Rebuilding L&D for an AI-Driven World with Larry Durham & Jonathan Eighteen

In this episode, David James is joined by Larry Durham, President of St. Charles Consulting Group, and Jonathan Eighteen, Global Head of Consulting and Advisory Services at NIIT, to explore the findings of the 2026 Learning Transformation Benchmark. Together, they examine why L&D is entering a period of structural rebuild as the environment it was originally designed for ceases to exist.

Larry and Jonathan reflect on the growing gap between organizational ambition and actual system readiness, highlighting how AI intensifies the need for learning to operate as enterprise infrastructure. They discuss the shift toward "invisible L&D," the necessity of moving skills from static taxonomies to active tools for workforce planning, and how L&D must evolve from a delivery engine into a strategic architect of performance to have a real business impact in an AI-accelerated world.

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

·      Currently, the real gap is misaligned systems, governance, and funding.

·      As AI takes over declarative and procedural work, L&D must shift from compliance and content to performance, judgement, and stakeholder capability.

·      AI collapses design and development effort; the opportunity is to reinvest at the edges in performance consulting, measurement, and capability architecture. It gives us more impact.

·      Owning the organisation’s capability operating system is L&D’s path to lasting relevance in an AI‑driven workplace.

BEST MOMENTS

“The ambition is really clear. It's just the execution, the systems, and the governance that are holding people back.”

“I think it (AI) inverts it, and it maybe even flattens the bell curve.”

“If we don't have a seat going forward, it's because we didn't either take it or we didn't show up.”