Conjunctions are interesting learning opportunities. When two things provide different facets, particularly on something you’ve been thinking about, it’s serendipitous. In this case, two widely different readings triggered some reflections asking whether perhaps we’ve a misplaced organizational focus.
So, I’ve been a bit concerned about the rabid interest in generative AI. Not that I think it’s inherently bad, despite its flaws. Instead, my concern is the uses it’s put to. If you think about the classic engineering proposition – cheap, fast, or good; pick 2 – you know you can apply AI to any of the areas. Always, however, it seems that the focus is on cheap and fast. Which concerns me. There’s substantial evidence that our L&D efforts aren’t having an impact. Thus, doing bad faster and cheaper is still bad!
Part of this, it seemed to me, to stem from a rabid focus on short-term returns. I read The Japan That Can Say No many moons ago, and became convinced that a purely financial focus isn’t in the long-term interests of organizations. Now, there’re reinforcement!
First, in Australian news was a report about how a famous economist was rethinking the role of economics. While I didn’t agree with all of it, one aspect that resonated was captured in these bits:
“…we have largely stopped thinking about ethics and about what constitutes human well-being. We are technocrats who focus on efficiency…We often equate well-being with money or consumption, missing much of what matters to people.”
The juxtaposition happened with this quote aggregated by Learnnovators and posted to LinkedIn:
” The early signals of what A.I. can do should compel us to think differently about ourselves as a species. …Those skills are ones we all possess and can improve, yet they have never been properly valued in our economy or prioritized in our education and training…”
– Aneesh Raman, VP, Workforce Expert at LinkedIn & Maria Flynn, President & CEO of Jobs for the Future (JFF)
The overlap, to me, has to do with the undervaluing of what humans bring to the economic table. Efficiency isn’t the only good. Pushing L&D to do ‘box ticking’ learning design faster and cheaper isn’t consonant with recognizing what gives our work meaning. Besides undervaluing what learning design could and should be, it’s disrespectful to the learners and the organization.
I think that what’s driving organizations should be how they contribute to society as a whole. The means to that end is creating an internal environment conducive to supporting people, individually and collectively, to contribute their best in ways that respect what we offer. There are things technology can do that, frankly, we as people shouldn’t. Similarly, there are things we can do that we shouldn’t abrogate. To paraphrase the meme, I don’t want people doing menial tasks leaving the creativity to machines.
A holistic synergy, each doing what they do best to augment the other, alone and together, is optimal. Our economics should support that as well, and to the extent our structures don’t, it may be time to rethink them. Otherwise, it’s a misplaced organizational focus. Thoughts?
Dear Clark Quinn,
Yesterday, I attended the ́ ́ -’ (Strategic Forum on Solutions to Workforce Challenges), organized by The Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal.
It provided a prime opportunity to hear different city leaders’ perspectives about the challenges I encounter daily in my business development role and through my engagements with clients and collaborators in the training and development sector. The recurring themes were talent action, retention, labour shortages, culture and values, change, artificial intelligence, both temporary and permanent skilled immigration, DEI, and Frenchification, among others. Training is often seen as a solution, leading to an increase in courses, platforms, links, resources, and AI tools aimed at achieving faster and cheaper outcomes, but not necessarily better ones.
In my role, I attend numerous events hosted by chambers of commerce, governmental employment and economic development organizations, associations and universities. It seems that only in educational settings within L&D do we delve into the “how.”
Despite frequent mentions of ‘training’ yesterday, there was a notable lack of discussion on its implementation. In the face of my personal and professional challenges, I ponder the extent to which our current and potential clients value quality over price and connections. I am also concerned about the efficacy of the marketing and business development efforts by leaders and entrepreneurs in instructional design, particularly in terms of promoting our craft and its relevance. Training and development entities, particularly those generating content and ensuring its quality, often struggle with sales, marketing, and brand communication. The proliferation of substandard content, ignoring adult training principles and peddling debunked theories like learning styles is disheartening.
Yet, the field is full of talented instructional designers with vast experience and mastery. This leads me to question whether we genuinely lack the necessary marketing and business development skills and strategies.
The landscape of company growth has transformed; intangible concepts and solutions can no longer be sold with just a phone call. The challenges are fundamentally different now. While AI might aid in creating appealing content, the essence lies in altering our value communication to resonate with decision-makers, many of whom might be unfamiliar with instructional design. As new professionals in L&D, how can we enhance visibility, advocate for quality over quantity, and move away from mass-produced content? How can experts like you collaborate with newcomers like me, eager to tackle the “dirty” work of sales and make a meaningful impact?
Yes, generative AI concerns me in the way you say. There are things it allows to be easier, but at what cost? A program we use for video development can use AI text-to-speech, and there’s some preference for that despite some VO talent on our team. Yet, it hits whatever the audio version of the uncanny valley is. It’s too easy to settle for ‘good enough’ and check that a task is complete. I worry we’ll continue to lose quality in favor of speed and quantity, even though we all say we don’t want that.
Ana & Dave, it’s been a long slog trying to change the course of our industry *and* its perception. I think we have to fix internally before we can get credibility externally. So far, I think it’s a continual push for quality in what we say, the questions we ask, and what we do. The latter, in particular, to me becomes a situation where “it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission”. Time to start stealthily just doing better practice (read: mini-scenarios), and when called on it, explaining why. Also being strategic, invoking classic ‘change’ techniques: working with early adopters, evangelizing the wins, encouraging the reluctant, talking openly about barriers and fixes, etc. Long slog, but past time. It will help when vendors push the message, too; they’re selling to what customers will buy, but good marketing is, to me, good customer education ;). (How many learning vendors have anyone who understands learning anywhere near their own C-suite?)