In L&D, there’s a loud narrative right now that we’re broken.. But brilliant work is already happening | Kim Rodrigues

“If everyone in the profession hears we’re broken often enough, it really starts to affect how they see their own work. It affects how they pitch, how ambitious they’re willing to be…”

Kim Rodrigues (Natwest Group) described this as giving ourselves a narrative problem on top of a practice problem.

But we can shift that narrative! By recognising when great work is being done, sharing it openly and prioritising progress over perfection.

Kim shared some great examples of this happening in practice that she’s seen recently, including:

• Measurement maps that help them get a deeper understanding of KPIs and outcomes.
• A shift in mandatory learning with pre-assessment that respect people’s knowledge.
• Delivering a learning experience for branch managers by nailing the design intent.

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Four takeaways on brilliant work that’s happening in L&D

1. Work in motion, honestly shared, helps us move forward together

The positive examples Kim saw had one thing in common: they were works in progress.

People testing, prototyping, sharing what was happening to help L&D pros learn together.

“Nothing was the finished article. Nothing there had a big bow around it, all done, and complete. It was all in testing, it was being refined, it was failing fast, it was prioritising progress over perfection.

“What we need as a profession is more of that raw progress. Not case studies from five years ago that have got that nice neat bow on them, but work that’s in motion, really honestly shared.”

It can feel vulnerable sharing work in progress, you might think it’ll open the door to lots of questions – but it adds value to others, and we have to adopt that mindset.

2. Respect what people already know (and deliver more personalised learning experiences)

Mandatory learning comes with challenges, and Kim spoke about the need to “move away from the idea that mandatory learning has to mean that everyone spends the same amount of time on the same content.”

The team that Kim saw doing great work asked themselves a key question to help with this:

“How do we keep our organisation, our customers and our colleagues safe and secure, but also respect what people already know?”

They used pre-assessments to answer that last question, and it allowed them to reduce training time for colleagues who were already able to demonstrate that capability.

“The benefits are really strong because, yes, there’s efficiency there. It’s driven a substantial reduction in training hours and that comes with a commercial benefit in terms of resource time and cost…

“But this is about experience as well, and with what that team created, the story’s as much about relevance as it is efficiency…

“By respecting that prior knowledge, it’s good for the colleague experience, it’s good for productivity, it’s great commercially, and when it’s done well, it can strengthen the focus and effectiveness of mandatory learning rather than dilute it.”

3. Start with a clear problem, match that with the right design intent

Kim talked us through a recent development experience for frontline colleagues, which recognised the “need to support branch managers in thinking like a customer and acting like an entrepreneur.”

It was a structured space for peer collaboration, that really focused on the problem it was there to solve.

They established a really clear problem/the metrics it would influence:

“The team had a real crystal clear view on how that would show up in business outcomes and commercial metrics over time. Whether that’s business activity, referrals, customer satisfaction.”

The design intent was built on that foundation:

“It wasn’t about shipping a digital module or content. It was about practical application over information transfer… about creating an environment for sharing and learning from each other with the right prompts and tools.”

“The real value hasn’t been in content consumption. It’s been about seeing what happens when people connect and share what works and build confidence through practical commercial conversations.”

4. Use a measurement map to understand impact

Happy sheets get a bad rep, but they have their place. If you’re collecting post-event feedback or piloting an experience, they’re great…

The problem is when they become your entire measurement strategy! Kim and her team use a measurement map to prevent that happening:

“Sometimes we can scoff at completions and say ‘oh it’s just activity’. And it is, but it’s a really valuable part of the story as well. It tells us something. But what we do is we build on top of that… and we use something that we call a measurement map.”

Kim shared two key parts involved in this:

• They consider which metrics are going to help demonstrate learning gain/behavioural shift.
• They’re capturing outputs in a way that helps them understand what it does for business outcomes.

“It almost gives us a framework to work through in terms of testing our own thinking on a project-by-project basis, but also with stakeholders as well.

“It allows us to really make sure that we’re partnering with the business to understand, right, what data can we capture from an L&D perspective, what data will we bring in from a business perspective, how will that all come together to create a really powerful story.”