Beyond learning – Mobilising L&D for organisational change

Nigel Cassidy: Big work changes ahead. Here's how Learning and Development can be the key to success. I'm Nigel Cassidy and this is the CIPD podcast.

Now it seems like almost every organisation you encounter today is in the throes of change. In some cases, change to survive. As the old saying has it, “growth is optional, but change is inevitable”. But what is far from inevitable is that when you make the changes, your team will accept and embrace them. So, this month we're focusing on how your L&D team can be your not-so-secret weapon in ensuring that changes stick and succeed. I mean, what tools can L&D deploy to equip employees with the necessary knowledge and confidence to bridge that gap between senior leader ambitions and workforce readiness?

And we've got three great guests with unique angles on all this. We've a business founder who's dedicated the last 20 years to inspiring us to embrace change. All along, she says she's been careful to balance leading change programmes from the front with personal coaching work to keep her advice practical. It's Melanie Franklin from Capability for Change. Hello, Melanie.

Melanie Franklin: Thank you. Looking forward to this discussion.

NC: From the world of football, we've the Senior Lead of Learning Design and Digital Innovation at the Football Association, no less. Nick Baker creates resources and experiences for the game's national workforce for all levels, from the England team coaches to grassroots volunteers. Hi, Nick.

Nick Baker: Hi, Nigel. Hi, everybody.

NC: And from the home team, a certified Coach and Talent Assessor with experience in healthcare, social housing and business services. As Learning and Development Business Partner at CIPD, he collaborates on designing, reviewing, delivering and evaluating learning development initiatives. It's Paul Hodgkinson. Hi Paul.

Paul Hodgkinson: Hey, everyone, good to be here.

NC: Now, as we're going to talk about how learning can support change, I just wonder if each of you can think of something that you really wish you'd known when you were going through a change?

MF: I did a massive change of my own life six years ago when I changed countries and I moved from London to southern Spain. And on reflecting on that, I was very aware that I was moving away from something, which was, with my commute and the hours that I worked, I really wasn't seeing any daylight. So, I decided to radically change my life, and it was that realisation later on, several years later, that I was moving away from something. So, I was fixing problems, but actually I missed out on perhaps some of the excitement and some of the enjoyment because I wasn't also thinking so much about what I was moving towards.

Everybody has a view of whether they are trying to fix a problem or they're going to exploit an opportunity. And I think it's making sure that whenever we're talking about a change at work, we're getting that balance of both of those things. And I look back now and think, wow, I missed out. I could have been so excited. And instead, I felt the change was more of an endurance test, which I got through successfully, but it was a couple of years before I really started to reap the benefits of the move.

NC: I suppose that also shows that the things you learn sometimes take a long time to sink in or have an effect. Nick Baker, what about you?

NB: Yeah, I think when I was a little bit younger and leading sort of programmes of change, I didn't actually probably realise they were change programmes and I didn't realise what a change programme was. Yes, I knew we had this thing to deliver, we had stakeholders to manage or project milestones to achieve, but I didn't understand change itself and particularly the human impact on change. Some people have quite strong opinions about football, when you're trying to.

NC: Really?

NB: I don't know if you've noticed. When you're trying to change the way of working for somebody who's been doing something the way they've been doing it for a number of years, it's almost, you know, that grieving process almost of losing something that they've been attached to and you're trying to help them deal with the new future. You know, that process of change and how people react to it and what me as, I guess, a leader doing that, I didn't quite understand some of the human impact. And I think some of the things I was responsible for may have gone a little bit smoother or may have gone a little bit quicker or more efficiently if I'd have really understood the whole broad concept of a change programme and change management as such.

NC: Yeah, you brought out that change is so multi-faceted, isn't it? Paul.

PH: I've recently gone back to playing the piano. It's something I did when I was probably going to university, and I stopped for 30-odd years, and I've recently just come back to doing it. And it's amazing, isn't it? You still have a fixed view of how you were, but you're almost 30 years ahead and things are very, very different, aren't they? And it's trying to. I'd say reconcile that in your head because you're not where you were, where you, you know, where you are now, you know, so there's a there's a real skill gap there. There's lots more learning to do. You're going over things that you've done before, but they, they feel different. They, you know, you notice probably stuff that you never even thought about before in terms of your playing, in terms of how you sound. It's a real, yeah, it's a real mind shift and it completely amazed me how things are different when I was very young and now, I'm probably nearly very old.

NC: So, I guess on some level that's kind of informed your practice in subtle ways. OK, well before we really get stuck into how learning can help organisations to change and adapt, Melanie Franklin, it seems to me it might be helpful just to ask you why change programmes themselves often fail.

MF: From every client that I work with around the world, the answer is the same; that actually the focus is often on the tangible change, which is the creation of the new thing, whether that's a restructuring, it's trying to bring together companies after an acquisition or it's the implementation of the new system. A lot of the focus is on the delivery of that thing on that date. And I think it's the "go live" for the tangible change and not the "go live" for people. The people piece will often take two, three, four times as long for people to adjust because, as Nick's just said, there is a grieving process. There is getting comfortable with saying goodbye to experiences and saying goodbye to your shortcuts and maybe your status of how you're regarded within the team as a bit of an expert on something. You have to go through a grieving process for all of that before you can then get ready to learn the new things and accept that you're going to be working differently. And I think it's that emotional and psychological journey that we forget.

I spend a lot of time explaining to people that perhaps change, it's building the plane, but actually we also have to build, well, I used to say build the runway, but now I say build the airport because I think change is so interdependent, that actually we need the runways, we need to deplane the passengers into terminal buildings, and we need the baggage control and immigration. So, there are so many pieces of laying the groundwork for people to be able to do something differently, not just give them the trigger, which is, "Hey, start using this new system". And I think with AI, this is something that many organisations are going to learn the hard way.

NC: OK, well Nick Baker's building a new system with the FA. We'll get on to that pretty soon. But I just want to ask Paul first, you've got a bit of an overview at CIPD, I just wondered. When are learning development professionals typically asked to help when organisations need to change things? At what stage are they consulted about what form it might take? And obviously, you probably catch my implication there that it might be too late.

PH: Yes, in some cases it is. And I think that the main area where L&D get involved is certainly the capability piece, you know, the development piece, the assessment piece and helping leaders or individuals move through whatever change it is, you know. To your point, yeah, are we bought in early enough? We tend to be the afterthought sometimes when actually we've got some really good stuff that we can bring to the party in terms of offering insights into how committed people are to maybe go through the change. You know, are they, are they competent? You know, are they, have they got skills now or do we have to think about skills that they haven't got? And obviously that journey as well.

So, I love your analogy earlier as well, Melanie, about the airport. I think that's a really good way of thinking it because there's so many different component parts and actually L&D's got to be everywhere, in the terminal building, in baggage, on the plane.

NC: OK, well, we'll come back to you a bit later, Paul. We could perhaps look at some of the tools that L&D can offer to help these change processes. But Nick, at least in the football world, nobody questions the value of coaching and training to change and improve how you play to win. And I know you're working on a new learning delivery platform. So, can you tell us a bit about how you're designing it to deliver on the association's ambitions?

NB: The process we're going through, I think as Melanie said, it's very easy to say, "Yeah, we've got a new platform. We're going to move from the previous supplier or vendor to a new one. It's going to do this. You need to press these buttons. Here's a bit of training. It's easy. It's done". I think what we're trying to do though, and I've been very, we've been very clear from the beginning, this is a sort of a behaviour change project and a culture change project. You know, very quickly, our learning vision it’s not anything fabulous. You know, we're trying to move away from formal, just providing formal long form type courses to a more bite-sized, agile approach. But that comes with it, is trying to change the culture, not only of the internal staff, of how we design and deliver learning and provide learning from a delivery point of view, but our workforce is a national workforce of predominantly volunteers.

So, what we're trying to do is change the culture of learning almost, across the country, and trying to move people away thinking, "Oh, to get better, I must do my next course" or in football parlance it’s my next badge. You might just need to watch these few videos or have a look at this PDF and just to improve and just develop yourselves in short, bite-sized segments almost. So, it's been an interesting journey, and I think, building on the point Paul was making there in terms of the question you asked previously. I think L&D almost can have a role before that, you know, in terms of what is the culture in the organisation? Is the culture alert?

You know, we talk about learning culture, and I know that means different things to different people, but is the culture within the organisation a learning culture that might be open-minded, agile, proactive, resilient, positive? Because if it has elements of that, then potentially it's more likely to be open to change more and to accept the change and be more happy with the change and to, you know, jump straight into it and deal with it rather than maybe more of a closed and a negative culture. So, us as L&D, I think, yeah, I think we have a much broader opportunity and a much broader role to play in change that comes way before almost the airport's built and things. It's that ground swell before that.

MF: Every indication, every piece of research regarding the move towards an AI-enabled world talks about the need for lifelong learning for individuals. So, we are talking about bite-size, we are talking “at the moment of need”, and we are effectively moving away from more formal courses. They still have a part to play, but it is about making available solutions, practical techniques, and answers at the moment that people need them. But that is what L&D can do structurally. But what I think is very interesting is that we need learning professionals who really do understand that the culture of lifelong learning is a culture of curiosity and asking, "what's next" and "what else should I know?"

Now, we have to build that culture. Now, it starts, I think, with senior leaders recognising that perhaps we need to invest in that idea of constant curiosity. I can't name the global organisation, but working with their Global Head of HR, her focus this summer was on how do we stimulate curiosity? Because we're not really running change programs, we're running a transforming organisation - it never stops. And we want people to be a part of the innovation, not leading top-down innovation. So, if they don't have the characteristics and the willingness to go, "what else should I be knowing about? How can I learn about this?" Then whatever we put in place structurally, the bite-sized learning, they simply won't pick up and run with.

NC: But of course, before you can get that curiosity going in people, through the work that you do with them, you've got to often overcome resistance to change when something in an organisation is going to alter that they might not like. So, I’m just going to ask you, Paul, what sort of tools and techniques and things can Learning and Development offer to help people understand a change and perhaps overcome their resistance to it?

PH: Yeah, I mean, I've worked with a number of organisations, but one of the themes and initiatives that tends to come up at these times is team development and particularly helping teams to build sort of cohesion amongst themselves and actually where they've got natural strengths and where they've got blind spots as well and really try to unpick that. And one of the tools could be, you know, there's a range of psychometrics, which are great in terms of just giving you some insights, some data as well.

There's other stuff that you can bring to the table as well, where, we've done it a number of times in various organisations. With engagement data, the survey data is so powerful because it certainly shines a light on how a leader is leading and how the team are seeing that particular individual, but also where the natural qualities and gaps are in a particular team for whatever reason as well.

I think your other part of the question was conflict as well. And it's a bit of a buzzword over the last few years, but it's emotional intelligence. I still think that has a significant part to play through change.

NC: Can you really teach that?

PH: Can you teach it? Hey, that's a tough one. The way I think about it is a good colleague of mine talks about mindset and skills and that's where we can certainly influence that, you know, helping people to understand where their head is at right now and also sort of get them to think about where that needs to be. And it's not necessarily changing them per se, but it's actually getting them to think about where they need to flex and adapt to get the result they need as well. And those skills are things like dealing with ambiguity, dealing with complexity, dealing with your emotions as well. So, wow, yeah, there's so much you could get into there, but I think it's centred around that team-build, and I think team-builds are sometimes, can be a little bit pink and fluffy, but actually they're really a good mechanism.

NC: So, obviously football, as I mentioned earlier, coaching is an accepted practice. People do at least know they have to use learning in one form or the other. I wonder whether you have to almost educate leaders themselves so that they can understand what learning, what training can do.

NB: A lot of the resistance is around, springing surprise on people or, what's in it for me and things like that. So, if we can help support our leaders to become a little bit more authentic and genuine, show a little bit of vulnerability, you know, that builds trust and that openness, and dare I say, support them understanding and being able to act in a leadership style that's maybe non-traditional, like heart-centred leadership or human-centred, that you can show that vulnerable side and you build that trust with your direct reports and your team. I'm not saying it's going to suddenly make things easy, but people will have that congruence with you and know that, where you can be, you are being open and as honest as possible in telling people what you can, when you can, within the process.

So, I think there's a lot you can do with the individual leaders as well to upskill them and support them to help other people around that team alongside I agree wholeheartedly with Paul in terms of that team development, accountability, ownership, decision-making and everything that was said previously.

NC: Because Nick's talking there about openness and honesty, but Melanie, let's face it, there are going to be times when a change programme is going to be unsettling, it's going to be difficult and people may not like where they have to be after the programme. So, how do you deal with that? Or at least how can the training, the learning assist you?

MF: I think, from a neuroscientific perspective, we can recognise that every change is immediately regarded as a threat by the brain because it goes against what our brains want, which is certainty and autonomy. I think that when it comes to unpleasant outcomes from change, I think a lot of organisations are going to be dealing with one common issue, which is redeployment of staff. The jury's out on whether or not, from an AI perspective, we're going to lose a huge number of jobs. The CEO of Walmart recently said that he couldn't think of a job that wasn't going to be affected by AI, but Walmart were committed for the next three to five years to maintaining a flat level of staff. However, that everybody should expect that they will be involved in some kind of redeployment. So, if we automate in one team, we don't want to lose those valuable people, but we are asking them to step into a whole new world of responsibilities and skills.

And again, I think Learning and Development are an essential partner. They have to work alongside the line managers who are delivering those very difficult messages, because what people need to hear at that moment is that they will be supported and they'll be given plenty of, not just skills training, but plenty of opportunities to practice and to basically take on a whole new corporate persona. So, redeployment, I think, is a type of change that we really do need to coach our line managers to do.

NC: So, Paul Hodgkinson, from where you sit at CIPD, do you see organisations struggling with these aspects of their change management?

PH: I suppose there's a "yes" to that and there's a "no" to that. Yes, I think they struggle with it because there is, I think someone's already mentioned the fact that there is a level of vulnerability that people need to show and that some people are willing to go there and some are not. So, that's always an interesting one when you might, for example, sit in on a team meeting and observe a manager in practice and then give them feedback afterwards or with the team. It's interesting - some managers are up for that, and some are not. So, it's a difficult one, right?

MF: Do you think there are practical skills and solutions, techniques that we can help line managers with or even senior leaders? When we talked earlier on about the fact that we have to cope with a sense of ambiguity. And I think there are solutions there, simple techniques for helping managers to talk about any change, but in the context of the changes that have already taken place and the changes that are also coming up, even if they are at that moment, just rumours and gossip. So, I think there's something about how you can technically help leaders to create that holistic or cohesive picture so that their teams feel that actually there is an overarching sense of direction. Even though every step is not yet clear, there is something, a North Star that we are moving towards. And that the managers have a clue what that is, and they're constantly referring every new thing that comes up into the context of that.

We often talk about managers having to role-model during change. And one of the things that those techniques can help them do is to role-model the fact that they feel they are also on shifting sands as well as their staff feel they're on shifting sands, but that they're chipping away at it and they are working out how all the different pieces connect. And I think it's giving people practical techniques that they can use to do that.

PH: Yeah, no, it's probably that example I gave earlier about being in a meeting and one of the techniques that I have used before is just some simple Think, Do, Be statements and getting the team to think and be and do and write things that they can do in each of those three areas, while they're moving through a particular milestone or shift. And I think that's really helpful as well because it allows people to be vulnerable. It sort of allows people to play out their fears. And I know sometimes in change we lean on fears, but actually it sometimes brings out people's qualities, which are really good to shout about.

People have got amazing qualities through change and sometimes by doing that process of Think, Do, Be is really helpful. And another one we're sort of bringing in as well, is this idea of championing transfer. So, you're not just there to learn, but you're all about championing the transfer back into your workplace. So, for example, if you're in a team-build, you know, what are you going to be championing outside of that workshop from what you've learned in the session as well? So, you really start to get people to think about what they believe, what they're going to focus on, and more importantly, what's it going to drive? What's it going to result in?

NB: Yeah, definitely. I think just to build on, you know, the practical tips that managers can do. I mean, just one example, when I was listening to Melanie, that springs to mind is, links a little bit back to the culture piece at the beginning. But, you know, are we equipping our managers to have difficult conversations? Because, you know, explaining change or you know, Melanie's point about, you're not doing this job anymore, but you're going to do that job can be.

You know, it's a difficult conversation for the expert who is now going to go to conscious incompetence in something. Having those difficult conversations and having, training managers to do that, but having a culture of those conversations, previous to the change will help build resilience as well as equip managers to have those conversations when they arise and for people to be able to, not accept them, but certainly understand that they're coming from a place of humility or vulnerability and the person is being as honest and as open as possible. So yeah, there's lots of pieces to the jigsaw, as ever, but I just thought of, you know, just another example, I think.

NC: When you're using learning and training to not only change organisations, but long-term, to change and develop people, Melanie, do you have to adjust what you do depending on the age of the people? I mean, it's been a theme that's kind of come up in a few of these podcasts recently. We've talked about the rather transactional approach, for example, that young workers may have. So, do you have to consciously think about exactly who's consuming your training?

MF: I think there are some generational differences, but I would never overplay them because I think that. And I'd come back to neuroscience again. I always look at what our brains need, and there are visceral responses to threat. And that tends not to be related to age. It tends to be related to whether or not the brain thinks that what's being put in front of it is threatening its livelihood. If you're in your 20s, does it affect my ability to pay my rent? If you're in your 40s, it might affect your ability to pay your mortgage. But either way, you're worried that redeployment, for example, is affecting your ability to still have a job.

So, I think that I'm less worried about the generational issues. What I'm worried about is some common themes around people's sense of certainty, their sense that what they're being asked to do is meaningful, it makes sense, and in that way they can get enthusiastic. So, I'm less, I think the only generational thing that I tend to focus in on is, there are digital natives who have grown up in a technology world that perhaps our colleagues in their late 40s to mid-60s have not. And therefore, there's an openness to communication and constant communication. Video calls, leaving video notes, less reliance on email, not though liking to talk on the telephone, but quite happy to jump on a video call. There are lots of differences around that technology and therefore that shapes maybe how we encourage people to engage with each other.

But I would also say that the other thing that affects change mostly, from the post-COVID world, is hybrid working, because you now have the difficulty of you might be leading somebody who is completely remote, somebody who likes to come into the office all of the time, and somebody who's trying to work out several days a week, that they're in the office and several days a week they're at home. And I think that from a communication point of view, from a senior leader's role-modelling changes when actually you can role-model things, but certain things it's easier to see if you're face-to-face. How do you create that role-modelling when you're on a Teams call is a little bit harder. So again, I think it's not so much generational, it's actually an engagement with technology that can have an effect.

PH: A bit like what Melanie's just described it. For me, I don't ignore generational pieces, but I always look at people as, you know, they have needs and wants. So as a manager, I suppose your duty or role, certainly when I'm working with managers, is to identify and help them understand what needs are in their team and how they are being addressed and supported, but also through change. How can you, and it's the classic, isn't it? You know, you've got individual aspiration, but you've also got business aspiration happening at the same time. And how, as a manager, can you try and forge a link between those two things? So, they're a bit of competing forces, aren't they really?

But the role of a manager certainly is to try and address that, you know, whether it's a good thing or, you know, sometimes it creates tension and frustration because that naturally comes up in these types of situations. So, yeah, I think there's, but yeah I look at it as needs and wants, and I think that's where learning can really help managers work through that and find good solutions.

NC: So, I mean, what we're looking at here overall is that Learning and Development can be a trusted partner when the change is happening and then when you're working with people, you know, going forward. So, how do you approach it so that people have got the fact that you understand what the mission is and that you can come up with different ideas to make it work?

MF: One of the things I think is that Learning and Development are essential partners to change. But one of the things that I'm often bothered about is that perhaps nobody's bothered to invest in teaching Learning and Development much about change management. I think that as we move towards this idea that we have to create lifelong learning, on-going curiosity, how we cope with multiple simultaneous change.

One of my ambitions is that Learning and Development are brought into actually being the recipients of change and transformation training. And I see a lot of the really switched-on clients I have are putting their L&D teams through the neuroscience for change courses because that cuts across. Perhaps those sort of more old-fashioned learning styles from the old David Cole's work, Honey and Mumford's work, you know, there's so many of those models out there. 93, I read a PhD paper, there was 93 of them and none of them correlated. So, that is my ambition. But how does that fit with your ambitions for your team? Is it something on your radar?

NB: I would completely agree. The only reason I know a small bit about change is, yeah, I took it upon myself to do a Change Practitioners course a couple of years ago. Hence my, the very first question you asked Nigel, about I needed to understand this process more. I could see it wasn't working in the organisation at a certain time. So, I completely agree with you that change training for equipping L&D people up and down is, it would be vital for us to become a real partner and to understand the processes that the rest of the business may be going through and help and understand where they can fit into that. So yeah, I think it would be very valuable for anybody to take that bit of training and to help their teams with the process.

MF: Well, I'm just going to say, as the former Chair of the Change Management Institute, I feel horrified in part that I feel that we've let the L&D community down and the HR community down, to be honest, because I think that change management's almost been running parallel to Learning and Development. And we should be cooperative, and we haven't brought you into our world. And I feel that, in some respects, we've kind of let people down. So, that's definitely my focus for the next two to three years is that we need to turn the tide of that. I really feel very strongly about that.

PH: It's a missed opportunity, Melanie, I think.

MF: Yeah, really.

PH: During my career, there's been a handful of times when the learning team have had any focus on them before any major piece of change. You know, usually we are learning it ourselves as we're rolling out the change, and that seems to be a given. And I've not seen that change too much in some of the businesses that I've been in. To say only a handful of the businesses that I've worked in have focused on, let's build the capability of our teams and let's get those Learning and Change teams working alongside each other because there's some real opportunity there because we're both.

MF: They're essential partners.

PH: Yeah.

NB: And ultimately change is the learning process, isn't it? As we've said a couple of times now, there is congruence right the way through. So yeah, seems bonkers when you think about it, that it's not close, more closely aligned, from my point of view.

MF: I think there's a bigger thing for me is that I look at Human Resources and actually I work with a number of global heads of HR who are now taking over the IT departments as well, because as we move towards more agentic AI, what they are is they're global resource directors. There is human and agentic AI. So, we'll have mixed teams of AI agents, who are doing repetitive work 24/7. And also at the same time, we're managing human teams. This has already started in a number of bigger global brands. And I don't meet many HR professionals who are sort of, who feel like they've been educated in this at all. But suddenly, you know, this is going to be something that they are having to manage. So, I think there's a massive shift in the scope of HR, which is another massive change that actually we need to be preparing for. And I don't think anybody's bothered to help people with that either on that change side.

NC: Well, that's definitely another podcast. But on that closing bombshell, I'd like to thank our trio for some really great thoughts. There's lots more learning and development wisdom on the CIPD website, where you can also find our Podcast Page and back catalogue of other useful podcast content. But for now, until next month, from me Nigel Cassidy and the whole team, it's goodbye.