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

In a series of following posts I’ll share some practices and approaches that have worked for me.  There is incredible variety in the business settings where we work, the jobs we support and the latitude we have to build our solutions.  Hopefully some of the following suggestions will be relevant in your situation.

Each of the 10 strategies on the list in the highlight box on the right, have helped me to improve performance through learning without pulling people way from the job for formal (classroom or e-learning) training.  I’d love to hear some of your suggestions and experiences.

In this post I’ll discuss practices 1 through 3.

1. Understand the job

If your going to integrate learning with work you had better understand the work.  Watch people, talk to people, use appropriate analysis tools, and think like the performer.  Understand their world, day to day pressures, tools they use (or could use) and how they use them.  Understand the job inputs, processes and feedback mechanisms for job incumbents.

Learn and use the many analysis tools appropriate for different kinds of performance–task analysis for visible work, Cognitive walk-through for knowledge work and output focused performance analysis for both.  Process analysis and value stream analysis are useful for seeing work in the context of the broader system. These and other analysis methods are critical tools if you are to find ways to build learning into a job without burdening the learner (employee) with irrelevant or unwieldy tools and programs that don’t fit in the flow of their day to day work.

It’s unfortunate that some job/role analysis efforts have been overly cumbersome or time consuming (analysis paralysis!).  They don’t need to be.  Often they can simply be a good mental model or filter through which to rapidly examine a job or process for learning and improvement opportunities.  A good analysis is part of the solution not a barrier to it.

2. Link information and learning to business process

We often talk about linking training to business strategy and of course that’s critical, but a key link to strategy is cross functional business process.  Well designed business processes are structured to accomplish business objectives.  Every job is driven by a process, implicit or explicit.   If it so implicit as to be almost imperceptible (as if often the case with knowledge and creative work) there is some improvement you can offer before you even start to think about learning.

Once business processes have been identified (or made visible), process phases can be used to effectively embed relevant learning resources. All business processes contain “knowledge leverage points”-those points in the process where key information is needed for optimal performance. These could be key decision points, data collection points requirements, planning requirements etc. and will vary by type of job and process. And knowledge generation is as important in modern knowledge work as knowledge delivery so it’s also important to examine how knowledge can be accumulated through practice and made available to the wider group at those same knowledge leverage points. Here’s a sample cross functional process (sales) with knowledge leverage points identified.

With knowledge leverage points identified, learning and knowledge can be made available at it’s most relevant place, and most relevant form in the work flow.

3. Build a Performance Support System

A Performance Support System is a concept more that a specific solution.   Whatever configuration it takes, the core idea is to reduce the need for training (or eliminate it, altogether) by proving information, decision tools, performance aids and learning on-demand, using tools available at the moment they are needed.  An excellent performance system becomes part of the task and complements human abilities (compensate for weaknesses and enhance strengths).

They can be as simple as a job aid or reference and as complex as the panel of airplane cockpit.  It can include decision tools, searchable information resources, e-learning objects, simple software apps, help systems, advisory systems, video and media based reference material, procedural guidance, job aids, demonstration animations, simulations and anything else that supports performance.  They can be as useful for management and professional work as they are for procedural and administrative work.

Research support for performance support can be found in the area of “distributed cognition” which argues that tasks (mental and otherwise) can be dramatically improved through the aid of external tools that intimately aid thinking and performance.  It is embodied in Don Norman’s distinction between the personal and system point of view regarding performance support tools (”cognitive artifacts” as he labels them in Things that Make us Smart):

“there are two views of a cognitive artifact. The personal point of view (the impact the artifact has for the individual person and the system point of view (how the artifact + the person, as a system are different than the abilities of the person alone).

The personal point of view:
Artifacts (performance tools) change the task

The system point of view:
The person + artifact is smarter than either alone

The point is that a well designed performance support system becomes an integral part of the task.  Performance support systems can include small amounts of structured e-learning if the task requires some conceptual understanding or routine practice before application but generally performance support tools are designed to replace reliance on memory.

Business Process Guidance is an emerging term for performance support more directly linked to business processes.  Panviva and Tata Interactive Systems have adopted the term for their tools.

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

Learning methods that are embedded in authentic situations are not merely useful; they are essential Brown, Collins & Duguid. 1989

While this approach can be effective for learning discreet tasks, it struggles when trying to teach more complex skills which almost always contain elements from all domains.   Modern approaches are based more on designing learning in it’s the full social, cognitive and skilled based context.  This implies a more holistic approach rather than the deconstruction approaches of the past (although, the vast majority of instructional design continues to use traditional approaches).

This new wave of learning design models come in a many variations and each has slightly differing methods, philosophies and approaches.   Here are a few:

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

How to design authentic learning tasks

Authentic learning tasks are whole-task experiences based on real life (work) tasks that integrate skills, knowledge attitude and social context.  Instruction is organized around the whole task, usually in an easy to difficult progression, which “scaffolds” learning support from “lots to little” as learners progress.

Identifying what an authentic learning task can be challenging.  The term is often used without any real guidance on how to identify whole tasks and then transfer them to a training context.  I stumbled on the following framework from Authentic Task Design, a research project of the University of Wollongong in Australia.  They suggest 10 research based elements for the design of authentic tasks in web-based learning environments. I thought it was a useful guide.  Hope you do to.

1. Authentic tasks have real-world relevance

Activities match as nearly as possible the real-world tasks of professionals in practice rather than decontextualised or classroom-based tasks.

2. Authentic tasks are ill-defined, requiring students to define the tasks and sub-tasks needed to complete the activity

Problems inherent in the tasks are ill-defined and open to multiple interpretations rather than easily solved by the application of existing algorithms. Learners must identify their own unique tasks and sub-tasks in order to complete the major task.

3. Authentic tasks comprise complex tasks to be investigated by students over a sustained period of time
Tasks are completed in days, weeks and months rather than minutes or hours, requiring significant investment of time and intellectual resources.

4. Authentic tasks provide the opportunity for students to examine the task from different perspectives, using a variety of resources
The task affords learners the opportunity to examine the problem from a variety of theoretical and practical perspectives, rather than a single perspective that learners must imitate to be successful. The use of a variety of resources rather than a limited number of preselected references requires students to detect relevant from irrelevant information.

5. Authentic tasks provide the opportunity to collaborate
Collaboration is integral to the task, both within the course and the real world, rather than achievable by an individual learner.

6. Authentic tasks provide the opportunity to reflect
Tasks need to enable learners to make choices and reflect on their learning both individually and socially.

7. Authentic tasks can be integrated and applied across different subject areas and lead beyond domain-specific outcomes
Tasks encourage interdisciplinary perspectives and enable diverse roles and expertise rather than a single well-defined field or domain.

8. Authentic tasks are seamlessly integrated with assessment
Assessment of tasks is seamlessly integrated with the major task in a manner that reflects real world assessment, rather than separate artificial assessment removed from the nature of the task.

9. Authentic tasks create polished products valuable in their own right rather than as preparation for something else
Tasks culminate in the creation of a whole product rather than an exercise or sub-step in preparation for something else.

10. Authentic tasks allow competing solutions and diversity of outcome
Tasks allow a range and diversity of outcomes open to multiple solutions of an original nature, rather than a single correct response obtained by the application of rules and procedures.

Tony Karrer in his e-learning technology blog recently wondered about social networking participation –”it’s different when it’s a natural part of how we work”.  Some insight is provided in a popular article from the McKinsey Quarterly Report.  In Six Ways to Make Web 2.0 Work, company analysts suggest some tactics that are instructive for encouraging participation in social media for e-learning or in communities of practice.  One of their “six ways” that resonated with my own experience they labeled “What’s in the workflow is what gets used”.  From the report:

What’s in the workflow is what gets used

“Perhaps because of the novelty of Web 2.0 initiatives, they’re often considered separate from mainstream work. Earlier generations of technologies, by contrast, often explicitly replaced the tools employees used to accomplish tasks. Thus, using Web 2.0 and participating in online work communities often becomes just another “to do” on an already crowded list of tasks.

Participatory technologies have the highest chance of success when incorporated into a user’s daily workflow. The importance of this principle is sometimes masked by short-term success when technologies are unveiled with great fanfare; with the excitement of the launch, contributions seem to flourish. As normal daily workloads pile up, however, the energy and attention surrounding the rollout decline, as does participation. One professional-services firm introduced a wiki-based knowledge-management system, to which employees were expected to contribute, in addition to their daily tasks. Immediately following the launch, a group of enthusiasts used the wikis vigorously, but as time passed they gave the effort less personal time-outside their daily workflow-and participation levels fell”

As enthusiastic as early adopters are with new technologies,  each new wave teaches us that unless they add value to how work get accomplished,  the novelty can wear off quickly.   I think the lesson here for organizational learning and e-learning practitioners is to be careful not to simply roll out social media (for learning or otherwise) and expect widespread adoption similar to what we have seen in the public arena.

Also, management will be making a mistake if they feel they are best suited to make the decision regarding how to best use web 2.0 tools. That decision should be a participatory exercise with end users and it should be grounded in workflow or knowledge flow improvement efforts.  Chances for successful adoption will be much greater when employees analyze and improve their business processes building in web 2.0 tools as integral elements to that workflow.  There will also be lots of trail and error involved.  One of the other interesting findings of the McKinsey report was was intended uses sometimes failed but were replaced by unintended successes that emerged from grass roots use of the tools in pilot projects.

I too believe that facilitating informal learning in the workplace is critical and has been long overlooked by the Learning function.  However, we’re creating an artificial competition between formal and informal learning and should be careful not to throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater.

Learning in organizations is a continuum from informal natural learning through loosely structured learning experiences to formally structured and designed training.  Traditional training functions have typically focused on the design, delivery and management of structured learning programs.   Organizational Development, Performance Technology, many quality systems and Senge styled Organizational Learning practitioners have all merged learning and work through semi-structured, facilitated learning experiences.    Knowledge Management and more recently social media (web 2.0) have provided environments that support informal knowledge creation and sharing environments.  This continuum of informal through formal learning continuum might look something like this:

The Organizational Learning Continuum

Leveraging the full range of this learning continuum is important for every organization.  Here are some general suggestionsfor how to do that.

Use formal training to prepare employees for jobs and tasks

Well designed, formal learning (traditional or on-line) develops new skills fast.  Leaving routine, job specific skill development to informal, buddy system methods is wasteful.  Skills may need to be tweaked and refined once on the job but organizations need rapid development to a performance standard for quick productivity.  Well designed structured learning is the best way to accomplish this.  The time/performance chart illustrates this time tested principle:

The time performance chart

Informal learning encourages “learning from mistakes and experimentation” and is great for experienced employees.  But it’s also true that we “learn our mistakes”.  This is the risk of leaving initial training to chance and buddy systems.

When jobs change, new methods or technology are introduced, formal training methods can again be the best method to get up to standard quickly.

Use non-formal (semi-structured) learning to build organizational capability

When employees become productive, they need continuing opportunities to learn and develop in ways that grow organizational capability and resilience. Here learning must be intimately integrated with work–almost a byproduct.  When employees say they learn the most from “experience” this is what they mean.  Learning by doing.

Skilled facilitation through team development, real time problem solving and process improvement efforts move learning in the direction needed to build individual and organizational capability.  Organizational Development, Human Performance Technology,  Senge inspired Organizational Learning have all produced sophisticated methods for results focused learning in job settings.  After initial training, as job expertise develops through experience, less formal learning interventions are more effective for shaping culture, building capacity, and improving performance.  I discussed some methods in my last post.

Create processes and tools that build learning into jobs and cause informal learning

Experienced employees also learn plenty (sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally) simply from interacting with people, ideas and objects in their work environment using the natural learning cycle I described here.  We can create work systems that can cause this type of informal learning through well designed and visible work processes, feedback, and performance systems. Web 2.0, social networking tools and communities of practice give employees, especially knowledge workers, tools to create, share and use organizational knowledge.

Clark Quinn in his recent article Social Networking: Bridging Formal and Informal Learning, includes this useful chart describing the value of formal vs. informal learning for new and experienced employees.

Formal and Informal learning for novice vs. expert

The Learning function in combination with other functions tasked with improving performance need to work together to use the full range of the learning continuum.  How the learning continuum is used and where emphasis is placed depends on job type, organizational function, industry sector, performance issues etc. but the ultimate solution should be a combination of informal, non-formal and formal learning methods to best suit the needs of the organization.

Ultimately we need to use the continuum to create programs and services to:

• Build requisite knowledge and skills
• Create pervasive learning opportunities beyond initial skills
• Encourage collaboration and team learning
• Establish systems to generate, capture and share learning
• Build organizational capability and adaptive capacity

” 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.

“Companies Rethink Annual Performance Reviews,” gives examples of companies that have switched to providing feedback on a continuous basis, using a coaching-oriented process.  It refers to the Rypple application I mentioned in this post.

From the NPR story:

“The annual performance review is getting reviewed itself, and has received low marks. Employees say feedback from the review is too little and comes too late to be effective. Now companies are beginning to rethink how they give feedback”

You can listen to the report here