Matt Burr |
AI is extraordinary. Every day I learn something new — or see something differently — because of a thought-provoking interaction with AI. As a learning-and-development (L&D) professional, I’m amazed at how it’s transforming our work, too. We’re spinning up modules in minutes that used to take days. We’re building learning paths on the fly. We’re delivering nuanced opportunities for roleplaying, coaching, and practice that scale.
At its best, AI-empowered learning should also create new opportunities for our learners to connect with real, live people in cohorts. This will be critical to L&D’s success in the coming years. That’s because something unexpected is happening across the learning ecosystem right now: As the machines get smarter, the demand for authentic human connection grows stronger.
We see this in our clients’ experiences all the time.
Cohort-based learning in practice
One of our Fortune 50 clients recently launched an online, cohort-based learning program, connecting more than a thousand senior leaders across more than 100 countries.
The program, created by Guild Academy, turned out to be the most popular online training the company ever delivered based on engagement rate. And 18 months in, engagement has only grown.
When we asked what made the difference, the answers were consistent and clear: The opportunity to hear real stories and experiences from their leadership team and the chance to connect with one another in meaningful conversation was a game-changer.
Traditional training treats knowledge transfer as the goal. But the real goal — the one that moves the business — is strengthening the muscle that enables teams to perform with excellence.
Zooming out from this story, the paradox is staring CHROs and L&D leaders in the face: AI is making traditional e-learning cheaper and faster — but is missing the harder job to be done. The job of delivering shared learning for both employees’ growth and business growth. That means creating connections at scale.
Content can’t build capability — only people can.
The real differentiator isn’t the quantity of content — it’s the quality of experience. Not just what’s taught, but how it’s learned. Who it’s learned with. And how it's applied in real-world scenarios that matter to the business.
That’s where most learning programs fall short. Traditional training treats knowledge transfer as the goal. But the real goal — the one that moves the business — is capability building. That is, strengthening the muscle that enables teams to perform with excellence. If that’s the goal, then passive consumption is an obvious dead end. And talking to robots is not enough either. You need active engagement with real human beings on the team.
This isn’t just a philosophy. It’s how our brains are wired.
In Guild Academy programs, each module centers on a story that pushes learners to reflect on nuance, wrestle with complexity, and workshop next steps with peers. These stories, which require “medium-level inference” — where the learner must actively interpret and apply learning — have been shown to drive deeper cognitive processing and stronger recall.
It’s not about watching a video together. It’s about building trust, debating ideas, solving real challenges, and learning in ways that are emotionally and strategically aligned to the business, in a context that’s familiar and relevant.
There’s a formula for learning that sticks, and we see it emerge in the research, too. It goes like this: exposure > reflection > application > feedback. And it requires time, practice, and other people. We now know from neuroscience that social learning literally activates different regions of the brain, compared to solo learning. Regions associated with planning, empathy, anticipation, and reward light up more strongly when people interact with other people — as opposed to AI systems.
The same holds true at the organizational level. Teams thrive when there’s space to experiment and a shared sense of purpose. That’s why cohort-based learning is so effective. It’s not about watching a video together. It’s about building trust, debating ideas, solving real challenges, and learning in ways that are emotionally and strategically aligned to the business, in a context that’s familiar and relevant.
This kind of development can’t be downloaded in a one-off session. Especially not for the skills that matter most today: communication, adaptability, creativity, inclusive leadership. These are complex, behavior-driven skills. And the only way to build them is by learning with — and from — each other, over time.
Cohorts do that. Well-designed ones support sustained learning, encourage peer facilitation, and create the “low-risk experimentation zones” that modern workplaces need. As research from Johns Hopkins has shown, employees deepen their own expertise by sharing knowledge with peers, not just receiving it.
The more we understand about how people grow and how teams function, the clearer it becomes: AI can create more content. But it can’t create shared capability.
Learning is most impactful when it reflects work and builds culture.
Here, it’s worth stating the obvious about the world of work: Ours is a human infrastructure. It’s the day-to-day tasks and interactions of people that make up the hum of a business and the heartbeat of a company culture. So, how do we keep it thriving, especially amid disruption and uncertainty?
Cohort-based learning offers an operating system for how companies can build culture and capability in the same breath. It creates the structure needed to support sustained engagement: shared pacing, small-group discussions, personal reflection, and social accountability. Critically, it also teaches teams how to think through problems together. How to manage conflict, weigh decisions, give feedback, and drive results — not just as individuals, but as connected parts of a whole. Done well, it also creates belonging and psychological safety, two conditions that research links directly to better learning outcomes, team performance, and innovation.
But what makes cohort-based learning powerful isn’t just the scaffolding — it’s the stories. The human element. When learners engage with real-world stories — told by peers, leaders, or cross-functional collaborators — they’re making meaning. They’re applying lessons. They’re seeing themselves in the narrative.
It’s a powerful combination. One that not only strengthens teams, but also makes companies more resilient.
If humans still power your business, then design learning for them.
AI is here to stay — and it’s already transforming how we work. But when it comes to L&D, the companies that thrive won’t be the ones that treat AI as a content-generation machine. They’ll be the ones that balance intentional AI integration with one goal in mind: building human capability.
It feels surreal to say, but it’s true — as long as your employees are human, as long as your teams are made of people who need to grow together, work together, and lead together, your learning strategy should reflect that.
So, what do I see when I look out on the horizon of the future of work and L&D’s role in it?
Most businesses’ next big breakthrough won’t come from a new platform or policy. It’ll come from the teams that know how to learn and perform together — the one thing AI can’t do.
