I had another conversation last week about the 3As of learning. A reminder: much of the work we do in L&D can be drilled down into 3 A words:

Awareness
People are alerted that they probably already know something, or that they need to know something. They may already have the knowledge or experience, or they may need to find it, build it, or make sense of it.

Acquisition
This is where most L&D work has traditionally sat. It’s the space where we inject information into people and help them develop the processing and cognition to recognise when they need to use it and how.

Application
People are able to practice the skill and get better at it – perhaps after 100 occurrences – as I mentioned yesterday.

The frustration for me – and many people in L&D – is that we are centred in the Acquisition space. We have, over decades, been the people to create, craft, design, and deliver content that people acquire through content libraries, courses, and workshops. Now? They ask their AI tool, look on YouTube, or ask their colleagues…as they have done forever.

Relevant L&D is able to operate across all three of these A domains, don’t get stuck in Acquisition.