I was thinking the other day about the pace of learning in organisations. I was in a conversation with someone kicking around culture and the idea of an organisational learning pace came up. It often feels like the learning function is somehow expected to ‘manage’ this speed through its governance of the learning process.

The levers we have to control this pace are, however, very blunt tools. The idea of having control over the pace that stuff happens is probably a bit too much for most in L&D. and I think it’s not like we don’t try, but our attempts are limited. We can make sure the compliance, mandated, required stuff is completed and we have a LMS to record data of what has happened, how quickly, etc.

But that stuff is the minimum pace. It’s like sweeping up behind everyone, making sure the stragglers are picked up. Even then we miss people who never get round to doing the minimum. 80% completion rates anyone?

I’m more interested in the speedsters. They’re pushing ahead and moving faster than the organisation might like. It’s clear we shouldn’t be throttling them back, but the temptation to make sure they’re not racing ahead can be difficult to avoid. We should be celebrating these people since they’re leading the pace. They’re role modelling self-determined learning – moving at a pace and likely direction which we’d love to see replicated. They’re probably working off our map too, finding things outside our preferred routes.

Why do we want to control the pace? Is it to provide us with a semblance of control? Does it even exist? Let me know in the comments.