Tag Archives: learning

Lead with Training? Look beyond the recipe

15 May

I’ve seen it time and time again. An organization has a new technology, often joined with a new process and vision for processing, customer service, data alignment, sales, etc. The knock comes on L & D’s door, and we are thrilled to be able to get in on a new initiative without the baggage of poor performance leading the request.

But just as we should pause and assess if training is the part of the solution to substandard performance or a new change initiative, we need to also pause to think about the appropriate timing and type of training that will advance the strategy initiative. While it might seem counter-intuitive to those of us in the instructional design and training game, we need to think about training as an essential element in the organizational kitchen remodel — a part of a well-designed program, but not the driver.

OK, I’m not entirely sure a kitchen is the best analogy, but let that marinate with me for a moment. A kitchen needs a workflow plan, a place to store fresh and nonperishable items, ample space to store tools and cooking utensils, and a set of good cook books (explicit knowledge), at least until the cook moves through competence and proficiency to become an expert intuitive gastro-artist (implicit knowledge).

So, training can carry the novice cook along the path to competence, and even proficiency. However, if the goal is to build expertise, training can’t carry the load the full distance. Similarly, the training program, no matter how well designed and implemented, can’t deliver the tools, materials and setup necessary to get the anticipated results.

Cathy Moore has done some excellent work on how to evaluate the need for training to address performance issues. But what I’m suggesting here is to take that to another elevation: Even when training is part of the issue, are the conditions for applicable success present? Seen this way, each training design should be a mini (or full-blown) change management program. Per standard practice of change management, skills are an essential ingredient. But so too are organizational support, vision and incentives to follow through.

complex change matrix

Complex Change Management Matrix

So, if you are already in the discussion that Moore (and I) suggests, take it to the next logical step: How does training fit into the change the organization wishes to see?

We don’t spend the money to build a beautiful kitchen without the hope that we’ll become better cooks. But design and appliances don’t get us there. Neither will skills alone without the proper tools and support for experimentation, failure and improvement.

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From Auckland, a charge to curate

24 Jul

Nigel Young, a professional colleague via my Twitter PLN, pointed me to a live broadcast from eLearnz 2015, a New Zealand eLearning conference that I could watch while at my desk in Portland, Oregon. Randomly, and quite fortunately, I saw some of Nigel Paine’s remarks. (A classic case of serendipity, but that’s a topic for another time!)

Wait! I was watching a live broadcast of a conference happening in as far away place as could possibly be! That, in itself, should highlight how very different our world has become. But, that’s not what I want to discuss in this current post — just a rather amazing set up.

A comment he made, among many important comments on MOOCs, neuroscience and some serious debunking of “rubbish,” that really made me sit up and pay attention was his discussion of the wastefulness of content creation for almost all learning programs.

L & D, training providers and their kin serve their clients’ needs, whether they’re internal or external. As a service provider, I think we do our clients a disservice if our first thought is to

Create your own learning boutique from the abundance around us. Or better yet, let your learners put together the collection themselves!

Create your own learning boutique from the abundance around us. Or better yet, let your learners put together the collection themselves!

create something new for the learning need (real or imagined). For the vast majority of topics, there is nothing we could create that does not already exist. Like a good librarian or boutique shopkeeper, the value is in the careful curation of artifacts that take the customer (learner) on a journey of discovery. If I ask a librarian to help me learn to fix my bicycle, I certainly would not expect him to write me a guidebook! He will find the best existing materials to recommend.

As Nigel Paine said, people will yawn their way through a corporate training event, and, later that evening, happily turn to YouTube to repair their dishwasher. Can’t we learn from this new reality? The feeling among some of our colleagues is that our learning problems are so complex, so unique that no video or website could adequately address them. That may be, but in aggregate of sources, via a collection of various bits and parts? I’m guessing we could get just about all the way there. Our own sense of importance becomes our blinders.

The key is to make sense of the overabundance that exists in our digital, connected world. The skills adults need to find, connect, synthesize and share content are not instinctive. It’s not a matter of some “having the knack” and others out of luck. It’s a learned skillset.

Taking this to its logical conclusion: For your next learning activity, direct your cohort to curate their own resources. I had discussed this once before, in a much earlier post. While my thinking and practice have evolved quite a bit in the two years since then, I think that the idea remains valid. By learners curating their own learning, then sharing it back with a cohort, it allows for learning skills, reflection, demonstration, defense, social interaction. That’s how people learn!

You’ll not only have a great collection of learning resources, but you’ll help your learners learn the skills of the digital age at the same time. Oh, and you save your client a lot of time and money, too.

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My Top 10 (and a half) Learning Tools, 2015

7 Jul

Jane Hart, at the Center For Learning & Performance Technologies (@C4LPT), is a leading contributor to our industry (used in the broadest sense). One of the many contributions she makes is to compile a yearly list of “Top 100 Learning Tools.” She compiles this list by aggregating contributors’ Top 10 lists, which can be submitted in a number of ways including her online form.

She also invites folks to make it transparent by blogging or tweeting them. This is the first year I have chosen to do it this way, in the spirit of transparency and #WOL (Working Out Loud/Show Your Work).

I encourage you to contribute your list by whatever method suits you, and join me recognizing Jane for her ongoing contributions from which we all benefit.

My Top 10 Learning Tools of 2015:

  1. Twitter: I was far from an early adopter, but now it is hard to imagine maintaining my own learning and professional development without it. I learn via my Twitter feed every day.
  2. Google Search: I suspect there is not much need for commentary here, other than to say it remains for now the best search for what I look for, and how I wish to find it. That could change in the future.
  3. Google Docs/Drive/Sites: For everyday collaboration and transparent cooperation, these have become my go-to tools. There is a lot of room for improvement, but their wide acceptance makes them very useful.
  4. WordPress Blog: I write first and foremost to help clarify my own thinking and combine ideas together to see if they stick that way. But, the benefit of knowing that others read this blog and occasionally respond to it makes it a focused learning activity for me. Others feel the same about their “visible thinking” on their blog.
  5. Scoop.It: I maintain a scoop.it page on which I clip articles, posts and images, and have built a reasonable following of others I follow there and who follow me. Not as robust a feed as Twitter, but more focused and topical. I have found that for me it works better than other similar tools (paper.li, Pinterest, etc.), especially the feature that allows me to comment on each clip, quoting or summarizing why I thought it “scoop worthy.”
  6. MS PowerPoint: We love it. We hate it. We use it, time and time again. I use it to create learning graphics, too – such are my poor graphic design skills.
  7. Evernote: I have had a hot-and-cold relationship with Evernote over the years. I am quick to recommend it as a universal tool for clipping, tagging, note-taking and sharing, but I also go a full month at times without touching it. I will say this: In my periods of high productivity I use Evernote a lot. I’m uncertain of the causal relationship, though.
  8. YouTube: I find myself drifting to YouTube when I need to see how to do something specific, but also for the general hunt-and-peck drifting to see what I might find. There is so much of… everything! The good, the bad, and the ugly. But when I do find something great, I love that it’s there.
  9. Adobe Captivate: It is less and less frequent, but when we do need an animation or software capture with narration/annotation, we use Captivate. I’m not prepared to defend it against competitors; it’s simply the one we use now.
  10. LinkedIn: I spend a lot of time thinking negative thoughts about LinkedIn, but the fact remains that I come across useful and thoughtful posts and links there on a regular basis.
  11. (10a) eLearning Guild/Learning Solutions Magazine: In terms of my own professional development, the guild remains central to my activities. While I have argued publicly that they drop the “e” (The Learning Guild), the publications, events (DevLearn!), and community remain vibrant and extremely relevant.

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I have an Idea: Now what?

31 Mar

The older I become and experience I gain, the more interesting ideas I find and (sometimes) generate. Some are silly, some (I think) are quite insightful, and other need time to marinate in the juices of other ideas and experience to even make sense.

Some ideas are immediately applicable, while others remain theoretical. Some never make it past mindful amusement, while others change personal and professional practice in meaningful and lasting ways. But even the most ethereal add value by constantly shifting the filter mechanisms through which new ideas and experiences are sorted.

I’m not exceptional in any way in this regard – pretty much everyone has ideas all the time that amuse, fascinate, and distract. I have created my own system that has been working (for me) for keeping and weighing ideas over the last several years, and it folds in nicely with the more general connectivist mindset that resonate with me. At the heart of connectivism is the idea of relativity: Ideas, knowledge, experience and actions are not absolute, but are constantly measured against past and freshly-acquired content/context. That is, we are in a constant state of recalibrating and re-measuring what we know, what we do, and what we think.

I am not a good self-organizer, and never have been. Attention to detail is not my strong suit. But, I’ve learned how to incorporate a systematic process – a PKM practice, I suppose – that works for me. Being naturally disorganized and messy, it would be a stretch to recommend what works for me to

My Scoop.It page is one place to collect and reflect on ideas.

My Scoop.IT page is one place to collect and reflect on ideas.

anyone else.

I believe the key, though, is to have a system – any system that works – and practice it faithfully. What’s more, when we capture those ideas digitally, via Evernonote file, audio “notes-to-self”, curated boards (like Pinterest or Scoop.It), Twitter favs and retweets, and so on, it becomes easy to tag, retrieve and connect. I shuffle ideas into connections via visual mind maps, with arrows, dotted lines and color codes. About once a month I do a formal iteration break, with the archives becoming a record of my idea evolution.

One other great benefit of that process is it is easily shared, too. As we are discovering, the Work Out Loud (and their corollaries Think Out Loud and Learn Out Loud) practice is a centerpiece of both personal and organizational growth.

Whatever your practice is or becomes, it is learned and constantly refined. Don’t assume that others have the skills to do this on their own. I learned from others, and I try to share with others the purpose and benefits of thinking and working in this way.

Sense-making In The Learning Age is an ongoing process, and I welcome hearing from you about how you make it work.

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Stuck inside of mobile with the platform blues again

22 Jan

I hear it everywhere I go, in conversations with people who don’t know better and—more frustratingly—with people who should. Some variation of the themes laid down in this recent article from CMS Wire. Complete with a fine-looking infographic (which I’m a sucker for!), the author highlights trends in business communication. She points out the shift to a higher share of communications on mobile devices and internal tools (intranets and enterprise network solutions (ENS)), and away from face-to-face meetings.

She is correct on each point, and yet misses the point entirely.

The significant trends in our networked world aren’t about mobile, communication platforms and new devices. The “trends” in workplace communication are about why and how, not what and on which platform.

As I’ve discussed in this blog before, alongside and in the footsteps of those more expert than I, all that devices and platforms provide us with is a new gateway to discover, categorize, tag, share, synthesize and learn from the information at our fingertips. The hot new device of 2015, and whatever new platform your organization rolls out this year, doesn’t really matter. Devices and platforms are fleeting and will be gone by 2020.

The mental maps we create are the critical element in how we work/ learn.

The mental maps we create are the critical element in how we work/ learn.

The real change is between our ears, within organizations that are reconfiguring away from hierarchies and toward network-centered activities, and those who can learn—and make use of that learning—every day, individually and collectively.

I see this confusion raging even close to home in my own PLN in eLearning and L & D circles. “Mobile is the next big thing!” No, it isn’t. Mobile devices are becoming ubiquitous and we can’t ignore their significance in how we deliver learning experiences and performance support, but they are only a facet of what really is the next big thing: personal learning and how it intersects organizational and communal learning. The significance of “mobile vs. other” will be over by 2020 (along with email as primary work function, please!!), but the significance of learning practice as the tool for organizational and professional development is just getting off the ground.

Sooner or later, one of must know… sorry, couldn’t stop myself.

Thanks, Bob.

Thanks, Bob.

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