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Where in the world is…

18 August 2015 by Clark Leave a Comment

It’s time for another game of Where’s Clark?  As usual, I’ll be somewhat peripatetic this fall, but more broadly scoped than usual:

  • First I’ll be hitting Shenzhen, China at the end of August  to talk advanced mlearning  for a private event.
  • Then I’ll be hitting the always excellent  DevLearn  in Las Vegas at the end of September to run a workshop on learning science for design (you  should want to attend!) and give a session on content engineering.
  • At the end of October I’m down under  at the Learning@Work event in Sydney to talk the Revolution.
  • At the beginning of November I’ll be at LearnTech Asia in Singapore, with an impressive lineup of fellow speakers to again sing the praises of reforming L&D.
  • That might seem like enough, but I’ll also be at Online Educa in Berlin at the beginning of December running an mlearning for academia workshop and seeing my ITA colleagues.

Yes, it’s quite the whirl, but with this itinerary I should be somewhere near you almost anywhere you are in the world. (Or engage me to show up at your locale!) I hope to see  you at one event or another  before the year is out.

 

Teasing apart cooperation and collaboration

4 August 2015 by Clark 6 Comments

There have been a couple of recent proposals about the relative role of cooperation and collaboration, and I’m trying to make sense of them.  Here are a couple of different approaches, and my first take at teasing them apart.

Dion Hinchcliffe  of Adjuvi  tweeted  a diagram about different types of working together that shows his take. He has coordination as a subsidiary to cooperation and on to collaboration.  So coordination is when we know what needs to be done, but we can’t do it alone. Cooperation is when we’re doing things that need to have a contribution from each of us, and requires some integration. And collaboration is when we’re working together with a goal but not clear how we’ll get there.  I think what’s core here is how well defined the task is and how much we contribute.

In the meantime, Harold Jarche, my ITA colleague, as a different take.  He sees collaboration as working together to achieve a goal that’s for the organization, whereas cooperation goes beyond.  Cooperation is where we participate and assist one another for our own goals.  It’s contribution that’s uncoupled from any sense of requirement, and is freely given.  I see here the discussion is more about our motives; why are we engaged.

With those two different takes, I see them as different ways of carving up the activities. My initial reaction is closer to Dion’s; I’ve always seen cooperation as willingness to assist when asked, or to provide pointers. To me collaboration is higher; it’s willing to not just provide assistance in clearly defined ways such as pointers to relevant work, answering questions, etc, but to actively roll up sleeves and pitch in.  (Coordination is, to me I guess, a subset of cooperation.) With collaboration I’ve got a vested interest in the outcome, and am willing to help frame the question, do independent research, iterate, and persist to achieve the outcome.

I see the issue of motivation or goal as a different thing. I can cooperate in a company-directed manner, as expected, but I also can (and do) cooperate in a broader sense; when people ask for help (my principles are simple: talk ideas for free; help someone personally for dinner/drinks; if someone’s making a quid  I get a cut), I will try to assist (with the Least Assistance Principle in mind).  I can also collaborate on mutual goals (whether ITA projects or client work), but then I can also  collaborate on things that have no immediate outcome except to improve the industry as a whole (*cough* Serious eLearning Manifesto *cough*).

So I see two independent dimensions: one on the effort invested, just responding to need or actively contributing; and the other on the motivation, whether for a structured goal or for the greater good.

Now I have no belief that either of them will necessarily agree with my take, but I’d like to reconcile these interpretations  for the overall understanding (or at least my own!).  That’s my first take, feedback welcome!

SME Brains

30 June 2015 by Clark 1 Comment

As I push for better learning design, I’m regularly reminded that working with subject matter experts (SMEs) is critical, and problematic.   What makes SMEs has implications that are challenging but also offers a uniquely valuable perspective.    I want to review some of those challenges and opportunities in one go.

One of the artifacts about how our brain works is that we compile knowledge away.  We start off with conscious awareness of what we’re supposed to be doing, and apply it in context.  As we practice, however, our expertise becomes chunked up, and increasingly automatic. As it does so, some of the elements that are compiled away are awarenesses that are not available to conscious inspection. As Richard Clark of the Cognitive Technology Lab at USC lets us know, about 70% of what SMEs do isn’t available to their conscious mind.  Or, to put it another way, they literally can’t tell us what they do!

On the other hand, they have pretty good access to what they know. They can cite all the knowledge they have to hand. They can talk about the facts and the concepts, but not the decisions.  And, to be fair, many of them aren’t really good at the concepts, at least  not from the perspective of being able to articulate a model that is of use in the learning process.

The problem then becomes a combination of both finding a good SME, and working with them in a useful way to get meaningful objectives, to start. And while there are quite rigorous ways (e.g. Cognitive Task Analysis), in general we need more heuristic approaches.

My recommendation, grounded in Sid Meier’s statement that “good games are a series of interesting decisions” and the recognition that making better decisions are likely to be the most valuable outcome of learning, is to focus rabidly on decisions.  When SMEs start talking about “they need to know X” and “they need to know Y” is to ask leading questions like “what decisions do they need to be able to make that they don’t make know” and “how does X or Y actually lead them to make better decisions”.

Your end goal here is to winnow the knowledge away and get to the models that will make a difference to the learner’s ability to act.  And when you’re pressed by a certification body that you need to represent what the SME tells you, you may need to push back.  I even advocate anticipating what the models and decisions are likely to be, and getting the SME to criticize and improve, rather than let them start with a blank slate. This does require some smarts on the part of the designer, but when it works, it leverages the fact that it’s easier to critique than generate.

They also are potentially valuable in the ways that they recognize where learners go wrong, particularly if they train.  Most of the time, mistakes aren’t random, but are based upon some inappropriate models.  Ideally, you have access to these reliable mistakes,  and the reason why they’re made. Your SMEs should be able to help here. They should know ways in which non-experts fail.  It may be the case that some SMEs aren’t as good as others here, so again, as in ones that have access to the models, you need to be selective.

This is related to one of the two ways SMEs are your ally.  Ideally, you’re equipped with stories, great failures and great successes. These form the basis of your examples, and ideally come in the form of a story. A SME should have some examples of both that they can spin and you can use to build up an example. This may well be part of your process to get the concepts and practice down, but you need to get these case studies.

There’s one other way that SMEs can help. The fact that they are experts is based upon the fact that they somehow find the topic fascinating or rewarding enough to spend the requisite time to acquire expertise. You can, and should, tap into that. Find out what makes this particular field interesting, and use that as a way  to communicate the intrinsic interest to learners. Are they playing detective, problem-solver, or protector? What’s the appeal, and then build that into the practice stories you ask learners to engage in.

Working with SMEs isn’t easy, but it is critical. Understanding what they can do, and where they intrinsic barriers, gives you a better handle on being able to get what you need to assist learners in being able to perform.  Here are some of my tips, what have you found that works?

Embrace Plan B

17 June 2015 by Clark Leave a Comment

The past two weeks, I’ve been on the road (hence the paucity of posts).  And they’ve been great opportunities to engage around interesting topics, but also have provided some learning opportunities (ahem).  The title of this post, by the way, came from m’lady, who was quoting what a senior Girl Scout said was the biggest lesson she learned from her leader, “to embrace Plan B” ;).

So two weeks ago I was visiting a client working on upping their learning game. This is a challenge in a production environment, but as I discussed many times in posts over the second half of 2014 and some this year, I think there are some serious actions that can be taken.  What is needed are better ways to work with SMEs, better constraints around what makes useful content, and perhaps most importantly what makes meaningful interaction and practice.  I firmly believe that  there are practical ways to get serious elearning going without radical change, though some initial hiccups  will be experienced.

This past week I spoke twice. First on a broad spectrum of learning directions to a group that was doing distance learning and wanted to take a step back and review what they’d been doing and look for improvement opportunities. I covered deeper learning, social learning, meta-learning, and more. Then I went beyond and talked about 70:20:10, measurement,  games and simulations, mlearning, the performance ecosystem, and more.  I then moved  on to a separate (and delightful) event in Vancouver to promote the Revolution.

It was the transition between the two events last week that threw me. So, Plan A was to fly back home on Tuesday, and then fly on to Vancouver on Wed morning.   But, well, life happened.  All my flights were delayed (thanks, American) on my flight there and back to the first engagement, and both of the first flights such that I missed the connection. On the way out I just got in later than I expected (leading to 4.5 hours sleep before the long and detailed presentation).  But on the way back, I missed the last connecting flight home.  And this had several consequences.

So, instead of spending Tuesday night in my own bed, and repacking for the next day, I spent the night in the Dallas/Fort Worth airport.  Since they blamed it on weather (tho’ if the incoming flight had been on time, it might’ve gotten out in time to avoid the storm), they didn’t have any obligation to provide accommodation, but there were cots and blankets available. I tried to pull into a dark and quiet place, but most of the good ones were taken already. I found a boarding gate that was out of the way, but it was bright and loud.  I gave up after an hour or so and headed off to another area, where I found a lounge where I could pull together a couple of armchairs and managed to doze for 2.5 or so hours, before getting up and on the hunt for some breakfast.  Lesson: if something’s not working, change!

I caught a flight back home in just enough time to catch the next one up to Vancouver. The problem was, I wasn’t able to swap out my clothes, so I was desperately in need of some laundry.  Upon arriving, I threw one of the shirts, socks, etc into a sink and gave them a wash and hung them up. (I also took a shower, which was not only a necessity after a rough night but a great way to gather myself and feel a bit more human).  The next morning, as I went to put on the shirt, I found a stain!  I couldn’t get up in front of all those people with a stained shirt.  Plan B was out the door. Also, the other shirt had acquired one too!  Plan C on the dust heap. Now what?  Fortunately, my presentation was in the afternoon, but I needed to do something.

So I went downstairs and found a souvenir shop in the hotel, but the shirts were all a wee bit too loud.  I didn’t really want to pander to the crowd quite so egregiously. I asked at the hotel desk if there was a place I could buy a shirt within walking distance, and indeed there was.  I was well and truly on Plan D by this time.  So I hiked on out to a store and fortunately found another shirt I could throw on.  Lesson: keep changing!

I actually made the story part of my presentation.  I made  the point that just like in my case, organizations need not only optimal execution of the plans, but then also the ability to innovate if the plan isn’t working.  And L&D  can (and should) play a role in this.  So, help your people be prepared to create and embrace Plan B (and C and…however many adaptations they need to have).

And one other lesson for me: be better prepared for tight connections to go awry!

Got Game?

28 April 2015 by Clark 1 Comment

Why should you, as a learning designer, take a game design workshop?  What is the relationship between games and learning?  I want to suggest that there are  very  important reasons why you should.

Just so you don’t think I’m the only one saying it, in the decade since I wrote the book  Engaging Learning:  Designing e-Learning Simulation Games, there have been a large variety of books on the topic. Clark Aldrich has written three, at least count. James Paul Gee has pointed out how the semantic features of games match to the way our brains learn, as has David  Williamson Shaeffer.  People like Kurt Squire, Constance Steinkuhler, Henry Jenkins, and Sasha Barab have been strong advocates of games for learning. And of course Karl Kapp has a recent book on the topic.  You could also argue that Raph Koster’s A Theory of Fun is another vote given that his premise is that fun  is learning. So I’m not alone in this.

But more specifically, why get steeped in it?  And I want to give you three reasons: understanding engagement, understanding practice, and understanding design.  Not to say you don’t know these, but I’ll suggest that there are depths which you’re not yet incorporating into your learning, and  you could and should.  After all, learning  should be ‘hard fun’.

The difference between a simulation and a game is pretty straightforward.  A simulation is just a model of the world, and it can be in any legal state and be taken to any other.  A self-motivated and effective self-learner can use that to discover what they need to know.  But for specific learning purposes, we put that simulation into an initial state, and ask the learner to take it to a goal state, and we’ve chosen those so that they can’t do it until they understand the relationships we want them to understand. That’s what I call a scenario, and we typically wrap a story around it to motivate the goal.  We can tune that into a game.  Yes, we turn it into a game, but by tuning.

And that’s the important point about engagement. We can’t call it game; only our players can tell us whether it’s a game or not. To achieve that goal, we have to understand what motivates our learners, what they care about, and figure out how to integrate that into the learning.  It’s about not designing a learning event, but designing a learning  experience.  And, by studying how games achieve that, we can learn how to take our learning from mundane to meaningful.   Whether or not we have the resources and desire to build actual games, we can learn valuable lesssons to apply to any of our learning design. It’s the emotional element most ID leaves behind.

I also maintain that, next to mentored live practice, games are the best thing going (and individual mentoring doesn’t scale well, and live practice can be expensive both to develop but particularly when mistakes are made).  Games  build upon that by providing deep practice; embedding important decisions in a context that makes the experience as meaningful as when it really counts.  We use game techniques to heighten and deep the experience, which makes it closer to live practice, reducing transfer distance. And we can provide repeated practice.  Again, even if we’re not able to implement full game engines, there are many important lessons to take to designing other learning experiences: how to design better multiple choice questions, the value of branching scenarios, and more.  Practical improvements that will increase engagement and increase outcomes.

Finally, game designers use design processes that have a lot to offer to formal learning design. Their practices in terms of information collection (analysis), prototyping and refinement, and evaluation are advanced by the simple requirement that their output is such that people will actually pay for the experience.  There are valuable elements that can be transferred to learning design even if you aren’t expecting to have an outcome so valuable you can charge for it.

As professionals, it behooves us to look to other fields with implications that could influence and improve our outcomes. Interface design, graphic design, software engineering, and more are all relevant areas to explore. So is game design, and arguably the most relevant one we can.

So, if you’re interested in tapping into this, I encourage you to consider the game design workshop I’ll be running for the ATD Atlanta chapter on the 3rd of June. Their price is fair even if you’re not a chapter member, and it’s great deal if you are.  Further, it’s a tried and tested format that’s been well received since I first started offering it. The night before, I’ll be busting myths at the chapter meeting.  I hope I’ll see you there!

Personal Mobile Mastery

23 April 2015 by Clark Leave a Comment

A conversation with a colleague prompted a reflection.  The topic was personal learning, and in looking for my intersections (beyond my love of meta-learning), I looked at my books. The Revolution isn’t an obvious match, nor is games (though trust me, I could make them work ;), but a more obvious match was mlearning. So the question is, how do we do personal knowledge mastery with mobile?

Let’s get the obvious out of the way. Most of what you do on the desktop, particularly social networking, is doable on a mobile device.  And you can use search engines and reference tools just the same. You can find how to videos as well. Is there more?

First, of course, are all the things to make yourself more ‘effective’.  Using the four key original apps on the Palm Pilot for instance: your calendar to remind you of events or to check availability, using ToDo checklists to remember commitments to do something, using memos to take notes for reference, and using your contact list to reach people.  Which isn’t really learning, but it’s valuable to learn to be good at these.

Then we start doing things because of where you are.  Navigation to somewhere or finding what’s around you are the obvious choices. Those are things you won’t necessarily learn from, but they make you more effective.  But they can also help educate you. You can look where you are on a map and see what’s around you, or identify the thing on the map that’s in that direction (“oh, that’s the Quinnsitute” or “There’s Mount Clark” or whatever), and have a chance of identifying a seen prominence.

And  you can use those social media tools as before, but you can also use them because of where or when you are. You can snap pictures of something and send it around and ask how it could help you. Of course, you can snap pictures or films for later recollection and reflection, and contribute them to a blog post for reflection.  And take notes by text or audio. Or even sketching or diagramming. The notes people take for themselves at conferences, for instance, get shared and are valuable not just for the sharer, but for all attendees.

Certainly searching  things you don’t understand or, when there’s unknown language, seeing if you can get a translation, are also options.  You can learn what something means, and avoid making mistakes.

When  you are, e.g. based upon what you’re doing, is a little less developed.  You’d have to have rich tagging around your calendar to signal what it is you’re doing for a system to be able to leverage that information, but I reckon we can get there if and when we want.

I’m not a big fan of  ‘learning’ on a mobile device, maybe a tablet in transit or something, but not courses on a phone.  On the other hand, I am a  big fan of self-learning on a phone, using your phone to make you smarter. These are embryonic thoughts, so I welcome feedback.   Being more contextually aware both in the moment and over time is a worthwhile opportunity, one we can and should look to advance.  I think there’s  much  yet, though tools like ARIS are going to help change that. And that’ll be good.

 

Road trip(s)!

16 April 2015 by Clark 1 Comment

Several events are coming up that I  should mention (“coming to a location near you!”):

If you’re anywhere near  Austin, you should check out the upcoming eLearning Symposium  May 7 and 8. I’m speaking  on the L&D  Revolution  I’m trying to incite, and then offering a half day  workshop to help you get your strategy going.  There’s a nice slate of other speakers to help you dig deeper into elearning.

I’ll also be speaking on Serious eLearning at Callidus Cloud Connections in Las Vegas May 11-13.  If you’re into Litmos, or thinking about it, it’s the place to be.

If you’re near Atlanta, I’ll be busting learning myths in an evening session  for the ATD Chapter on the 2nd of June, and then running a learning game  workshop on the 3rd.  You’ll find out more about learning and engagement; you can  and should  add game elements to your learning design.  I’m serious when I say that “learning can, and should, be hard fun“.

And  I’ll be touting the needed L&D  Revolution up in Vancouver June 11, keynoting the CSTD Symposium.  There’s a great line up of talks to raise your game.

I  would love to meet  you at one of these events; hope to see you there (or there, or there, or there).

Michael Furdyk #LSCon Keynote Mindmap

26 March 2015 by Clark 3 Comments

Michael Furdyk gave an inspiring talk this morning about his trajectory through technology and then five ideas that he thought were important elements in the success of the initiatives he had undertaken. He gave lots of examples and closed with interesting questions about how we might engage learners through badges, mobile, and co-creation.

The subtleties

13 January 2015 by Clark Leave a Comment

I recently opined that good learning design was complex, really perhaps close to rocket science.  And I suggested that a consequent problem was that the nuances are subtle.  It occurs to me that perhaps discussing some example problems will help make this point more clear.

Without being exhaustive, there are several consistent problems I see in the elearning content I review:

  • The wrong focus. Seriously, the outcomes for the class aren’t meaningful!  They are about information or knowledge, not skill.  Which leads to no meaningful change in behavior, and more importantly, in outcomes. I don’t want to learn about X, I want to learn how to  do  X!
  • Lack of motivating introductions.  People are expected to give a hoot  about this information, but no one helps them understand why it’s important?  Learners should be assisted to viscerally ‘get’ why this is important,  and helped to see how it connects to the rest of the world.  Instead we get some boring drone about how this is really important.  Connect it to the world and let me see the context!
  • Information focused or arbitrary content presentations. To get the type of flexible problem-solving organizations need, people need mental models about why  and how  to do it this way, not just the rote steps.  Yet too often I see arbitrary lists of information accompanied  by a rote knowledge test.  As if that’s gonna stick.
  • A lack of examples, or trivial ones.  Examples need to show a context, the barriers, and how the content model provides guidance about how to succeed (and when it won’t).  Instead we get fluffy stories that don’t connect to the model and show the application to the context.  Which means it’s not going to support transfer (and if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re not ready to be doing design)!
  • Meaningless and insufficient practice.  Instead of asking learners to make decisions like they will be making in the workplace (and this is my hint for the  first  thing to focus on fixing), we ask rote knowledge questions. Which isn’t going to make a bit of difference.
  • Nonsensical alternatives to the right answer.  I regularly ask of audiences “how many of you have ever taken a quiz where the alternatives to the right answer are so silly or dumb that you didn’t need to know anything to pass?”  And  everyone raises their hand.  What possible benefit does that have?  It insults the learner’s intelligence, it wastes their time, and it has no impact on learning.
  • Undistinguished feedback. Even if you do have an alternative that’s aligned with a misconception, it seems like there’s an industry-wide conspiracy to ensure that there’s only one response for all the wrong answers. If you’ve discriminated meaningful differences to the right answer based upon how they go wrong, you should be addressing them individually.

The list goes on.  Further, any one of these can severely impact the learning outcomes, and I typically see  all of these!

These are really  just the flip side of the elements of good design I’ve touted in previous posts (such as this series).  I mean, when I look at most elearning content, it’s like the authors have no idea how we really learn, how our brains work.  Would you design a tire for a car without knowing how one works?  Would you design a cover for a computer without knowing what it looks like?  Yet it appears that’s what we’re doing in most elearning. And it’s time to put a stop to it.  As a first step, have a look at the Serious eLearning Manifesto, specifically the 22 design principles.

Let me be clear, this is just the surface.  Again, learning engineering is complex stuff.  We’ve hardly touched on engagement, spacing, and more.    This may seem like a lot, but this is really the boiled-down version!  If it’s too much, you’re in the wrong job.

Reflections on 15 years

31 December 2014 by Clark 2 Comments

For Inside Learning & Technologies 50th edition, a number of us were asked to provide reflections on what has changed over the past 15 years.  This was pretty much the period in which I’d returned to the US and took up with what was kind of a startup and led to my life as a consultant.  As an end of year piece, I have permission to post that article here:

15 years ago, I had just taken a step away from academia and government-sponsored initiatives to a new position leading a team in what was effectively a startup. I was excited about the prospect of taking the latest learning science to the needs of the corporate world. My thoughts were along the lines of “here, where we have money for meaningful initiatives, surely we can do something spectacular”. And it turns out that the answer is both yes and no.

The technology we had then was pretty powerful, and that has only increased in the past 15 years. We had software that let us leverage the power of the internet, and reasonable processing power in our computers. The Palm Pilot had already made mobile a possibility as well. So the technology was no longer a barrier, even then.

And what amazing developments we have seen! The ability to create rendered worlds accessible through a dedicated application and now just a browser is truly an impressive capability. Regardless of whether we overestimated the value proposition, it is still quite the technology feat. And similarly, the ability to communicate via voice and video allows us to connect people in ways once only dreamed of.

We also have rich new ways to interact from microblogs to wikis (collaborative documents). These capabilities are improved by transcending proximity and synchronicity. We can work together without worrying about where the solution is hosted, or where our colleagues are located. Social media allow us to tap into the power of people working together.

The improvements in mobile capabilities are also worth noting. We have gone from hype to hyphens, where a limited monochrome handheld has given way to powerful high-resolution full-color multi-channel always-connected sensor-rich devices. We can pretty much deliver anything anywhere we want, and that fulfills Arthur C. Clarke’s famous proposition that a truly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Coupled with our technological improvements are advances in our understanding of how we think, work, and learn. We now have recognition about how we act in the world, about how we work with others, and how we best learn. We have information age understandings that illustrate why industrial age methods are not appropriate.

It is not truly new, but reaching mainstream awareness in the last decade and more is the recognition that the model of our thinking as formal and logical is being updated. While we can work in such ways, it is the exception rather than the rule. Such thinking is effortful and it turns out both that we avoid it and there is a limit to how much deep thinking one can do in a day. Instead, we use our intuition beyond where we should, and while this is generally okay, it helps to understand our limitations and design around them.

There is also a spreading awareness of how much our thinking is externalized in the world, and how much we use technology to support us being effective. We have recognized the power of external support for thinking, through tools such as checklists and wizards. We do this pretty naturally, and the benefits from good design of technology greatly facilitate our ability to think.

There is also recognition that the model of individual innovation is broken, and that working together is far superior to working alone. The notion of the lone genius disappearing and coming back with the answer has been replaced by iterations on top of previous work by teams. When people work together in effective ways, in a supportive environment, the outcomes will be better. While this is not easy to effect in many circumstances, we know the practices and culture elements we need, and it is our commitment to get there, not our understanding, that is the barrier.

Finally, our approaches to learning are better informed now. We know that being emotionally engaged is a valued component in moving to learning experience design. We understand the role of models in supporting more flexible performance. We also have evidence of the value of performing in context. It is not news that information dump and knowledge test do not lead to meaningful skill acquisition, and it is increasingly clear that meaningful practice can. It is also increasingly clear that, as things move faster, meaningful skills – the ability to make better decisions – is what is going to provide the sustainable differentiator for organizations.

So imagine my dismay in finding that the approaches we are using in organizations are largely still rooted in approaches from yesteryear. While we have had rich technology opportunities to combine with our enlightened understanding, that is not what we are seeing. What we see is still expectations that it is done in-the-head, top-down, with information dump and meaningless assessment that is not tied to organizational outcomes. And while it is not working, demonstrably, there seems little impetus to change.

Truly, there has been little change in our underlying models in 15 years. While the technology is flashier, the buzz words have mutated, and some of the faces have changed, we are still following myths like learning styles and generational differences, we are still using ‘spray and pray’ methods in learning, we are still not taking on performance support and social learning, and perhaps most distressingly, we are still not measuring what matters.

Sure, the reasons are complex. There are lots of examples of the old approaches, the tools and practices are aligned with bad learning practices, the shared metrics reflect efficiency instead of effectiveness, … the list goes on. Yet a learning & development (L&D) unit unengaged with the business units it supports is not sustainable, and consequently the lack of change is unjustifiable.

And the need is now more than ever. The rate of change is increasing, and organizations now have more need to not just be effective, but they have to become agile. There is no longer time to plan, prepare, and execute, the need is to continually adapt. Organizations need to learn faster than the competition.

The opportunities are big. The critical component for organizations to thrive is to couple optimal execution (the result of training and performance support) with continual innovation (which does not come from training). Instead, imagine an L&D unit that is working with business units to drive interventions that affect key KPIs. Consider an L&D unit that is responsible for facilitating the interactions that are leading to new solutions, new products and services, and better relationships with customers. That is the L&D we need to see!

The path forward is not easy but it is systematic and doable. A vision of a ‘performance ecosystem‘ – a rich suite of tools to support success that surround the performer and are aligned with how they think, work, and learn – provides an endpoint to start towards. Every organization‘s path will be different, but a good start is to start doing formal learning right, begin looking at performance support, and commence working on the social media infrastructure.

An associated focus is building a meaningful infrastructure (hint: one all-singing all-dancing LMS is not the answer). A strategy to get there is a companion effort. And, ultimately a learning culture will be necessitated. Yet these components are not just a necessary component for L&D, they are the necessary components for a successful organization, one that can be agile enough to adapt to the increasing rate of change we are facing.

And here is the first step: L&D has to become a learning organization. Mantras like ‘work out loud’, ‘fail fast’, and ‘reflect’ have to become part of the L&D culture. L&D has to start experimenting and learning from the experiments. Let us ensure that the past 15 years are a hibernation we emerge from, not the beginning of the end.

Here’s to change for the better.  May 2015 be the  best year yet!

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