Many of my Performance Support colleagues and I have lamented over and struggled to find why the adoption of performance support technology has been so difficult. Having been in the L&D discipline for over 30 years, I can see why, and it’s not a failure of L&D. It’s a failure of the Training paradigm in which we’ve devolved as we have evolved. We are walled in by the myth that Training drives performance… and we have successfully evolved deeper within the walls of that paradigm to innovate and improve our learning solutions. Sadly, that evolution has given rise to a devolution of the ultimate strategic business objective of enabling sustained capability and workforce performance at Point-of-Work.
Author: Gary G. Wise - Author - Grief Coach
Unsupervised, unfiltered, and occasionally undisciplined Writer of Things that thrill readers with engaging stories created by a seasoned storyteller.
In the comparison to a 400-meter relay race, Training does not fail. Training delivers a quality product for 25% of the race and makes a successful hand off to…ummm…the Help Desk? This is not a sustainable solution. Training doesn’t fail…the expectations of what training can deliver fails, and that’s because expectations are not aligned with the entire scope of the race. This is a misdiagnosis of how to sustain a dynamic learning performance ecosystem. Training is critical…and always will be…but serves only part of a longer race. That’s a paradigm failure; not a failure of L&D.
If L&D spent half the time enabling human performance at Point-of-Work in the operation of new systems as IT spends in fine-tuning and optimizing the systems prior to GoLive, think about how much more productive the workforce would be…with little to no learning curve to overcome…not to mention how the Help Desk would fare with 40-50% fewer distress calls
After one Chapter 11 fiasco and three Reduction-in-Force events in the last 10 years, I’ve decided it’s time to join the “gig economy” as a Human Performance Outfitter. With the last dozen or so years dedicated to Point-of-Work Solutions leveraging performance support and technology integration, I will be the first to confess that adoption of Point-of-Work […]
Momentum to accept the validity of performance support has been a long time coming as evidenced by a dramatic increase of articles advocating more L&D attention targeting performance outcomes. Unfortunately, the attention given is still largely skewed toward innovative learning solutions in the training environment. Methinks part of that dilemma is a result not of the discovery questions asked, but those unasked.
LMS Market Trends revealed 48% of organizations desire a “new or different learning technology” and nearly half (47%) are at least seeking to “revise their current learning strategy”. Why does dissatisfaction exist? Why revise learning strategy? Given the report was focused on LMS I wondered if “learning technology” was code for LMS and performance support technology would remain separate and apart from learning strategy. Then my mind’s eye flashed to a herd of lemmings dashing over the same cliff as their predecessors. I really hope for the sake of L&D organizations everywhere that I’m wrong.
This as a story, a pivotal story in my career, that validated re-thinking the significance of adopting an evolved strategy using a tactical Learning Performance Assessment (LPA) methodology embedded in a Learning Performance Solutions Discipline called DRIVER…and of course, becoming a die-hard learning performance ninja.
A perfect storm of increasing demand to remain competitive and the continuous nature of change have effectively flanked the traditional Training Paradigm. L&D cannot keep pace. Even with smaller micro-learning objects, agile design, rapid development, and mobile delivery tactics, the solutions remain focused on pushing potential…not performance.
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Data Analytics Vs. Tsunami
There may be a few bean-counters out there enduring a pucker moment right now but hear the message I hope comes through in this post. “We don’t have to measure everything just because we can – have a plan tied to action.”
I have no intentions of offending anyone with this post, but likely will get a few of you all raked up in a pile over it. I’ll take that eventuality as my risk. The reward in considering this evolution is not mine to enjoy; rather, it is the power L&D teams will gain by simply shifting the starting point to a different ground zero – Point-of-Work.