The Weird Tactic I Use to Move Learning Strategies From Education Focussed To Performance Driven

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 TODAY’S THOUGHTS ☠️

Hey there 👋,

Like many of you, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to win the hearts and minds of business leaders with modern-era learning practices.

I’ve not always won those battles.

However, I’ve learnt you don’t always need to.

Sounds odd, I’m aware. But, nothing changes overnight, and real change takes longer than most of us think.

If you want to make real impact in moving your company away from education focussed activities to performance driven experiences, this framework might be right for you.

Today, we’re exploring one of the weirder tactics I’ve used to move leaders from education obsessed activities to performance focused ones.

Get your tea or beverage of choice ready, 🍵.

We've got lots to discuss!

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 IN THIS DROP 📔

• How to change the perception and purpose of workplace L&D

• A twist on a historical tactic to grow a culture of performance

• NotebookLM can now create video overviews, but are they any good?

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 THE BIG THOUGHT 👀

How To Transform Your Learning Strategy From Education Obsessed To Performance Focused

How can you influence your stakeholders on modern-day learning design experiences?

It’s a question all L&D pros face.

We’re in 2025 with AI advancing everything, but most stakeholders want ‘e-learning’ or ‘to get people together in a room’. It’s a huge contradiction of our time.

The learning solution problem

90% of stakeholders want to tell you the solution to their problem.

This has been constant across the nearly two decades I’ve spent in the industry.

Typically, they fall into two camps:

1. I think I have a training problem and want you L&D person to facilitate a classroom workshop.

2. I still think I have a training problem. I want you L&D person to create a point-and-click e-learning experience because I want something interactive. We can also add “give me something with AI and interactive” to this section.

(Fun fact about the word ‘e-learning’, it’s 2025, and we know that everything is electronic now. You can drop the ‘e’. I promise it won’t hurt you).

Before you pull your hair out, let’s explore why this thinking occurs:

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

• Naturally, this pours over to the working world. If it’s the only system you know, why would you do anything else? The problem is the world of work is not school.

• Organisations don’t see L&D as performance-based. They label it as education. Which leads many to believe it is nice to have.

Now, it’s difficult to introduce new ways of thinking with such an established attitude towards L&D.

I write a lot about doing things in a new way in the industry (I know, how devilish of me!).

But this is not easy.

You’re not going to walk into a company and change the strategy from ‘here’s our list of courses’ to ‘how can we design the best solution to x problem for this audience’.

You’ve got to play the long game.

Sorry, no easy fix here.

You’ll need to compound small moments and opportunities to showcase a different way of working. One of the strategies I’ve used to do this with good ROI is what I call the ‘Trojan horse’ technique.

When in doubt, build a Trojan horse

Before we get into the meat of this, let me provide context for those who aren’t familiar with the tale of the Trojan horse.

Back in the 5th century (a long time ago) the Greeks and Trojans were at war.

It was not going well for the Greeks. They’d been attempting to break down the city of Troy for 10 years. The siege felt like it would never end. The Greek king Odysseus had an idea that would change the tide of this war.

He built a wooden horse. I know, very revolutionary. Odysseus hadn’t lost his mind, he was seeing more clearly than ever.

Winning the war by brute force wasn’t going to work. The Greeks have been doing this for 10 years with nothing to show.

Instead, they created a trick.

One day, the Greeks pretended to sail away from Troy.

The Trojans believed they had given up. Outside the city walls, the Greeks left a wooden horse as a parting victory trophy for their enemies. The Trojans accepted and brought the horse into the city.

Little did they know, not all the Greeks had left.

Odysseus and a group of his men secretly hid within this wooden horse to gain access to the city.

When darkness fell, the troops jumped out of the horse to open the city gates for the rest of the Greek army who had sailed back after their fake departure.

Within hours, the Greeks destroyed the city, concluding the fall of Troy.

The Trojans played the smart move.

What does this have to do with transforming your company’s L&D strategy?

→ A lot.

Or, you can deploy the long game and switch to a smarter tactic.

How to deploy your Trojan horse

When a stakeholder wants a particular solution and you know you have no leverage in the matter, don’t fight it.

The battle will be pointless and you’ll likely end up in the same place.

Instead, build the solution(s) they want but drop in 10% of the stuff you know works better.

You find opportunities to weave in new ways of thinking and approaches into existing experiences. You’ll then compound this play over time.

What I’ve found is stakeholders typically get excited about that 10% bit and want more of that. It’s not a 100% win rate of course.

And, it has to be something that delivers a clear impact. You can’t do something different to have it fall flat and kill your own play.

The idea is to be strategic in your order-taking.

You can’t expect people to change because you tell them to. It takes months even years to win hearts and minds.

My best advice is to stay the course and keep showing up with your experiments.

Final thoughts

This is just one tactic you can use as part of a transformation playbook.

Of course, this one thing alone will not change it all, yet it will go some way in showcasing more modern and effective solutions.

→ If you’ve found this helpful, please consider sharing it wherever you hang out online, tag me in and share your thoughts.

Till next time, you stay classy, learning friend!

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A MESSAGE FROM WORKERA

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Join us to see how you can turn L&D into a true engine of growth.

 VIDEO THOUGHTS 💾

NotebookLM Just Got Video Overviews — Are They Any Good?

Google’s NotebookLM now lets you generate video overviews of your notebooks.

But is this a genuinely useful upgrade or just another flashy AI feature?

In this video, I explore the new video overview capability inside the updated NotebookLM interface. You'll see exactly how it works, how to generate one, and most importantly what the end result actually looks like.

You’ll also find this video as part of my free to access “How to use NotebookLM” series on YouTube

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