Ex-BBC HR Director Lucy Adams: 'Stop spoon-feeding L&D'

At a recent Rakuten conference, Lucy Adams spoke to Executive Grapevine about how important it is that L&D moves into a new area of self-sufficiency.

“What we will see is a complete undermining of the traditional learning and development we have today. Billions of dollars are spent on training and development in the US every year, only to have 80% of it forgotten in just 30 days.

“We have wasted a fortune by spoon-feeding ‘one size fits all’ to passive participants. What we need to see now is a development of people’s capability to be resourceful. So, for example, stimulating curiosity and setting standards to open them up to a level of information, whilst equipping them with the skills so that they can go and learn it for themselves.

“So, for example, if you look at organisations like BP, they have a dramatic training budget. And the time has come to now think about the different styles of learning, contextualised learning, and just-in-time learning. I saw a brilliant presentation which explained how we are actually moving away from the idea of me as the guru, teacher or trainer who is just telling you something. The model is now the equivalent of Google Maps, just there to tell us where to go at the point we need that specific information.