Category: Point of Work Assessment

The organization needs a myth buster. Is that the CEO re-thinking where to focus precious resources to enable and accelerate productivity? Is it a new role like Chief Productivity Officer? Grand Poohbah of Performance? Regardless of what the title becomes, there is an acute need to look beyond Learning to actual Performance with focused attention and priority.

Workflow Learning is getting a lot of press these days, and that’s a good thing because it is bringing learning closer to Point-of-Work. BUT…it’s still wrapped in the myth. If my L&D mission is limited to enabling learning without a direct catalyst of specific performance at Point-of-Work and measurable evidence of impact as business outcomes, then we’ve not overcome the myth…we’ve just put more lipstick on it.

All told, the Virtual Knowledge-Sharing approach was successful, especially when a geographically dispersed audience is on the receiving end. Hopefully, the list of key learnings provided here offer some help and crash-avoidance tactics should your team go down this path. Our audience satisfaction and engagement scores were bright points despite a less than optimized launch. Even sub-optimized the participants loved it because it was interactive start-to-finish. We learned and adjusted, and things only became more impactful as sessions continued. Last thought: Do not under-estimate how critical the context of “When, Why, & How” is to a newbie going through on-boarding. 

We (L&D) could prove knowledge transfer…also known as “potential”…at completion of our learning events, but we were not focused on nor were we equipped to implement that learning downstream at Point-of-Work where “effective and sustainable performance” SHOULD manifest. Just ask the Help Desk staff blown out with an avalanche of post-training questions. Just ask the Procurement staff pulled off task to isolate and recycle bogus requests due to data field entry errors. Just ask the HR staff buried in Manager Self-Service confusion. Just ask the frustrated end-users who fought through delays in getting help at their moments of need…and there were plenty. Did we ultimately implement and slog toward full adoption? Yes…but at what cost?

I’m a big fan of reducing redundant work and these RIGHT THINGS provide a structure to optimize short-form assets to enable productivity acceleration at the Point-of-Work. Optimization is tied directly to identification of performance restrainers via the PWA.

 So…does Intentional Design threaten the ID role? Just the opposite – it expands the role into new asset development that can be re-used or re-purposed to decrease actual development time by following a Create Once – Use Many Times mindset. In some ways one could consider intentional design as replacement therapy…replacing long-form learning with short-form solution assets that can serve multiple roles both at Point-of-Work (Moments 3,4 & 5) and at Point-of-Entry (Moments 1 & 2).