The point of work is a different, evolving venue for the consumption of learning assets, especially when we could consider mentor/mentee or apprentice/master craftsman relationships as “learning assets”. These different venues can be as “social” as they are downloadable asset-equipped. This evolution is a full 1,600-meter race, and the evolving venue has a ton of implications on the design, development, delivery, and/or accessibility of these assets. In fact, ADDIE needs to shed a few pounds and become more agile…producing content that is a little more nimble…a little more downstream-thinking in order to address the where, when, and how learning assets may be consumed.
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The Hardest Four Years
<God Alert:>This piece is not my usual rant about some aspect of corporate learning. It still is about learning, but is tagged for the Learning About Living side of the Living in Learning blog. Some might ask, “Why combine something like this in a corporate learning blog?” I in turn would ask, “How can God […]
Take heart. Our LMSs are doing exactly what they are supposed to do. Our training programs are as effective as training can be. We are as good on platform delivering training as the best trainers can be. Our Flash programming sizzles with the best, and our Level 1s and 2s speak an undeniable truth and that truth we can defend to the death…or to the moment of an unanticipated down-sizing…whichever comes first. We can honestly say this – “Training delivered!” No puns, please. This is our truth, but it is simply not enough to save our bacon…spoken confidently by one who has recently had his bacon drop-kicked through the window of opportunity.
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 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. Methinks being fully developed, means being in a constant state of “evolution” with a minimum of resistance to change.
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?
Deployment gets you to the end-of-training celebration party and the three-bite shrimp, the balloons, the creepy clowns, and the face painting. A frightfully high percentage of system knowledge packed into the heads and hearts of learners evaporates [unreinforced knowledge retention loss] almost before all the confetti is swept up from the gala celebration. Then comes something called GoLive, and heads and hearts that were “certified as ready”, struggle with crippled recall knowledge; some users settling for feelings of success when they can remember enough to sign-on to SAP or the EMR the first time. Now our learners are in their downstream, post-training environment called the work context. Now they are outside of the scope and charter of most training organizations. Now they are most dangerous. As Satchel Paige said, “It’s not what you don’t know that can hurt you; it’s what you think you know that just ain’t so!”
Having been a Sales Trainer, Sales Training Manager, and Director Sale Training in a couple of previous lives, I nearly jumped out of my chair when I read a blog post by a new networking contact, David Brock. Dave authors a blog, Partners in Excellence, and his post of December 7th “Let’s Put an End to Product Training” triggered a wee bit of a dance…not really, but I did unleash a couple mental fist-pumps. First-hand experience and many many road miles confirm how wasteful product training can be. I must add, it is not “What we train” as much as it is ‘How we train it.” Sales reps certainly need product knowledge, but the ability to spew features and promise of intangible benefits at a prospect is a waste of time and energy to both parties.
The original question… “What Kind of Learning Is Best Suited to Mobile Technology? …surfaced yesterday in a networking group and included three different learning contexts:
– Acquisition of learning
– Retention of learning
– Application of learning
The first thing that popped into my head was… “Yeah, all three are a good fit!” Then the consultant in me kicked in and the answer morphed to what we are all trained to give… “It depends.”
Having all my bases covered, I attempted to clarify…or was that justify…
C-suite’s addiction leads to relentless pursuit of ROI. There’s a headline for you! 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.