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”.

I think it’s a great example of the contrast of learning in rigid formal environments and learning in the context of meaningful problems and authentic tasks.   The focus is public education but it’s not a stretch to extend to classroom training in the workplace.

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No, I’m not very good in school. This is my second year in the seventh grade, and I’m bigger and taller than the other kids. They like me all right, though, even if I don’t say much in the classroom, because outside I can tell them how to do a lot of things. They tag me around and that sort of makes up for what goes on in school.

I don’t know why the teachers don’t like me. They never have very much. Seems like they don’t think you know anything unless you can name the books it comes out of. I’ve got a lot of books in my room at home-books like Popular Science Mechanical Encyclopedia, and the Sears & Wards catalogues–but I don’t sit down and read them like they make us do in school. I use my books when I want to find something out, like whenever mom buys anything second-hand I look it up in Sears or Wards first and tell her if she’s getting stung or not. I can use the index in a hurry.

In school, though, we’ve got to learn whatever is in the book and I just can’t memorize the stuff. Last year I stayed after school every night for two weeks trying to learn the names of the presidents. Of course, I knew some of them–like Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln, but there must have been thirty altogether, and I never did get them straight. I’m not too sorry though, because the kids who learned the presidents had to turn right around and learn all the vice-presidents. I am taking the seventh grade over, but our teacher this year isn’t so interested in the names of the presidents. She has us trying to learn the names of all the great American inventors.

I guess I just can’t remember the names in history. Anyway, this year I’ve been trying to learn about trucks because my uncle owns three, and he says I can drive one when I’m sixteen. I already know the horsepower and number of forward and backward speeds of twenty-six American trucks, some of them Diesels, and I can spot each make a long way off. It’s funny how that Diesel works. I started to tell my teacher about it last Wednesday in science class when the pump we were using to make a vacuum in a bell jar got hot, but she, didn’t see what a Diesel engine had to do with our experiment on air pressure, so I just kept still. The kids seemed interested though. I took four of them around to my uncle’s garage after school, and we saw the mechanic, Gus, tear a big truck Diesel down. Boy does he know his stuff!

I’m not very good in geography either. They call it economic geography this year. We’ve been studying the imports and exports of Chile all week, but I couldn’t tell what they are. Maybe the reason is I had to miss school yesterday because my uncle took me and his big truck down and we brought almost 10 tons of livestock to the Chicago market.

He had told me where we were going, and I had to figure out the highways to take and also the mileage. He didn’t do anything but drive and turn where I told him to, Was that fun. I sat with a map in my lap, and told him to turn south, or southeast, or some other direction. We made seven stops, and drove over 500 miles round trip. I’m figuring now what his oil cost, and also the wear and tear on the truck–he calls it depreciation–so we’ll know how much we made.

I even write out all the bills and send letters to the farmers about what their pigs and beef cattle brought at the stockyards. I only made three mistakes in 17 letters last time, my aunt said, all commas. She’s been through high school and reads them over. I wish I could write school themes that way. The last one I had to write was on, “What a Daffodil Thinks of Spring,” and I just couldn’t get going.

I don’t do very well in school in arithmetic either. Seems I just can’t keep my mind on the problems. We had one the other day like this:

If a 57 foot telephone pole falls across a cement highway so that 17 3/6 feet extended from one side and 14 9/17 feet from the other how wide is the highway?

That seemed to me like an awfully silly way to get the width of a highway. I didn’t even try to answer it because it didn’t say whether the pole had fallen straight across or not.

Even in shop I don’t get very good grades. All of us kids made a broom holder and bookend this term, and mine were sloppy. I just couldn’t get interested. Mom doesn’t use a broom anymore with her vacuum cleaner, and all our books are in a bookcase with glass doors in the living room. Anyway, I wanted to make an end gate for my uncle’s trailer, but the shop teacher said that meant using metal and wood both, and I’d have to learn how to work with wood first. I didn’t see why, but I kept still and made a tie rack at school and the tail gate after school at my uncle’s garage. He said I saved him ten dollars.

Civics is hard for me, too. I’ve been staying after school trying to learn the “Articles of Confederation” for almost a week, because the teacher said we couldn’t be a good citizen unless we did. I really tried, though, because I want to be a good citizen. I did hate to stay after school because a bunch of boys from the south end of town have been cleaning up the old lot across from Taylor’s Machine Shop to make a playground out of it for the little kids from the Methodist home. I made the jungle gym from old pipe. We raised enough money collecting scrap this month to build a wire fence clear around the lot.

Dad says I can quit school when I am sixteen, and I am sort of anxious because there are a lot of things I have to learn–and as my uncle says, I’m not getting any younger.

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.

The SECI Cycle of Knowledge Creation

In that book they advanced a “dynamic theory of knowledge creation” embodied in their SECI cycle of tacit to explicit knowledge creation. In the model organizational knowledge is created and grows through a cycle of  Socialization, Externalization, Combination and Internalization

Nonaka considered that “Ba” was the context in which the knowledge assets of an organization were created shared, and utilized through informal interaction.  According to Nonaka, a different type of Ba is associated with each stage of the knowledge creation cycle.  This includs Originating ba (socialization), Interacting ba (externalization) Cyber ba (combination) and Exercising ba (internalization)

SECI and Ba (from Nonaka and Konno, 1998)

Ba and Management Development

In my search for informal learning services for the training function I came across a simple and powerful program that might be consider a Ba approach to management development.   The program, called Coaching Ourselves is founded by leading management thinker Henry Mintzberg of McGill University and Phil LeNir.

The Coaching Ourselves program is built around groups of managers, usually four to seven, meeting together on topics drawn from content authored by Minztberg and other leading management thinkers such as David Ulrich, Michael Beer, Marshall Goldsmith.  The sessions are self-structured by the management team and are built on the action learning approach I described here (without the facilitator).  The Coaching Ourselves web site illustrates the learning approach like this:

According to the website:
“Through Coaching Ourselves, managers develop themselves as individuals, the group develops as a team, and together they undertake initiatives that change their organization

• Participants bring their every day experiences, Coaching Ourselves topics provide the concepts
• Managers learn as they reflect on their experiences in light of the conceptual material
• The learning is carried back to work for impact.
• Insights from new experiences feed into subsequent sessions”

The SECI model and Ba are concepts firmly rooted in the informal end of the learning continuum I described here.  The loose structure of the Coaching Ourselves program might place it in the middle of the continuum as a “non-formal” learning program.

In my view it offers managers a way to bring their own experience to the table as they interact with their colleagues and the expert content provided by leading management thinkers.   It puts learning in their own hands and embeds it in their day to day work.   It also fosters management learning as a continuous endeavor rather than the one shot learning experience of many structured management programs.   Use of collaborative technologies would allow managers to continue the conversations outside of the meeting room (a virtual ba) and extend the reach of the discussions beyond geographic boundaries.

The connection to SECI and Ba was made for me by one of the participants in the program whose feedback was:

“The sessions have become a precious ‘Ba’ where ‘lonely’ managers can reflect on their management style and talk with their colleagues frankly.”
Mr. Kentaro Iijima, Managing Director of SSL Fugitsu, Japan

Here’s an introduction to the Coaching Ourselves program from Henry Mintzberg:

Learn More:

Ikujiro Nonaka, Noboru Konno, The concept of “Ba’: Building foundation for Knowledge Creation. California Management Review Vol 40, No.3 Spring 1998

H. Shimizu, “Ba-Principle: New Logic for the Real-time Emergence of Information,” Holonics, 5/1 (1995):67-69

Nonaka, I. and Takeuchi, H. (1995). The knowledge-creating company. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nonaka, I., and Toyama, R. (2003). ‘The knowledge-creating theory revisited: knowledge creation as a synthesizing process’. Knowledge Management Research & Practice, Vol 1, pp 2-10.

More on SECI and Ba: here and here

The International Masters Program in Practicing Management (The MBA alternative from which the Coaching Ourselves program is derived)

Blog Entries:

Chris Williams

Dave Crisp

” Not only did survey participants acknowledge that informal learning plays a role in today’s workplaces, they also predicted that it would grow in the next three years. More than half of respondents reported that informal learning would increase during that time period”

When asked of the “incidence” of informal learning in their organizations, respondents had this to say:

The results are interesting for a few reasons.  First, Informal learning always has and always will be “occurring” in organizations.   We are natural learners and experience is a natural teacher.   I think the predicted increase has more to do with the heightened awareness on the part of training professionals that the vast majority of learning takes place on the job,  not in the classroom (or e-learning program) along with the current proliferation of knowledge tools.   I think the predicted increase also has to do with the training function’s intention of being more proactive in their influence and facilitation of informal learning…to formalize informal learning so to speak.

That intention will be a great thing if the efforts actually add value and don’t simply get in the way of the naturally occurring human learning already taking place.  Right now training functions are struggling to figure out what kind of services they can provide beyond providing social networking tools and letting employees have at it.   You can see evidence of the struggle in this definition of informal learning provided in the ASTD report:

“After careful deliberation, the researchers arrived at the following definition: “a learning activity that is not easily recognizable as formal training and performance support. Generally speaking, it takes place without a conventional instructor and is employee-controlled in terms of breadth, depth, and timing. It tends to be individualized, limited in scope, and utilized in small chunks.”

huh?…defining something by what it isn’t seems the easy way out.  You can see the same struggle in the way trainers are reporting learning tools and resources being used for informal learning.  If e-mail is considered the top tool for informal knowledge sharing we have a lot of work to do.  From the ASTD study:

7 Informal Learning Services

We need to get beyond these types of generalities, and start adding clear service offerings that managers and teams can take advantage of to harness informal learning.  With that in mind here are seven services that a training function might add to their suite of services to influence organizational learning in meaningful ways.

1. Informal Learning Assessment

In the same way we now do needs assessment to identify formal skill development needs, learning consultants can analyze business processes, problem solving, and decision making methods to determine how and where informal learning solutions and mechanisms would help improve performance. This should be built into current performance analysis methods (in fact I wouldn’t even call it and informal learning assessment.  It should be one facet of a performance assessment or analysis)

2. Communities of Practice

This 20% activity on the ASTD survey needs far more traction.  It’s been around long enough to have worked out some early kinks and is a proven way to generate, share and maintain knowledge.  Many of the best CoP tools have now built web 2.0 inspired collaborative features (see Tomoye for example).  I’m a fan of Cop approaches because the focus is on the process of knowledge creation and exchange and not on the technology.  Also communities are focused around tasks and team accomplishment rather than the social meandering some “social networking” technology can result in.

Learning consultants can help teams plan, establish, build nurture and maintain communities of practice.

3. Action Learning

Another approach that has been out there and proven, especially for management development is action learning (see my previous post here). Action learning involves guided reflective learning around the completion of a real problem or task. A skilled learning consultant guides a small team through the process of doing, reflecting on results and making adjustments, that is at the heart of natural learning.

4. Performance System Design

You might simply call this job design (or re-design). There are so many things that can be hard wired into the design of a job or role that can cause incidental learning simply as a byproduct of doing.

One of the best is an effective feedback system.   No, not performance appraisal, but data driven visual feedback that is generated within the business process.  Performance feedback is frequent, specific and objective information to individuals (or teams) regarding how well they are performing against job requirements/standards.  Poor, delayed or no feedback at all breaks the chain of natural learning.

Other job design elements that will result in learning include access to information needed to do work, clear expressions of expectations, and tools necessary for good performance.   True, these resemble what line management sees as their responsibility but a good performance consultant can provide the guidance and expertise to get it right.

5. Social Media Coaching

Yes, use of social media itself facilitates learning, but how it is used can really accelerate that process. Skilled learning consultants can work with teams and coaches to help structure the use of social media to effectively capture and share learning.  To some, the notion of “structuring” the use of social media is antithetical.  But organizations have goals and collaboration has always been structured to meet those goals.  Social media as we are already seeing with corporate tools like Yammer, Mzinga, Rypple, and Kindling are already being structured for specific organizational purposes.

6. Team Development

Good old fashioned team development is informal learning.  When concerns arise with team relationships new approaches focus on the fit between the business process and human systems rather than narrowly on interpersonal conflict. Learning consultants can use simple tools and methods to help teams and individuals improve candor, feedback, resolve conflict and clarify roles in the context of business activities. The result is team learning and improvement.

7. Systems Thinking

A broad concept but one that can result in powerful learning and performance improvement.  Large scale change and improvement models from Toyota’s Lean Production System (based on Deming’s work), to Rummler-Brache performance improvement and Socio-Technical systems are all grounded in understanding organizations as systems.  Peter Senge’s fifth discipline is systems thinking.  Performance consultants skilled in the use of tools, templates and approaches for modeling an organization as a system can help managers and teams better understand their work and how to get to the deep fixes that organizations need to make both incremental and radical change.  Systems Thinking is a learning tool that results in organizational learning.

…and more

These are but seven broad ways training functions can start to add some value through informal learning consulting services. You need look no further than the sister professions of organization development and performance improvement for more, including coaching, mentoring systems and team learning activities.   I suggested here that it would be nice in the future to see organizations like Training,  OD,  process re-design etc. merge with a common mission of improving performance.  Training is the last one to the table on informal learning.  Many solutions with years with years of successful use and refinement are already available if we can find ways to better combine resources.

By the way, I don’t think learning functions should abandon their focus on formal, structured learning.  I do think they should do less of it and improve its quality.  More on that next time.

The best way to predict the future is to create it- Peter Drucker

Back to the future: The last 10 years.

If you believe that the best predictor of the future is the past, then your view of the workplace learning in ten years would be dismal indeed.  Little of the essence of the training function has changed in the last ten years. The big questions remain– how to link to business strategy, how to measure impact and ROI, how to develop the right skills, how to create and use organizational knowledge.

The biggest change has been in technology (LMS, e-learning, authoring, collaborative tools).  Learning applications have allowed us to develop and deliver more training, more efficiently that ever before.  But more training is not necessarily better training.  A pretty good argument can be made that e-learning has actually reduced the quality and effectiveness of the learning function in organizations.  There are many notable exceptions and current developments in simulations and scenario based approaches are promising.  Rapid development tools (again with exceptions) have resulted in perpetuating the content driven information dump. However our tracking, record keeping, reporting, content management, self service and ease of access are better than ever!!!  Again to quote Drucker “There is nothing as useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all”.

The next ten years

Predicting the future is a bit like picking Oscar winners.  There are those you think will win vs. those you think should win.  A lot of factors are at play that may keep training in the same box as the last ten years–same back end and an ever changing skin.    To keep from exposing that cynical view too dearly, here is a list of some of my hopeful winners over the next ten years.  I don’t believe, as Harold does, that training function should be put out of it’s misery but I do hope that we can change it’s mission and methods and shape technology to meet our purposes rather than visa versa.

One mission

There are a lot of staff and line groups that compete for the performance improvement pie. This includes organizational development, operational training, knowledge management, Quality and process redesign, change management and others.  I hope in ten years we have one organization that works tightly with management to improve performance and add value to the organization.  This would allow the unit to both develop knowledge and skills and shape the environment in which the skills are to be used…resulting in much greater performance results.  Organization Effectiveness anyone?

Less training, more learning

Old news you say. Maybe, but I think “learning” has simply replaced “training” as a softer label for the same old, same old.  Informal learning methods like coaching, mentorship etc will play a role but I’d really like to see consulting services targeted at developing “ways of working” built around a natural learning cycle of  a) try something, b) collecting and chart results, c) receiving visual feedback and d) making informed adjustments. This habit of team problem solving and continuous improvement is learning.  See my posts on Let Learning Lead and Learning in Action.

Merging work and learning

With the right workflow, tools and methods, learning can be built directly into work and have far greater impact than formally structured programs.  The organizational effectiveness function should be directly involved in helping management re-design process and workflow to optimize learning, building performance support tools, and track continuous improvement.

Better “training”

I hope we’ll be doing less structured training but get better at the training we do.  Even as organizations move to knowledge based work there are many jobs that still require procedural tasks that are most efficiently learned through well designed and executed formal training.  We used to call it skills training.  Even in knowledge work there are patterns, processes and systems that need to be learned to be effective.  Knowledge workers can be left to their own devices, informal chats and all the informal learning tools they desire but maybe a more efficient way is to compress this experience into  well modeled simulation. I hope the next tens years brings some real advances and tools for learning simulation development.

Focus on knowledge work

I think there will be a large movement towards improving the productivity of knowledge workers and knowledge work in the next ten years.  Knowledge and service sector productivity trails manufacturing by a wide margin.  To stay competitive knowledge based companies are already looking to re-purpose proven manufacturing management systems like the Toyota Production System for knowledge work environments–See this article for example.  I think this can and should shape learning approaches, content and consulting over the next ten years.

Learning as management consulting

The organizational effectiveness (nee Training) organization  in ten years should evolve to something more akin to an internal management consulting group.  It should have the formal charter and mission to improve organizational performance, not provide training solutions, although that would be part of the solution set.  Consulting skills should be paramount.  Management will approach the unit for their performance improvement abilities rather than training programs.

Less measurement myopia, more learning from process data

When learning and organization effectiveness consultants are connected to their client’s business,  the persistent “can you prove it?”, “what’s the ROI?” questions will diminish because the proof will be in the measurement systems built into the workflow of the organizations they support.  Business measures will be learning measures.

Technology

I leave it to last because i hope we can begin to lead it instead of visa versa.  There is no doubt technology is going to evolve dramatically in ten years.  I hope it has more of an influence on how we learn than on what we learn. I’d like to see more simulations that model and compress work processes for rapid learning.  I’d especially like “rapid learning”  come to mean how fast we can cause learning rather than how fast we can develop it.  I’d like to see it used to improve the quality of learning as much as the efficiency of managing it.  I’d like e-learning to be a quaint term from the past.

Human capital and LMS systems will become one and the same (more mergers to come).  Web 2.0 will feature in these systems but will not be dominant.  Free form use of Web 2.0 will thrive and morph in the public (consumer) sphere.  In business, as the drive to improve knowledge work gets more tightly focused on producing results, web 2.0 apps will be harnessed for knowledge sharing and creation around specific projects and teams.    I hope that future learning consultants will be right inside the workflow, using whatever technology emerges to help employees rapidly and efficiently add value for customers.  The “next” technology will always capture our imagination but I hope that we get better at learning from the past to not let our enthusiasm distort effective application.

In some ways all of the above are what performance consulting and organizational development camps within our profession have been trying to encourage for many years.  Maybe, the current miasma in Training will be just the medicine to get us moving.

The Toyota Production System (TPS) and Lean Production are legendary of course (and becoming more so in light of the self-destruction of the North American car industry) but the book doesn’t tread this well worn ground.  Instead it extracts principles from the Toyota Production System of use in non-manufacturing and knowledge work settings.

An excellent chapter of note for learning and performance professionals is “Let Learning Lead“.  In it May argues that learning and innovation are intimately linked but that learning must come first–that it is a precondition for innovation. Through learning, ideas are converted into action. The conversion happens through a natural, informal learning cycle. He’s not referring to loose and simplistic approaches to informal learning, but rather building the essential steps of The Scientific Method into jobs and workflow.  Broadly, those steps would be Questioning, Solving, Experimenting/testing , And Implementing .   W. Edwards Deming translated the method to the Plan-Do-Check-Act Cycle that is at the heart of the Toyota system and most Quality approaches since the 1950’s .

May uses the chapter to describe his variation on PDCA targeted at knowledge work and innovation:  I.D.E.A. Loops – a learning cycle for innovation. His cycle is

• Investigate

• Design

• Execute

• Adjust

In this video the author (May) explains the Let Learning Lead premise and and comments on formal and informal learning. Towards the end he asks “to what degree is experimentation (learning) built into your work processes?”. Good question.

Performance feedback is frequent, specific and objective information to individuals (or teams) regarding how well they are performing against job requirements/standards. A performance feedback system is a process for consistently and visually providing performance feedback to employees.

Here are the broad steps of what needs to be done to implement a performance feedback system. This is followed by two approaches on how to implement them

1. Identify the key job or role outputs.

Outputs (results, accomplishments) are the valued outcomes of our thinking and behaviour at work. (documents, decisions, designs, materials etc). They are the starting point for any effective performance feedback system. Identity outputs at the process, department, job or team level depending on the scope of your project. Most jobs will have 5-8 key outputs.

2. List the critical requirements for each output

Business processes transform job outputs into valued products or services. Therefore receivers or users of those outputs, are your best source to define what makes them useful or valuable. These “critical requirements” can usually be categorized into one of three types:

• Quality (accuracy, ease of use, novelty, reliability etc)
• Quantity (frequency, volume, rate, timeliness)
• Cost (labour, materials, overhead)

Any output can be measured on all three variables, but it is only what is most important to the user/customer that should be measured. To determine importance ask:

• Does actual performance typically vary on this measure?
• If performance varies on this measure does it matter?
• If it does vary is it large enough to require action?

Often higher level measures (unit, department, process) can help define what measures are important.

3. Define how each requirement will be measured

There are really only two ways to measurement critical requirements. Counting and Judging. Counting is easiest and most appropriate when requirements like volume, frequency and rate and accuracy (errors) matter most. It is common in manufacturing environments.

The output of knowledge and service oriented work will usually require measures of judgment as well. Judgment is essentially opinion or evaluation by comparing to a standard–ranking or rating an output based on perception or pre-established criteria like rating scales.

4. Define the target/goal for each measure

Without a goal or target performance the feedback will have no meaning and the visual display will have much less impact. Goals can be derived from a number of sources including the following:

• Top performers: What levels of performance are achieved by top performers in the group?
• Customer or user requirements: What level of performance does the user or customer (internal or external) of the output require?
• Benchmark studies: What are best practices in the industry for similar jobs/roles?

5. Create a visual display of performance against the target over time.

Graphs are the best way to present performance feedback because they can communicate trends, provide an at-a-glace snapshot and can be maintained by the employees whose performance is being graphed. While there are many chart types to choose from the best and simplest are line graphs that chart performance over time (time series, run charts and control charts)

Encourage self monitored performance. When feedback is given to people individually or in small groups they can measure their own performance and enable feedback to be immediate.

Do not display individual performance graphs publicly. Individual graphs should be kept privately. Team graphs can and should be displayed publicly.

Some performance management software systems have charting capabilities but are often not useful for results driven performance feedback because they measure employee behaviour rather than job output or results. Charting software from process and quality improvement organizations will be more appropriate here.

Implementation options

The steps listed above can be implemented though group managers or directly with performance teams. In both cases a performance consultant will facilitate the process.

Manager implementation: The consultant works directly with a unit manager to complete the steps described. Outputs, requirements, measures and feedback display methods are determined by the consultant with input collected from the unit manager. The manager then rolls the program out with appropriate communications and support. Employees may or may be consulted through the process

Team implementation: The consultant works with the employee team, using facilitated education and design sessions to generate employee defined outputs, requirements, measures and feedback display methods. Employees own the results of the effort and are more inclined to support the implementation.

I recently received my Certified Training and Development Professional Designation (CTDP) from the Canadian Society for Training and Development (CSTD). I’ve been working in this profession for a number of years and have been an intermittent member of CSTD over that time.  CSTD has been working hard to build the certification as an indicator of accomplishment and excellence in the workplace learning and performance profession in Canada.

from the CSTD website: CSTD is a strategic world leader, driving excellence in workplace learning and performance, impacting business success. The CTDP designation is intended to set the standard for quality for the Training and Development industry

The CSTD Training Competency Architecture

The performance standard for the CTDP designation is the Training Competency Architecture, a set of competencies, knowledge and behaviours describing best practice performance in five categories.   CTDP holders must demonstrate competence against these standards.  I’ve listed the five competency categories and core competencies from the Architecture below.

What’s Missing?

The Architecture and supporting certification exam are currently under formal review for additions and modifications.  Most learning and performance professionals will notice areas where the competencies could be modified to incorporate crossover disciplines and meet emerging trends.  For example, I think technology in learning and performance is at this point a core skill, as are informal learning approaches and sister competencies such as knowledge management and performance consulting.

Do you have any thoughts on the competencies and how they might be modified/updated to meet current workplace requirements?

CSTD Competency Categories

Each competency category is subdivided into core competencies, which are further subdivided into contributing competencies.  Details can be found here

Analyzing Performance/Training Needs
Core Competencies:

1. Prepare Training Needs Analysis Strategy/Project Plan
2. Prepare Training Needs Analysis Methods and Media
3. Conduct Training Needs Analysis
4. Identify and Evaluate Solutions
5. Present Solutions and Document Decisions

Designing Training
Core Competencies:

1. Conduct a Detailed Training Design Analysis
2. Determine the Performance/Learning Objectives & Sequence
3. Prepare a “Concept Draft” of the Training Design
4. Design the Learning Evaluation (Process & Content)
5. Design the Learning Materials & Media
6. Validate/Pilot the Training Design (Process & Content)
7. Finalize/Produce the Learning Materials & Media
8. Support the Implementation/Evaluate the Organizational Impact
9. Update and Maintain Learning Materials & Media

Facilitating/Instructing
Core Competencies:

1. Prepare to Facilitate/Instruct
2. Relate Design to Unique Needs of Learners & Organization
3. Create and Maintain a Hospitable Learning Environment
4. Create and Maintain a Learner-Centered Environment
5. Foster Learning
6. Facilitate Individual and Group Work and Process
7. Engage Learners Through Communication Skills
8. Use Media and Technology to Enhance Learning
9. Behave Ethically and Keep Current

Evaluating Training
Core Competencies:

1. Prepare the Training Evaluation System/Process
2. Determine the Training Evaluation Methods and Media
3. Implement the Training Evaluation System/Process
4. Respond to Evaluation Results/Recommendations
5. Maintain and update the training evaluation system/process

Coaching the Application of Training
Core Competencies:

1. Identify the Need for Performance Improvement/Development
2. Communicate Learning Expectations/Follow-Up Coaching Plan
3. Support and Monitor Completion of Training
4. Coach On-the-Job Application of Training
5. Evaluate Success of Training Application & Support

More information on the CTDP certification can be found here