Picture three vehicles: a bus, a Ferrari, and a BYD. Now imagine each of these represents a different approach to corporate learning.

For years, L&D professionals in the GCC have really only had the first two vehicles to choose from: the bus, an off-the-shelf course that gets a large audience from A to B cheaply; or the Ferrari, a fully bespoke program that delivers deep, personal transformation for senior leaders, at a price and pace to match.

Both have served organizations well and have a place in learning and development, but neither was built for the audience that now needs the most attention: the hollow middle, where top performers have been promoted at a pace that leadership pipelines can’t match. Very real skill gaps leave relatively unprepared employees in charge of execution, and learning leaders have needed to roll out the best development they have available to close these gaps quickly, even if those options were imperfect.

The bus is too generic to develop this rising leadership audience effectively. The Ferrari is too slow and too expensive to reach all of them. So, a third option has emerged as a solution to this L&D challenge: the BYD.

Let’s start by exploring the two main types of learning rolled out in most GCC organizations:

The Bus

We’re all familiar with this kind of mass audience, off-the-shelf intervention, usually reserved for mandatory compliance training. Like a bus, it gets you from A to B, but it’s unexciting and allows zero customization. Though we need buses to provide an accessible and affordable means of transferring mandated knowledge, we know there are situations in which a bus will not take our learners where they need to go.

• High-Volume: Possible to roll out to entire learner populations with minimal L&D resources.

• Affordable: Low-cost per user, which boosts accessibility but can significantly reduce quality and impact.

• Static: Takes everyone the same route with minimal personalization or contextualization.

The Ferrari

The sleek, premium learning experience is very different. The Ferraris of the L&D world are the fully bespoke programs designed for executives and senior leaders. These are elite, personalized, and often built in collaboration with prestigious institutions. They might include retreats, executive coaching, and highly tailored personal development plans. This luxury L&D intervention comes with a high price tag, making it effective but unfortunately inaccessible for the majority of the workforce.

• Premium: Incorporates high-quality, high-cost touchpoints that put the learner at the center of the experience.

• Exclusive: Usually reserved for senior leader populations or invitation-only for high potentials and aspiring executives.

• Bespoke: Fully personalized to each learner’s unique development goals, with custom content and assessments.

 

The struggle many L&D teams face is what to do with the stretched middle: the managers who are responsible for translating senior leadership’s vision into action. They are more junior in their careers; they aren’t yet eligible for the Ferrari. But their development needs are pressing and demand more than an A to B ‘bus’ solution.

The BYD of Leadership Development

Let’s look at a third model: the BYD.

This car is well-known for its innovative technology and reasonable pricing. It’s non-traditional, perhaps a little unfamiliar, but its popularity is rising thanks to its quality, accessibility, and enhanced features.

The BYD, in learning terms, is a program that adopts innovative new delivery methods or technologies to engage learners, while being scalable enough to roll out to hundreds or thousands of learners at a time (unlike the Ferrari which will always be a more exclusive experience).

If L&D had an equivalent to the BYD, it would be equally non-traditional:

• Innovative: Leverages technologies like AI or simulations to make the experience feel tailored, relevant, and impactful for learners. Not luxurious, but feature-rich and performance-driven.

• Scalable: Easy to deliver at volume and pace to meet the demand for middle manager development, but not a bus with only a single destination and scheduled stops; there needs to be freedom to maneuver and adapt or contextualize content.

• Fit-for Purpose: Not another imperfect solution, but a targeted intervention that achieves learning goals in the most effective way within budget.

 

There is a place for all three of these learning vehicles within most organizations; not every training need demands a Ferrari. But often business leaders can fall into the trap of assuming a fully bespoke solution is required when a BYD-level solution can deliver the same results.

Why the BYD is a good option for developing middle managers

In an earlier iteration of our organization, we designed custom simulations for learners on the request of companies who believed they needed a learning environment that fully reflected the reality of their leaders’ day-to-day challenges. These programs would simulate the industry context, organizational challenges, and even the products those companies produced. But, after designing and delivering many of these interventions, we discovered that organizations were always coming to us with the same challenges, the same learning objectives, and the same leader capabilities. We realized that fully custom programs were often covering exactly the same topics but with different skins and we started advising learning leaders that they didn’t need expensive, custom-made solutions: they needed to develop the same capabilities in their leaders that almost every other organization, regardless of industry, required.

We went from designing Ferraris to designing BYDs because we saw that they allowed the organizations we worked with to do more: more learner audiences, faster roll-out, and greater impact, especially for small L&D teams. When it comes to middle managers in the GCC, who are often recently promoted and in need of urgent development, the BYD, with an average time of implementation in weeks, not months, is a fast and scalable route to leadership competence.

What makes a program a BYD instead of a Ferrari?

So, to answer the question, ‘do you need a BYD or a Ferrari?’ the main consideration is if you need to develop skills quickly for a large population, or do you need to deliver a deeper level of personal transformation over time. If your priority is the former, the BYD learning solution is your best choice.

How to deliver a BYD solution in your organization

A BYD solution may contain off-the-shelf elements, but it requires a collaborative partnership to tailor it to the learning goals of your learner audience.  A vendor that specializes in bus-level learning is unlikely to have the resources available for customization; similarly, a vendor that specializes in custom solutions is unlikely to have the speed of implementation you need for a BYD program. Find a vendor that specializes in ready-made or build-your-own programs with a strong partnership approach.

When evaluating providers, look for:

• A catalogue of ready-made programs that can be deployed quickly

• Demonstrated experience adapting content to specific learner audiences and organizational contexts

• A consultative approach to understanding your objectives and success criteria

• Regional presence and cultural fluency in the GCC market

• Clear implementation support, not just content delivery

The right partner will treat your program as a collaboration, not a transaction.

About Abilitie

Abilitie delivers simulation-based leadership development to build the essential skills of business acumen, people leadership, and strategic decision making. We developed our award-winning ready-made simulations after years of designing custom solutions for organizations, and we work closely with our clients to contextualize the learning for their industries, audiences, and learning objectives. From our regional headquarters in Dubai, we deliver scalable programs to GCC organizations that want to develop future-ready leaders.

In our view, unlocking the region’s human capital will require the introduction of a BYD of L&D. We look forward to engaging with L&D leaders to develop a scalable solution to talent development in the GCC.