Quit Knocking Lectures, A Brief Muse

Enablement and L&D folks love to say lectures don’t work.

Hard disagree.

The rise of podcasts and audiobooks as dominant forms of human learning would also disagree.

Oration didn’t die because it stopped working — It died somewhere along the way when we replaced storytelling with slide decks. (I blame Microsoft.)

Humans are wired for narrative. From Jesus to Aristotle to Churchill to Carl Sagan to Maya Angelou, the greatest teachers and persuaders didn’t rely on fancy frameworks or academic theory, they relied on story. They moved hearts and reshaped beliefs and behaviors through language, emotion, and rhythm.

The same is true in every form of learning and change, even in professional settings. The best salespeople and marketers tell stories so compelling that the audience (buyer) is persuaded to act (buy).

The problem isn’t “lecture.”
It’s shitty storytelling.

Story moves people. It changes them. It moves them to action.

(If you like the academic framing, Jack Mezirow called this "transformative learning" — the process of changing how people see and interact with the world. I published a peer-reviewed piece on this in college, fwiw.)

Experience, as I've shared before, is what really creates mastery. We should absolutely create experiences of practice and lean into real-world trial and error.

But without a compelling story — call it a "lecture" if you want — you’ll never create the belief required to drive real change... real learning.