As a Brit, my day doesn’t start properly without a cup of tea. It’s a non-negotiable ritual. The kettle goes on before my brain does. It’s a habit so ingrained I barely notice I’m doing it. Coffee comes, but later in the day.
We all have these habits. In life, and in our professional work.
For those of us in learning roles, these habits often look like defaulting to familiar solutions. A request for sales training automatically becomes a slide deck. A new product launch triggers the creation of a 60-minute webinar. We reach for what’s comfortable, what we know we can deliver efficiently. We make our corporate L&D tea.
But what if the situation calls for coffee?
This isn’t about criticising the classics. Sometimes, a straightforward course is exactly what’s needed. The problem arises when habit overrides strategy - when we stop asking if there’s a better way to get the caffeine hit. When AI can generate content instantly and business needs shift quarterly, our old habits can become liabilities.
The alternative isn’t to abandon our tools, but to challenge our defaults. Deliberately choosing the right approach for the job, not just the most familiar one.
From Autopilot to Active Choice: Your L&D Brew
The most effective learning functions today are not just delivering content; they are solving business problems. This requires moving beyond our automated responses and building a more versatile toolkit.
Here’s how to start questioning your own L&D tea-making and consider brewing some coffee instead.
The Habit: Defaulting to Content Creation
The request comes in: "Our partners are making too many delivery errors." The default "tea" response is to build a new training module on best practices.
The "Coffee" Alternative: A Performance-Support MVP. Instead of a course, what if you ran a two-week Minimum Viable Pilot (MVP)? You could create a high-quality, one-page checklist for the most common errors and give it to a small cohort of partners. Or, maybe, configure an AI assistant trained on your documentation to answer questions in real-time.
Impact: You shift the focus from "did they complete the training?" to "did the errors decrease?". You get faster feedback, solve the problem at the point of need, and learn what truly works before investing in a larger solution.
The Habit: Measuring "Learning" Metrics
We are conditioned to track completions, quiz scores, and engagement time. These are the L&D equivalent of counting how many cups of tea we've served. It feels productive, but says little about the effect.
The "Coffee" Alternative: Measure Business KPIs. Tie your work directly to the metrics the business already values. For that partner enablement project, the success metric isn’t course completion; it’s a reduction in support tickets or an improvement in project implementation interventions.
Impact: You start speaking the language of the business. Your work is no longer a cost centre but a value driver, directly influencing revenue, efficiency, or customer success.
The Habit: Focusing on Tools and Features
The market is saturated with AI tools, and it’s easy to get distracted by the technology itself. This is like debating the merits of different teapots while ignoring whether people even want tea.
The "Coffee" Alternative: Focus on AI Behaviours. As I’ve written before, the tool isn’t the point - what it allows you to do is. Instead of just rolling out another AI writing assistant, teach your team how to leverage specific model behaviours. Show them how to use a "Thinker" model for problem-solving or a "FactFinder" model for research.
Impact: You build "model literacy," a critical future-of-work skill. You empower people to solve their own problems, moving the learning function from a content provider to a capability builder.
When Did You Last Try the Coffee?
Breaking habits is hard. They provide comfort and predictability. But in our field, clinging to old habits is a risk. As AI automates the routine tasks of content creation, our value shifts to the things it cannot do: understanding context, asking strategic questions, and designing interventions that drive measurable performance.
Run a small experiment. Measure its impact. Fail smarter. The goal isn't to give up tea entirely. It’s to ensure that when you serve it, it’s because you’ve deliberately chosen it as the best solution for the challenge at hand.