If you’re going to move towards the performance ecosystem, a technology-enabled workplace, where do you start? Partly it depends on where you’re at, as well as where you’re going, but it also likely depends on what type of org you are. While the longer term customization is very unique, I wondered if there were some meaningful categorizations.
What would characterize the reasons why you might start with formal learning, versus performance support, versus social? My initial reaction, after working with my ITA colleagues, would be that you should start with social. As things are moving faster, you just can’t keep ahead of the game while creating formal resources, and equipping folks to help each other is probably your best bet. A second step would then likely be performance support, helping people in the moment. Formal learning would then backstop for those things that are static and defined enough, or meta- enough (more generic approaches) that there’s a reason to consolidate it.
However, it occurred to me that this might change depending on the nature of the organization. So, for example, if you are in an organization with lots of new members (e.g. the military, fast food franchises), formal learning might well be your best starting point. Formal learning really serves novices best.
So when might you want to start with performance support? Performance support largely serves practitioners trying to execute optimally. This might be something like manufacturing or something heavily regulated or evidence based, like medicine. The point here would be to helping folks who know why they’re doing what they’re doing, and have a good background, but need structure to not make human mistakes.
Social really comes to it’s fore for organizations depending on continual innovation: perhaps consumer products, or other organizations focused on customer experience, as well as in highly competitive areas. Here the creative friction between individuals is the highest value and consequently needs a supportive infrastructure.
Of course, your mileage may vary, and every organization will have places for all of the above, but this strikes me as a potential way to think about where you might want to place your emphasis. Other elements, like when to do better back end integration, and when to think about enabling via mobile, will have their own prioritization schemes, such as a highly mobile workforce for the latter.
So, what am I missing?
#itashare
There will also be environments where a significant part of training is driven by policy, administrative rules or even actual statute. Military and other government organizations come to mind where this can be the case. My organization will put out 60+ on-line hours of training for our staff and a majority of the topics and specific content are liability focused with policy/statute requiring specific content and in some cases even delivery method. As for mobile delivery, to use an example, I deal with large groups of staff who work in environments that are not able to support (as in can’t have the tech) mobile delivery. Everything has to be hard-wired and meet security needs. Just another factor that can impact strategy for the use of technology and delivery methods.
Hi Clark, thanks for this – a really clear, succinct guide as to how different organisations might approach these strategies. With all the talk at the moment about performance support and social strategies, it’s nice to see that you still acknolwedge a place for formal in particular orgs / to serve particular needs. I work within an organisation that does A LOT of formal classroom based training. As much of this training is accredited and safety critical (training for train drivers, guards, rail workers) a lot of it is likely to stay formal. However, as your example suggests, there might be opportunities for performance support for more experienced employees, and I think definitely opps for performance support and social strategies in place of formal training for office based employees (to support learning and optimal application of processes, use of systems etc). So – your model might be useful for looking at how strategies might be differentiated across diverse audience groups within a single organisation, as well as across different types of organisations.
Tanya & Paul, yes, there are lots of requirements that cause people to develop courses. I think we’ll have to change regulatory and accrediting bodies’ minds about what actually leads to acceptable behavior (hint: knowledge dump is not the answer :). ‘Til then, yes, we’ll still need lots of courses. CYA, sigh.
Clark, I like this post. I had the thought after reading the part about formal training still being a good choice for organizations with a lot of new members. If you were to use social learning in these organizations, there could be some negative repercussions. I liken it to the blind leading the blind. A bad bit of information could get into the social learning mix, that could cause some serious issues in an organization like the military. This could happen with any type or learning though I’m sure. I guess it would be equivalent to major news sources vs blogged news vs twitter news. I’m wondering if some of those could be compared back to types of learning in an organization.