I've been in learning and development long enough to have championed terms I've since come to regret. "Microlearning" is one of them — and the regret isn't just about the term itself. It's about what the term has done to the field.

I've spent most of my career thinking about how people learn and develop — and a significant part of that time watching managers say the wrong thing at the wrong moment, often without knowing it. This isn't about scripts or communication formulas. It's about a small set of phrases that do something conventional managerial language doesn't.