Why we should rename L&D. And why it won't make a difference.
Thoughts and reflections from my LinkedIn network.
In the early days of the L&D Dispatch, I wrote a newsletter titled ‘'Content is king' (and other meaningless phrases)’.
At the time, I’d been reading Ed Catmull’s Creativity Inc., and the following passage had lodged itself deep in my brain:
‘Merely repeating ideas means nothing. You must act – and think – accordingly. […] Managers scour books and magazines looking for greater understanding but settle instead for adopting a new terminology, thinking that using fresh words will bring them closer to their goals. When someone comes up with a phrase that sticks, it becomes a meme, which migrates around even as it disconnects from its original meaning.’
As I argued in the newsletter, this obsession with terminology is pervasive in L&D:
‘Spend five minutes scrolling through L&D LinkedIn, and you’ll find someone making an impassioned plea for all of us to stop using one word, and start using another.
We don’t design ‘e-learning’ — we design ‘learning experiences’.
We don’t care about ‘learning objectives’ – we care about ‘learning outcomes’.
We don’t serve ‘learners’ – we serve ‘customers’.’
Then, last week, I too succumbed to the seductive allure of ‘fresh words’, and asked the following question on LinkedIn: ‘If you were given the power to rename 'Learning & Development', what would you do?’
This question was front of mind because I’d recently recorded two podcast episodes on sales enablement, and it struck me that ‘performance enablement’ would be a much more accurate description of what L&D does.
The response to the question was pretty wild (by my LinkedIn newbie standards).
Here are just a few of the suggestions I received:
‘The Knowledge Lab’ - Wesley Atkinson
‘Growth Gurus’ - Ady Howes
‘Solution Design’ - Kelly Morin
‘Performance & Growth’ - Sean Brown
‘Growth & Empowerment’ - Paulina P.
‘Learning & Doing’ - Neil John Cunningham
‘People Empowerment’ - Paul Kraff
‘Upskilling & Development’ - Kristin Neumayer
‘People & Organizational Development’ - Andy Seehusen
‘Interactive Education’ - Mike Colombo
‘Strategic Enhancement’ - Lisa Hartman
While I think that any of these would offer a meaningful improvement on ‘Learning & Development’, the next questions I asked was: ‘Do names and titles even matter?’
On this, my network was divided, perhaps tipping ever so slightly into the ‘No’ camp.
Here are two illustrative responses from both perspectives:
‘I think they do matter. These words create a connotation, a belief about the role and the person in it. The problem for L&D is “learning”. As learning is synonymous with schooling. The expectation then is that L&D focus first and primarily on school activities - courses, classes, modules, assessments, etc. However, *Performance* is a business term. A shift here changes the focus from products to process and improvement efforts are more far reaching.’ - Mark Britz
‘After studying the history of the field from post-WWII and beyond, I feel like we change names when we're unhappy with the reputation we've earned. But changing the name doesn't change our behavior (and therefore our reputation), and we of all people should know better than that. It's an awkward irony, and I'm seeing L&D size up sales enablement and customer education, trying to steal their terms, but what they should be taking is their approach to evaluation and proving ROI.’ - Heidi Kirby
For me, ‘reputation’ is the word that jumps out here.
When I suggested earlier that ‘performance enablement’ would be a more accurate description of what L&D does, what I meant was that it would be a more accurate description of what L&D aspires to do.
Every good L&D pro knows that performance is about more than learning. Most want to do more than just build courses.
But, generally, L&D doesn’t have a reputation for driving performance. It has a reputation for developing training. And so the cycle continues.
To break that cycle and change our reputation, we need to start with small experiments to demonstrate our value.
Speaking on an episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast last year, JD Dillon gave the following advice:
‘For me, it’s about making small tweaks. […] I scrounged and I duct-taped the pieces together. But not as the solution, as the proof of concept to start turning people’s heads, to start influencing people to think differently, and to start earning the trust that I needed to then make the bigger recommendations. […] Start architecting […] the vision for what you think enabling people in your organization can be.’
To bring all of this back to Ed Catmull, we can (and maybe we should) rename ‘Learning & Development’, but changing our terminology won’t bring us closer to our goals.
Want to share your thoughts on this week’s newsletter? Then get in touch by emailing custom@mindtools.com or reply to this newsletter from your inbox.
🎧 On the podcast
The World Economic Forum’s recent ‘Future of Jobs’ report positioned ‘AI and big data’ and ‘technological literacy’ as skills that will become increasingly important over the next five years. But what do these skills look like in practice? What do we mean when we talk about ‘AI literacy’?
In last week’s episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast, Anna and I were joined by Erica Werneman Root, legal consultant and co-founder of Knowledge Bridge, to discuss:
what ‘AI literacy’ means in different contexts;
the compliance implications of building AI literacy in organizations;
how L&D can help employees develop AI skills.
Check out the episode below. 👇
You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify or the podcast page of our website. Want to share your thoughts? Get in touch @RossDickieMT, @RossGarnerMT or #MindToolsPodcast
📖 Deep dive
In the latest instalment in the debate over the productivity benefits or downsides of working from home, a recent research paper studied the impact of WFH on the performance of staff in Greater Manchester Police’s ‘Crime Recording and Resolution Unit’ (CRRU).
As the paper’s authors point out, the CRRU is an interesting research subject due to the nature of the unit’s work:
‘The task consists primarily of recording the details of cases from emergency and non-emergency calls. Recording cases does not require team interactions. Following a deterministic work schedule, police staff alternate between working from home (WFH) and working from the office (WFO). The CRRU is an ideal setting to study the impact of WFH on workers’ productivity: there is an objective and well-measured metric to evaluate workers’ performance (i.e., the number of cases recorded per day), staff alternate working at the office and at home, and tasks are as good as randomly assigned (in certain periods).’
The researchers found that, while working from home did not appear to affect the quality of the participants’ work, it did lead to a 12% increase in their productivity, largely attributable to reduced workplace distractions.
Fenizia, A., & Kirchmaier, T. (2025). ‘Not Incentivized Yet Efficient: Working From Home in the Public Sector’.
👹 Missing links
✈️ No, It’s Not Getting More Dangerous to Fly
When an American Airlines jet collided with a Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River in January this year, it marked the first major US commercial airline crash in over fifteen years. Since then, a number of other accidents and near-misses have been reported, including a Delta Airlines aircraft which flipped on landing at Toronto International Airport. Despite these incidents, the numbers suggest that air travel is not getting more dangerous. Like everything else, though, whether Americans agree with this reality comes down to their politics.
In my last Dispatch, I referenced OpenAI’s new ‘Deep Research’ tool, which is purportedly capable of finding, analyzing and synthesizing hundreds of online sources to generate a report worthy of a research analyst. Over the last month, Ben Betts has been putting the tool through its paces, applying it to study recent mergers and acquisitions in the e-learning industry. Check out Ben’s blog to get his verdict!
A couple of weeks ago, I went down to London to meet up with some of my Mindtools colleagues. Over lunch, I was amazed to see Ersan, one of our Marketing wizards, activate the torch on his iPhone by yelling ‘Lumos!’ at Siri. As it turns out, this is just one of many Harry Potter spells you can ‘cast’ with the help of Apple’s digital assistant. Naturally, Ross G’s first impulse was to try ‘Avada Kedavra!’
👋 And finally…
A friend showed me this video last week. May it brighten your day as it brightened mine.
👍 Thanks!
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