This is a true story. No instructional designers or facilitators were harmed…threatened a little…but not harmed permanently.
It was a Monday morning. Early. I’d already sucked down three cups of coffee…not counting the venti bold with a shot on the way to work. I could no longer hear the ringing in my ears due to the buzz in my brain now masking all other real or imagined internal bodily noises.
At first glance Change Management (CM) and Change Leadership (CL) may be considered interchangeable and simply more jargon used to confuse a familiar concept. Stay with me on this post as there is a significant difference when the end-game is the desire to create full adoption and sustained capability of any Change initiative.
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. Several pundits like Rosenburg, Mosher and Gottfredson, among others are using “ecosystem” routinely in conversations and presentations. The question that jumps into my brain is “Why seek what you already have?” I say this primarily because every organization already has a Learning & Performance Ecosystem. The question that manifests from “Why seek…” is “It’s not really a question of having an ecosystem; the real question is – Are you managing the one you have effectively and efficiently?”
Implementing Embedded Performance Support [EPS] can be as daunting a task as eating an entire elephant. Not sure I’d ever want to eat an elephant, but if I did, it would be one bite at a time versus scarfing down the whole thing. One bite at a time rings true for implementing EPS as well. Keep in mind that EPS is not a technology [though technology may well be part of the effort]; EPS is a discipline.
With all the recent press performance support is getting…make that positive press…I’m noticing that we could easily slip into a best practice of admiring the problem of what to do about it. To be a bit less sarcastic, I must clarify that admiration of the problem is NOT a best practice, but it often seems like we manage to do it best.
Once again, I find motivation flung upon me to grind out a new post based upon an awesome question asked this morning in one of my networking groups. The question, “Do we see a myopic view by training [L&D] limiting training’s impact?” And a second part, “What do we need to do to overcome it?” One response suggested it was not so much “myopic” as it was “funnel vision!” I heartily agree, and on either view [sorry…], if our vision does not peek through a more holistic lens to view the learning environment as a dynamic ecosystem, we will never progress beyond our current limits.
A question many of us have sought to answer…or maybe “predict an ETA”…came up in one of my networking groups this morning. “When you do you know that the Learning & Development function in your organization is fully developed?” The answer to this may be as impossible to define as it is to nail Jell-O to the wall.
Internal – External Ecosystem-040722A colleague recently asked me to respond to a question that has been a source of constant challenge [for me at least] in my last three corporate training gigs that span about 15 years or so. I cannot imagine my experiences are that dissimilar to many of us who work in the business of Training. Here was his question, “What’s the biggest hurdle to getting stakeholders (employees, employers, clients etc.) involved and engaged with workplace training – and how do you overcome it?” Personally, I believe this question distracts us from two other questions we really need to answer first…and with conviction. I believe that answering these two questions will define an actionable road map to not only answer his original question, but do something about it…and with conviction.
I had the good fortune to stumble into a great discussion thread on LinkedIn this week that finally tripped my trigger this morning on the C-suite’s addiction to ROI. I recognize this affliction is common these days and any attempts to pry fingers off traditions are often seen as more of an assault than an effort to evolve beyond current paradigms. Methinks we ultimately must drive transformational change in the perceived role Training & Development (T&D) plays in the organization. Current T&D practices produce traditional training outcomes. What the C-suite needs to see…and will respond to…are a workforce that has the capacity to be agile and effective at the point of work…AND…produces sustainable business outcomes.
I can remember my first Learning Management System (LMS) implementation from years ago. Actually, in those days they called them Training Management Systems (TMS). This one, Registrar, if I recall correctly, despite its limited functionality, worked better to meet our needs than the four LMS platforms I have endured since. Registrar was simple. It tracked learning. Learning was simple. You did it in a classroom. Period. With the advent of e-learning, the innovation dam broke, and the TMS morphed into LMS and soon a component of a more complex Human Capital Management (HCM) beast. The core competency of registering, tracking and administering training remained intact, but the feature-rich technology largely overran our ability to embrace all the potential it represented. In other words, many training departments fell behind compared to what the technology they owned could ultimately deliver.