Often deployed because L&D needs someone to push a programme that people don’t want and/or need in a team that is, at best unsure the programme will work and, at worst actively hostile towards L&D with the purpose of increasing ‘engagement’ (see: Attendance).

Learning Champions don’t work. Why?

1. It’s not their full-time job, so you know, their job takes precedence and the vigour that they had banging your drum in month 1 is lost by month 3.

2. The people that put themselves forward for these informal roles aren’t those who are sceptics the programme won’t work, the noise of the drum becomes disruptive and drives people away, rather than motivating them.

3. You haven’t addressed the root cause – the resistance to the programme. They wanted a violin, not a drum.

How do I address the root cause?

1. If you’re facing resistance to programmes go and talk to the people that are resistant

2. Find the informal leaders in these groups and ask them what’s historically not worked

3. Take this onboard and see if it can be addressed

4. Don’t over-promise (I’ll bet this will always be in the top 3 grievances of what went wrong in the past)

5. Involve them and people they say would be good to involve in the design

I’ve found that the act of listening to the informal leaders, the people that others literally look to, leads to a faster reduction in resistance and a renewed engagement in trying new Learning ‘things’ (sorry can’t think of a better descriptor than things right now!) rather than having a learning champion banging a drum to a tune people don’t want to hear.

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