In a recent People Management on-line article - Daniel Wain (who will be speaking at HRD in April) previews some of the finding from the CIPD tenth annual Learning & Development survey.
The article reveals that the results of 1999 survey reads 'like a sneak preview of the latest survey results'.
In 1999:
- eighty-one per cent of respondents were reporting training activities explicitly designed to support strategic business objectives
- knowledge of business objectives ranked almost as high as knowledge of people management, at 95.4 and 97.8 per cent respectively
- skills of organisational development, consultancy and knowledge of business objectives were seen as important for the training manager
While I agree that as a profession we do need to reflect on whether our pace of 'evolution' is sufficient ..... I also feel that the statement: “One senses little real movement over the past decade – worrying given the extraordinary developments that have happened in the wider business and economic world.” misses a key point.
L&D (in the context of HR) is primarily focused on people-management and leadership effectivness.
As expertly highlight by Gary Hamel in his current book - The Future of Management; it is actually the model of management that has had 'little real movement'. This is not just over the past decade, but the last century !
So we do need to keep the Leadership Pipeline flowing ...while (in my view) playing our part in management innovation. For most organizations I suspect that this will continue to be reflected overall as evolution rather than revolution !
PS: I love the 'sound-bite' from Jimmy Naudi, Head of L&D at Christian Aid: "We have to facilitate more, helping people to help themselves, acting as 'a guide on the side' rather than 'a sage on a stage' .."
