Smart BOLD L&D

In the winter of 2019, I spent an evening with some wonderful people-professionals who were looking to improve their impact by reimagining the future of learning. We explored the latest evidence behind top performing learning leaders – how they used evidence, insight, and influence to create impact within their work.

The group then used an exercise to imagine what they wanted the future of learning to look like in their own organisation. Their vision included democratised learning, taking down HR silos to find new ways of surfacing, developing and growing talent, ensuring students were work-ready and becoming increasingly digital.

Looking back I wonder how many of them had been buffing up their crystal ball! It didn’t take long for this group’s bold vision for the future to become a global necessity!

I’ve been an advocate of boldness in our learning leaders for many years now – it takes a level of courage to act on our convictions and realise our vision. So I then asked a follow up question of the group: “Given this evidence of what high performing learning teams are doing today, what would you DO in your organisation if you were 10x bolder?”

The top scoring actions crowdsourced from participants were:

• Shift to learner centred learning – ask what individuals need to do their job, be open to an emergent approach of resources not courses
• Listen, listen, and really listen! – what is needed and is what we are doing really working?
• Connect and collaborate – create personalised learning that works horizontally AND vertically across organisation
• Take a more holistic approach HR/L&D – ditch the programme of courses, instead focus on culture change by upskilling managers to take more supporting role to facilitate flexible, personalised learning for teams
• Develop tools for learning that are simple and easy to use
• Explore digital with an open mind – get exposure to advanced AI, use it to challenge thinking about how to evolve with it to support the changes that people need to make

This was a small group with their own unique challenges. This list of actions was personal to them. However, since the pandemic hit, I often wondered which of these ideas, generated in the warmth of a cozy conference room in November of 2019, had been implemented in the cold Covid light of day?

I’d like to think that this group took BOLD action because of their experience that night which meant they were equipped and ready to respond a few months later. I’d like to think that they had already started to experiment with these themes and had begun the process of reflecting and learning from them. I’d like to think that they were ready to adapt when called on 4 months later.

I’d like to think that, but I wonder…

Whilst we need a BOLD vision to genuinely move forward, bold ideas alone are not enough, we also need action.

Making an impact: BOLD action

The value of an idea lies in the using of it. — Thomas Edison

There has always been a certain amount of ‘danger’ for L&D leaders looking to do things differently– challenging the status quo and sticking our heads above the parapet is a risky business. There is a level of uncertainty and risk in business and in our own jobs. Will new models of learning work? Will investing in new tools and technologies make a return? After all, no L&D professional got fired for building a catalogue of courses or a suite of online compliance eLearning or implementing the IBM of learning management systems!

But the definition of boldness is ‘the willingness, confidence and courage to take risks’.

The challenge is, we often know what action we need to take to make a difference to the individuals, teams, and organisations that we support. But it takes courage.

It’s safer to stick to what we know. It is also safer for the business to ask us for what they have asked us for in the past. Doing what we’ve always done feels like the safe thing to do but it won’t help us seize opportunities or challenge our pain points. It takes boldness to step out of the safe zone.

Cultivating boldness

Boldness, like resilience, curiosity, are easy to talk about but tough to develop.

These mindsets inform our actions but they need to be proactively cultivated. Like habits they need to be named and recognised, nurtured and affirmed, repeated and rewarded over time.

Since 2020 I have been exploring how our professional thinking habits influence our actions and from what I have seen through interviews, conversations and studies is that boldness starts with us.

Challenging the status quo takes courage and the first stakeholders we need to challenge are ourselves! In my eBook 5 Thinking habits for a smarter stronger L&D I explored how our internal thoughts influence our actions and responses to the situations that we find ourselves in.

How do you think about the value you add through your work? – Do you believe that you add value by solving learning problems or business challenges?

How do you think about your role? – Are you primarily in place to be the expert (to prove your value) or to work with others (to co-create value)?

How do you approach a challenge? – Are your actions influenced by your past successes or a willingness to let go, go back to first principles, to try something different?

We found that those who thought about their value in terms of business outcomes, who thought about themselves as part of a team working on a common problem and who approached a challenge with a fresh perspective were less likely to feel that they had to prove themselves and were more likely to respond with boldness.

The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud. — Coco Chanel

Naming our thinking habits is one thing but owning them makes the difference. Bold thinking takes courage and in our industry I have seen 2 types of boldness in action.

Brassy bold comes from those confident leaders who like to take centre stage – their big ideas flow easily and sometimes they work.

Smart BOLD action is the action of often the quieter learning leaders, who are comfortable away from the centre stage and are painfully aware that smart bold recognises fear. Those working from a smart BOLD perspective, know their actions encompass bravery, are willing to take risks and understand that failure means learning. Smart BOLD helps them to adapt, change, learn and grow as a result of new evidence, opportunities and challenges.

There are 4 main characteristics that I have observed in smart BOLD L&D professionals:

1. Business first

Spotting the business opportunity vs following the L&D trend is essential for cultivating boldness. Whilst we all love a ‘what’s hot’ new year trend lists, they feed FOMO – fear of missing out. It takes boldness to think independently – to buck the trends and to totally rethink our approach to what’s needed in our organisation right now.

We cultivate boldness when we align our purpose with the purpose of the organisation.

Right now, the statement ‘People are our greatest asset’ is no longer a glib platitude for business leaders with limited follow through. Business leaders are now talking about talent as an essential pillar for business success. As a result this new business agenda creates an opportunity for cultivating learning boldness:

• The Reskilling / right skilling / upskilling agenda – creates opportunity for us to ensure that individuals and teams are equipped and ready
• The Innovation agenda – creates opportunity to enabling a culture of learning and curiosity across the whole organisation
• The Digital transformation agenda – provides permission to rethink processes, roles, and value creation – both in business and in our L&D teams
• The Performance agenda – provides opportunity for our impact to shine and be recognised

Those smart BOLD learning leaders will use the business agenda to shape their own. They will use it to set a new direction that will impact their organisation’s growth, transformation, productivity, and performance.

A business first approach creates your North Star and purpose, essential for cultivating boldness.

2. Open minded

Being smart BOLD means proactively exploring alternative perspectives. We found that learning leaders who were taking BOLD action, did so because they looked at their opportunities through different lenses.

Open mindedness involves:

• Becoming more self aware about our own professional thinking habits, how they inform our work and when we might need to change them
• Being open to the ideas of others – other sectors, other departments who might think differently
• Being open to working with others to create value vs for others. Even if that means sharing the glory
• Being open to letting go of past experiences, past successes

3. Leading and learning

Smart BOLD involves action. It is a willingness to explore, to experiment, to fail. It is also a willingness to see failure as an opportunity to continue to learn.

Leading and learning involves:

• Spotting opportunities to make a difference
• Stepping out in our approach to experiment
• Providing permission to explore and learn
• A willingness to be open to failing

4. Deliberate

Smart BOLD is not brassy bold, shoot from the hip. It is intentional, risk aware and informed.

The deliberate in smart BOLD involves:

• Being evidence informed – embracing multiple sources of the best available data (scientific, insight and experience, internal data, stakeholder data) to inform our decisions
• Being risk aware – tuning into our own environment and situation vs copying others
• Bringing the outside in but developing our own pathways to success

What will you do when you are 10x BOLDer?

In one sense, these ideas will not be new but, if we want to personally make an impact, we need to be willing to be smart BOLD!

Believing in our value, aligning our purpose with the purpose of the organisation, surrounding ourselves with the safety net of a strong community and evidence base and creating for ourselves the permission to try, all help to build personal boldness in the face of adversity.

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now. — Chinese proverb

So what are you going to do today to become 10x BOLDer?

Originally I talked about smart BOLD here:

OEB article Cultivating Learning Boldness
LinkedIn article Fortune Favours Bold