Post by Melissa Milloway

Here's one thing that separates an effective learning leader from an ineffective one. A senior leader comes to two different learning managers with the same message, "We need microlearning tools. Our data shows people aren't completing courses. They're too long and microlearning is the answer." Both managers already know their organization has Articulate Rise, Storyline, Camtasia, and a full suite of eLearning and AI tools. Any of them can produce microlearning today. But they hear the leader out. Both managers ask good follow-up questions. Why are we seeing low completion? Why aren't we seeing business impact? What's the root cause here? The senior leader explains, "The courses teams are building are just too long, and studies show microlearning drives better results." Here's where the paths split. The ineffective manager ➡️ Takes the ask at face value and runs with it. They rally their teams, evaluate vendors, and spend $500K on a new microlearning tool. Everyone starts cranking out microlearning. Content is flying out the door. But completion numbers don't change, there's no behavior change or business impact, and now learners are flooded with content no one needed, just broken into smaller pieces. Eventually learners start ignoring the microlearning altogether because when a new one shows up, they already know it's not going to solve anything for them right now. The effective manager ➡️ Sits with the answer and something feels off. They don't dismiss the senior leader, but they don't just execute either. They dig in and they look at what teams are building and why. What they find, yes, some courses are too long and microlearning could help. But it's not a tool problem. The real problem is a skills gap. The learning teams don't know when microlearning is the right solution, why it works when it does, or how to design content that changes behavior. The tool was never going to fix that. They write up their findings and bring a set of recommendations back to the senior leader, including where microlearning fits, where it doesn't, and what it would take to drive business impact through behavior change. If you're a learning leader, the request in front of you is usually a symptom of something deeper, not the problem itself. When you run with the wrong assumption, you don't just waste money. You send your own learning team in the wrong direction, the same people you're responsible for coaching and developing. They build more of what isn't working, the problem gets bigger, and now you're deeper in debt across the board, in budget, in content, and in the skills your team never got the chance to develop. Have you seen an effective or ineffective learning leader handle a situation like this? What happened? #eLearning #InstructionalDesign #LearningandDevelopment