I think there are many people in an L&D role who spend their days quietly tearing their hair out in frustration. They are what I call the order-takers. They came into the profession, like most of us do, because they like and care about people. They believe that learning can (and should) make a meaningful difference in someone’s professional life and career. Perhaps they experienced this in their own lives and wanted to help others achieve the same.

But somewhere along the way, something went horribly wrong. The job they thought they would be doing wasn’t the job they actually found themselves doing.

They became a harassed (and not very well-respected) internal supplier. Taking orders for courses and workshops others demanded from them. Courses and workshops that satisfy the demands of the order-giver but don’t do much to benefit the learners or the organisation they work in.

Perhaps this describes your situation right now. Or perhaps you’ve been there, done that and escaped to pastures new. Either way, being caught in a cycle of delivering training that doesn’t really solve problems and doesn’t really improve workplace performance is deeply frustrating and ultimately, very demotivating.

I’ve worked with scores of L&D teams over the years and witnessed people caught in the order-taking trap in a variety of sectors and industries. Almost everyone wants change. But how? How can we make the impact and build the influence that we keep saying we want, if just delivering excellent training is not enough.

The truth is, we need to get better at enabling performance. Which means getting much, much closer to our learners’ real moments of need. For example, when someone is:

• facing a new challenge on the job
• making a decision under pressure, or
• trying to apply a skill they should remember, but can’t quite recall

Those are the moments where performance can either bumble along as always or start to excel given the right support. Things like a timely nudge; a helpful prompt; a short, smart answer that moves someone forward, in the flow of work.

I learnt the importance of supporting those moments of need about 15 years ago, during a workshop run by Jim Kirkpatrick. And since then, I’ve spent years deeply frustrated by the fact that the concept is simple; but effective implementation of that concept is not.

However, that frustration is no more. Right now, I’ve finally found a way to do something I’ve wanted to do for years. A way to help L&D professionals design and deliver intelligent, contextual support for those very moments of learner need just described above.

This is not about trying to replace the learning experiences we already do well. It’s about adding a layer of performance-first thinking that gives our work more credibility, more relevance, and yes, more respect.

The future of L&D isn’t about smarter content. It’s about smarter integration with how workplace performance actually flows.

So, this is my new mission. And over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing more about the journey that’s got me here — and the tools we’re building to help others add that layer of performance-first thinking.

If any of this resonates and you’ve felt the same frustrations, then I hope you’ll come along with me.

And if you would like a more personal take on this new mission of mine? I’m keeping a ‘behind the scenes’ diary of this new journey. You can follow the story here. 

What I really want, what I’ve always wanted, is for L&D to actually make a difference.
To stop being side-lined. To stop doing good, hard work that goes unrecognised.

L&D professionals genuinely care about helping others grow. We want to have impact. We want to make a difference. But time and again, we share the same frustration:

“We’re doing all this work and the business still doesn’t recognise our effort.”

It’s a painful feeling. One I’ve heard expressed countless times across countless courses and workshops. But over the years, I’ve also had to face up to an uncomfortable truth:

That lack of respect feels unfair but sometimes, it might be the symptom of a deeper problem we haven’t fully acknowledged.

What do I mean by that? Well, people come to us with a ‘training’ need and ask us to create a course. If we see ourselves as the “training people” then, naturally, we want to oblige. So, we design workshops. Build e-learning. Roll out programmes. And then we wait for results - that rarely come.

And the reason those results rarely come? Because, I believe, we’re focusing too much on delivering learning solutions… rather than supporting workplace performance.

It’s not that training we are providing is bad. Far from it. But training alone doesn’t move the needle - especially when people forget most of what they’ve learnt before they get a chance to use it. What actually makes a difference is what happens after the training: in the messy, unpredictable reality of work. The part L&D rarely reaches. The part where support and follow-up could really make a difference.

Now, let’s be honest, the idea of supporting learner performance in the workplace is hardly a new idea. In fact, it’s been around for decades. And we are already very familiar with this kind of ‘just-in-time support’ when using apps and systems.

But the ways and means to make this kind of support simple, scalable, and genuinely useful in other areas of the workplace just hasn’t been there. Until now.

Because the arrival of AI, I believe, completely changes the performance support game.

Of course, AI is being widely used in L&D already. But most of that use is focused on content production. Quicker instructional design. Faster course creation. Automating aspects of e-learning production.

Useful? Absolutely. Transformational? Probably not. Because speeding up training design and production doesn’t fix the core problem. We don’t need more training, created more rapidly. We need smarter workplace support.

We need tools that help people in the flow of their real work, not just when they happen to have time for a course.

We need smarter ways to support problem solving, decision-making, and action-taking
right at the moment of need.

Over the last 12 months, I’ve become a bit obsessed with all this and with thinking about how we can turn this new technology into a practical, performance focused solution. One that L&D teams can deploy easily. One that’s practical, low-friction, and grounded in the work people are actually doing.

So, I’m working on a new approach. A new platform I’m calling PerformaGo that puts performance support at the heart of L&D.

If you’re ready to move beyond training delivery and start designing for real-world results,
join the waitlist and be the first to know more about PerformaGo and when it goes live.

P.S. Curious about the journey behind this shift in focus?
You can follow my personal diary, where I share the highs, lows, and learning curve of building an AI-first product from the ground up.

Read my diary here