When Einstein defined insanity as “Continuing to do what we’ve always done and expecting different results”, he was on the money. We continue to train with hopes that some form it…some technology enhanced venue of it…some exotic blend of it…is going to produce sustained capability that produces tangible business outcomes. Does training contribute to results? Sure it does, but does it sustain them? No, it cannot. It was never chartered nor was it scoped to do so.
Tag: performance support
This is an interview by Bloomfire I participated in almost two years ago that just resurfaced on their blog. I think the relevance is timely and worth sharing again for those who missed it. The basis for this dialog centers around how the T&D role is being stressed to meet the new learning demands of business and some thoughts on what to do about it.
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.
Paradigm shift? Methinks this evolution is going to make more noise than a dramatic shift of thinking. My only hope is that training organizations hear the noise and embrace the implications of new skills and integration of learning @ the point of work before they hear another sound – the firing squad blasting away at their training budget.
Plucking is good. It’s happening at an ever-increasing pace. A technology savvy user population is asking for it by their actions. Isn’t that reason enough to shift our content design, development, and delivery models to match the need for the population that pays the rent on our training cost center? Methinks it is, and our [Training’s] paradigm is way over due for an evolutionary step toward the new ground zero for learning @ the point of work.
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!”
When do you abandon a vision? How many times can you run into a wall before deciding to stop trying to get over, under, or around it? Have you ever reached a level of frustration that caused you to ask yourself questions like these? Attempting to usher in Change, especially the kind that smacks of innovation can prompt these questions if the Change is not properly positioned. Innovation can feel threatening when introduced as new technology or new methodology. Selling Change successfully redirects emphasis from the solution to the impact anticipated from it.