Yes, you read the heading correctly. Now…weight watchers? Wasn’t that a thing in the 90s, where you counted points and had weigh-ins? How is that relevant today, when we can easily access everything we need to know about health and weight loss?

Give me 6 minutes and I’ll find articles and podcasts about the latest and greatest on intermittent fasting, ketosis and everything else I need to know to lose weight and maintain it over time.

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This brings me to one a my favorite quotes from Derek Sivers, serial entrepreneur and TED talker: “If information was the answer, we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs”

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Coming back to weight watchers - what made them successful initially was not necessarily about having the best information, or perhaps even the best advice or meal plans.

From our perspective, they designed a weight loss journey that created motivation to stick to a weight loss regime over time. Going one level deeper, they integrated several different components that helped create a sense of community and accountability among participants. 

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For starters, everyone who signed up for weight watchers had a clearly defined and (quite obvious) shared purpose. Moreover, the program allowed for them to continuously meet and discuss, reflect and share their journeys. From a knowledge and “upskilling” perspective, they had experts present that talked about nutrition and healthy eating. Critically, there was a sense of accountability with the “weigh-ins” to check if you were on track.

This aspect also helped provide feedback on your progress, and a chance to - as a group - celebrate small victories along the way. Finally, you had the actual meals, which made it easier and more doable to stick to the plan of healthy eating. Perhaps ahead of their time, the points system added a sense of gamification and increased engagement in learning about food and nutrition. 

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Apologies for the food analogy, but it was the combination of ingredients that lay the foundation for their early success.

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As you might suspect, there are several things in the paragraph above that can be applied to leadership development initiatives. We need different ingredients to help leaders grow and develop over time. However, in our constant search for efficiencies and cost-effectiveness, we often look for one magic ingredient that will take care of everything, instead of focusing on the recipe for success.

Self paced e-learning, powered by AI, can curate personalised development plans, leveraging scale and speed and opportunities for flexibility in upskilling. Why over-invest in traditional programs? 

Couldn’t Yomento replace traditional approaches to leadership development? A modern nudging platform that helps leaders in the flow of work, which can also measure behavioral change and impact, should solve most of the needs. Right? Wrong.

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We firmly believe that a holistic approach, with several components, are needed to develop leaders over time. From our observations, initiatives that focus too much on one aspect of leadership development are not successful. Workshops are great; but we need to address how learnings are applied, and measured, when back at work. Self paced e-learnings are important for upskilling, but we also need to add components of community and accountability through peer groups and creating space for reflection.

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The interesting question is how to create a learning design that include all components - from a shared sense of purpose and belonging, to learning and application and measuring progress and results - in a cost-effective way that is sustainable over time.

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