Donald H Taylor has released his latest L&D Global Sentiment survey.
If you are in L&D, it is well worth a read. You can get it here
As Don says in his introduction, “This survey is about sentiment. Fervent feelings about AI do not predict its future”.
This reminds me of the poem by Robert Frost, written in 1916.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
The poem speaks to the idea of taking risks and forging your own path in life, and the overall message for me is that it is better to make your own decisions and be true to yourself.
Knowing the sentiments of others is useful; following them blindly is not.
How does the list in the survey, and the way it is ordered, relate to your local context?
What is hot ‘out there’ and what should be hot for you this year are likely different.
A very useful exercise for your L&D strategy is to think through this difference so that you can articulate what the difference is and why it exists.
What if your CEO came to you, after misunderstanding the intent of the survey, and said, “Everyone is doing this, so we should do it as well”?
