By Meredith Belbin
In these busy times of information overload, large amounts of time for those of us working in Learning & Development - either as specialists or line managers with L&D as a string to our bow - is spent deciding what information to throw away and what to keep.
Throwing some things out is obvious, but what do you do with that article of interest in a magazine or quality newspaper that is definitely worth retaining? You can cut it out, file it and have frustrating difficulty locating the original source or the whereabouts of the sought-after passage at a later date! Or lose it completely!
Increasingly as Learning & Development practioners our attention is not just on the delivery of learning & development processes but quite rightly on the strategic link between organisational goals and learning interventions and the evaluation of such processes.
Summarised – L&D specialists and those involved in L&D are required to deal with more information, to work more strategically and at the same time deliver interventions that make a real difference in the organisations we work within.
A specialised publication is a useful way to save time, filter out vital information and keep up to date with thinking about L&D from both strategic and operational views as well as getting practical ideas to augment our own learning and practice.
This new CIPD publication aims to lift and challenge our thinking and fills the gap between what already exists and what is truly needed.
On one hand, circulation pressures are continually impinging on more general-interest publications, pressing them to become populist. On the other, academic journals are so beset by standards and refereeing that many months of delay and enforced revision is common before anything acceptable is allowed to appear.
This new publication is designed to sit between the popularist of mass appeal and the self-styled rigour of the academic ivory tower, with grounded chapters based on best practice and experience. The appearance of the CIPD’s Learning & Development subscription publication says something about our times and profession and that there has been a gap waiting to be filled.
The publication is divided into four easy to access sections -
- Section 1: Learning & Development – The Strategic View
- Section 2: Learning & Development – The Operational Level
- Section 3: Research – Leading Edge Developments
- Section 4: Resources and Tools
In addition, the regular updates and inserts will continually augment the original body of work.
The complex nature of human learning and development and the optimisation of the conditions under which learning takes place and the relationship between the needs of individual and the organisation can offer many surprises. Due humility and broad awareness is needed if incorrect assumptions are to be challenged and difficult problems are to be seen as opportunities.
I hope this new publication fulfils it’s promise of offering new angles on the fundamentals of learning and development that stimulate our thinking, create opportunities, challenge our assumptions and serve as a useful tool for those of us engaged in the increasingly complex and strategic field of learning and development.