Search Results for: align

Another response to my request for topics asked about moving from the classroom to the ‘fringe’.  Here, I have a very simple response: the case studies in Revolutionize Learning & Development. Each was chosen and structured to talk about the context, specific situation, the plan, the results, and advice.  Each also represents a diversity of settings and needs.  These represent some folks working at the edge, away from the ‘event’.

Mark Britz, facing more experts than novices, structured his corporate university as a network, not a series of courses.  Communities of Practice served as a model for this thinking.  This included and Enterprise Social Network and a Knowledge Management system.

Jos Arets and Vivian Heijnin at Tulser talked through a case study working with a medical care organization.  The problem was too much hierarchy. Using a Human Performance Improvement approach, they decentralized the work to more self-directed teams.  The solution includes continuous assessment, mobile performance support, and coaching.

Coaching also played a role in the case study Jane Bozarth provided.  The issue was solving workplace problems. Instead of courses, the solution connected those with demonstrable skills to mentor those who could benefit.  A ‘yellow pages’ to find ‘in the moment’ help was also a part.

For an internal self-help solution, Allison Anderson developed a community of practice with events, portal, and a networking platform. Here, the issues was getting disparate groups performing similar functions (L&D) to share best principles.

I had Charles Jennings recount his actions while serving as CLO in a global organization. With a mantra of ‘from event to process’, he used the 70:20:10 framework to rethink a balance of ‘push’ and ‘pull’ services.

In the book, they tell the stories in their own words. They unpack the thinking behind their choices, ‘showing their work’.  The contributions are very valuable, and I’m very grateful that they agreed to share them.  For that matter, you should find and track these folks!

Each of these were chosen as exemplary of the type of thinking that takes us from the old model to the ‘edge’. We want to be looking holistically at how people think, work, and learn, and aligning our infrastructure (policies, technology, procedures, and culture) accordingly.  This is the L&D part of a larger push to make the workplace more effective by making it more humane (read: more aligned with  us).

Listening, as I mentioned, in this case to  Guy Wallace.  As one of the premier promoters of evidence-based design, he responded to my question  about what to post on with:

Any “How Tos” using methods, tools and techniques that you‘ve found to work in L&D and Performance Improvement.

Since I am a fan of Guy’s work, I thought I should answer!  Now, obviously I don’t work in a typical L&D environment, so this list is somewhat biased. So I mentally ran through memorable projects from the past and looked for the success factors. Besides the best principles I usually advocate, here are a few tips and tricks that I’ve used over the years:

• Engage.  Obviously, I wrote a book about this, but some of the quick things I do include:
  • embed the decisions they should be making in contexts where they make sense
  • as Henry Jenkins put it: “put the player in a role they  want to be in”
  • exaggerate the context
  • minimize the distractions
  • hook the learners in emotionally from the start
• Decisions. I find that working with the objectives for learning projects, it’s critical to focus on the decisions that learners will ultimately be making.  I argue that what will make the difference for organizations, going forward, will be better decisions. And it keeps the discussion from focusing on knowledge. Knowledge is needed, but it’s not central.
• Brainstorming. When working a strategy session with clients, I seed the discussion before hand with the challenges and background material, and ask that everyone think on their own before we begin collaboration.
• Better ‘Pair and Share’.  If, in brainstorming, you should think individually before collectively, so should you do so in all forms. So I trialed a ‘pair and share’ where I asked everyone to:
  • think on the questions (asking for 2 things) first,
  • then share with another,
  • and try to reach agreement
  • (I polled the first audience I trialed it on, and they said that the discussion was better, FWIW).
• Shared language. I have found it valuable, when starting a new project, to run a little ‘presentation’ where I present some of the models that I’m bringing to the table (that’s why I‘m there ;), so we’re starting from a shared understanding. And of course I’ve reviewed materials of theirs beforehand so I can use their terminology.  Educating clients is part of a Quinnovation engagement!
• Test.  In making the Workplace of the Future project with Learnnovators,  we were barreling along full tilt, working on the second module, and I was getting increasingly worried about the fact that we hadn’t tested the first.  We finally did, relatively informally, but still got valuable feedback that changed our design somewhat. Similarly on other projects, get feedback early and often.
• Visualize. My diagramming bent had me map out the workflow of a client’s production process, to identify opportunities to tweak the process to bring in better learning science with minimal interruption.  In general, I will often jump up to the whiteboard and try to represent what I’m hearing to see if it’s shared.
• Prototype.  Similar to the above, I will often mock up what I’m thinking about (in sort of a ‘ape with a crayon’ level of fidelity), to help communicate the idea; e.g. some sort of walkthrough.  I find that only a percentage of the audience can imagine what the experience will be without getting somewhat concrete. (And, yes, they do then complain about the production values, despite the tradeoff of cost versus value.  Sigh.)
• Get the context.  I generally try to understand the whole ecosystem (ala ‘the revolution‘) before I engage in specifics.  What are the goals, stakeholders, what’s already being done and by whom, etc. It’s important to re-contextualize ‘best principles’, and that requires  knowing the context.
• Architecture. Thinking through things using a design thinking approach and a systems-thinking perspective, I’ve tried to think of platforms, not just solutions. It might be content architectures, ecosystem elements, but it’s thinking in terms of systems, not just tactics.
• Pragmatism. One final approach that has been beneficial is thinking about how to approximate the best with a budget.  I used to talk about ‘what would you do if you had magic’, and then see how close you can get with the resources to hand. It’s a heuristic that often has led to an innovative yet viable solution.

Looking at them, I see that they generally reflect my overall focus on aligning what we do with how we think, work, and learn. Your thoughts?

It appears that, too often, people are building courses when they don’t need to (or, more importantly, shouldn’t).  I realize that there are pressures to make a course when one is requested, including expectations and familiarity, but really, you should be doing some initial thinking about what makes sense.  So here’s a rough guide about the thinking you should do  before you course.

You begin with a performance problem.  Something’s not right: calls take too long, sales success rate is too low, there’re too many errors in manufacturing.  So it must need training, right?  Er, no.  There’s this thing that’s called ‘performance consulting‘ that talks about identifying the gaps that could be preventing the desirable outcomes, and they’re not  all about gaps that training meets.  So we need to triage, and see what’s broken and what’s the priority.

To start, people can simply not  know what they’re supposed to do.  That may seem obvious, but it can in fact be the case.  Thus, there’s a need to communicate. Note that this and all of these are more complex than just ‘communicate’. There are the issues about who needs to communicate, and when, and to whom, etc.  But it’s  not (at least initially) a training problem.

If they do know, and could do it but aren’t, the problem isn’t going to be solved by training.  As someone once put it “if they could do it if their life depended on it”, then there’s something else going on. If they’re not following safety procedures because they’re too onerous, a course on it isn’t going to fix it. You need to address their motivation.

Now, if they can’t do it, then could they do it if they had the right tools, or more people, or more time? In other words, is it a resource problem?  And, in one way I like to think about it: can we put the solution in the world, instead of in the head?  Will lookup tables, checklists, step-by-step guides or videos solve the problem? Or even connections to other folks! (There are times when it doesn’t make sense to course or even job-aid; e.g. if it’s changing too fast, or too unique, or…)

And, of course, if you don’t have the right people, training still may not work. If they need to meet certain criteria, but don’t, training won’t solve it.  Training can’t fix color-blindness or lack of height, for instance.

Finally, if the prior solutions won’t solve it, and there’s a serious skill gap, then it’s time for training.  And not just knowledge dump, of course, but models and examples and meaningful (and spaced) practice.

Again, these are all abbreviated, and this is oversimplified.  There’s more depth to be unpacked, so this is just a surface level way to represent that a course isn’t always the solution.  But before you course, consider the other solutions. Please.