Bridging learning and organisational development

Nigel Cassidy (NC): How do you get learning and Organisational Development specialists out of their silos to work together more effectively? I'm Nigel Cassidy, and this is the CIPD Podcast.

Now, Team L&D train people in the skills they need. Team OD deal with culture, strategy, and change. It's always been that way. But why? Both practices are vital in meeting talent needs and making your organisation effective. And you might say, well, something has got to give. YouGov polling of business leaders suggests a lack of long-term vision in L&D is the number one cause of organisations not reaching their goals. Well, this month's contributors think that it's time to bridge the gap between learning and OD, to spot and break down the barriers to start communicating and collaborating. As our first guest, Natal Dunk, puts it, business ways have changed dramatically, so learning and OD must too. She's co-founder of the PXO Culture Consultancy and the author of Agile L&D. Hello.

Natal Dank (ND): Hi, great to be here. Thank you.

NC: Jaimini Lakhani says she relishes working with people at pivotal moments with numerous household named clients and rolls under her belt, including Heathrow Airport and Burberry. She runs her own consulting practice, Lumiere. Hi, Jamini.

Jaimini Lakhani (JL): Hi, pleasure to be here.

NC: And to complete our trio from the home team with a background in cognitive psychology, a man who follows every development in this field because he's the CIPD's Head of Learning, Steve George. Hello, Steve.

Steve George (SG): Hi there. Really great to be here. Thank you.

NC: Now, I just thought for starters, seeing we're all about learning this month, I just thought I'd first ask each of you, can you cite one thing that you wish you'd learned years ago? I mean, in your business or your personal life.

JL: I'm happy to kick off. When I moved from consulting into working, my first role was over at Heathrow Airport. And I remember a colleague of mine who also had to come from consulting and it was a great piece of advice, actually, it made me laugh. Sort of a month or two in, and I was trying to get a feel for, you know, am I getting the handle of this working in organisations versus being an external consultant. So, my friend, and she knows who she is, came up to me and says, Jay, you're doing fantastic. You're doing great. Everybody loves you. But I tell you what, you're doing way too many PowerPoint slides.  And that was a fantastic bit of advice. Thankfully, because I was becoming more of a PowerPoint expert than I think an organisation design and development expert.

NC: Great. Yes. Well, working in audio, I don't have that problem. But Natal, what about you?

ND: Well, I'm going to go for one that actually relates to the topic that we're talking about. Probably about 15 years ago or something, I started leading a Learning and Development team and it was a small team of about five people. And we also, however, looked after other topics such as performance, engagement, culture change and I was obsessed with getting our name changed to Organisational Development and learning. And once I got our name changed, and I was then the head of, you know, Organisational Development learning, I was so proud. And there's two things, one is I thought it was more sophisticated to have that in the title, but also it kind of, I felt like it fitted the remit better. Of course, I then subsequently learned it really doesn't matter what title you have. It's actually what you do and the value you produce and I think that's maybe something that we can kind of explore a little bit more. And of course, these days, it's, you know, you sort of position yourself with what do you do in the organisation and how do you solve problems and the value that that brings rather than the title that sits behind it.

NC: You've opened up a big issue, I suspect we may return to shortly. But Steve, what about the lesson you learned?

SG: My instinctive response was to learn to say no more frequently because definitely in my career, there are times I've tried to do too much and boil the ocean, which is really good for anybody. But then there's a tension with that because quite often some of the best moments in my career have come from saying yes to things where all my instincts have been to say no. So, I think what I wish I'd learned a long time ago was early identification of the opportunities that can come from saying yes and the problems that can come from saying yes and when to say no more judiciously.

NC: Say no more selectively, OK? We think we got that.

JL: Mindful no.

SG: Yeah.

NC: Well, Steve since we're with you let's just be clear what we're talking about so just remind us what L&D and OD sort of do as different practices in a nutshell, and what has kept them apart.

SG: Sure. So, Organisational Development, in a nutshell, it takes a systematic, long-term approach to improve the overall effectiveness of an organisation. So, it looks at culture, structures, systems, processes and capabilities, and then it will create intentional change initiatives to achieve that. Learning and Development, on the other hand, will primarily focus on individual, group, and team development. So, developing their skills, knowledge, and competencies. Both are focused on employee capability, just at different points of that journey. In terms of the separation, I think there's historical functional differences. There's also some different skill sets, as well as the overlapping and aligned skill sets. They also have different origins. So, I think Organisational Development traditionally comes from behavioural science, whereas Learning and Development perhaps more traditionally comes from education and from training.

NC: OK, well, that's very clear. And Natal, you rather hinted at what I suspect might be part of the answer to my next question, which is clearly there are sensitivities between these two. OD work, it's more strategic in nature, as we've just heard from Steve. Maybe people don't get their hands dirty actually training anybody. And it might be perceived as more senior, which is kind of what you were saying earlier, isn't it?

ND: Yeah, look, I think there's a lot of assumptions or misinformation about the different disciplines. But for most, they do generally cross over just so much and a great Learning & Development practitioner easily leans into strategic initiatives, understands that it's about changing values and behaviours across an organisation as much as skills. And then a great OD practitioner generally has facilitation background, coaching, you know, can have those great conversations that are often sit in that L&D space. So, I think how much that has come from, I don't know, a logical kind of legacy of how the disciplines developed or a bit of snobbery, I'm not so sure, but there has for some reason been this distinction where one is considered a little bit more sophisticated than the other. But I think that's quite unfair, to be honest.

NC: So, do you think you were guilty of that little bit of snobbery when you wanted that title?

ND: Oh, totally yeah, totally. I wanted to be more than at the time, I thought you know, I wanted to be more than the L&D title that was, that I had and I think because I probably maybe because if when you first start in roles in an organisation in that area, generally you start in the Learning and Development team as a kind of L&D consultant or a trainer or maybe you could even do the L&D coordinator. So, you're kind of organising the events, etc. So, I think the OD practitioner was seen as someone who had been more experienced, been around more and can have more of those senior conversations, I think. Is probably what sits in there.

NC: So, Jaimini and me, we know there is this concern about these two swim lanes with different labels. Why does it matter? How would you say that a lack of integration of Learning and Development and Organisational Development matters? How does it get in the way?

JL: It absolutely matters. And I think if you take, I think Natal was referring to sort of, you know, a label or a name and, you know, it's fascinating that she wanted to sort of, you know, put that label of Organisational Development, you know, creating a different perception to the capability, perhaps getting access to a different level of executive, you know, to be able to, you know, first and foremost, what all of us want to do, which is to understand, diagnose appropriately. And really address a key business issue. So, it absolutely matters that, you know, these various skill sets that people bring to the table, we're able to integrate those. You know, ultimately, we're all here for the same things, to me, Organisational Development is a philosophy for leaders to be vigilant and buy into the continuous development and improvement, the growth of organisations of which, you know, consists of people. But it's equally a commitment, a commitment to the right level of resources and oftentimes with organisations, when they're challenged from a financial standpoint, you know, it's Organisational Development and even, you know, Learning and Development budgets that, you know, really take the hit, casualties.

NC: OK, well, let's talk a bit more about how you get started on bringing these two areas of your Learning and Development business together. Steve, I guess it might start when you've got a new mission, something you want to do as an organisation, you've got to deploy people and work out what each can contribute. So, just sort of talk us through the various roles and how, if you're not working together, perhaps things go awry a bit.

SG: Yeah. So, I loved what you said, Natal, around the L&D people doing OD things, the OD people doing L&D things and that distinction becomes less and less clear in lots of ways of working, I think. In terms of some of the things that I've seen in organisations that I've worked in, where it goes wrong in terms of setting up those projects and those roles. You tend to find L&D people get brought in at the last minute. So, they get brought in late to support on something. So, it'll be an absolutely fantastic Organisational Development initiative. So, perhaps around leadership capability or something, there'll be a fantastic initiative all lined up and then the Learning and Development people will be the last to know about it, and the last to contribute to it. So, in terms of closing some of that divide and working more closely together, I think it's recognising that L&D is a critical part of implementing Organisational Development work. So, bringing them in early, involving them, working with their expertise around things like change, where that's one of those overlapping skill areas, around understanding behaviour, around motivation, all those different elements that Learning and Development can bring to Organisational Development practice.

NC: Would a lot of L &D people be used to dealing with change? They're sort of delivering something which is a bit sort of set and fixed, aren't they? Natal, do you want to take that?

ND: No. If L&D people can’t help change the organisation, then it’s probably going to be a bit of a failure. So, I would say that change is integral to all kinds of Learning and Development initiatives and then vice versa for Organisational Development. And I think this is where we maybe trip up is that. There is a little bit of a wider legacy that's at play here, which is across the HR and people profession, where we tend to start in our topic silos and remits as opposed to the business problem that we need to solve. And if it goes to, just as Steve was saying, you know, OK, it goes to the OD lead or OD team, they look at it, how do they solve it using their OD perspective and skills and ways of working? And then they go and bring in maybe an L&D practitioner or maybe reward or talent, depending on what's required. And then the flip side happens.

So, I once was talking to a head of L&D and he said, oh, you know, if I give it to the e-learning specialist, I get an e-learning solution. If I give it to the leadership specialist, I get a leadership solution. But actually what I want them to do is think about the business problem and what are all the different components that's needed? Because you might need e-learning, you might need leadership, you might need others. And I think that's where we need to sort of progress but I think it's a little bit of a legacy of how we've learned our craft across the whole HR profession. Unfortunately, some of the training that we even do, you know, some organisations, etc., you know, with and therefore we start with the remit that we have rather than the problem to solve and what are the different skills and solutions that sit within solving that? So, I think that's where we maybe go wrong.

NC: So, dealing with those skills and solutions, but also maybe sharing data metrics, that kind of thing. Jaimini, can you say anything about design thinking, learning frameworks, because in a way people should be singing from the same hymn sheet, shouldn't they? But I'm sensing from Steve that doesn't always happen.

JL: No, you're right, and it doesn't always happen and we're all working off of the same core principles, right? We're all working off of being very human-centric, being very customer-centric, being very problem-oriented. So, you know the irony is actually our founding principles, you know are all the same. One of the standout experiences I have, I was working for Burberry at the time. So, a luxury retailer actually had shifted their entire strategy to become a luxury retailer and this was when there was a question whether or not going digital and selling a luxury product online would be beneficial for a luxury retailer. Well, Burberry went all in and they committed and they actually bought iPads for all of their store personnel to be able to get online. They said the biggest store in the world was digital. Any of their store associates should go online and actually order any product that the customer wanted and we weren't necessarily seeing the sales numbers from the digital, online catalogue and the digital distribution. So, I went traveling to the different regions. I remember going into one of our regions and actually into the stores and actually asking them, observing and asking them, I don't see you using your iPad to make this purchase. And they said, well, you know, we're incentivised to actually sell the merchandise that's in our store.

That goes towards our bonus, that goes towards our regional bonus. And so we're going to try and sell that inventory first, it's not that we don't want to operate as one team or we don't believe in the brand. But, you know, that's their reward mechanism. So, I went over to the CEO, we had this conversation and, you know, that was it. You know, the problem was, is that we had our reward mechanism wrong. And so the distribution of the product, we moved downstream to the regions, the actual credit for those sales, we moved down to the regions and all of a sudden, you know, it was a behavioural element. But it took, you know, a number of different aspects of the people profession and, you know, digital sales started to increase, you know, incredibly. But that was starting with a challenge. That was starting with a business problem and then we backed into, you know, what were the mechanisms, the levers, the elements that we could change to really influence that problem.

NC: And Steve George, I mean, I know you have to judge a good many winning learning projects as part of your work. Have you any thoughts on this distinction between Learning and Development and whether there have been examples of companies or organisations that do manage to break the mould?

SG: Yeah, there have been many. I think quite often where we see the most effective Organisational Development projects, they're where they are integrated very closely with their L&D colleagues. And to Natal's point, colleagues from across the organisation. So, finding their organisational allies and building that project team around meeting whatever the business need is. When we're judging the awards, for example, that's quite often some of the stuff that we see is that overlap. So, when does an L&D project become much closer to an OD project, for example, because there is so much similarity between some of the things that they're working on. But certainly that closer integration does tend to lead to better outcomes and more success and the bigger project team you have from across the organisation, the more reliable your data is around the problem you're looking to solve, the more breadth of expertise you're bringing in, the stronger your evidence base is. So, it's that team effort towards solving the organisational problem that's the important bit more than the roles.

NC: Yeah, makes sense. Natal Dunk, isn't one problem that HR does use a lot of proprietary platforms, people providing outside solutions, and these are often rather strongly focused on organisational or learning lines?

ND: Oh, yeah, like I think that some of these topic swim lanes that we're talking about, encouraged or upheld by the markets that sit around it and the industry. And Learning and Development has a very strong industry, very tech-based industry, that they're trying to sell particular products that will help you fix a business problem, such as skills development. And so they're sort of naturally, I suppose, encouraging these different kind of topics silos because they want to sell into each one of them. So, I think that's definitely an issue. Though what I would say is, you know, to both the examples just given there.

I think one of the biggest shifts that is happening in our profession is this move to being much more of a strategic collective and a multi-skilled function. You know, I was just on a conversation today with a CHRO of a big UK bank, and that was the big thing that she wants to achieve for her function was understanding the end-to-end journey of the employee and how that is the over-arching offering and how everyone needs to work together to deliver that out. And if we take a couple of, you know, key theories that are out there, there's Josh Bersin's Systemic HR, there's the Gartner Model. You know, there's lots of models coming out to show that actually, you know, how do we see the employee experience as a product? And then there's different component parts, but we have to work in this very integrated way to actually deliver that out across the organisation. And I think some of the problems we now face, you know, AI upskilling, you can't just go off and teach that in a classroom, L&D wise, you can't just go and release a digital e-learning, and you can't just talk about the cultural mindset shift, you actually need to do all of it together to make it successful.

So, I think more and more to solve the big problems in an organisation, the collective HR function is realising, oh no, we need to actually put problem-solving teams behind this with different skill sets, you know, multiple skill sets to get it done. So, I think that's definitely the shift, but it's not as easy as it sounds to do it, I think that's the thing, of course, about legacy, yeah.

NC: Which immediately raises the question, Jaimini Lahini, if L&D and OD are stronger together, is there an argument to totally integrate them structurally within your organisation?

JL: I think, you know, it's a great question. And hopefully my organisation design community will support me on this. But, you know, I walk into a lot of organisations these days, you know, with my very strong design passion and hat. And the first thing I say is don't touch your structure. You know, that's not necessarily going to be the answer. I think, you know, what Natal is alluding to, what Steve is alluding to, is, you know, we have that gift to work together. We have that gift to collaborate, we have that gift to have those conversations without making any structural change whatsoever. To me, I think that is a wonderful organizational learning. And I think, you know, the CHRO and, you know, individuals in that role, you know have that ability to make that happen.

Now, interestingly, you mentioned the John Bersin. I mean, in terms of, we're getting some wonderful, wonderful research coming through now. I love Gartner coming through, Deloitte coming through, John Bersin coming through. Their three top capabilities from their research, internal HR capabilities that are going to have the greatest impact, where we absolutely can work together. Number one, developing leaders and managers, you know, what a great, you know, aspect to work together on. Number two, change management, communication. Number three, applying organisation design principles. Nowhere on there, these top, these top coaching, these top mentoring and at the very bottom is, you know, thinking about your HR operating model. Fascinating, but I think it's looking outside in and not necessarily internally out.

NC: We've got a great podcast on HR's future operating models just a few episodes back, if anybody wants to check that out. Steve, you're head of learning, so I think I know what your answer to this is going to be. But maybe one of the problems is that OD professionals just don't properly know what L&D is capable of and can do, and vice versa. Maybe they need to know more about each other's expertise.

SG: I don't think it's fair to say either way. I don't like the particularly oppositional approach to roles. I think, as Natal and Jaimini have both said, we're all working towards the same aim. So, if we think of the organisation as a system, we're both working on that system, just at different levels within it. So, as an L&D professional, we might be working with individuals or teams within that, whereas the Organisational Development function or team might be working at that bigger, more holistic view. But we're both working towards the same aim And I think that collegiate approach is to be as encouraged as possible.

NC: In which case, Natal, I just wonder whether for somebody in mid-career in the profession, having the label of OD or L&D might be a problem. You need to signal your versatility and people, whether we like it or not, have gone down particular tracks with the professional qualifications to go with them.

ND: Yeah, and this is maybe where I would just slightly disagree with not changing the structure at some point. So, while I definitely don't think you start there, and I think HR, the profession can be obsessed with operating models and we often, you know, we're constantly debating the Ulrich Model and how it's changing and what, you know, what should we be next? But I think there's something about breaking down exactly that.

If we think about the people strategy and building, you know, solutions to the biggest problems that the organisation has. We have to be quite ruthless in our prioritisation and really go after these big kind of topics such as building leaders for roles of the future, you know, developing AI skills at pace, you know, filling skills gaps, digitalisation, these kind of things. And I think to do that, you have to be very collective in that prioritisation and forming your kind of strategy and your project groups. Because if you start just within these different siloed topic areas, going out to solve each one yourself, you end up with a lot of initiatives. We end up putting too much cognitive load into the organisation and we compete with each other's initiative essentially. And so, if you've got something that the wellbeing team is doing, something that the recruitment team is doing, something that the reward team is doing and they all release it at the same time, it's just overload and it's too much for employees and the organisation. So, I think there's something about how do our methods of working become much more collective, strategic, agile and we properly diagnose business problems and bring these multi-skilled groups together to go and deliver solutions.

And where I've seen this kind of become quite successful, and I think it really goes into then challenging titles, is one team I worked with over a period of years, they did start with, OK, what are the methods? How do we solve problems differently? Brought in design thinking, brought in some agility. But over time, they realised they just couldn't release people from their existing remit and, you know, teams to move them into project teams quick enough to solve the problems in real-time, and so they actually ended up restructuring and they do have something that's probably quite different to what I've seen before and so they have HR strategy business partners, they have what they call people services and essentials, but they then just have this one big, bigger team that's people products. And in that is L&D, OD, X, HR tech, HR business partners, reward, and solve business challenges as they're prioritised, which might have, you know, OD and L&D components, but it could be about reward as the main focus, you know, rather than the topic silo kind of way of working. And I think that's, I'm seeing that more and more and I think it's just going to, you know, the more that we try and work this way, the more we'll probably have to break down some of the older structures that we had. Yeah and I think that plays into the titles. So, we'll be a people product expert as opposed to, an L&D versus OD, I think, in the future. Yeah.

NC: So, Jaimini, these labels, what would you do about them?

JL: I think one of the things that we can do as a community is actually peel the layers of these labels and I think it's changing our language and actually changing our language to talk more commercially. HR isn't a separate part of an organisation, it has absolutely equity. You know, HR, we feel the same bruises and scars. So, you know, let's talk the civil service, let's talk the NHS. Under huge pressure, you know, they just announced quite dramatically, actually, traumatically, you know, one day they're saying that there's going to be a certain number of job cuts within NHS England. The next thing we know, they're going to get rid of the entire department. It's very unsettling. It's unsettling for individuals. It's unsettling for leaders. We want to know, how do we do that in the best way to preserve you know, the mental health, the awareness, you know, these are the problems that we are talking about.

I haven't said the word L&D and OD yet, but, you know, I think what we can do is peel the layers and say, well, do you know what? It takes a certain type of leadership mindset to be able to go through that. It takes a certain skill set to be able to evaluate, you know, how we do that. You know, do we have a timeframe? Is there a particular number? Is this going to be a technology sort of driven solution? We actually have to peel those layers and not use those labels. Organisational Development, when I look at various job descriptions and it's almost funny to me, I remember looking for organisation design specialists and people will just put OD on their CVs. You know, I interview them and they're like, well, I've done a bit of training. I've done a bit of change management. I'm good at communication and I'm like, OK, but your CV said OD, where's the design? Oh no, I've never done any of that.

So, we really have to be very, very articulate, very specific so that we can help business leaders with those problems. Organisational Development, there is employee experience, there's employee engagement, there's leadership development, there's culture, there's huge systems, you know, sort of problem solving. Let's talk a few levels down from the labels, because that's really when I think we're going to get to the root of the problems that we're trying to solve.

ND: I would just add to that because I think that's, we talk about being more skills-based in our approach to careers, you know, team building and talent. And this is exactly what it is. You know, we actually need to go down into, well, what are the skills that we need in a role? And that might pull on OD, Learning and Development, but it might actually also pull on things like comms or HR tech or some other areas as well. Definitely design thinking, human-centric design and I think if we get good at that, we can also go and help the organisation do that better in how they build teams and how they scale teams up and down based on the products they need to deliver. I also think it's really interesting because when you're talking about the OD of design versus development and the kind of misunderstanding. I find that the OD term doesn't translate very well. So, in different countries I've worked in, they think it's more like design or they don't quite understand how does it differentiates from L&D. So, I think we can trip ourselves up a little bit as well with these labels. So yeah, strip it back, definitely.

NC: OK, well, we've covered a lot of ground. Just before we finish, maybe let me just ask each of you just for a single tip or a bit of advice from your experience on breaking down boundaries, maybe conflicting priorities or bringing a project to everybody more quickly. Any thoughts on that practice you've seen, Steve?

SG: So, I think just to repeat what Natal said earlier is identify what the business problem is, look at the expertise you need and the roles that have that expertise and bring everyone together from the start. So, create your project team and all work towards the same aim.

NC: Short and sweet. Natal.

ND: Definitely agree. I'm the same. It starts with a problem that you need to solve. I use a framework called the T-shape, which a lot of people might understand. So the vertical is, the specialisms you need, but then the horizontal are the general capabilities. And I think what we're talking about here is you want a few specialists in the team, L&D, OD, probably change and a few others, but then everyone needs good general capabilities in these skills, and also things like people analytics, comms, marketing. So, think about the T-shape of the team and how that helps you then go and solve that problem. And definitely do it based on the problem rather than the model and these other things, you know, do it based on the problem at hand because that's the best way to do it. Yeah.

NC: Great. Jaimini, very unfair. You're last.

JL: You know what? I think one of the obstacles is, you know, actually having the right budget to be able to fall upon the required skill sets that are needed. You know, if you look at the research, you know, in terms of the leadership development research, you know, more than 60% of companies that actually invest in, let's say, leadership development, which would have a massive impact to the performance of an organisation. They spend, you know, less than $500, maybe £400 per year per individual. Those individuals probably spend more, this is a Josh Bersin analogy, but they would spend more on coffee than they do on a particular need that can result in, you know, the stats show us, you know, 17% more likely to be a great place to work if you've got a great leadership development practice, 12 times more likely to engage and retain employees if you have a great leadership development programme.

So, to all of my colleagues, and this is why I love working with CIPD. Professionally, we recognise each of those disciplines separately as specialisms. There is a T-shape where you could be a generalist, but if you put your label, you know, I'm going to hold you to account. If you say that you're an organisation design, OD, I am going to ask the questions because I know when I need the L&D specialism, CIPD recognises that, the HR, the organisation design and the organisation development. So, let's get underneath the layers and let's really talk about the strengths that we bring to the table to a particular business problem and have that conversation with the business leader, not amongst ourselves.

NC: Better together. It's certainly coming through loud and clear. Thank you very much indeed to Jaimini Lakhani of Lumiere, Natal Dunk of PXO Culture and CIPD's Head of Learning, Steve George, who knew learning professionals have so much to learn about themselves. If you've not caught it, do have a listen to our podcast from last month. We had a fascinating exploration of finding room in your organisation for people with previous convictions, including contributor, former prisoner, now advising on the best use of people, the valuable and often wasted resource. But until next time, from me, Nigel Cassidy, and the whole CIPD podcast team, it's goodbye.