Learning and Change

By Adrian Lorains

Shouldn't they be the same thing?

All change is an opportunity to learn. It’s a simple philosophy. Yet, if you walk into almost any organisation, you will notice a glaring disconnect.

On one hand, employees are hungry for development. You see it reflected clearly in engagement surveys, people consistently express a desire for more learning opportunities to advance their careers.

On the other hand, our workplaces are navigating an unprecedented volume of structural, technological, and cultural change. Because every change requires individuals to adapt, modify their habits, and adopt new behaviours, every single change requires learning.  

So why is it that when learning is packaged as an organisational change initiative, people stop viewing it as a growth opportunity and start treating it as something they merely need to survive?  

When we look closely at this disconnect, it becomes clear that "learning for change" feels fundamentally different to traditional professional development. To understand why, and to bridge the gap, we must look at how people view each type and how we can adapt and align them better.

A Tale of Two Leaders

Let’s break this down by looking at two different scenarios involving the same leader in the same organisation.  

Scenario A: The Open Invitation

Imagine I am a leader in an organisation, and I am offered the opportunity to attend a full-day leadership development workshop. I am genuinely excited because I get to spend a whole day immersed in talking about leadership, which is an area where I have already identified that I need personal development.

The day arrives, and it is a well-structured session. I walk through high-level concepts, swap stories with my peers, and receive a comprehensive suite of resources that I can implement into my own practice at my own pace.

Additionally, there are no immediate outcomes expected of me, other than that I develop my skills. I feel completely in control of the experience.  

Scenario B: The Mandated Metric

Now let’s look at an organisational cultural change aimed at leadership within that same company. The latest engagement survey results have returned, and they reveal a problem: the people I support do not feel that their leaders genuinely care about them.

To address this, executive leadership mandates a new operational process. Data shows that teams with the highest scores conduct regular catch-ups, therefore all leaders must now implement formal, fortnightly one-to-one sessions with all direct reports.  Up until now, one-to-one sessions in this organisation have been ad-hoc and completed only as needed.

To support this transition, human resources designs a mandatory one-hour lunch-and-learn session and provides a standardised template on how to conduct the meeting. The initiative is announced at a corporate town hall where leaders and their teams hear the news together.  

Can you spot the psychological shift? In the first scenario, I proactively identified a gap in my own knowledge. I was given the psychological safety and freedom to explore how to fill it. In the second scenario, a deficiency was identified for me, a rigid solution was provided, and my autonomy was removed. Even though both interventions are technically aimed at making me a better leader, I am keen and interested in the former, but I feel active dread toward the latter.  

The Disconnect is in the Design

If we analyse these two scenarios from a learning design perspective, we discover something interesting. The mandated change in Scenario B is actually far more structured to succeed in driving measurable performance outcomes.  Let’s view these two experiences side-by-side to see how:

In the traditional course, the learning design feels comfortable to the participant. There are clear learning objectives and supporting materials. However, the cognitive reality is that it often creates a massive information overload. Without clear parameters for accountability, that glossy folder goes on the shelf, and the leader returns to their usual habits with maybe a few minor tweaks. There is no risk, but there is often very little sustained change.  

The change initiative, though, targets a specific behavior, provides a clear performance metric, and allows the organisation to track whether the fortnightly sessions are being fulfilled. Yet, because it completely lacks participant autonomy and ownership, it feels forced, like just another chore to add to an already long list.  

Our goal should be to fuse the best parts of both worlds: injecting the empathy, ownership, and psychological safety of traditional learning into corporate change, while bringing the identified impacts and metrics of change management into our training rooms.

Aligning Through Designing

To successfully align learning and change, we can evaluate each intervention by asking three key questions:  

1. What do they need to know?

2.  

   How will they learn this?  

3.  

   How can we be sure they grow the right routines and behaviours?  

Instead of dropping a mandatory process on leaders during a high-pressure town hall announcement, we can redesign the change initiative as a collaborative learning experience.  

What do they need to know?

We identify the explicit knowledge needed, such as a conversation template, sample layouts from successful one-to-ones, or the foundational theory that explains why the format is successful. Then we host it in a searchable, easily updated central intranet repository.  

How will they learn this?

We introduce collaborative leader forums to explore the engagement data and identify solutions that work in their unique team contexts. We highlight internal peers who are already executing this well and ask them to share their practices. Leaders are provided opportunities to review and practice templates in a safe environment with a direct feedback loop. No massive town hall announcement is needed; the strategy is developed within the leader forums, allowing individuals to actively figure out how to incorporate these changes into their daily routines.  

How can we be sure they grow?

The metric (fortnightly sessions) and the target lift in engagement scores remain. However, because leaders were actively involved in the design, they possess genuine operational ownership. When they practice this with their teams, they are continuously learning and enhancing their leadership capabilities ongoing, rather than treating learning as a single point-in-time event.  

Injecting Metrics into Traditional Training

Now let’s look back at our full-day leadership retreat. To make sure this course isn't just a one-off event, we can run it through the same three-question lens.

What do they need to know?

Before the workshop, a 360-degree review is conducted to help the leader identify their specific behavioral gaps, moving them from generic concepts to targeted focus areas. The explicit knowledge for these focus areas is made available, easily searchable, and clearly aligned with organisational values and strategy.

How will they learn this?

During the workshop, the participant is not just a passive consumer of information. As they now have clarity on their specific developmental focus areas, and why they matter, they are asked to construct a concrete implementation plan tailored to their direct reports by the end of the session. This supports them to apply the concepts learned in their own team context.  

How can we be sure they grow?

Since the leader leaves with an actionable implementation plan, clear key metrics can be defined to keep them on track and measure their success in transitioning these new concepts into daily habits. A follow-up 360-degree review can then be performed 12 months later to measure the overall, sustained effectiveness of the capability development.  

By viewing the traditional course through this lens, the learning experience becomes more targeted, and the leader becomes genuinely accountable for their own development in alignment with the broader organisational culture.  

Conclusion

Every change in a workplace succeeds or fails based on whether individuals can successfully adapt and learn new ways of working on a personal level. Change management gives us the destination, but learning design builds the bridge that gets us there.  

By consciously focusing on how we position our interventions and involve our people, we can completely remove the dread associated with organisational changes. At the same time, by introducing clear success metrics and behavioral accountability to our training programs, we elevate L&D from a "nice-to-have" corporate activity into a core driver of operational performance.  

The next time you are tasked with rolling out a major corporate change or a new training program, pause and look closely at your design. Make sure you are giving your learners the structure to guide their growth, alongside the autonomy they need to truly own their learning outcomes.

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About the Author: Adrian Lorains

For over 20 years, Adrian Lorains has delivered transformations across diverse environments, from small membership organisations to state government, regulatory bodies, and global corporations. Holding a Masters in Adult Education, he combines academic learning with hands-on experience to help leaders build change capability.

Adrian openly challenges the corporate cliché that training is a silver bullet for workplace transitions. Standing at the front of a room or presenting via a virtual screen for two hours is not learning. It is "telling" . This practice overwhelms people with knowledge and leaves them to figure out the application on their own, which ultimately fuels burnout.

To bridge the gap between dry academic theory and real-world application, Adrian developed the repeatable Know-Learn-Grow to Change Approach. By shifting the focus from passive listening to active application, his method transforms changing from a source of stress into a comfortable, repeatable workplace routine.

His book Changing with Confidence: Growing Change-Ready People with the Know-Learn-Grow Approach explores his approach and the impact it can have on building a successful change routine. It is available through online retailers or his website knowlearngrow.com