Development and learning go hand in hand with appraisal ... you need to know what knowledge/skills/attributes are required before you spend your training dollar.

Development and learning can occur at the individual and/or at the collective (organisational) level. Development at the organisational level is a field in itself, surprisingly called OD ... organisation development.

Identifying learning & development needs
What techniques/methods are you using to identify your individual and organisational learning needs? A host of toolkits are available from formal surveys to multi-rater appraisal systems to individual psychometrics.

The key issue here is to think about how you can improve the whole system, not just put band-aids on the spots that are bleeding ... treat the root causes, not the symptoms.

Designing learning & development events
Having conducted your in-depth analysis to identify your learning needs, you need to design and deliver relevant learning events to close the knowledge/skill/attribute gap. Many resources and training providers are available to assist you. Often the learning can best be addressed on-the-job ... formal classroom type events have their place, but, they are not the only solution.

Evaluating the effectiveness of learning & development activities
Having spent all this time and effort, you need to know that you have arrived ... how do you tell that the learning and development has been effective? By measuring the performance against agreed standards. And, so the loop starts again.