The Performance Improvement Blog

Lies About Learners and the Internet of Things

In a blog post for ATD provocatively titled “Lies About Learners”, Larry Israelite writes:

Our current learning approach is outdated. Now is the time to reinvent it. The global business environment is changing rapidly; access to sophisti­cated, social, digital technologies is increasing; and the digital generation’s expectations of how, when, where, and why work gets done are shifting. The learner needs to be at the center of our reinvention. 

The first lie—or assumption—is that learners need a break from their hectic work setting, and thus need a peaceful and tranquil environment to soak in and apply content. Instructor-led delivery of training content continues to lead the way when it comes to formal programs, but most learners prefer an anytime, anyplace, any path, and any pace approach to learning. 

The distinction Larry Israelite is making is the difference between “push learning” and “pull learning.” Traditionally, HR managers and training specialists have been given the responsibility to decide what employees need to learn, often with input from SMEs, and then they push that onto the learner through training programs. No surprise that employees, who are being told what and how and when they will learn, lack the motivation to develop new competencies. Retention of learning is low and application to the workplace is minimal.

Pull learning, on the other hand, gives employees control over what, when, and how they learn. An example of this kind of learning is KnowledgeStar™. This is an app and system for just-in-time learning. David Grebow describes it this way:

The app is driven by iBeacon technology connected to any cross-platform internet connected device that can pull information from the cloud. The beacon goes on any machine or piece of equipment and sends out a specific signal when you get close. The app ‘hears’ the signal and calls the cloud for the information on that machine or piece of equipment. You get a tailored menu of information choices that could include safety checklists, operating instructions, functional specs, diagrams, and safety warnings. Whatever you need. Whenever that information is really needed.

KnowledgeStar™ makes machines smart so that employees can pull information and instructions “…anytime, anyplace, any path, and any pace...”  The app and process is designed to do the following on-demand:

• Show employees what they need to know to operate the machine
• Tell employees how to use the machine correctly and efficiently
• Help employees be safe working with and around the machine
• Help employees complete and submit regulatory forms and checklists
• Show employees how to fix the machine if it is broken
• Show employees how to maintain the machine over time
• Provide employees with the schematics and diagrams they need
• Contact an expert or get emergency assistance if needed

And all of this is done using the method preferred by the employee. This could be text, sound, video, graphics – whatever is best for that employee to “pull” the information he or she wants.

HR and training managers don’t necessarily need internet technology to facilitate pull learning. Action learning, coaching, experiments, and internships could be used for pull learning. However, internet technology continues to offer more and more ways in which employees can take charge of their own learning. KnowledgeStar™ is one example of this.

What are examples of “pull” learning that you are seeing in your organizations?

Stop Relying on Training for Employee Learning

Formal training continues to take up too much of organizational resources. Formal, event-based training (courses, workshops, seminars, MOOCs) has a place in corporate learning but only a small place and only for employee learning that can’t be achieved in other, more timely, less costly, and more effective ways. This is because formal training (referred to as "push" learning), regardless of how well it is delivered to employees, is limited in its impact:

• Learning is not retained. Although forgetting varies widely depending on the content, training design, and workplace environment, some research shows that students forget 70% of what they are taught within 24 hours and they forget 90% after a week.
• Learning is not applied. Research shows that only between 10% and 50% of training participants, depending on non-training factors, apply what they have learned to their work.
• Learning is not experienced by those who need it most. Employees who need performance improvement the most often are not the ones who receive training. Because they are not given the opportunity or not encouraged by their managers or the training is not delivered in a way that makes it accessible, many employees are never exposed to what they need.
• Training does not promote creativity and innovation. This is a way of thinking that is antithetical to formal training which depends on a predetermined set of objectives and curriculum. Creativity and innovation comes from the unanticipated and the unexpected; the willingness to veer from the old way of doing things and experiment with ideas that have never been applied before.
• Training does not have the flexibility needed by a growing contingent workforce. Many companies rely on a constant flow of contract and temporary workers who need to be brought onboard quickly, adapt to a continuously changing environment, and can’t wait for a training program.
• Training does not work for rare events. For example, employees need to be able to respond to workplace, life-threatening accidents that can’t be anticipated and might never occur. When these accidents do occur, employees aren't ready because the relevant training was weeks or months or years earlier.

More than formal training programs, we need learning that is targeted, relevant, and can be applied immediately. We need to create an organizational culture in which learning is on-going and happens in the course of work, where workers "pull" the learning they need when they need it. Most learning happens on-the-job anyway. The challenge is to make sure workers are receiving correct and useful information and if it’s learning through trial-and-error, that employees are receiving feedback that helps them learn. With the technology that is available today, there is no reason why we can’t get just the right information to individual employees when, where, and how they need it.

Reprise: How to Create a Learning Culture in Organizations

Several excellent blog posts have recently come to my attention that, when combined, provide a how-to for creating a learning culture in organizations. One of these posts appears in Jane Hart’s blog, Learning in the Social Workplace. In this post, she writes that workplace learning is:

1. Structured learning experiences (e.g., training) and informal learning experiences (e.g., communities of practice)
2. Helping workers learn continuously on the job
3. Peer-to-peer learning that is “lite on content and rich in interaction”
4. An integral part of everything that is done in the organization, supported by technology and social networks
5. Managed by learning professionals who facilitate both formal and informal learning experiences

Hart writes further that learning professionals should, therefore, take on a new role, that of “Enterprise Learning Community Managers.” I see this role a little differently. I think we need this role but learning professionals should teach all managers how to serve in this capacity. A learning culture needs every manager encouraging, facilitating, and holding people accountable for learning.

In another post titled, How to create sustainable behaviour change, Tom Quayle writes “learning and development needs to move away from the fixation that the way to grow the capability of your staff and improve performance is through training.” He explains that training doesn’t change long-term behavior. Employees must be motivated to change. This is done by managers communicating a compelling reason for the change, measuring the new behavior and giving feedback to employees, creating “triggers” in the work environment that remind employees what needs to be done, and building communities of employees that support shared learning.

Quayle offers some specific ideas for sustaining learning and change, such as:

Do your homework on your employees. If they're sales people and they're out on the road, how can you bring development directly to them? Is there an app or social networking forum you can communicate through? And what type of individuals are they? Are they likely to respond to emails or do they prefer face to face interactions? 

In this suggestion, he is imploring managers to adapt the method of learning that they use to how particular individuals and networks learn best given the content. Use the ways they tend to communicate when conveying information to them.

In a blog carnival started by Enterprise Collaborative, Harold Jarche contributed a post titled, The learning organization: an often described, but seldom observed phenomenon. In this post, he writes that we need to:

...move learning away from training and HR, as some external band-aid solution that gets called in from time to time. Learning must be an essential part of doing business in the network age. Learning has to be owned by the workers and learning support has to be a business function.

Jarche observes that learning organizations have these three characteristics:

• People at all levels are narrating their work in a transparent environment
• The daily routine supports social learning
• Time is made available for reflection and sharing stories

What I think Jarche is saying and what I think is missing in most discussions of organizational learning, is an organizational routine of feedback, reflection, and active social learning. That is, organizational learning is not about training. Rather, it's about a community of workers sharing in a process of constantly seeking improvement through new knowledge, new skills, and new applications of knowledge and skills to achieving the goals of the organization. They examine what they do, compare that to what needs to be done, reflect on what they have learned, and make the needed change in the organization.

- See more at: http://stephenjgill.typepad.com/performance_improvement_b/2012/07/how-to-create-a-learning-culture-in-organizations.html#sthash.YKQbbMDC.dpuf