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Nuances of aligning

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I apparently talk about alignment a lot. There’re good reasons, of course. First, I am referring to two different alignments. One is aligning organizations with the way our brains work. Otherwise, we won’t get the best out of people. The other is aligning our learning experience designs with what we know about how our brains work. Also critically important. In this case, prompted as always by conversations, I realized that I wanted to explore the nuances of aligning for the latter.

So, I’ve talked before about how  we should make sure we have meaningful objectives, and then align practice to that. I’ve also become enlightened about how important examples are as well. But within both of those, there’s more.

It came up in reviewing a design, looking to refine the approach. In it, there were examples, but they weren’t being used quite systematically enough. Then, the practice also wasn’t quite reflecting what people did. In the course of the conversation, I realized that there were nuances that seemed to be missing.

When you’re focusing on performance, you should be looking at what people will need to be doing. Too often, folks can talk about what they want people to know. However, what matters is what people do. Thus, you really need to dig down into that.

Then, you need to be making sure your examples show people doing whatever it is they need to be able to do. Similarly, you need to be asking people to be doing that, as well. For good examples, they should have a narrative flow, and show the underlying thinking. Good practice should require contextualized decision making like they’ll have to actually perform. Not characterizing the situation, but making decisions based upon those situations. So, not saying “is this an X or a Y situation”, but instead “do you choose action A or B”?

Then, of course, there are the actual choices of situation. The first task should be elementary. It may require scaffolding, so the circumstances might be simple, or some of the task is performed, etc. Then, you systematically add complexity in the task, while also broadening the situations seen. You’re simultaneously supporting both the acquisition of skill, and the ability to transfer to appropriate situations.

Then, of course, you want to make the situations appropriately compelling. That may mean choosing the best stories, some exaggeration, and storytelling. For practice, of course, there’s also the feedback: performance-focused, model-based, and minimal.

Look, I’m not saying this is easy. If it was easy, we’d get AI to do it ;). Yet AI doesn’t, and really can’t, understand the nuances of aligning. We can, and do. Yes, it is somewhat rocket science, done properly. We’re talking about systematically creating change in arguably the most complex thing in the known universe, after all. However, we do have good principles and practices. We just need to make sure we know, and use them.

That’s what makes our field so fascinating and important, after all. The creativity involved is also why it’s fun. Then, we’re also achieving important goals, improving people. We owe it to our stakeholders to do it right. (We are the leaders of the future economy, after all!)  That’s my take, what am I missing?

Achieving alignment

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I’ve seen, up close and personal, some organizations that demonstrably were lacking alignment. This manifested in various ways. The question then becomes, what do you do to remedy? What leads to achieving alignment?

So, many years ago I spent a summer working on a large engineering floor. The group I was assigned to finally told me to slow down, that I was making them look bad! In another firm we were acquired by, they weren’t happy with sales and fired the team, but then hired the leaders responsible for the broken practice to create a new process. My own previous ISP had a great app, and not only broke their implied promise but lied to me. My current ISP is more human when you can get through to them (and their app is horrid).

What’s common is a lack of alignment across the organization. I’ve eventually come to expect pockets of inefficiency in most organizations (I wonder how any of them make money!). Now, it can be bad management on the part of a particular leader, or miscommunication between units. The main point I see here is the lack of effective communication. It can be just within a team, or upwards to a business unit or community of practice, or between business units.

Look, there are lots of ways to go wrong. Lack of measurement, insufficient resources, culture hiccups, and more. One clear barrier, however, that can solve some of the others, is communication. Even before collaboration, which is better, is communication. We need to be social in appropriate ways.When we have trust and safety, we can towards transparency. When we know what others are doing, we can can work in coordination. We can show our work, we can cooperate, and even collaborate.

Achieving alignment is a useful tool for businesses, but it isn’t automatic. You need to work at it. One of the ways is to work to creating an environment where people are sharing. When you do, the benefits emerge. At least, that’s how I see it. How about you?

BTW, our final LDA debate this year will be tomorrow, December 20, at 1PM ET (10 AM PT), on lying, which is directly tied to transparency! Come for the fun, stay for the learning.

Aligning and enabling transformation

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In what was my last Quinnsights column for Learning Solutions, I wrote about how the transformation wasn’t (or shouldn’t) be digital. In many ways we aren’t aligned with what’s best for our thinking. Thus,  digitizing existing approaches doesn’t make sense. Instead, we should be fixing our organizational alignment first,  then  digitizing. The opportunity is in aligning  and enabling transformation.

First, we should be looking at  all  the levels of organizational alignment. At the individual level we can be doing things like implementing federated search, to support individual learning. This should be coupled with providing development of writing good search strings and evaluating search outcomes. This also means curating a suite of resources aligned with learning directions and future opportunities. The point being that we should be supporting evidence-based methods for individual development, then supporting digitally. For instance, supporting learning-to-learn skills. Taking them for granted is a mistake! It’s also about ongoing support for development, e.g. coaching. Good practices help, and tools that document approaches and outcomes can assist.

At the group level, there are again ways in which we can be fostering effectiveness. This includes having good collaboration tools, and assisting people in using them well. It can also be about policies that make ‘show your work’ safe. Then you can augment with ‘show your work’ tool. Again, having the right practices and policies makes the digital transformation investment more valuable. You could pick the wrong tools if you’re instituting the old ways instead of doing the process work first.

This holds true at the organizational level as well, of course. The policies and practices cross the organization. Thus, what works for teams comes from an organizational focus on learning. Then, the digital investments are focused on the most optimal outcomes. The alternative, digitizing unaligned practices, can only hinder improvement to be a successful organization.

There are a lot of myths about what works. This includes learning myths, but also bad HR practices. Many stem from maintaining approaches that are carryovers from industrial age business. Instead, we should be leveraging our knowledge of thinking to be strategic. L&D can be critically contributing to organizational success! Or not. There’s a big opportunity to shift practices in a positive direction, with upsides for outcomes. However, it takes the understanding and the will. What will you do?

This is related to the talk I’ll be giving as the opening keynote for the ATD Japan Summit in December (though I’m filming it for virtual delivery). I get my thinking done here first ;).  

Levels of Organizational Alignment

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Several years ago, I was pushing the notion of the Coherent Organization. While I still feel it’s relevant, perhaps the time wasn’t right or I wasn’t convincing enough. However, as I continue to consider the issue of alignment of what we do in L&D (and organizational) practices, I realize there’s more. One way, then, to think about the coherent organization is as achieving levels of organizational alignment.

Starting from the top, I think of the alignment with the organization and society. Normally, and probably most importantly for survival, organizations need to think about alignment with their market. (In appropriate ways; I’m reminded how the freight business got upended when companies thought they were in the train business and not the transportation business.) However, there  is a level above the market, and that is whether the org is serving the market in a society-appropriate way. For instance, if you’re helping your customers rip off their clients, it may be lucrative but it’s not a scrutable way to do business. I like the notion of benefit corporations  (though they may not go far enough). Don’t do well by doing ill.

Which is the next level of alignment, of employees with the organization’s mission. They’ll be more engaged if that mission is appropriate!  Further, I like the notion of ’employee experience’. I’ve heard it said that you can’t have a good customer experience if you don’t have a good employee experience. That’s plausible. I think Dan Pink’s  Drive says it well, you want your employees to have Mastery, Autonomy, and Purpose. Which means having a clear raison d’être, goals and the freedom to pursue them, and support to succeed.

Accompanying that is a workplace culture that’s supportive of success. I like Jerry Michalski’s focus on trust; start from there. Then have transparency, e.g. ‘show your work’ and ‘learn out loud‘. I’m also a fan of the Learning Organization Dimensions of Garvin, Edmondson, & Gino. I like how Amy Edmondson has gone on to advocate for including both safety and accountability as complementary components of success.

Of course, this carries down to the individual level. For instance, including a focus on having performers prepared up front and developed over time. This includes a shift to coaching and mentoring, as well as learning experience design grounded in the sciences of learning and engagement.  Going further, we should havie people not just knowing their purpose but getting feedback on how they‘re doing to achieve it. Recognition matters, with positive recognition of accomplishment or support to improve. Against an objective metric, of course, not comparative to others.

There’s more, but most importantly, it’s aligning all these from bottom to top. For instance, you could be creating a great culture to serve a bad purpose. Alternatively, you could have a great purpose but use industrial era methods to get there. I have to admit that, having served in orgs of various sizes, and seen the pockets of inefficiency that can emerge, I wonder how any business makes any money! Still, there’s evidence that the better you’re aligned, the better you do. (See the Toward Maturity Top Deck results or Laurie Bassi’s work on the link between people approaches and org success.

Achieving success at all  levels of organizational alignment is a path to success. No one’s saying it’s easy, but it  is doable. Further, it’s your best investment in the future. Just as with designing learning, get the core right before you add shiny objects, the same is true for organizations. There’s a transformation in practices to be done before you then apply the digital transformation. However, once you align these, as well, you’re on an upward path. Shall we?

By the way, this is aligned :) with the theme of what I’ll be  talking about in my opening keynote for the ATD Japan Summit.  

Misaligned expectations

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As part of the Learning Development Conference that’s going on for the next five weeks (not too late to join in!), there have already been events. Given that the focus is on evidence-based approaches, a group set up a separate discussion room for learning science. Interestingly, though perhaps not surprisingly, our discussion ended up including barriers. One of the barriers, as has appeared in several guises across recent conversations, are the expectations on L&D. Some of them are our own, and some are others, but they all hamper our ability to do our best. So I thought I’d discuss some of these misaligned expectations.

One of the most prominent expectations is around the timeframes for L&D work. My take is that after 9/11, a lot of folks didn’t want to travel, so all training went online. Unfortunately (as with the lingering pandemic), there was little focus on rethinking, and instead a mad rush to get things online. Which meant that a lot of content-based training ended up being content-based elearning. The rush to take content and put it onscreen drove some of the excitement around ‘rapid elearning’.

The continuing focus on efficiency – taking content, adding a quiz, and putting it online – was pushed to the extreme.  It’s now an expectation that with an authoring tool and content, a designer can put up a course in 1-2 weeks. Which might satisfy some box-checking, but it isn’t going to lead to any change in meaningful outcomes. Really, we need slow learning! Yet there’s another barrier here.

Too often, we have our own expectation that “if we build it, it is good”. That is, too often we take an order for a course, we build it, and we assume all is well. There’s no measurement to see if the problem is fixed, let alone tuning to ensure it is. We don’t have expectations that we need to be measuring our impact! Sure it’s hard; we have to talk to the business owners about measurement, and get data. Yet, like other areas of the organization, we should be looking for our initiatives to lead to measurable change. One of these days, someone’s going to ask us to justify our expenditures in terms of impact, and we’ll struggle if we haven’t changed.

Of course, another of our misaligned expectations is that our learning design approaches are effective. We still see, too often, courses that are content-dump, not serious solutions. This is, of course, why we’re talking about learning science, but while one of us had support to be evidence-based, others still do not. We face a populace, stakeholders  and our audiences, that have been to school. Therefore, the expectation is that if it looks like school, it must be learning. We have to fight this.

It d0esn’t help that well-designed (and well-produced) elearning is subtly different than just well-produced elearning. We can’t (and, frankly, many vendors get by on this) expect our stakeholders to know the difference, but we must and we must fight for the importance of the difference. While I laud the orgs that have expectations that their learning group is as evidence-based as the rest, and their group can back that up with data, they’re sadly not as prevalent as we need.

There are more, but these are some major expectations that interfere with our ability to do our best. The solution? That’s a good question. I think we need to do a lot more education of our stakeholders (as well as ourselves). We need to (gently, carefully) generate an understanding that learning requires practice and feedback, and extends beyond the event. We don’t need everyone to understand the nuances (just as we don’t need to know the details of sales or operations or…unless we’re improving performance on it), but we do need them to be thinking in terms of reasonable amounts of time to develop effective learning, that this requires data, and that not every problems has a training solution. If we can adjust these misaligned expectations, we just might be able to do our job properly, and help our organizations. Which, really, is what we want to be about anyway.

Cultural Alignment

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I was thinking about the ways in which organizations can support performance. That is, we can and should be aligning with how we think, work, and learn. So  we can provide tools to support us in the moment, we can provide tools to help us work together, and we can develop people all slowly over time.  In short, I was thinking about  cognitive alignment, and I was going to write about it, but it turns out I already have!  However, I also realized that there was an opportunity to extend that to cultural alignment, and I think that’s important as well.

So,  one of the things we can do to optimize outcomes  is to give people  performance support.  In particular, we can provide  tools to address gaps that emerge from our cognitive architecture.  We can also provide policies about things we’re supposed to do.  And that’s all good.  However, some of that might not be necessary under the right circumstances.

I was thinking about the specific case of acting in ways that are consonant with the values of the organization. For instance, in a well-known upscale department store chain, the staff have the leeway to spend on the order of $1K to address any emerging customer problem.  I reckon the store  figures that’s the future worth of a happy customer. And that’s acting in alignment with the culture of the organization.

The point I want to make is that by having an explicit culture in the organization, you might not have to provide performance support. If the desired approach is understood, it  can be generated from understanding the organization’s value.  If you know what’s expected, you can perform in alignment without needing external clues and cues.

There are clear  benefits from a learning organization in terms of innovation and employee engagement, but what about the other side? I suggest  that the right culture can also benefit the ‘optimal execution’ side.  In short, there’s little reason to do aught but begin a move to a more enlightened culture.  At least, that’s what seems to me to be the case. How about you?

Aligning Learning

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Online Educa logoLast week, at Online Educa in Berlin, I gave a tutorial on deeper elearning as a pre-conference event. In it, I talked about getting more meaningful objectives, writing practice that actually develops meaningful outcomes, and content (concepts & examples) aligned to support effective practice. I also talked about emotional engagement and social learning, before talking about revising design processes to incorporate these deeper elements in an effective and not-too-different approach.  In short, I was talking about aligning our designs, and our design processes, to how we think and learn.

This is something that most organizations should be thinking about.  I was pleasantly surprised that the audience included folks from universities, not-for-profits, and government agencies as well as businesses.  The challenges are different in some respects, but there are shared elements.  Education tends to be about long term learning relationships (typically at least a half year to several years), versus the short-term relationships (e.g. an hour to several days) in organizational learning.  Yet the need to respect how our brains work is a continuum. Our brains learn in particular ways that are unaffected by the curricular needs.  Learning solutions for performance and for education both still need to respect our neural and cognitive architecture.

And too little of what  we do  reflects what we know.  As a recent commenter noted, there’s a conflict between the de-facto practices and what research says.  As she also noted, our tools are also focused on supporting wrong approaches.  It’s not that tools prevent doing meaningful learning, it’s just that you have to get your design right first and then make the tool conform (as opposed to the alternative). And our limitations as designers flow from the same source, our brain,  as our limitations as learners.  Thus we need to be as aware of cognition in our designing as in our design.

I’ll be talking about the problems this engenders in a special  webinar  tomorrow. There’re still a few slots left. If you’re committed to trying to improve  your learning design, and you have the resources to do so, this is an opportunity to get started.  There isn’t a lot of pressure  yet, but it’s time to be proactive  before people start asking questions about the business impact of what we’re doing. What do you think?

Aligning with us

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One of the realizations I had in writing the Revolutionize L&D book was how badly we’re out of synch with our brains. I think alignment is a big thing, both from the Coherent Organization perspective of having our flows of information aligned, and in processes that help us move forward  in ways that reflect  our humanity.

In short, I believe we’re out of alignment with our views on how we think, work, and learn.  The old folklore that represents the thinking that still permeates L&D today is based upon outdated models. And we really have to understand these differences if we’re to get better.

AligningThe mistaken belief about thinking is that it’s all done in our head. That is, we keep the knowledge up there, and then when a context comes in we internalize it and make a  logical  decision and then we act.  And what cognitive science says is that this isn’t really the way it works.  First, our thinking isn’t all in our heads. We distribute it across representational tools like spreadsheets,  documents, and (yes) diagrams.  And we don’t make logical decisions without a lot of support or expertise. Instead, we make quick decisions.  This means that we should be looking at tools to support thinking, not just trying to put it all in the head. We should be putting as much in the world as we can, and look to scaffold our processes as well.

It’s also this notion that we go away and come up with the answer, and that the individual productivity is what matters.  It turns out that most innovation, problem-solving, etc, gets better results if we do it together.  As I often say “the room is smarter than the smartest person in the room  if you manage the process right“.  Yet, we don’t.  And people work better when they understand why what  they’re doing is  important and they care about it. We should be looking at ways to get people to work together more and better, but instead we still see hierarchical decision making, restrictive  cultures, and more.

And, of course, there still persists this model that information dump and knowledge test will lead to new capabilities.  That’s a low probability approach. Whereas if you’re serious about learning, you know it’s mostly about spacing contextualized application of that knowledge to solve problems. Instead, we see rapid elearning tools and templates that tart-up quiz questions.

The point being, we aren’t recognizing that which makes us special, and augmenting in ways that bring out the best.  We’re really running organizations that aren’t designed for humans.  Most of the robotic work should and will  get automated, so then when we need to find ways to use people to do the things they’re best at. It should be the learning folks, and if they’re not ready, well, they better figure it out or be left out!  So let’s get a jump on it, shall we?

ALIGN!

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I’m recognizing that there’s an opportunity to provide more support for implementing the Revolution. So I’ve been thinking through what sort of process might be a way to go about making progress. Given that the core focus in on aligning with how we think, work, and learn (elements we’re largely missing), I thought I’d see whether that could provide a framework. Here’s my first stab,  for your consideration:

Assess: here we determine our situation. I’m working on an evaluation instrument that covers the areas and serves as a guide to any gaps between current status and possible futures, but the key element is to ascertain where we are.

Learn: this step is about reviewing the conceptual frameworks available, e.g. our understandings of how we think, work and learn. The goal is to identify possible directions to move in detail and to prioritize them. The ultimate outcome is our next step to take, though we may well have a sequence queued up.

Initiate: after choosing a step, here’s where we launch it. This may not be a major initiative.  The principle of ‘trojan mice‘ suggests small focused steps, and there are reasons to think small steps make sense.   We’ll need to follow the elements of successful change, with planning, communicating, supporting, rewarding, etc.

Guide: then we need to assess how we’re doing and look for interventions needed. This involves knowing what the change should accomplish, evaluating  to see if it’s occurring, and implementing refinements as we go.  We shouldn’t assume it will go well, but instead check and support.

Nurture: once we’ve achieved a stable state, we want to nurture it on an ongoing basis. This may be documenting and celebrating the outcome, replicating  elsewhere, ensuring persistence and continuity, and returning to see where we are now and where we should go next.

Obviously, I’m pushing the ALIGN acronym (as one does), as it helps reinforce the message.   Now to put in place tools to support each step.  Feedback solicited!

Aligning

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I’m realizing that a major theme of my work and the revolution is that what we do in organizations, and what we do as L&D practitioners, is not aligned with how we think, work, and learn.  And to that extent, we’re doomed to failure. We can, and need to, do better.

Let’s start with thinking. The major mismatch here is that our thinking is done rationally and in our head. Results in cognitive science show, instead, that much of our thinking is irrational and is distributed across the world. We use external representations and tools, and unless we’re experts, we make decisions and use our brains to justify them rather than actually do the hard work.

What does this mean for organizations and L&D?  It means we should be looking to augment how we think, with tools and processes like performance support, helping us find information with powerful search.  We want to have open book learning, since we’ll use the book in the real world, and we want to avoid putting it ‘in the head’ as much as possible. Particularly rote information. We should expect errors, and provide support with checklists, not naively expect that people can perform like robots.

This carries over to how we work.  The old view is that we work alone, performing our task, and being managed from above with one person thinking for a number of folks.  What we now know, however, is that this view isn’t optimal. The output is better when we get multiple complementary minds working together.  Adaptation and innovation work best when we work together.

So we don’t need isolation to do our work, we need cooperation  and collaboration.  We need ways to work together. We need to give people meaningful tasks and give them space to execute, with appropriate support. We need to create environments where it’s safe to share, to show your work, to work out loud.

And our models of learning are broken. The trend to  an   event comprised of information dump and knowledge test we know doesn’t work. Rote procedures are no longer sufficient for the increasing ambiguity and unique situations our learners are seeing. And the notion that  “practice ’til they get it right” will lead to any meaningful change in ability is fundamentally flawed.

To learn, we need models to guide our behavior and help us adapt.   We need to identify and address misconceptions. We need learners to engage concretely and be scaffolded in reflection.     And we need  much practice.  Our learning experiences need to look much more like scenarios and serious games, not like text and next.

We’re in an information age, and industrial models just won’t cut it.  I’m finding that we’re hampered by a fundamental lack of awareness of our brains, and this is manifesting in too many unfortunate and ineffective practices.  We need to get better. We know better paths, and we need to trod them.  Let’s start acting like professionals and develop the expertise we need to do the job we must do.

#itashare