Today’s Connect 2025, my last as organiser. After 3 years, I’m handing it over. In L&D, as in leadership, we don’t own things. We steward them for a while, do our best, then pass them on. That’s the work, and the privilege. Full post ↓ 🔗 bit.ly/4qUjSVR #LNConnect2025 #LND #Leadership

Office politics isn’t toxic by default. It’s just how decisions get made when people with different priorities work together. Ignore it, and even your best ideas stall. Engage with it ethically, and it’s how real influence and change happen. Full post ↓ 🔗 bit.ly/43j11da #LND #Leadership

How much of our professional development ever develops us? CPD isn’t about collecting courses or points. The real growth happens after the session ends, when you test what you’ve learned and see if it holds up. Full post ↓ 🔗 bit.ly/4qTvh8k #CPD #LearningAndDevelopment #LND

I dictated over 51k words in October. Being dyslexic, voice typing turned writing from painful to joyful. It’s accessible, fast, and sounds like me. What assistive tech do you use to make your work life that little bit easier? #Accessibility #Writing #AI #LND

What if AI readiness isn’t about tools, but trust? Most people use AI, yet fewer than half trust it. If we repeat the mistakes of remote work, focusing on tech, ignoring humans, we’ll gain efficiency and lose connection. Full post ↓ 🔗 bit.ly/4oX1RV8 #AI #LearningAndDevelopment #LND

Every facilitator knows that moment. An innocent question turns into a full-blown rant about Janet from Finance, and suddenly the room’s gone negative. In today’s Substack: how I handle it with The Moan Management Matrix. 🔗 bit.ly/3WKHkHr #LearningAndDevelopment #Facilitation

Been playing Dispatch this week, and it nails four UI heuristics most eLearning forgets: affordance, consistency, feedback, and minimalism. Proof that great design gets out of the way. 🔗 bit.ly/4oTmL7z #LND #InstructionalDesign #UX

Certainty feels safe, but it stops us listening, learning, and connecting. Our strength isn’t in being right, it’s in being useful, in conversation, community, and curiosity. 🔗 bit.ly/47nkz2j #LND #LearningAndDevelopment #Community #Collaboration

What would it take for L&D to be professionalised like medicine or engineering? We’re a profession, but we lack shared standards and accountability. Maybe it’s time to stop waiting for them to appear and start building them ourselves. What do you think? 🔗 bit.ly/4qwNl86 #LearningAndDevelopment

We talk about motivation and mindset all the time, but rarely about sleep. Without enough of it, the brain simply can’t learn. Today’s post explores what that means for training design. 🔗 bit.ly/4hvqrdc #LND #LearningAndDevelopment #Neuroscience

Sometimes the credibility gap between L&D and senior leaders isn’t about them not understanding us, but about what we’ve not yet demonstrated. 🔗 bit.ly/3JjUvMo #LND #LearningAndDevelopment #Leadership

We love to mock vanity metrics in L&D, but sometimes they’re the first sign something’s wrong. The trick isn’t to ignore them, it’s to read them differently. Today’s article explores how. 🔗 bit.ly/4oEHsnU #LND #LearningAndDevelopment #Data #PerformanceSupport

We need to talk about what happens when we start treating machines like people. The science is early, but the warning signs are clear. When we call AI a colleague, the humans pay the price. Read the full piece ↓ 🔗 bit.ly/4nhSPAM #AI #LND #FutureOfWork

Are we designing for certainty, or for change? Experiment-led design helps L&D stay flexible, useful, and relevant when frameworks can’t keep up. Check out the full article. 🔗 bit.ly/4hjhpQm #LND #InstructionalDesign #LearningAndDevelopment #Experimentation

The problem isn’t attention, it’s distraction. Human attention hasn’t changed, but the world has been engineered to steal it. Before we make training shorter, maybe ask: are we giving people a fair chance to focus? 🔗 bit.ly/3KY3jb8 #LND #InstructionalDesign #LearningAndDevelopment

New Sunday series: L&D Myth-Slaying! 🐉 This week’s dragon: the idea that people can learn while doing other things. Spoiler: multitasking kills learning. Each Sunday, I’ll tackle a new myth with evidence and plain English. #LND #LearningMyths #InstructionalDesign 🔗 bit.ly/4ovK0Vi

If we want to call ourselves evidence-informed, we need to show our working. Cite your sources. Credit the people whose research you build on. It’s not just honesty; it’s how others keep learning, too. 🔗 bit.ly/47atByd #LND #LearningAndDevelopment #Research

Personalisation feels like a no-brainer, right? More tailored = better learning. Except… the evidence doesn’t really agree. Today’s Substack looks at when it actually helps, when it doesn’t, and why that matters. 🔗 bit.ly/4h9PEtA #LND #InstructionalDesign #IDTInsights #EvidenceInformedPractice

How are you using desktop wallpapers at work? Probably not at all. But they’re free real estate for behavioural nudges. Subtle, visual reminders can drive change without a course in sight. Where else could you place a nudge in your workplace? 🔗 bit.ly/3J4bbqU #LearningAndDevelopment #LND #Nudge

I've been thinking a lot about Alexander Stubb's address at the UN. His ideas around values, interests, and power really got me thinking about how we work with and around others. This got me thinking about Julian Stodd's work on the shadows we cast. 🔗 bit.ly/4nKTOu6 #LND #HR #Leadership

Compliance training works when it’s hyper-contextual: the exact actions, decisions, and processes people face in their role, nothing else. That’s today’s article in my week-long series. What’s the most irrelevant detail you’ve sat through? 🔗 bit.ly/4mzQNvr

Why is compliance training, with budget and leadership backing, still the part of L&D we’re most embarrassed by? First in a four-part series on how we can do better. 🔗 bit.ly/4nQh225 What’s the first word you’d use to describe compliance training?

What does community really mean in L&D? How do we tell the difference between a genuine space built for members & a sales funnel with a shiny label? Check out the full article: bit.ly/46mVPpe #LND #Community #Networking

Not every L&D event is worth your time. Before booking I ask: - what type of event is it, - whose interests come first, - and how honest are they about it? My latest article explores how I decide where to show up. 🔗 bit.ly/46DRf7g #LND #CPD #Events #Conference #Exhibition

When was the last time a podcast actually changed how you worked? In L&D, podcasts only shine when part of something bigger, campaigns, CPD, or culture change. I’ve shared practical ways to make that happen. Link in comments. 🔗 bit.ly/4nB7wzz #LND #InstructionalDesign #Podcasting #ELearning

🎥 Video doesn’t need to be high-budget or high-stress. Join our free webinar on 25 Sept, 16:15 BST, to learn how to create confident, engaging learning videos without a studio setup. 🔗 bit.ly/3VjuT4C #LND #Webinar #CPD #InstructionalDesign #ContentCreation

Just read the WCAG 3.0 draft. No more A/AA/AAA, now Bronze–Gold. Moving from pass/fail to a spectrum of progress Feels like accessibility growing up, covering more needs and more tech. Exciting step forward. What do you think of the shift? 🔗 bit.ly/3VjuT4C

🎙️Final call! Our webinar on podcasting for workplace learning is today. Sounds Like Learning: Creating Impactful Podcasts for the Workplace ⏰16:00 BST We’ll cover when podcasts work in L&D, and how to create them without expensive gear. 🔗 bit.ly/45ZNRn9 #WorkplaceLearning #Podcasts #LND

Our Access All Learners webinar was a fantastic success last week, and I'm pleased to be able to share the full recording with you all today. bit.ly/4pcT4iR The audience questions were wonderful, and they will form the basis of an article I will share later this week. #LND #Accessibility #A11y

The eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed there was no #CPDWeekly newsletter yesterday. I usually write the newsletter on Sunday evening, pulling together my thoughts from the previous week, content catch-ups, the editorial, and of course, all the events for the coming week. 1/9

Most orgs start AI adoption with vendors and demos. The smart ones start with principles. Decide what matters: transparency, oversight, integration, before tech. That way, vendors fit you, not the other way round. 🔗 bit.ly/47NX82M #LND #AI #DigitalLearning #EdTech

Teresa Torres’ Continuous Discovery Habits is written for product teams, but L&D has a lot to learn from it. Stop one-off needs analyses. Talk to people regularly. Test assumptions. Treat every solution as an experiment. 🔗 bit.ly/4fXwsyt #LND #LearningAndDevelopment #ProductThinking

The debate rumbles on: should training be easy or hard? The truth is in the messy middle. Keep access simple, make the learning challenging. Desirable difficulty builds capability; pointless friction just wastes effort. 🔗 bit.ly/4fTW0gd #LND #LearningScience #InstructionalDesign

In nearly every team I work with, assessments look the same: 80% pass mark, 5–10 MCQs, maybe a quiz bank. Comforting, but not useful. Criterion-referenced testing shows if people can do the job. 🔗 bit.ly/45AYmNt #LND #Assessment #LearningAndDevelopment #PerformanceImprovement

Training is theatre. 🎭 In our latest webinar, The Stories We Tell, we explored how acts, arcs, and tension can turn workplace training from forgettable to unforgettable. Catch the full recording and see how Vonnegut’s story shapes and theatrical principles can transform training 🔗 bit.ly/4oSbWn7

This week’s #CPDWeekly is out: 📖 Editorial on how we misuse research 🎥 Webinar replay: The Stories We Tell 📝 New Substack articles on compliance, benchmarking, UGC, badges, and theatre in training 📅 Events, calls for speakers, and ticket discounts 🔗 bit.ly/4myIdOA #LND #CPD #Webinar #Newsletter

“What’s past is prologue.” Shakespeare knew transformation needs structure. Training does too. Not performance, but invisible architecture that builds tension, deepens it, and resolves it into real change. 🔗 bit.ly/3JOnSWP #LND #InstructionalDesign #BehaviouralDesign #UX #PerformanceSupport

The iDeas Podcast is back Got a big idea for L&D? Culture, accessibility, performance, alignment… whatever makes people go “oh, that’s interesting.” 30 mins, just you + me chatting. No sales pitches. Drop me a message if you’d like to join. #LND #Podcast #Community

Are badges just digital gold stars? Often, they reward clicks, not capability. Log in, badge. Watch a video, badge. Done well, micro-credentials prove skills, support growth, and motivate development. Do badges in your org drive real growth, or just fuel consumption? 🔗 bit.ly/4oHlIZ7 #LND

UGC isn’t about how much content gets made, it’s about whether it helps people do their jobs better. Stop only tracking volume, start tracking impact. How are you measuring performance from UGC in your org? 🔗 bit.ly/3HAI5io

Spent yesterday at an L&D co-work in Leeds with Kim, Rebecca, Arash, Mike & Steph. A day of shared problems, fresh perspectives, and free user testing! How do you stay connected with peers, and what’s the biggest lesson you’ve gained from it? #LND #Collaboration #Community

Do you know if your learning designs are getting better over time? Internal benchmarks give you a way to track improvement, not just tick boxes. If you don’t have one, now’s the time to start. 🔗 bit.ly/45J6rP1 #LND #Impact #LearningAndDevelopment

Ever wondered how long captions can be delayed? Or what ARIA labels are for? Or what to include in alt text? We’ll cover these and more in my free webinar: Access All Learners 📆 28 August, ⏰ 16:00 BST. 🔗 bit.ly/4oHqKF5 #LND #Accessibility #A11y #InstructionalDesign #LearningAndDevelopment

AI has changed everything and somehow nothing in the workplace. Yes, it can draft strategies, scripts, graphics and summaries in seconds. But unless the way we work changes, the performance needle barely shifts. 🧵 A quick thread…

Compliance training isn’t an obligation; it’s an opportunity for performance improvement. Map it to tasks, embed it in workflows, and deliver support just-in-time. Stop pushing info, start engineering performance. 🔗 bit.ly/3Jneauq #LND #InstrucitonalDesign #LearningAndDevelopment

Yes, compliance training. The face you just pulled is why it’s one of our biggest missed opportunities. Universal reach, budget, leadership backing, if it’s boring, the problem isn’t compliance. It’s the training, it's us. 🔗 bit.ly/3JeDxyF

Today is the day! At 4pm I will be running "The Stories We Tell", one of my favourite sessions to run. It would be amazing if you could come and join us. As always, it's 100% free and all about helping you develop, in this case, the skill of storytelling. 🔗 bit.ly/4mqgaRh

How do you measure training impact? Not LMS logins. Not made-up ROI slides. Start with whether it’s even a training problem. Then track metrics close to the work, and measure the chain: knowledge → behaviour → contribution to results. Check out the full article below. 🔗 bit.ly/4fBEFIJ

The build vs buy choice isn’t about cost per course; it’s about what changes performance. Build for context, buy with purpose, bookend for impact, and go hybrid when it makes sense. The priciest training? The kind that doesn’t work. 🔗 bit.ly/3HtRzvH

Most skills frameworks sound good, but don’t tell us if people can do the work. Start with tasks, make skills specific, and assess them in real contexts. That’s how we move from training to true performance. Check out the full Substack article 🔗 bit.ly/41ulVVC