The world is changing too fast for us to rest on our laurels, writes Barry Johnson
We readers of L&D blogs are, in the main, professionals who seek to help our peers learn. We are subject matter experts who have a professional drive to pass on the latest knowledge, skills and attitudes related to that expertise, so that others can share what we have learned. We are crucial to the UK’s economy. We, like all others in this turbulent world, are in a state of unprecedented and consistent change.
We have been asking ourselves: how is what we have been doing changing? What changes have we made already? What other changes do we need to make? I have been learning and relearning rapidly over the past couple of years – as I expect you have, too – about the use of technologies, how to engage new clients, what changes are affecting clients and how we can serve them in their changing situation.
We have been studying neuroscience, modernising changes to learning facilitation, the resurrection of past methodologies and the core changes to the root of our profession within the context of the broad and specific changes faced by our clients.
Recently I revisited The Iliad by Homer. I know, I must be mad. In the introduction to the translation by Alexander Pope, I read the following that hit the nail firmly on the head of what we in L&D face. Of course, there is nothing constant in this world and this snippet, I think, captures that inconsistency:
“Scepticism is as much the result of knowledge, as knowledge is of scepticism. To be content with what we at present know, is, for the most part, to shut our ears against conviction; since, from the very gradual character of our education, we must continually forget, and emancipate ourselves from knowledge previously acquired; we must set aside old notions and embrace fresh ones; and as we learn, we must daily be unlearning something which has cost us no small labour and anxiety to acquire.”
– Theodore Alois Buckley (1825-56)
Yes, fellow L&D professionals, we have a lot of learning to do.
Barry Johnson is a non-executive director of Learning Partners