Learning Leaders – are you ready to join a different conversation?

When shared curiosity, collaboration and conversation turn into a book

Spending 30+ years in any industry can have one of two effects – it can leave you jaded, cynical, or perhaps a little too cocky and snooty. For me, it has just left me more curious. And when I am curious I want to explore!

I know that might sound strange coming from someone who has spent decades researching, analysing, and writing about L&D. You’d think by now I’d have all the answers neatly filed away. But here’s the thing – the more I’ve learned, the more questions I have. And lately, those questions have been keeping me awake at night.

Groundhog Day

I’m intrigued by the repeating patterns I’ve witnessed in our industry. Sometimes it feels like we’ve been around this block before. Technology has always created uncertainty. Business impact has always supported progress. L&D professionals have always been searching for ways to make a difference – new tools, platforms, methodologies. Our learners have consistently been more open than we are to using whatever technology they have in their hands for learning.

And every time a new layer of technology is introduced, there’s an industry-wide call for revolution, reimagination of who we are, what we stand for, what we’re even called.

Sound familiar?

And yet everything is new

But here’s where it gets interesting – and why I can’t shake the feeling that something fundamental is shifting. AI isn’t just another tool. The pace of change that this technology is driving is calling us to shape the future rather than just be shaped by circumstance. Skills, our collective ability to adapt, learn, and shift professions, has become a vital component of organisational success. It’s no longer HR rhetoric. We have a new generation of learning professionals joining the industry, bringing fresh perspectives. And we’re serving a new generation of workers with entirely different expectations.

The patterns are familiar, but the context is new and the stakes feel different.

So many questions – so many!

After studying this industry for years, I still find myself with more questions than answers:

• Why are we so surprised by the fact that technology keeps getting more sophisticated?
• Does the threat of extinction actually create change, or does it suppress it?
• Why have some organisations with limited resources delivered learning innovation and business impact in abundance, while those with abundant resources can have such limited vision?
• Is it all someone else’s fault?
• As individuals, how do we build agency, make a difference, and lead by example when everyone around us is digging in and waiting for yesterday to return?

My approach – continuously curious

I have the data. I have the insights. I have the experience. But I’ll be honest – I don’t have all the answers, just more questions. So when Kogan Page asked me to write a book five years ago, I tried. I really did. But despite all the words I’d committed to paper through reports and articles over the years, I was struggling to know what to write that would make a difference today.

I needed to have a different conversation.

So I did something unexpected – I went back to school. I’m currently in the middle of a doctorate program at Middlesex University. This sharpened my curiosity and gave me permission to explore again, but this time with new people and new lenses. I got to the point of writing my thesis, then realised something crucial: I wanted to explore these ideas in the real world. This needed to be useful for practitioners as well as academically sound. It was time to revisit the book!

It was important for me to keep my feet on the ground so I invited Michelle Ockers to join my exploration and she took up the challenge to write with me as co-author.

Different conversations

For me, Michelle is a perfect example of a Learning Changemaker, passionate about the business impact that L&D can make, curious about the practical things we need to do to achieve our goals and hungry to find ways of making change happen. For the last year she has been my sounding board, reality check, pragmatist, thinker, fellow curious soul, and friend. Our weekly conversations created the space to unravel thinking and explore differently as we prepared to write together.

Our conversations were a continual test-and-learn process. We are both advocates of the benefits of great experiments and ideas took shape through regular discussion and challenge. I was testing out new thinking and frameworks; Michelle, with her wealth of experience from hundreds of podcast interviews, helped explore these frameworks in more detail. She challenged my thinking, and I challenged hers.

The result? Conversations. Lots of different conversations, spanning opposite sides of the world. The result? A book – The L&D Leader.