I advocate informal and social learning vehicles when appropriate and get as excited about their uses as you likely do, but it’s not a panacea for all our learning woes.  The current zeal around social learning solutions can distract from real performance needs (we’ve been distracted before).  Social learning gets positioned as the enlightened and “correct” solution for the modern workplace. Formal learning is old, tired, and reluctantly tolerated for the vestiges of the traditional, mechanistic workplace.

But, set aside your biases one way or the other for the moment and simply think of the roles and functions you support in your organization.  It will vary by industry of course, but your list is going to be some subset of the following:

..Please visit my new blog Performance X Design to read the remainder of this post and others.

Note: The Gram Consulting blog has been discontinued. I post blog introductions here to encourage former Gram Consulting readers to visit the new blog. All the Gram Consulting content, plus a bunch of new posts are on the new blog. Please come on over…

…Please visit my new blog Performance X Design to read the remainder of this post and others.

Note: The Gram Consulting blog has been discontinued. I post blog introductions here to encourage former Gram Consulting readers to visit the new blog. All the Gram Consulting content, plus a bunch of new posts are on the new blog. Please come on over…

Leadership Development in a Learning 2.0 World

• Contrast current leadership development practices with learning 2.0 driven practices
• Describe benefits of learning 2.0 for transforming leadership and management development
• Describe a model of leadership development driven by learning 2.0 principles
• Envision a future Leadership Development program for your organization on a by a learning 2.0 foundation
• Define strategies for integrating learning 2.0 concepts into current leadership development programs

To read the full post and view the conference presentation please visit Performance X Design.

The research is based an an annual survey of 1700 companies from across the globe in a range of industries and functional areas and has been ongoing now for about three years running.  The Mckinsey Quarterly recently summarized results in an interactive visual chart and as a full article in the McKinsey Quarterly titled How companies are benefiting from Web 2.0: McKinsey Global Survey Results (The article is free but you have to join the free membership to see it in full).

The following chart from the interactive feature summarizes how web 2.0 technologies are being used for some internal purposes including managing knowledge and training.   Internal blogs and wikis are being used significantly for Managing Knowledge. For Training uses the highest categories are Podcasts and Video Sharing (unfortunately the most  presentation oriented technologies of the bunch).   Social Networking is being used extensively for fostering collaboration and identifying and recruiting talent.

Click to access the McKinsey interactive chart

If you go to the interactive feature be sure to listen to the “about this research” audio snippet.  It provides a brief summary of the research and findings across three years.   Some conclusions McKinsey draws:

• an increasing number companies are adopting web 2.0 technologies
• more companies will start to use them for wider purposes including customers, internal employees and suppliers
• uses will continue to evolve and get better at deriving business value

the striking result is that 2/3 of the companies are deriving measurable business value.

McKinsey summarizes:

“This year’s survey turned up strong evidence that these advantages are translating into measurable business gains.  When we asked respondents about the business benefits their companies have gained as a result of using Web 2.0 technologies, they most often report greater ability to share ideas; improved access to knowledge experts; and reduced costs of communications, travel, and operations.  Many respondents also say Web 2.0 tools have decreased the time to market for products and have had the effect of improving employee satisfaction”.

Ellen’s post focused on how Learning Designers on a twitter discussion got  “cranky” at the first mention of the ADDIE process (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation).  On the Twitter #Lrnchat session  participants had a gag response to the to the mere mention of ADDIE (sound familiar?).  Don responded with some great comments on how ISD (ADDIE) has evolved and adapted.

Much of my career has been involved in applying ADDIE in some form or other and I’ve landed on a conflicted LOVE/HATE relationship with it that that you, lucky reader, will now be subjected to .

HATE (Phase A, Step 3.2.6)

Throughout the 90’s many Instructional Designers and e-Learning Developers (me included) grew disgruntled with ADDIE (and its mother process Instructional Systems Design—ISD) as training struggled to keep up with business demands for speed and quality and as we  observed process innovations in software and product development field (Rapid Application Development, Iterative prototyping etc).

In 2001 that frustration was given voice in the seminal article “The Attack on ISD” by Jack Gordon and Ron Zemke in Training Magazine.

The article cited four main concerns:

• ISD is too slow and clumsy to meet today’s training challenges
• There’s no “there” there. (It aspires to be a science but fails on many fronts)
• Used as directed, it produces bad solutions
• It clings to the wrong world view

I have memories of early projects, driven by mindless adherence to ISD, where I learned the hard way, the truth in each of these assertions.  As an example of what not to do and a guard against blowing my brains out in future projects,  for years I have kept an old Gagne style “instructional objective” from an early military project that would make your eyes burn.

Early ISD/ADDIE aspired to be an engineering model.  Follow it precisely and you would produce repeatable outcomes.  The engineering model assumes a “one best way” and the one best way of the time was grounded in the science of behavioral psychology and general systems theory.  The “one best way” thinking appealed to the bureaucratic style of the times but it couldn’t be more of an anathema to the current crop of learning designers, especially those focused on more social and constructivist approaches to learning.  And they are right.

Another criticism of ADDIE I have parallels Ellen’s comments.  Adherents and crankites alike view ADDIE as an “instructional design” methodology when in fact it should be viewed more as a project management process for learning projects.  Viewing  Instructional Design as synonymous with ADDIE does both a disservice.  There is loads of ID going on inside ADDIE but it is primarily in the Design phase of the process, and it can be much more creative than the original model prescribes.

In the end, the Achilles heel of formal ISD/ADDIE rests in its prescriptive posture and foundation in behavioural psychology.  Behavioural psychology and performance technology–its extension in the workplace–have added greatly to our understanding how to improve human learning at work, but we have learned much since then, and technology has provided tools to both designers and learners that profoundly change the need for a process like ADDIE.

Of course the ADDIE process was (and is) not unique to the learning design profession.  For many years the five broad phases of ADDIE were the foundation for the design of most systems.  Software engineering, product development, interactive/multimedia development are all based on some variation of the model.   Most however have evolved from the linear “waterfall” approach of early models (can’t start the next phase until the previous has been done and approved) to iterative design cycles based on rapid prototyping, customer participation in the process and loads of feedback loops built into the process.  And learning/e-learning is no different.  It has evolved and continues to evolve to meet the needs of the marketplace. Much of the current gag reaction to ADDIE, like that experienced by Ellen, is based on the old waterfall-linear approach and the assumed instructivist nature of the model.  And again the gag is entirely valid.

However, if you can break free from the history, preconceptions and robotic application of ADDIE, you may find room for something approaching…

LOVE (Phase B, Step 2.3.7)

I can’t say I ever use ADDIE in its purest form any longer.  For e-learning and performance applications, I prefer processes with iterative design and development cycles that are usually a variation of rapid application development process like this one from DSDM.

Or for an example specific to e-learning,  this process from Cyber Media Creations nicely visualizes the iterative approach:

Source: http://myonlineelearning.blogspot.com/

Or for the Michael Allen fans out there, his Rapid Development approach described in Creating Successful e-Learning is very good.  There is a respectful chapter in the book on the ADDIE limitations and how his system evolved from it.

But at the heart of all these processes are the familiar phases of analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation,  albeit cycling through them many times along the way.

For me ADDIE has become a useful heuristic,  not even a process really, but a framework for thinking,  coaching instructional designers,  and managing learning and e-learning projects.  Many e-learning designers these days are not formally trained in Instructional Design and initially think of it as instructional “writing” more than the holistic and systemic approach at the heart of ADDIE.   Likewise customers and subject matter experts are much easier to work with once they understand the broad project process that ADDIE represents.  For these two purposes alone I am thankful for ADDIE as a framework .  ADDIE has staying power because of it’s simplicity.  Purists will say it has been watered down too much but in many ways that’s what keeps it alive.

ADDIE phases are also a useful way to think about organization design and structure of a learning function.  They are the major processes that need to be managed and measured by most learning functions.  Just think of the functionality of most LMS systems have added since their inception.

In the end ADDIE (and its more current modifications) is probably most valuable because it makes the work of learning design visible. This is an essential feature of productive knowledge work of all kinds.   Almost every learning/training group uses a ADDIE as a start point to design a customized process that can be communicated,  executed,  measured and repeated with some level of consistency.  Equally important in knowledge work is the discipline of continually improving processes and breaking through to better ways of working.  This has resulted in the many innovations and improvement to the ADDIE process since its inception.

SUMMATIVE EVALUATION (Phase E, Step 5.2.3)

I’ve come to believe that the power of ADDIE/ISD lies in the mind and artful hands of the user.  In my experience Rapid Application Development processes can become just as rigid and prescriptive under the watch of inflexible and bureaucratic leaders as ADDIE did.

There’s an intellectual fashion and political correctness at work in some of the outright rejection of ADDIE.  It’s just not cool to associate with the stodgy old process.  Add Web 2.0, informal and social learning to the mix and some will argue we shouldn’t be designing anything.

For the organizations I work with, there is no end on the horizon to formal learning (adjustments in volume and quality would be nice!).  Formal learning will always require intelligent authentic learning design, and a process to make it happen as quickly and effectively as possible. If instead of  the irrelevant old geezer in the corner waving a disapproving finger,  we think of ADDIE more like a character from Mad Men, maybe we can refresh the image a bit.

A few years ago the UPS driver training unit had a mini-revolt on its hands from younger drivers who were unhappy with the long traditional classroom-based training program required for new drivers.  The program was experiencing increasingly higher failure rates and the number of tasks that had to be learned was becoming too much for classroom delivery.  Peggy Emmart, corporate schools coordinator of UPS corporate training and development department commented “while in the early ’90s our DSPs (drivers) may have needed to concentrate on eight key tasks each day, they now routinely perform 30 to 40 major tasks within the same time frame.”

UPS responded by completely overhauling the driver training program into a simulation and immersion based experience called UPS Integrad.  It included a training facility that incorporated a mix of e-learning, simulations, virtual learning, and immersive learn by doing.

Here is a video feature from ABC news on the program. Click the image to take you to the video. There is a short ad first–be patient (sorry I couldn’t embed it).

UPS Integrad Video profile (click to link)

Results

The Integrad program has “exceeded expectations” in all three of the program’s primary goal areas, which include enhanced DSP safety, decreased new driver turnover, and accelerated time to proficiency.

“It wasn’t about video games, it was about providing hands-on application and allowing trainees to learn by doing in a way that connects unambiguously with their jobs”.

When UPS originally started the re-design effort they thought the answer to training younger workers was going to be video game-type training.  Through additional research, they learned it wasn’t about video games, it was about “providing hands-on application and allowing trainees to learn by doing in a way that connects unambiguously with their jobs”.  I think this is a useful caution to e-learning designers moving down the path video game style instruction.

Here’s an article that describes the program in more detail:  UPS Moves Driver Training From the Classroom to the Simulator

But is it appropriate for knowledge workers?

The UPS program is an example of mostly physical or psychomotor learning,  but the lessons hold true for knowledge work as well.  For managers to learn “problem solving and decision making” they need to make decisions and solve real work problems first in a simulated setting and then in real work context with feedback and coaching.   New consultants need to consult; learning designers need to design learning, engineers need to design and test solutions all within safe, feedback rich, immersive work contexts.

As UPS summarized so simply, “The point of all this hands-on instruction is to simulate-as closely as possible-exactly what it’s like to be a…”fill in the blank“.

Just say no

Even if you haven’t read Outliers yet you probably know that it sets out to dispel myths that intelligence or innate ability are the primary predictors of success.  Instead,  Gladwell summarizes research and provides examples to show that it is hours and hours of practice (10,000 to be exact) and a “practical intelligence” (similar in concept to emotional intelligence) acquired through experience that are the real determinants of success.

Gladwell covers similar territory (and draws on the same research) as Geoff Colvin’s Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates world Class Performers from Everybody Else, another excellent book that elaborates on an article Colvin wrote for Fortune magazine a few years ago: “What it Takes To Be Great”.

Both books debunk the assumption that “gifted” skill and great performance comes from innate talent, personal traits or hard wired competencies and ability.  The research Galdwell and Colvin draw on is impressive.  Both point to the extensive work of K. Anders Ericsson at Florida State University.  Ericsson has conducted years of rock solid research on the role of “deliberate practice” in the acquisition of expert performance.  If you like to seek out source research as I do, then you’ll enjoy Ericsson’s (and others) impressive work that has been collected in the Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance. Here is an earlier (and less hefty) review on some of the same research: “Deliberate practice” in the acquisition of expert performance.

At the core of these works is the concept of “deliberate practice” over longs periods of time (up to ten years).  While impossible to boil down the theory into a few points, here it is…uh…boiled down into a few points.   Highly skilled performance in all aspects of life and work can be developed by the rough equivalent of 10,000  hours (10 years or so) of increasing specific, targeted and mindful practice in a domain of expertise. The practice must be:

• Specific & technique-oriented
• Self regulated
• Involve high-repetition
• Paired with immediate feedback on results
• Isn’t necessarily “fun”, (in fact can be grueling hard work)

“Deliberate practice is activity designed specifically to improve performance, often with a teacher’s help; it can be repeated a lot; feedback on results is continuously available; it’s highly demanding mentally, whether the activity is purely intellectual, such as chess or business-related activities, or heavily physical, such as sports; and it isn’t much fun.
From: Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else .

Where Gladwell and Colvin focus on how an individual (you!) can use deliberate practice to improve and achieve the success you want,  Learning Professionals should be thinking about how to use the ideas to help others develop and grow the expertise needed by the organizations we support.  Ericsson has something to say here as well, having recently published a new book on how to design learning environments to develop and measure expertise– Development of Professional Expertise: Toward Measurement of Expert Performance and Design of Optimal Learning Environments.  In a time when learning/instructional design has become generalized and de-professionalized to the point of non-existence, it’s refreshing to see a serious treatment that moves the profession forward.

Using “Deliberate Practice” to Improve Workplace Performance

Here are 10 ideas that just scratch the surface on how Learning Professionals can use “deliberate practice” to improve workplace skill and performance.

1. Move from “mastery learning” to designing practice with feedback over longer periods of time (from learning events to a learning process). Deliberate Practice differs from the concept of ‘Mastery Learning” at the heart of much instructional design.  Mastery learning assumes a skill is perfected (or at least brought to a defined standard) in a fairly short period of time often within the scope of a single course. The complex professional skills of modern knowledge workers and managers demand a stronger focus on long term practice and feedback and building learning around long term objectives.
2. Develop the person. Time, practice and individualized feedback imply a long term focus on individuals rather than on jobs or roles.
3. Informal learning efforts like action learning, coaching and are cognitive apprenticeships are critical but they must be focused on practice and immediate feedback and extend over long periods of time.
4. Relevant, frequent and varied practice must be the dominant and most important element in all formal training programs.
5. Practice opportunities must extend far beyond initial training programs, to allow people to hone their skills through experimentation with immediate feedback.
6. Create practice sandboxes and simulation centres for key organizational skills where people can practice their skills and experience immediate feedback in safe environment.
7. Design visual feedback directly into jobs so professional can immediately see the results of their work.  In this way working IS deliberate practice.
8. Turn training events into the first step of a learning journey that will continue to provide opportunities to practice and refine skills throughout a career.
9. Identify the interests and strengths of people nurture them through opportunities for deliberate practice. Provide resources and support that encourage early effort and achievement.
10. Ensure social media environments provide opportunities for coaching and mindful reflection on performance.

9. Design jobs for natural learning

Most of us accept that we learn through experience,  whether that experience is structured into a training program or simply the “experience” of working.   But what is it about experience that results in learning?  There are a number of factors,  but most powerful among them is the feedback we receive (or don’t receive) on the results of our actions.  We intuitively use that feedback to adjust our actions, decisions, methods etc. to try to get it right the next time…in other words we use feedback to learn…to get better at what we do and accomplish.

Left to our own devices we seek out feedback to determine how well our actions worked at accomplishing our goal.   Jobs with effective feedback mechanisms available result in much more rapid learning, improved results and higher levels of motivation.  Designing a job with an effective feedback system is the equivalent of designing a job as an effective learning system.

A useful performance feedback system need the following elements to produce the kind of information needed for an employee to learn and perform:

• A clear understanding of the requirements both in terms of the outputs they are expected to produce and the standards of quality, cost and time they are expected to meet.

• An accurate and objective measurement system. Job outputs must be easily measured and compared to the standard.   It can include both qualitative and quantitative data.

• A visual display of the performance data against the standard. Charting and graphing performance data is much more effective than text, tables and spreadsheets.  It adds a level of interpretation and visual comparison that people readily accept.  There are many visual performance charting tools available, most of them automated.  They include line graphs, control charts, bar charts, pie charts and many others.

A sample line graph

• It must be timely, relevant and specific to the employee of team.

System thinking has also taught us that feedback is also important for identifying the downstream consequences of our actions. This feedback will typically be delayed, especially in knowledge work contexts when our output is part of a larger solution that can take months or even years before results are fully realized.  Sometimes unintended or undesired consequences can be the result.

immediate and delayed feedback

Other learning uses of performance feedback systems

Once an effective feedback system is in place it can be the basis for other learning interventions like coaching, performance appraisal, team development, and process improvement.  It should also be used to provide data to evaluate the effectiveness for formal training.  In many ways formal training is meant to compress and accelerate the learning that an individual might naturally get on the job.  Training should result in improvements that register on the performance feedback tool.   Formal training is our last an final strategy for integrating learning and work.

10. Bring the job to learning

Integrating learning and working implies building learning into jobs and processes–and that has certainly been the focus of the first nine strategies.  But greater integration can also be achieved by bringing jobs and processes into formal learning design.

Broadly speaking the goal formal training is to compress on the job experience to bring people to competency as quickly as possible.  Somehow over the years that goal been reduced to lots of telling and very little “doing”.   So my last strategy is an appeal to bring structured experience back to formal learning.  I don’t mean generic structured experience (like a management outdoor education or abstract team building exercises for example) but experiences based on authentic learning tasks.

We know how to do it.  The formal learning strategies that result in superior learning include business and process simulations, decision case learning, anchored instruction and the whole task learning design methods found in Jeroen van Merrienboer’s  4C/ID work.   Here are some links to design approaches that are based on real world learning tasks:

• Situated Learning
• Anchored Instruction
• Cognitive Apprenticeship
• Goal Based Scenarios
• First Principles Method
• 4C/ID

Some organizations are starting to turn their training functions into simulation centres and learning “studios” that use a combination of physical and knowledge based simulations of actual work processes and tasks.  For example Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto has developed a simulation centre.

For a very interesting academic experiment in a studio based approach to learning that I think would translate well to business settings see MIT’s Technology Enabled Active Learning Project.  It is based on a studio approach to learning that moves seamlessly between lecture, experimentation and discussion and individual design projects in one large technology enabled room.  Remote technologies could easily be used for dispersed employees.

This takes us full circle back to strategy #1.   If you use appropriate analysis tools to understand the job for which training is being developed, the quality of that training will be dramatically improved and the skills employees learn will be immediately useful.   Performance-based learning and Learning-based performance.  Two worthy and achievable goals for the learning professional.

Posts in the “10 Strategies for Integrating Learning and Work” series:

Part 1:

• Strategy 1:  Understand the job
• Strategy 2:  Link Learning to business process
• Strategy 3:  Build a performance support system

Part 2:

• Strategy 4:  Build a community of practice
• Strategy 5:  Use social media to facilitate informal learning

Part 3:

• Strategy 6:   Implement a continuous improvement framework
• Strategy 7:   Use action learning

Part 4:

• Strategy 8:  Use Organizational Learning practices

Part 5:

• Strategy 9:  Design jobs for natural learning
• Strategy 10:  Bring the job to the learning

Are you ready for Bio-Optic Organized Knowledge (B.O.O.K)?  Apparently “thousands of content creators have committed to the platform and investors are reported flocking to the medium”

I learned about the new device through this B.O.O.K MARK while browsing a local supplier of B.O.O.K on the weekend.

8. Organizational Learning Practices

Organizational Learning (OL) means different things to different people.  These days, it is often used as a catch-all label for traditional (formal) training which it most certainly is not.  OL is broader than that label implies.  It is usually focused on individual and team transformation through participating in tangible activities that change the way people conduct their work.   It builds new capacities in individuals and teams that collectively begin to shape the culture and performance of an organization.

Peter Senge in his groundbreaking book The Fifth Discipline defined his view of what those new capacities should be and in doing so launched the Organizational Learning movement.   The Fifth Discipline contains a collection of practices from system dynamics, organizational development and psychology that Senge organized into a cohesive whole structured around “five disciplines of organization learning”.

OL practices have grown and evolved beyond Senge’s framework but his still remains the most cohesive.  This post lists his five “disciplines” along with some guidelines for the learning professional to help their clients achieve them.  It’s important to remember that each of the five disciplines listed are considered a “lifelong body of study and practice” so none are meant to produce immediate impact,  but rather continuously move towards understanding and behaviour change that collectively shapes the organization.   Also, the sample exercises I list below are not self explanatory.  They are mostly drawn from “The Fifth Discipline FieldBook”, a great source for activities that ground the often esoteric ideas in the Fifth Discipline.  See that source for further details.

Personal Mastery

Personal Mastery, the first of the five disciplines is effectively the skills of personal effectiveness–defining and accomplishing personal vision.

Learning professionals and facilitators can guide individuals through the process of identifying and clarifying a personal vision, realistically assessing it against the current state, and help individuals to understand and manage the creative tension between the two.  The goal is to help people make better choices, and to achieve more of the results that they have chosen.

Sample exercises:

• Drawing Forth Personal Vision: An exercise to surface, define and clarify individual purpose and goals.

• Cycling Back: Current Reality and Revisions: An exercise to continuously define, monitor and act on barriers to achieving the vision.

Mental Models

Mental Models are ingrained assumptions and ways of thinking held by individuals and organizations.  Adjusting mental models can lead to breakthroughs in personal and organizational performance.  Learning professionals can help their clients improve how they govern their actions and decisions through the skills of reflection and inquiry and develop an heightened awareness of the attitudes and perceptions that influence thought and interaction.

Sample exercises:

• The Left Hand Column: An exercise developed by Chris Argyris in which individuals record “what they were thinking” vs. “what was said” during important conversations.  Analysis of the result helps to surface and confront existing attitudes and assumptions (mental models).

• The Wheel of Multiple Perspectives: Rotating roles to widen a team’s perspective and see issues from as many vantage points as possible.

Shared Vision

This is the practice of collective vision and mutual purpose vs. the individual vision of personal mastery. Management and professional networks can be guided through activities to create a common vision of the future they wish to create and the methods and means they that will most effectively get them there. In doing so meaning is created and relationships strengthened.

Sample exercises:

• What Do We Want to Create?: Guide your team through a series of structured questions that bring pertinent issues to the forefront and results results phrases, ideas and governing ideas around which a vision can be built.

• Backing Into a Vision: A great exercise for surfacing common goals without taking on a full fledged visioning process.

Team Learning

The skilled practice of group interaction and collaboration.  Through techniques like dialogue and skillful discussion, teams modify their problem solving, collaboration and interaction to produce results that are greater than the sum of individual members.  Team Learning is not team building although a more cohesive team is usually a result.  Instead as a facilitator you want to focus on improved dialogue and team discussion skills.

Sample exercises:

• Fishbowl: To get immediate feedback on communication styles. Half the team discusses and issue while the other half watches and provides constructive feedback.

• Undiscussables: A card game in which people can anonymously raise questions that never get raised.

Systems Thinking

System Thinking is “the fifth discipline” and it is my personal favorite.  Over the years I have found many ways to use systems thinking to help clients and understand my own work practices.   The systems perspective is a powerful conceptual framework that allows teams to understand deep inter-dependencies and forces that shape the consequences of actions. Tools and techniques such as systems archetypes, feedback loops, and various types of learning simulations help people see how to change systems more effectively.

Senge’s view of systems is more about surfacing predictable patterns and outcomes of human behaviour and decisions as contrasted with the (equally powerful) view of organizations as systems that process inputs to valued customer outputs.   Senges “systems archetypes” help teams understand their problems in system dynamics terms and “see” the underlying patterns that are causing their problems.

Sample Activities:

Shifting the Burden Archetype: click to view

• Organization and Process Mapping: Documenting and analyzing an organization as a system to identify disconnects and problems and to re-design for improved effectiveness

• Problems as System Archetypes: Help clients examine problem situation in terms of typical combinations of feedback (reinforcing and balancing).

• Breaking Through Organizational Gridlock: A seven step systems exercise based on Senge’s “shifting the burden” archetype

Organizational Learning Technology

Some learning technology solutions have emerged that support the Organizational Learning methods described above.  The most interesting are the use of the system archetypes to develop management simulations.

• Decision Support Systems based on system archetypes

• Generic management learning simulators to help managers understand the underlying system archetypes.  For example the beer game is a role-play supply chain simulation that lets learners experience typical supply chain problems based on systems theory principles.

• Software to support system modeling of organizational behaviour and dynamics.  For example STELLA, iThink and Powersim

• See this example for how simulations based on organizational system dynamics can be used for management training

There is room for much more work in the use of system modeling for training and learning purposes.

Summary

Organization Learning (like organizational development) has been considered a sister profession to Learning and Performance.   I’ve seen some situations where the units compete and as a result sub-optimize their services to the organization.  As Learning and Performance begins to adopt more informal and non-formal learning solutions there is much to learn from organizational learning and development and the potential for overlap increases.   I think it makes sense to consider a combined business unit that provides service in the full range performance improvement solutions.

Learn more:

Society for Organizational Learning

Peter Senge and the Learning Organization

Learning for a Change: Fast Company Magazine interview with Peter Senge

The Learning Organization

Peter Senge will be a Keynote presenter at the Canadian Society for Training and Development (CSTD) annual conference this year in October (in Toronto).  See here for conference details

Posts in the “10 Strategies for Integrating Learning and Work” series:

Part 1:

• Strategy 1:  Understand the job
• Strategy 2:  Link Learning to business process
• Strategy 3:  Build a performance support system

Part 2:

• Strategy 4:  Build a community of practice
• Strategy 5:  Use social media to facilitate informal learning

Part 3:

• Strategy 6:  Implement a continuous improvement framework
• Strategy 7:  Use action learning

Part 4:

• Strategy 8:  Use Organizational Learning practices

Part 5:

• Strategy 9:  Design jobs for natural learning
• Strategy 10:  Bring the job to the learning