I have a gift from India in my office – a wooden model of Ganesh. An intern brought it back for me.  She said Ganesh reminded her of me, because Ganesh appears to be very capable of multi-tasking thanks to many appendages. Ganesh is the god of beginnings and widely revered as the mover of obstacles. I have always prided myself of my ability to juggle multiple things but if I’m honest, I am addicted to shiny objects and can actually create too many obstacles.  I love new projects and one of my faults is that I often drop the 80% done project to start a new one.  It seems like everyone is flailing their multitasking arms.

The culture of work needs a little help from Ganesh. The work world requires constant switching between topics and tasks, which crushes brain cells. Multitasking is required every minute of the day.  Email is always out of control. There is no rest, and you are never ahead, always behind.  Look at Ganesh – he has picked a few things to work on and is seated. He is carefully working within his capacity toward solid impact.  He looks pretty happy. Our (including mine) inability to focus in L&D is destroying the sanctity of the work we do and I for one am not happy. 

So, this I believe…

·         I believe that helping people grow performance is sacred work.  We are messing with people’s lives and need to do that with the right heart.  It’s all about ‘did the appropriate learning occur? - not just any learning, but the learning required by the human being in your class.  How can you take them from where they are to where they can go?

·         E-Learning and virtual learning are wonderful tools and have challenged our ability to adapt to the human beings who need us.  Building far away behind a computer, we can’t usually see the person, and we can wrongly proceed with our build as if they do not exist.  If I am in a face to face class, I can read the emotions of my learners and adjust.  This is possible in virtual learning but more complicated and expensive.  So, we shrug our shoulders and check the build off quickly, even though we know that this course sucks. Or we don’t know because we’ve never watched anyone take it.  Either way, it’s sacrilege.

·         Micro training can’t solve every type of learning gap or problem. Just because people don’t have time to learn, doesn’t mean you deliver learning content that isn’t enough or in context for the problem.  Blasphemy.

This is happening everywhere, not just L&D. Sales people close deals that they can’t deliver because they didn’t take the time to ask enough questions.  Leaders spend most of their time sending emails rather than growing their teams. We must rage against “GOOD ENOUGH” and “DONE”.  We all know that if we spent a little more time, we could deliver the quality our learner requires, and yet we allow ourselves to compromise our impact. 

And while I’m at it, L&D doesn’t even really have time to come up with a universal name. Are we Training? Performance? Development? Talent? Lack of clarity about our role chips away at the quality of our services that multi-tasking hasn’t already destroyed. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to end the day with “well, that’s the best I can do – “.  I want to leave a customer with clarity that both of us have been changed because learning occurred.  I want to make an impact, not check things off.  Not in this world, not in this time.  It’s impossible, though, right?  The days of delivering impact creating performance improvement are done. Throw out your old “How People Learn” books – we don’t have time for that. 

I refuse. I will rage against this diabolical mental model. Every day I remind myself of why I am here. I ignite, affirm and sustain learning in self and others. I must be vigilant to stay the course. Will you join me? Just so you’ll have time to read it, I suggest a tiny Grow Humans Manifesto:

As humans who help other humans, we believe in:

·         Connecting with People over Telling People

·         Adapting to Their Problem over Selling What You’ve Got to Them

·         Seeking Human Improvement over Checking Crap Off

I’d love to know what you think, but I have to go check things off.  Thanks to Vibons for the opportunity to play in their blog and for the amazing animated videos they produce. If you are reading this, call them right now and get another video from them.