About the Author

I have always loved learning and been curious about how to learn better and make learning meaningful.

I began doing my own research on learning as an undergrad. Because of my interests in psychology, business, and learning, I negotiated an unconventional master’s program incorporating special research and interdisciplinary study at the University of Minnesota, leading to an advanced degree in adult education.

I took what I had learned about learning to others, while continuing a rigorous personal learning and research agenda that has never stopped. In one of my first attempts to bring this new approach to others, I designed a study skills program for the University of Minnesota’s General College. Many of my students were veterans returning to civilian life and starting a university education. Initially, I thought they needed to update their skills, but I soon discovered their main needs were more personal—related to self-esteem and other issues. It was at this moment I truly began to appreciate the importance of a total-person focus in learning. Eventually, I launched the program Reading and Information Handling Systems. Work with my first client, 3M Company, led to referrals to other major corporations in Minnesota, then other parts of the United States and globally. It launched many years of intense work with GE, NASA, and other organizations that were focused on learning, learning design, and creating a learning organization.

As time moved on, my focus expanded to include the broader arena of organizational learning and change. I worked with businesses and agencies to create learner-centered programs that incorporated short modules on how to self-manage learning within courses and workshops. As it became clear that my life’s purpose was to support personal and business transformation, I became increasingly committed to understanding and promoting adult and organizational learning in all its forms. I began a company, McLagan International, to help advance that cause.

While my learning and development company grew, the field of business learning and development was also growing. I became very active in the expanding human resource development field, directing two internationally known competency studies to help define it, and taking on leadership roles in the American Society for Training & Development (now the Association for Talent Development) and the Instructional Systems Association.

Meanwhile, I wrote or co-authored several books to share my insights, research, and experience, including Getting Results Through Learning, Helping Others Learn: Designing Programs for Adults, On the Level: Performance Communication That Works, The Age of Participation: New Governance for the Workplace and the World, Change Is Everybody’s Business, and The Shadow Side of Power: Lessons for Leaders.

As the pace and challenge of change globally accelerated, my work shifted to large-scale change initiatives that required developing people and reshaping organizations. While continuing my work in the United States, I moved to South Africa in the early 1990s, helping several major businesses and state entities launch major human resource development and change management initiatives.

Throughout my journey, it has become increasingly clear to me that the environment for learning is changing radically and exponentially, not incrementally. Learning skills, confidence, and mindsets are not keeping up with today’s challenges, smart tools, and neuroscience and psychology research. It is a problem that education, training, and development professionals cannot solve on their own despite vast improvements in learning programs and technologies. It is increasingly clear that we all need to move beyond the learning capabilities we were born with (1.0), the learning skills we developed in school (2.0), and the capabilities we upgraded when we left school for a more self-managing role (3.0). Thus the idea of 4.0 learning, the approach to learning in Unstoppable You, began to take form.