Learning & Development is a quandary of a title, how we name things often results in how we then think about them and how they are then delivered. In this case, why are learning and development split with an ‘&’ when the two should be the best of friends, not separated.

First of all, let’s explore what learning is relative to a place of work. We all have to learn each and every day, we are faced with a plethora of information coming at us from people, news & technology and we learn as we go. It’s not necessarily conscious in our minds that we learn, the majority of learning we absorb is subconscious, we see it, we read it, we take it in and only register the major things that matter relative to the task in front of us. It’s only when something matters that we switch from the subconscious to the conscious, our awareness switches on and we focus on what we need to learn. Every day, we are learning, result!

Now let’s focus on development, in a work context we hear about personal development, leadership development, lifecycle development, sales development, they all have a different meaning as they can be about our people, ourselves, our customer and our future. Development is a tricky beast because it disguises its true meaning, that dreaded word….Change!

Nobody likes change, that old phrase is a neurological fact, the way our brains are built is for safety, regularity and of course, habits, which is one of our favourite subjects to tackle. The way habits occur in the brain is simple, let’s say you are a little kid and your parent shows you how to tie your shoes, the learning happens something like this:

Nope

Nope

Yippee

Nope

Nearly

Yippee

Nope

Yippee

Nope

Yippee

Yippee

Yippee

A simple act that we all had to learn. Once we understand this action it becomes second nature, it is a habit we don’t ever have to think about. Your brain has created a neurological pathway, the more you do it, the more it becomes second nature and over time it sits in your subconscious as you don’t think about how to tie your shoes you just do it.

This notion of change is where Learning & Development causes its own problems because everything we need to learn to develop in work is about repetition. We’ve all attended a wonderful training session, enjoyed it, felt energised and the next week can’t recall the details of what it was about. The best intent gets lots when you don’t combine the elements of learning and development together, this combination is based on one thing and only one thing, how the brain works. Once you understand what people need to thrive then what comes next is about positive behavioural change. To change behaviours we need to learn 2 develop, one follows the other, they should not be treated as separate entities or the habits don’t get created.

Having had responsibility for designing and delivering over 300 different types of workshops our expertise has a fundamental build around what we call Learn2Develop, we combine them as it drives our thought process and the quality or our build, scoping the work, prototyping, planning quality execution and ongoing assessments. We don’t think about anything as a project, we think about it in terms of repetition and ongoing learning. That is why we have had such positive success with 02, Young Enterprise and Old Mutual Wealth as a few of our highlights.