It’s no secret that many traditional professions are undergoing profound change. Finance, for instance, is growing well beyond simply accounting, auditing and financial reporting. Evolution is inevitable, however the last two-years have turbo-charged the profession’s change through technology, geopolitics, climate change and of course the global pandemic. These forces are reimagining traditional career paths, which is in turn demanding more proficient skills.
Leading us to consider whether existing learning and development (L&D) approaches are fit for purpose.
A Harvard Business Review study concluded that the U$357.7 Billion spent annually (in 2020) did not achieve the desired return on investment (ROI) where only 1 in 10 use the learned skills and 1 in 4 believe training improved their performance. These results are hard to ignore, clearly L&D spend fails to yield sustained value. So, is there a better way to learn the critical personal and business skills we need?
In a word: yes!
A new learning method: the inside-out approach
The traditional learning approaches favour, what I term, an outside-in learning style. Meaning we learn about a skill from someone else’s perspective – what works for them, their personal tricks or perhaps the tactical mechanics of the skill. How many of us tried a 10-minute ab workout only to disappointingly realize a chiselled 6-pack would not emerge merely from a few minutes of abdominal crunches each day, without considering a host of other factors such as diet, mindset, movement or cardiovascular exercise.
The main limitations of existing L&D strategies are that they are ill-adapted to individual learners, they’re designed for mass p...
