This is a guest post by Dr. Heidi Kirby. Dr. Kirby is a leader in instructional design and technology. Her focus is in helping real people navigate complex systems to empower them to do their best work without burning out. She has worked with a wide variety of clients – from NASA to billion-dollar SaaS companies to government, retail, and non-profits.

Redefining What It Means to Do This Work

Ten years ago, I worked for one of the premiere technological companies in the world. They had sent people to space! Yet, one of my tasks as a new instructional designer was to revise a process where one employee was printing out email messages, putting them in color coded folders, and walking them to another employee’s desk. Think about that. And I continue to hear stories like that from L&D professionals today. For a team that is supposed to be all about learning new things, we sure tend to be behind the times. 

But with AI, work isn’t waiting for us anymore. We can’t keep saying “it takes 140 hours to create 1 hour of eLearning” when there’s a new tool coming out each day that will create eLearning in 48 seconds. We also can’t continue to rest on the argument that “well, we can make it better than AI” because the margin in output is not as wide as we think it is. AI isn’t threatening to take our jobs – it already is. 

So, to redefine the role of L&D to be more adaptable to the rapid pace of modern work, we need to:

• Change our perspective about our role
• Reclaim ownership over our industry standards,
• Update the tools, resources, and processes we use, and
• Transform the way we tell the story of impact

Change Our Perspective About Our Role

One thing I love about many L&D professionals I meet is that they’re fellow creatives. They have hobbies and passions outside of the industry like pottery, music, cooking, homesteading, and so much more. Because our work requires creative judgement, I find that many in our industry feel passionate and sometimes even defensive about our projects. I’ve heard more than once the words “Well, I would like it if I was the learner” after someone hears feedback they don’t agree with. I love that we care about what we do and we try to put ourselves in our learners’ shoes, but I think it’s important to remember what we’ve been hired to do. 

Imagine you hire an interior designer (you know, the thing people commonly mistake us instructional designers for all the time) to help you decorate your home. You are a parent with 3 children, 2 dogs, and a cat. The interior designer puts a white velvet couch as the centerpiece in your living room because she “saw it and loved it and thought it was so fun!” Meanwhile, you’re imagining gummy bears and muddy paw prints smashed into the cushions. We do the same thing when we don’t listen to our audience and advocate for what they really need.

We're there to remove friction from learning.

When we lose sight of that goal – to help people work and learn better – we forget about the most important part of what we do. We’re there to remove friction from learning… to make learning easy first, and yes, maybe fun if we can. But if we’re not making it easier, we might as well just dump all that SME information into an email and send it out to everyone in the company. It’s a big responsibility, and it’s an important honor. We squander that when we make it about us. 

Reclaim Ownership Over our Industry Standards

I find it embarrassing how often folks in the industry claim to be “data-driven” or “research-backed” but are the first to share an AI slop infographic despite its glaring errors. These are typically the same people as those who have “been fortunate enough not to work in corporate” but have thousands of followers on social media talking about “what we do.” We fawn over models created by people who haven’t worked as practitioners in years. We share white papers and accept them as fact, without reading that their research was sponsored by a vendor trying to sell an idea. Remember when all these brand new LXP companies were saying “the LMS is dead!”? Many of us rolled our eyes, but too many also believed the hype.

When we don’t stand strong in our expertise and worth, others will take advantage of it. This shows up in our everyday work too. Imagine you hire a plumber to come fix a severe leak in your bathroom. Imagine you stand in the doorway while she works and eventually say, “oh, umm – are you sure you want to use that wrench? Wouldn’t another tool be faster?” You’re the stakeholder in this scenario. Yes, it’s your house and your wellbeing on the line. But hopefully, you trust the plumber’s expertise enough to get out of her way and let her do her job. So, why don’t you demand that same respect from your coworkers? 

Why don't we defend our expertise and professional worth to our coworkers when challenged?

It doesn’t require being combative or “hard to work with,” but standing up for your knowledge, your solutions, and your ideas is critical to being able to do good work. Especially when there’s a new shiny thing around every corner – AI has made it easier than ever for everyone to make tools and apps. But we’re supposed to be the learning experts. We should be setting the standards and making the decisions.

Update the Tools, Resources, and Processes We Use

Once upon a time, I started a brand new full-time job. I went to the office to pick up my laptop and my “onboarding materials.” What I received from the HR that day was a laptop with a Windows 8 sticker (9 years after Windows 8 came out) and a 3-inch binder of “onboarding.” I only lasted at that job for about 8-9 months. It was no surprise I left over not being able to get the tools I needed to work successfully. 

When you don’t reassess your tools over time, they get stale. It’s not enough to trust that because something is the “#1 tool in the industry” that the product will keep up with the times. In fact, there’s a term for how tech companies at the top of their game become exponentially worse as they gain notoriety (but I’ll let you look it up). Continuing to use the same tools and delivery methods over time keeps you from finding solutions that will allow your team to innovate efficiently.

But you also need to look at the resources and processes you’re using as well. If you’re using a framework that was created before AI and the pandemic, is it still fit for a modern working team? Maybe it is, but maybe it also feels outgrown. We can’t claim to be the team responsible for helping others change their behavior and grow as professionals if we aren’t willing to do the same thing ourselves. It’s the kind of hypocrisy that erodes trust. 

Transform the Way We Tell the Story of Impact

We can’t keep reporting on completion data and “smile sheets” if we want to be taken seriously. When I call this out, the rebuttals I hear most often are “but that’s all the organization wants” or “that’s all we’re expected to do.” I believe that it’s because teams are not doing it correctly. They’re either not presenting any alternatives, or they’re doing it in a way that makes sensible measurement seem more complex than it is. 

So, start with the learning outcome. What is this learning project aiming to do?

Are you looking to help people understand a new concept? Learn a new skill? Adopt and use a new platform?

Measure that. Measure it before and after your learning intervention. Learn how to explain your findings to leadership. This is one of the biggest ways to show your impact.

I find that many L&D professionals could also expand their concept of data. Data isn’t just numbers on a report or a spreadsheet. Your company is collecting so much information – from the intranet, to the help desk, to communications. It’s everywhere. Data is also stories. I always ask people, which is a more impactful story to your CEO? That 100% of the people in the company scored 80% or higher on a quiz? Or that the VP of Revenue said that his sales team loved the training you facilitated and he wants it to be added to their onboarding? Numbers matter, but the way we tell the story matters too. 

Anyone can suggest a “rebrand” or a name change when they aren’t happy with how things are going. They’ll cry “it’s not instructional designer, it’s learning experience designer.” But what you call yourself or your corporate university doesn’t change the reality. No one cares about that. What they care about is if they feel seen and heard. If you’ve made the learning easy for them. If you can be trusted as the expert to help them. And if you can prove all these things. 

It’s time to stop being the department of pretty slides and start being the department of problem solvers. It’s uncomfortable, it’s disruptive, and it might even mean admitting we’ve been wrong for a while. But the alternative is continuing to be the 3-inch binder in a world that’s already moved to the cloud. 

Dr. Kirby's expertise is in combining humans stories and innovative tech to create better workplaces for everyone. To read more from Dr. Heidi Kirby or learn about how your organization can make use of her talents, find her on LinkedIn.