Building in-demand skills for the modern world of work
Established in 2001, You Can Now is a training and development partner to growth-oriented organisations of all shapes and sizes.
We provide modern, motivating and measurable approaches to building in-demand skills — working with our partners both directly and cross-organisationally. Everything we design and deliver is developed with brilliant subject experts and enlivened by the experiences of the managers and teams we engage every day.
We’re a community of learning designers, subject experts, facilitators, coaches and digital maestros. Our partners are growing organisations, just like yours. Together we’re on a modern mission to make development opportunities as relevant, accessible and actionable as possible.
Partnering with You Can Now has connected our leadership with bright minds from outside the business, and brought endless fresh thinking back into it.
Lessons learned
Delivering effective development
Lessons we've learned
— Be clear on the ‘human data’ and how you’ll meaningfully measure impact.
— Ask... what do we want people to be doing that they’re not doing now? Why aren’t they doing it? What do they care about? What can we test that might help them? How will we know it's worked?
— Design experiences in which everyone feels welcome to participate, and new skills can be easily practised.
— Prime people ahead of these experiences, so they arrive mentally aroused.
— Connect learners with experts, while giving them a chance to learn from each other and share what’s already working.
— End experiences with an emphasis on experimentation.
— Enable experimentation by making resources easily available so people can get their hands and minds on them at the point they need them.
— Create ways for people to teach-onwards what they’ve discovered, back in their teams and 1-1s. Cement the learning, and pay it forward.
— Be clear on accountability for action. How can managers create motivation, and give people 'permission to practice'?
— Break things down into digestible chunks, and don’t try and change too many behaviours at once.
Different industries, a common belief. Whether fast-growth tech companies like Epic Games and Dice, sensational retailers like Lush and Cubitts, amazing charities like the NSPCC and Shelter or creative studios like Koto and Wolff Olins — our partners are thriving across an ever expanding circle of sectors. They're united in the belief that growing people grows businesses, and we test and learn together daily.
Purpose led
Ever since we set sail in 2001, we've been on a mission to enable others through continual learning. What began as early work within universities, colleges and business schools has grown into a thriving community of leading organisations globally — committed to continually unlocking the potential of their most valuable asset (that's you!)
Values driven
The key principles of being Personal, Action-oriented and Timely sit at the heart of everything that we design, deliver and decide upon daily. From knowing names, to showing autonomy in choices; being quick to respond, to visually reflecting the world around us — making these principles feel real as behaviours in our interactions with you is an ongoing goal.
Science backed
Definitive studies into the science behind why we do what we do (Ryan and Deci, Self-Determination and Intrinsic Motivation in Human Behaviour) reveal innate needs that we all carry with us — Autonomy (feeling like we have choice), Relatedness (feeling like we're connected to others) and Competency (feeling like we're continually improving). We call these three built in brain-cravings The ARC of Engagement, and they purposefully guide the design and delivery of all our development doings.
Social purpose
Our commercial ambition is matched with a social one, and we provide pro-bono training and development support to a number of charity and not-for-profit groups each year. Most recently, in partnership with London Community Foundation, we designed and delivered a three year programme of capacity building for over 70 front-line community organisations, all variously tackling youth violence initiatives in the capital — brilliant organisations like the Ben Kinsella Trust, LivesNotKnives and Fat Macy's (pictured).