This is the challenge in front of us when we are trying to successfully position the added value and positive business impacts of Performance Support to an organization comfortably fed by a Training paradigm. It is that Training paradigm that blocks even considering there are other options to drive performance outcomes. Henry Ford nailed it when he said, “If I’d asked them what they wanted; they would’ve said faster horses!”
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.
I have never met ANYONE on the operational side of the business who is satisfied with “potential”. No one on the operational side of the business gets compensated for “potential”. They don’t want a training graduate who knows that they need to use a shovel to dig a hole…they want somebody coming out of training who can dig a freaking hole…and more perfect the hole, the better.
Training tactics are slowly changing. Events are shrinking in size. MOOCs are unhooking linearity as a design concept. Learning is being “bursted” and “microed” in more granular chunks. More video is being embedded. Things are getting more social and collaborative, but the “T” word still seems to be central to the mission. We are still Training. Knowledge retention is still the enemy.
They say that even a blind squirrel will find a nut eventually, and I am living proof of that concept. So there I was at DevLearn 2014 locked in to speak at a couple of breakout sessions and facilitate a tabletop discussion at the crack of dawn on day one. I’m on a Performance Support mission of “seek and learn” and purely by accident I stumbled over a pre-conference session Tuesday afternoon before the conference ever started called the xAPI Hyperdrive. Yup…maybe not the squirrel metaphor but I found a nut I was not even looking for…and it changed my entire conference agenda.
We all experience hair on fire moments every single day and our ability to execute a quick action like Stop, Drop & Roll effectively and efficiently translates into effective loss prevention; saved accounts; business liability averted; employee churn prevented; redundant effort and rework minimized, competitive sales closed, material waste minimized…and…and…and. None of these tangible business impacts manifest during Training, and yet we continue to posture Training as the primary driver behind the business outcomes we seek.
One of the more recent buzzwords surfacing in our L&D lexicon is “Ecosystem”, and I see it as having more significance to a sustainable learning and performance strategy than acceptance. “Why seek what you already have? Answer: It’s not really a question of having an ecosystem; the real question is – “Are you managing the one you have effectively and efficiently?”
EPS readiness has more moving parts than simply building a few job aids and calling it good. In fact, to accurately assess readiness, I believe there are six major buckets of attributes and capabilities that should be considered. I developed an EPS Readiness Assessment a couple years ago that holistically covers the entire ecosystem where a sustainable EPS discipline can be integrated.
…but why launch into an 8-to-16 week design and development cycle for an hour of e-learning when the discovery evidence is staring you in the face screaming for a performance support [PS] job aid needed at the point of work? Disruptive? Yup! Agile? You’d better believe it.
…and I tend to believe that the “environment” defining each organizations’ learning and performance ecosystem is unique. Attempting to put learning and performance support into specific sized boxes is an unnecessary complication. For this camper, the objective is clearly one of driving performance…versus adhering to concept percentages.
I just had breakfast with a good friend and colleague, and, the usual thing happened; the conversation shifted to performance challenges around business systems implementations. He is a process improvement engineer blessed with the curse of a training background followed by deep business process improvement experience. While that sounds like a contradiction in terms, it […]