As redundant as this next statement sounds, it represents the core of my position on this…
Performance support supports performance @ Point-of-Work…not training courses!
Tag: Continuous Learning
After drinking the performance consulting Kool-Aid it struck me that the L&D focus was incomplete…and it still is…despite myriad Training innovations like MOOCs, micro-learning, mobile learning, virtual learning, and any other exotic blend you can name. No matter how we dressed it up, no matter how much lipstick, it was still Training. The myth continues to live on.
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.
Those are words a parent never wants to hear. After enduring sixteen hours of labor, my wife delivered our son, and due to general anesthesia from an emergency C-section, I was the first of us to see him. I can only imagine what the doctor and nurses must have thought, because he was one ugly baby. But this book is not about babies. It is about training. And in the course of what you read here I just might refer to training as the “ugly baby”; however, not so much at the course-level, but at the level of our intentions for the role that baby plays in giving back to the organization later in the span of its life.
A recent post “Evolving Training Into the Perfect Hole” brought a comment to me that I could really identify with as being a key challenge – justification for seriously considering learning @ the point of work. I find it stunning that the concept of learning @ the point of work is such a hard sell, especially when you consider that opportunities to learn and moments of potential failure happen at the same time…and very often in the same place – @ the point of work. Better training…or more training…have little-to-nothing to do with justification. What could you possible justify in the absence of real risk?
There’s no denying, that for some businesses LMSs are essential, but they cannot singularly represent holistic technology solutions that hope to sustain dynamic learning ecosystems. Any learning technology solution [LMS or not] should support continuous learning and workforce performance in the “work context”. Establishing learning continuum methodology is foundational to both clarify and plot implementation road maps that define discrete technology solutions. Doing anything less is equivalent to re-arranging deck furniture on the Titanic.
I like the concept of “re-thinking” training organizations based in HR, and I say this from personal work history primarily based in the training space over the last thirty plus years. The blended perspective I have comes from working both inside and outside of HR in training organizations. I found them to have a very different focus.