do we have? How do we prove value?…
TJ podcast: L&D needs to stop talking about learning, with Cathy Hoy – episode 332
What does it take for L&D leaders to now think more commercially, connect learning to business outcomes and move way beyond delivery? Cathy Hoy talks strategic thinking, the limits of ROI, the importance of understanding the business, and how L&D can build greater influence, confidence and impact across the organisation. Key takeaways: Podcast summary: Should L&D leaders stop talking about learning? That’s one of the provocations in the latest TJ podcast, where Jo Cook speaks with Cathy Hoy about what it…
My journey from HR to the c-suite, and what I learned along the way
A cold shift in a supermarket set an unexpected career in motion. Tom Emery traces the decisions led to the C-suite. Reflecting on setbacks, stretch roles and hard-won lessons, he shows how adaptability, relationships and courage can shape a career in the people profession far more than any grand plan. I was an accidental HR professional. Growing up, I wanted to work in public relations. I loved the sitcom Absolutely Fabulous. The characters, the outfits, the champagne and I thought…
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