You are not the main character in this story
Work is a Wonderland, but the L&D professional is not Alice.
One of the great privileges of working for an L&D vendor is the opportunity to explore the inner workings of different organizations. In the years that my L&D Dispatch co-author Ross Dickie and I have worked together, I estimate that we’ve developed custom learning solutions for over 60 clients: including household names, global tech giants, international schools programmes, government departments and not-for-profits.
We have also, through our content library and platforms, had the chance to interact with organizations who use our technology in all sorts of different ways. Just last year, I spoke to over 30 such clients as part of a research project.
And through our professional networks, including you, dear reader, we’ve enjoyed getting an insight into the day-to-day concerns of L&D practitioners, consultants, vendors, researchers, and authors.
Across all of these conversations the recurring theme is that of the hero’s journey: the L&D professional who goes off on an adventure, tackling multiple crises, and returns home victorious and forever changed.
It’s an attractive story that maps neatly against Star Wars, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings and most religious narratives. But the story I think best reflects the day-to-day life of an L&D pro is Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.
🐇 Into the rabbit hole
As L&D pros, we follow the white rabbit down the rabbit hole, chasing the elusive learning impact, return on investment, or business results.
We cry into the pool of tears, frustrated when we don’t feel that we’re making progress.
We take part in nonsensical races with others, where everyone sets off in a different direction.
We sit through tea parties, in boardrooms and on Teams calls, where various Mad Hatters introduce their crazy ideas and unrealistic demands.
And we try to avoid the Queen of Hearts, that stakeholder who is obsessed with executing people.
But while it’s tempting to see ourselves as Alice in this Wonderland we call work, that isn’t really our role.
🦸🏾♀️ Introducing the real hero
The main character in the story of our organizations is the frontline employee: the person who interacts with customers, makes the decisions that affect the lives of the people we serve, and ultimately shapes the experience that people have of our products and services.
Here in L&D, we’re just the helper: the hookah-smoking caterpillar who offers tools to help the hero overcome their challenges, who asks questions that help the hero reflect on the decisions they make, and who acts as a champion for change.

What I like about this role is that we’re not just helping one hero, we’re helping all of them. If we do our job well, we can have a wider impact that extends far beyond our organizations to our customers, or others who use our services.
And it helps to remember that we will never be able to leave Wonderland: we are part of Wonderland. So enjoy the weirdness. For me, it’s a privilege.
We love hearing from our readers. To share your experience as an L&D pro, or for help navigating this wonderful Wonderland, contact us at custom@mindtools.com or reply to this newsletter from your inbox.
This week’s newsletter was inspired by a LinkedIn post from April Dunford.
🎧 On the podcast
This week, Gemma and I enjoyed speaking to leadership coach and positive pyschologist Sandra Berko.
‘Positive psychology’ is one of those terms that’s easily misunderstood. It can sound like fluffy nonsense, or it can lead to the kind of toxic positivity that causes long-term harm.
But if you dig deeper into the techniques it offers, and the impact it can have, you discover a discipline that helps build resilience, manage emotions and navigate uncertainty.
In this week’s Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Sandra does a wonderful job of helping us explore some of those techniques and understand the impact positive psychology can have.
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
On our next podcast, we feature an interview with Martin Gonzalez, co-author of The Bonfire Moment. It’s a great conversation, with Martin taking us through the transformative (though sometimes uncomfortable) conversations that teams need to have when their individual bullsh*t (his term) gets in the way of team success.
During the discussion, Martin referenced the work of Albert Hirschman. Specifically, his 'principle of the hiding hand’.
As Martin tells it in his book, Hirschman’s theory was that no large project would ever get started if we truly understood how difficult it would be. By the time it becomes clear that additional time and money is required, those involved need to tap into hidden wells of creativity to find a solution.
To quote Hirschman:
‘Since we necessarily underestimate our creativity it is desirable that we underestimate to a roughly similar extent the difficulties of the tasks we face, so as to be tricked by these two offsetting underestimates into undertaking tasks which we can, but otherwise would not dare, tackle.’
Hirschman wrote that in 1967, and his ideas have since faced criticism. Cass Sunstein (of Nudge fame), points out that his ideas were a narrative description of what he had observed: not a hypothesis he had tested.
For every major project that is saved by underestimated creativity, there are those that never get completed because the initial underestimates were fatal.
Martin’s point stands, though: If you want to embark upon a major undertaking, you have to believe it’s going to work. Though failure is common, it’s an absolute certainty if you never get started.
Sunstein, C. R. (2014). Albert Hirschman's hiding hand. Available at SSRN 2448357.
👹 Missing links
If you’re a knowledge worker, most of your colleagues are already using AI tools at work. That’s the finding of a new report from Microsoft and LinkedIn titled ‘AI at Work Is Here. Now Comes the Hard Part’. It turns out that while organizations are dithering over top-down implementation of AI, 75% of knowledge workers are already using it. Of those, 78% are bringing their own AI tools (BYOAI), with many reluctant to tell their employer that they’re doing so.
The report above will come as no surprise to South Park fans. In season 26, episode 4, Stan discovers he can use ChatGPT to write texts to his girlfriend. The next obvious step? Using it to write essays for school. The influx of high quality essays quickly overwhelms Stan’s teacher, Mr. Garrison—until Garrison realises he can use ChatGPT to write detailed feedback without even reading them. (A Paramount+ subscription is required for the link).
👩🏽💼On the subject of feedback…
We’ve been enjoying Jess Almlie’s blog series ‘Things We Can’t Out-train’, and wanted to draw attention to her latest post. In it, Jess argues that no learning intervention can replace a manager who won’t give feedback. It’s easier to avoid a difficult conversation with the phrase ‘we need to train our people on X’ but, if you’re a manager, there’s no substitute for a frank discussion. That said, you can provide better training for your managers and, if that’s of interest, hit reply to this email to schedule a call.
👋 And finally…
It would be remiss to discuss Alice in Wonderland without including this absolute banger from 1967. Enjoy!
👍 Thanks!
Thanks for reading The L&D Dispatch from Mind Tools! If you’d like to speak to us, work with us, or make a suggestion, you can email custom@mindtools.com.
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