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Today’s Thoughts ☠️

Hey there 👋,

December seems to be a month of overload.

Aside from the mass gift-giving and food consumption competitions, it’s also the month for reflection, predictions and a little bit of dubious speculation on the year ahead.

I’ve never cared much for predictions, especially in the L&D world.

It’s always the same stuff, different year - mostly.

Instead of peddling more of this crap, I thought I’d share what I’ve experienced in my work over the last 12 months, and based on that, the 3 actions you can take to drive value in your L&D work and career in 2025.

These are my thoughts, but I’m running an exclusive one-question survey for readers to get involved, too.

I’ll be showcasing all that data in January 2025 right here.

Today, we’ll explore 3 ways to stay relevant, add value and improve your L&D career in 2025.

Get your tea or beverage of choice ready, 🍵.

We've got lots to discuss!

👀 In today’s chat:

• Workplace L&D is not education
  

• Why companies need better AI skills programmes

• The skills, mindset and behaviours of the modern L&D pro

(P.S. What do you think workplace L&D teams need to do to drive meaningful value for their business in 2025? Answer this one question survey to share your thoughts, and get exclusive access to the findings this December).

THE BIG THOUGHT
3 Strategies to Stay Relevant, Drive Value, and Elevate Your L&D Career in 2025

Last week, we explored keeping things simple in L&D and life.

I’ll be continuing that theme with these 3 strategies. I’m a big believer in focusing on the 2-3 areas that will drive the most impact vs a top 10 list that no one will ever crack.

Too many get lost in making changes because they try to do too much.

So, we’re keeping this simple but effective.

The 3 strategies, or insights, I’ll share are drawn from the work I’ve done with clients, L&D teams and conversations with industry peers. But, as always, context matters.

Don’t feel like you must do these things to succeed.

As I’ve covered before, the context, culture, and constraints of your organisation play a huge role in what you can achieve in your role. One of the reasons I don’t pay much attention to conferences is that they contain too many speakers who talk in absolutes.

The world is not that straightforward.

In sum: These are insights based on experience. If you can make them work for you, great. If not, don’t lose any sleep over it.

📌 Key insights

• Build strategies based on your context, not what trend reports say

• Knowing ‘how’ to use AI is worthless without knowing why and when

• You need more than L&D skills to go far

(FYI, you can watch a video version of the below on my Youtube channel.)

1/ Reshape what we mean by workplace learning

I’m coming in hot here already.

This is probably the biggest reason our industry experiences the pain and lack of recognition it does inside companies.

In the current model, no one takes us that seriously.

In L&D, we're often asked: "How are we providing business value?" I can’t tell you the amount of times I had this conversation with every new CFO dying to find a line to cut in the shrinking company budget.

The answer isn't in maintaining the status quo.

Especially when we have misguided souls who want to automate and 'AI-everything'. Everyone thinks they're a learning designer, marketer and product manager now.

The truth is the majority of your organisation doesn't care about methodologies or technology – they care about performance and ROI.

→ Building trust as a strategic partner isn't a quick fix, either. 

Too many organisations are stuck in a quasi-education system mindset. As we explored last week, workplace L&D teams are chucked into the same category as the traditional education system.

Both employees and leadership seeing us this way is a huge source of our problems.

People expect hours of lectures, note memorisation, and the idea that intelligence is assessed on only what you can recall. It doesn’t work in the real world. We need to focus on performance, not ‘learning’.

Our education system has brainwashed us to believe that ‘learning’ anything must be a designated event.

Your company still (probably) follows this system too.

So, what do you do?

In short, reframe how you view yourself and the value you bring.

In an era of 'AI-everything', I believe our value lies not in finding that tool with a faster one-click delivery system, but in positioning our unique strategic insight and contextual understanding across the organisation.

The future belongs to L&D teams who bridge the gap between learning activities and business outcomes. But, this takes time. It could be years, and you need to be prepared for that.

The move from ‘nice to have’ to a valued strategic partner is worth it, imo.

That’s why I created The Art of Performance Consulting course. Everyone is obsessed with AI, but we’re still in the business of people. Our world is still built on relationships and uncovering the real problems.

Everything I know with all my strategies and war stories is in that.

Check it out if you want to improve the human in 2025 too.

2/ Make smarter decisions with digital technology

Disruptions from tech innovations are nothing new.

Yet, I see the same pattern of behaviour play out. You already know that generative AI is the current superstar in this role. Many have come before and more will after.

The mistake here is getting caught in the hype.

It feels like everyone, and I mean everyone, including their mum, grandmother, and even their cat has suddenly become an AI strategist. It seems like 'AI' has found its way into every job title overnight too.

Industry data tells us what some of us already know: leaders understand AI has massive potential for creating value, yet the majority of employees don’t have the skills to unlock it. 

Two years into this AI gold rush, companies still have no clear, structured approach to help people learn the skills, behaviours, and mindset required to use AI tools intelligently.

But that’s a problem you can solve both for your company and your own journey.

For L&D pros, I created the AI For L&D Crash Course to educate and empower industry professionals to not just use AI tools, but understand why and when.

After working with many companies these last 18 months on AI skills programmes, I’ve seen the same trend.

Leaders are so obsessed with ‘how to use tools’, they forget to help users understand why and when to use them. This is going to become a problem down the road.

It may surprise you, but the majority of my work in these skills programmes has been 70% focused on mindset and behaviours with AI tools. This isn’t an L&D challenge to solve alone.

Your organisation can only succeed with AI skill-building if it treats it as a transformation programme. Training alone will not bring success.

Saying that, and particularly with generative AI today, taming the outright mad expectations is another task in itself. Most of its current value lies in tackling the "boring and basic" tasks like streamlining workflows, saving time, and freeing people up to focus on what really matters.

3/ You need more than L&D skills to succeed

Firstly, let me be clear, every job requires more than the industry skillset it occupies.

That’s nothing new.

For the past decade, I sat down at the end of the year with a notepad and answered “How do you create your advantage as an L&D pro?”.

There are millions of people doing the same role, so how do I stand out?

First, recognise that your most powerful skills won't be traditional 'L&D skills'.

I get that might annoy some of you.

Deep technical expertise in your industry alone is not a massive advantage these days. Don't get me wrong, it’s great but we need more than that.

Over the last 17+ years, my superpower in creating impact and staying ahead has had very little to do with being a good 'trainer' or 'learning designer' alone.

It's had a lot more to do with:

• Leveraging marketing principles to sell ideas

• Becoming a storyteller to get stakeholder and customer buy-in

• Adopting tech early to understand how it can shape experiences

• Understanding how products are built and scaled

You won't find this in any L&D 101 manual.

And that's a problem.

This is not about being a jack of all trades, rather, it's understanding what skills can enhance the L&D work you do.

Everyone's worried about what AI could do to their jobs.

The best way to combat that is by building a set of skills for the modern era that give you an edge. So, stop thinking like a trainer, and start exploring the skills that will complement your L&D expertise.

I think you'll have a pretty meaningful 2025 by doing that.

Two things to help you in this journey:

→ The 7 skills L&D teams need for today’s world

→ 5 rare skills no one talks about to become a successful L&D pro

📝 Final thoughts

I’ve gone on enough!

In essence: Focus on performance, embrace intelligent use of tech, and build a diverse skill set.

The future is human-powered and you can shape your growth and impact.

👀 ICYMI (In case you missed it!)

• How I assess new learning tech

• I dropped into the Big Think+ podcast to talk about AI, staying human and my love of memes

• Join me with other industry pros to chat about AI, VR and digital sustainability on December 17th, and I might even wear my Santa hat.

Till next time, you stay classy, learning friend!

PS… If you’re enjoying the newsletter, will you take 4 seconds to forward this edition to a friend? It goes a long way in helping me grow the newsletter (and cut through our industry BS with actionable insights).

And one more thing, I’d love your input on how to make the newsletter even more useful for you!

So please leave a comment with:

1. Ideas you’d like covered in future editions

2. Your biggest takeaway from this edition

I read & reply to every single one of them!

P.S. Wanna build your L&D advantage?

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• Build your confidence and skills with the only AI course designed for L&D pros.

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