What's in my head today?

I had what I thought was an odd discussion yesterday with a friend of mine who manages a couple of business units in a large corporate here in Australia. He was lamenting the fact that no matter how much time he allowed his staff to have away from their desks to participate in learning, their performance seemed to orbit around a mark that the business really needed to improve on. His question to me, after a good ten minutes of explaining the latest example, was simple: “What’s wrong with our training department?”

Of course, given he was on the operational side of the business, he spent most of his time with operational people (to give him credit, he spreads his attention around beyond his direct reports and makes sure the people who work in his area know him and know they can reach out to him if they feel the need) he knew the operational managers and staff were working their backsides off. He also knew he had some very savvy people in positions up and down the reporting line. So it had to be the training people that were the problem, right?

Well, partly. I had an idea what the problem seemed to be, or at least an important piece of the puzzle, not far into his story, and it’s something that plagues many businesses still, if what I see and hear is a representative snapshot. There was just an amazing gulf between the concept of “training” and the imperative of “performance.” Managers up and down the line seemed to be of the opinion that “training” was the responsibility of the “training department”, and it happened away from the job. Staff go to training and they come back all fixed up and ready to perform better. The role of managers was to monitor the performance of their people and teams and crunch the numbers - once per month, they’d chair a team meeting.

The trainers didn’t really seem to be in any better shape. Their responsibilities began and ended at the doors to the training rooms. From what I was told, they weren’t seen among the operational people before or after training (my friend clearly said that when a manager thought training was required, that manager would phone “someone from training” and they’d have a conversation, maybe followed by some emails back and forth. Once in a while, for a particularly important initiative, one or two of the training team would come over - they worked in another building - and meet with a few key managers to hash out the details).

Talk about silo city. The training team did very little intelligence gathering from the people who would be attending their programs, and didn’t come back afterwards to see what was being applied back at work after a training session. Managers neither asked for, nor received, a summary of how their people handled the training or any feedback on common questions raised by participants or observations from the trainers themselves. Everyone had the best of intentions, but it was like they lived in different worlds.

Needless to say, my friend and I talked about the importance of integrating a learning and development team with the operational people they were supporting. Far from being fly-in/fly-out consultants, the training people needed to be a part of the larger team. Similarly, managers needed to take an active role in the development of their people, and the frontline operators needed to be able to use their own experience and knowledge to become involved in the conversation. 

We also talked about putting the operational staff in the driving seat - giving them the tools and support to share their knowledge and skills among the wider organisation. As you guessed, we’re talking about a very traditional organisation here, and the idea of giving all and sundry access to broadcast their tips and thoughts on practices and improvement ideas met with a worried frown.

This friend and I will be having this conversation for a while yet, I think, but at least he’s heading to work this week determined to bring ops and L&D closer together. It’s a start.   

Thank you to all of those who have sent such kind messages regarding my presentation at LearnX last week in Brisbane. A few people have asked for a copy of the presentation and notes so, in the spirit of sharing, I’ve uploaded a copy of the PowerPoint to Slideshare. You can find it at http://www.slideshare.net/GlennHansen/learnx-2011-presso

I’ve uploaded a copy of the supporting notes to https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xM4drFt31eF1FYtanOzI7b8UGyor0GO2ww5JEHv_-LM/edit?hl=en_US (unfortunately, Slideshare doesn’t allow them to be included with the presentation file).

I’ll also post a Readers’ Digest version here in the blog shortly.

I’ve been sifting through various requests our team receives from the field - assistance with bringing people up to speed with one thing or another - which is nothing out of the ordinary (we are, after all, the L&D team). One thing generally stands out about requests that we receive, though, and I’m sure it’s been noticed by others at other organisations, too: just about every request that comes in comes from a manager asking for a certain training program to be run for their people.

What else would they be asking for, you ask? This is, as I said, the Learning and Development team. Of course they’ll be asking for training; that’s what L&D do!

The traditional view of L&D would agree with you. Someone, or in some cases a couple of people, from the L&D team go out to the workplace, run a course for a group of people, hand out some resources, maybe point participants to a guide that’s kept online inside or outside the corporate firewall, and off they go. People get sent back to their jobs (as quickly as possible, because people need to focus on “real work”, rather than sitting around in “training”) and perhaps someone from the L&D team will come back in a few weeks to make sure everyone has remembered the bits they need and can do the tasks that were taught.

It’s not like that anymore - and in organisations where is still is like that, it should be different. The assumption that some kind of formal training is the solution for any given performance need is a dangerous one that has led to uncountable hours of lost productivity and faux solutions across just about any field of endeavour you can name.

While it may seem natural for a manager to request a training solution, it is part of the responsibility of a learning and performance professional to emphasise that the key to whatever is done is performance. Positive outcomes for core business performance is the prime consideration when looking at any instance where that performance needs to be enhanced, supported or improved.

The way to achieve this goal will vary, depending upon the situation. Formal training is only one possible intervention among many, and the field includes changes to the working environment, improved access to required information, more open communication across business units, redesigning the way work is done - the list goes on.

It takes a certain amount of discipline to engage operational managers and higher leaders in a discussion of potential solutions, when instead they want to talk about the training they believe their people need, but it’s worth the time to develop that discipline (and the self-confidence to bring it to bear when it matters). It also requires learning and performance professionals to maintain an awareness of the key performance measures of the area or business unit in question, and how these relate to the way performance is rewarded/recognised within the organisation, in addition to the way in which these results are achieved within that team.

Early disucssion needs to be steered away from the solutions to be used (e.g. formal training, job redesign, better information resources, etc.) and toward examination of behavioural change in the workplace. What should people be able to do afterward that they are unable to do now, and how does this help achieve those results that are important to the performance of the team and the organisation? Only after that has been agreed should interventions be considered. Ultimately, it’s unlikely that any training program, by itself, is going to achieve the results the relevant manager wants. Performance issues are more complex than that, so even in cases where some kind of training is warranted, it is not the whole of the answer (and this is especially important when that training is done outside of the context of the work itself - e.g. in a training room). 

As learning and performance professionals, we need to be able to look beyond the quick fix and critically assess underlying issues that must be addressed and the end results that will indicate we have been successful. We need to be able to articulate the reasons why training alone is not a panacea to organisational, team or even individual needs. Finally, we need to be able to gather the information required to make a considered recommendation on how the desired results can be achieved, and then play our part in identifying who is going to be responsible for what actions.

If in doubt, better access to expertise and timely guidance is always preferable to offering people a bunch of theory and just-in-case knowledge, then hoping they can go about their merry way and put it to work effectively.

I was chatting to a colleague from the U.K. yesterday about learning in general and, at one point, the benefits of online learning (synchronous and asynchronous). When talking about the effectiveness of elearning, this person kept coming back to the mantra, “Yes, but it has to be engaging and interactive.” As we talked, it dawned on me that, although they used the terms separately, they effectively saw them as one and the same thing. To “engage” someone, an elearning program (and especially a self-paced online piece of content) must provide a swag of opportunities for “interaction.” Interaction was, to them, clicking a button, hovering the cursor over a roll-over area, answering questions - “that kind of thing”, as they concisely summed it up. This interaction, by providing a person with the opportunity to have input, created the level of engagement required for them to persist through to the end of the course - interaction as engagement, effectively.

I won’t bore you with the detail of our conversation, but the point here is not just that interactivity and engagement are different things, and that one does not necessarily lead to the other. A learning professional also needs to recognise how to use them to encourage an environment where learning can occur.

Active vs passive engagement

Think of the best book you’ve ever read. I’m sure it was extremely engaging - I know I’ve lost hours seemingly in the blink of an eye when engrossed in a really good, well-told story. This is passive engagement, where the content captures the attention of the user without any real physical interaction at all.

Active engagement, on the other hand, can be seen in an online course (we’ll stick to single elearning units for this example) where the user needs to manipulate the interface of the unit in order to progress through the content. For example, in an online program designed to help someone learn how to use the calculation functions of MS Excel, the user might view a demonstration and explanation of how to use the SUM() formula, then be presented with an activity where they have to enter it correctly themselves. How well they do then may decide what they view next. Here, the interactivity is relevant to the task at hand, and so can enhance the learning process.

Picture an alternative, though, where a user has to navigate their way through a game interface in order to get to the next piece of information in the learning sequence. Done well, this can work, but I’ve seen a few (well, more than a few, to be honest) where the game and it’s interactive components are completely unrelated to the learning content. Imagine having to explore a strange new planet in an effort to reveal information about double-entry accounting. See the relevance? I certainly didn’t, and although, in this case, the bells and whistles of the game environment were impressive, they were an unnecessary distraction that harmed the learning effort. This is a case where interactivity is added for its own sake, usually because someone involved in the development of the content believes that it serves some grand purpose all its own.

Interactivity alone doesn’t lead to engagement, and even if it did, that would not necessarily lead to learning in any case. So how can we go about setting up an environment (online, offline or anything in between) where adults can best be supported to learn?

Supporting adult learning processes

There are many parts of an environment to consider when we talk about providing people with the best opportunity to learn and grow - things like the value placed on learning, innovation and creativity within an organisation, the organisation’s view of the inherent value of collaboration and communication, and more - many more than we can hope to address here. For now, let’s look at the small picture - how we can set up, say, some content designed to support learning something in particular (like learning the SUM function in Excel).

1. Capturing and maintaining attention

Each second, we’re bombarded by stimuli. Our brains protect us from most of it, and we pay attention to only a select few. Many of the processes that govern select attention are evolutionary (try not to pay attention to running footsteps coming closer from behind on a dark night), but beyond these our more intentional selection cues are generally based on relevance - “What’s in it for me?” (WIIFM).

For learning, our ability to articulate WIIFM to the user is critical. If we hope for some kind of meaningful learning, rather than simple compliance because my manager told me I had to do this course, we need to be very clear about how this opportunity can benefit our participant. For adults, a sound method is to show them that the outcome in some way helps them do something that is important to them (to be better at their job, to better communicate with people who are important to them, any other improvement in some area they value). Hopefully, you’ve already been able to identify your selling points during your planning.

2. Provide users with the opportunity to relate new knowledge to what they already know.

The days of the old “learner as empty vessel”, where an all-knowing expert would fill them with knowledge and the wisdom to use it, are long gone. Your learning audience have a wealth of knowledge they have developed through their lives to this point, and one of your most important jobs as a learning professional is to help them see how this relates to the new content or information you want them to understand. Incorporating new information into existing mental models is a key for people to begin to see how it can be put into practice, and in seeing the ultimate benefit of learning it.

3. Support the transfer of new knowledge to long-term memory.

A couple of posts ago, we looked at Ebbinghaus’ famous Forgetting Curve (go back and take a peek if you need a reminder). New knowledge has a very short half-lfe, even when we agree that it’s important for us to know it. A critical part of supporting any new learning is the how we plan to facilitate putting it into practice. This should begin as soon as possible (preferably immediately after initial exposure) and needs to continue in the following days and weeks until the information is firmly encoded into long-term memory (when it effectively becomes part of a new mental model of whatever knowledge we’re dealing with). There’s no point in designing the world’s greatest course, job aid, support system, if users never put the information into practice.

Sometimes, workers go back to their job and find they are not only not supported in putting new knowledge to work, but they are either punished for attempting to do so, or are rewarded for not doing so. The perceptions and intentions of the managers and supervisors of our audience members must be taken into account when we are designing any learning opportunity (course or otherwise). Take care to ensure they’re identified as stakeholders in the effort, and that you deal with their concerns or feedback as part of the preparation for your program. Ultimately, you’ll find they have as much say in the success of your learning efforts as the quality of your design and implementation.

I still feel bad about the lateness of my submission for last month’s Learning Circuits Big Question, so I’d better get the current one up nice and early in the month. You can find #LCBQ here: http://learningcircuits.blogspot.com/.

The prevalence of mobile data in smart phones, laptops, tablets and other mobile devices means that every day we become more accustomed to being able to locate information and have our questions answered immediately. Honestly, I struggle to remember what we did before everyone was contactable at a moment’s notice. Obviously, work still got done, but I can barely remember the time when calling the office while you were out meant finding a public phone.

Our ability to locate required (and simply “nice to have”) information, as well as completely useless/unreliable information, at a moment’s notice has helped drive the assumption that everything should be available at the time it’s needed. That view can cause problems for trainers, instructional designers and those of us charged with managing the learning function. When the expectation of an immediate, quick “fix” runs up against the learning professional’s traditionally cautious approach to needs assessment and content creation, tension is almost guaranteed.

Managing the dual expectations of having something available ASAP while also providing a solution that meets the genuine needs of the work group can be likened to walking the hire wire without a net. Take a step in the wrong direction and unpleasant consequences will follow. There are a number of strategies we can use to help prepare our organisation for these situations in advance, and which can aid our development of options and solutions at short notice. First, though, we should consider a couple of points of caution:

1. Don’t assume that training is the answer. When most people think about learning needs they start to think about formal training – that is, courses, whether traditional group training in a room or online modules that can be completed individually. In previous blog posts, we’ve discussed how ineffective these types of interventions can be when they are not properly utilised and supported. If only 20% of what most people learn about how to do their jobs is learned from formal training, you can bet that forcing people to attend or complete courses that have no relation to the core need that must be addressed will not have a positive impact. Don’t waste people’s time (and your organisation’s time) by rolling out training simply because someone is demanding that something be done.

2. Even if some kind of training is reasonable, don’t assume the stakeholder in question has identified the right solution. Even in cases where you agree that there is a learning gap that some form of training intervention can address, you need to be sure you’ve identified the core need, not just some symptom of a deeper issue. For example, it would be a shame (to say the least) to roll out the world’s greatest time management course to help people manage their time better in order to achieve their targets only to find later than a bottle-neck in the flow of information of material elsewhere is the real cause of the performance gap.

So, with those two points out of the way, let’s look at some practical things we can do. The best way to meet requests for some kind of action at short notice is to encourage an environment where good learning practices are built into the work that is done. Doing so will certainly help head off many requests for formal assistance. Here, we’re talking about the kind of things we looked at when we discussed what’s become known as “social learning.”

As we’ve discussed previously, and as Jay Cross and the members of the Internet Time Alliance and other thought leaders continue to show, formal training courses play a minor role in the working knowledge of most of us. They are important for bringing novices up to speed and can be useful for helping people navigate new practices and systems, but organisations are much better served when they encourage a more natural form of ongoing learning, and cater for this in the work environment. Social tools such as expertise locators (use to identify the right person to ask when a question comes up), wikis, blogs, discussion groups, etc. are all excellent resources for learning at the point of need. At the moment, at TSAEP, we’re taking our old manuals and guides that are produced in PDF format and converting them to pages on the intranet. Many of these resources will be set up as wikis, so people can update them at a moment’s notice and so they grow and adapt as the business does. Locking information away in PDFs, Word documents, spreadsheets, etc. simply shuts out users who need quick access to important information to support their performance. Using items such as manuals and guides as the basis of a searchable, user-friendly performer support portal is my top tip for heading off many requests for immediate assistance from the learning and development team. Supporting these resources with good graphics, podcasts, videos, discussion groups, blogs, etc. provides organisations with the opportunity to capture and capitalise on the wealth of knowledge that resides within. Think of how much time and money your organisation may be able to save if a focus on chasing the expert from outside the company were to be transformed into a focus on capturing and making the most of the expertise of those who already work for you.

Another strategy for minimising the chance of short-term, emergency requests for training interventions is something that simply flows naturally from the approach discussed above. If learning is seen as the responsibility of the learning and development team, then of course people are going to look to them any time a need is perceived. Learning (and teaching) is a responsibility everyone should share – from the top of the organisational chart to the bottom. When you nurture an environment where people share their best practices and ideas, and where these things can be discussed openly, you are on the path to making the most of the incredible potential of the workforce within the organisation. Those who abdicate responsibility for learning to the L&D team are simply going to fall further and further behind those who take a more realistic and natural view, where learning is simply another aspect of their day-to-day work.

Still, even with these strategies and supports in place, any organisation is going to come across a situation where someone, whether it be a senior manager, a team leader, member or a subject matter expert, sees a performance gap and calls for some kind of training or additional support. In these cases, the traditional ADDIE model can be found wanting for the time it takes to step through the stages that come before implementation, and for the formality of many of the processes within. You’re likely to need to short-circuit the formal processes and develop a quick and effective way to identify the core needs that need addressing. However you do this, it’s likely to revolve around discussion with those who know the tasks in question and gathering some kind of data to support the argument that a gap exists and that it can be addressed through some form of training. This topic would take another blog post or two (it could just about fill a book, though it wouldn’t be the most gripping read), so I’m not going to go into detail here. Suffice to say that maintaining a positive relationship with as many of the team leaders and managers in the operational part of your organisation will certainly make your job easier, here and elsewhere, in many ways.

After the needs in question are identified, recognise that, as Jay Cross puts it, everything these days is in “perpetual beta.” Work up your material to the point where it conveys the skills and knowledge needed and where it is professionally presented and fit for purpose. Don’t chase perfection, because it’s more likely your information will be out of date by the time you have it ready. Certainly don’t waste time hunting down pretty graphics that serve no purpose other than looking nice – make sure the graphics you do use contribute to the content in a meaningful way. The work of Richard Mayer & Roxana Moreno, Ruth Colvin Clark, and Jane Bozarth can help you here.

It’s also important to remember that learning is not a once-off event bounded by unrelated “work stuff.” Make sure you plan whatever your intervention is so that it includes direct application immediately in the workplace. Show people what they need and no more – just-in-case training simply muddies the waters and clutters heads. Finally, make sure support is available on the job when the inevitable questions arise. Compile a FAQ, publish a wiki, use blogs where they can add value – and note which people can be relied upon to provide accurate information when answers can be found nowhere else. Record podcasts and videos where they add value as well - most people much prefer their information in a format other than pages of text.

So, in summary, it’s not realistic to aim for an environment where no short-notice training requests arise – ever. We can, however, encourage an environment (a “Workscape”, in Jay Cross’ terminology) where learning is catered for within the day-to-day functions that make up people’s jobs. This will certainly help reduce the number of requests that should be coming in to the learning and development team. Such an environment is really the only way an organisation can become adaptable and flexible enough to thrive in the face of increasing change – and the increasing speed of change.

Having nurtured an environment where learning=work and work=learning (thanks, Harold Jarche and Clark Quinn), when short-term requests do come in, we need to be able to investigate and verify performance gaps that learning can address as quickly as possible. Open and honest relationships with line managers and subject matter experts involved in the day-to-day work of your organisation will help speed this process. Involving these people in the design of the information and resources that you plan to use to address the needs identified will also help ensure key front-line stakeholders are on board with you from the start. Work up your content until the messages you need to convey are clear and unambiguous as possible, and the presentation is professional. Finally, plan to support the learning when your people return to their desks. Viewing learning as discrete instances of formal courses bordered by work is one of the key reasons that formal training has been so ineffective in helping people come to grips with the requirements of their jobs.

I had an interesting conversation recently with one of our people who is participating in the Certificate IV in Employment Services program here at TSAEP. They were afraid there was something wrong with their ability to process, store and recall information, because they were struggling to complete assessment activities following their facilitated workshop sessions. When I asked them about their study habits, they said they diligently turned up for their web conference workshops, paid attention and read the material they were required to. Their concern was that when, some weeks later, they sat down to complete their assessment tasks for a unit, they couldn’t recall enough information to do them to the standard they expected of themselves.

To anyone with experience in the learning field, diagnosing the issue here isn’t rocket science - it’s simple brain science. It did get me thinking, though, about how well we, as an organisation, have prepared our people to make the most of their learning opportunities. It’s trite to say that learning how to learn is a critical skill, and one that people often leave formal schooling without, but there’s a big difference between recognising that fact and actually doing something about it.

Of course, the problem my colleague was coming up against was that their study strategy wasn’t effective  in the face of the reality of how memory and cognition actually work. Hermann Ebbinghaus developed his theory of how quickly new information is forgotten in the last 19th century. His Forgetting Curve is charts one of the most robust findings in cognitive science, and should form the basis of any effective “How to Study Effectively” program.

For anyone not familiar with Ebbinghaus’ work, his research found that retention of new information starts to degrade in minutes. By the next day, about two-thirds of those (perhaps important) facts, figures and info will be gone. Recall degrades further with time until somewhere between 10 and 20 per cent of the information may be left after a few weeks. Treat these figures as averages, of course - they vary for individuals and between studies - but the underlying mechanism is not disputed. We know this instinctively; information becomes harder to recall as time passes.

So how do we improve the chance of retaining the important bits?

Fortunately, we’re not helpless in the face of such “lossy” biological memory. The short answer to the question above is, “Practice, practice, practice!”

Repeated, staged practice at regular intervals that’s as realistic as possible is the number one strategy to help improve recall. In addition, linking the new information to things the person learning it already knows, and helping them build their own links, provides crucial support. Finally, beyond simple practice, putting the knowledge or skills into use as soon as possible after learning them is essential (anyway, if they’re learning something they don’t need to put into action pretty much straight away, why are we wasting their time and ours training it?).

Realistic practice

The closer the practice is to the environment in which the knowledge and/or skills are to be used, the better. Forget about multiple-choice questions, tick-a-box exercises or dragging and dropping words on the screen. It’s fine to test someone’s understanding of underlying theory using a combination of these tools, but if they are learning something they need to do at work, especially something that involves manual skills or doing things in the the proper order, make the practice realistic. I’ve seen too many programs using question and answer assessments to check whether someone has learned to use a new piece of software. It’s wasteful, and if you think about that kind of example, it doesn’t even make sense. Meaningful practice and assessment is not about using whatever’s most convenient for the person who developed the training.

Spaced practice

We also need to ensure we space out the practice and revision - after all, lumping it all together is just cramming, and our problem to begin with was cramming doesn’t work. The time you leave between exercises or parts of an assessment can vary depending upon what the objective of the training is, but practice over time is much more effective than 30 minutes’ practice at the end of a training session that is never repeated.

Repetition strengthens new neural pathways that form the basis of our memories, and anything meaningful will benefit from repeatedly revisiting the information, especially doing so in the same context in which it will be utilised.

Putting it all to work

People who are novices at a new task or process will need support as they begin to put their new knowledge or skills to work. This support should always be considered when compiling the training plan for whatever intervention we choose to use. The options are almost endless, but things like job aids, access to online how-to’s and assistance from a local expert (or perhaps having one available via phone or web conference) can greatly ease the transition to mastery of the new information.

Sometimes, it’s important that a person is able to demonstrate a certain level of profiency before they are allowed to put the new knowledge to work. In this case, we need to ensure our assessment and certification process (we’re not necessarily talking about formal certification here, but a process where someone knowledgeable is willing to sign off on the newcomer’s competency level) is robust enough to provide an accurate picture of where the person’s skill level sits. Would you pay for a seat on a flight crewed by two brand new pilots who’d graduated from correspondence school and who have not actually entered a plane until today?

Pulling it all together

I’m glad the person enrolled in our Certificate IV program spoke to me the other day. Not only did it give me the chance to introduce them to some more effective study methods, but it also acted as a reminder to me not to simply assume that people know how to give themselves the best chance to successfully learn new things. It got me thinking about the kind of things we can do to steer people toward good learning habits from their first days with TSAEP. Those good habits have benefits not simply for formal learning; rather, people who know how to maximise their chances of learning successfully should be able to apply that knowledge to any kind of learning opportunity. I think it should also play a part in helping our people look at the potential for change and uncertainty with the confidence they can adapt and grow in ways that allow them to successfully transition with the environment. And that kind of positive outlook is worth its weight in gold in any business (and for any individual, for that matter).

#LCBQ – Predictions and challenges for 2011

In response to the latest edition of The Big Question on the Learning Circuits blog, I’ve eviscerated my old GI Joe doll, poured through the entrails, and read the signs in the Twitterverse. Here are some of my thoughts on what’s to come in learning this year.

2011, the year of collaboration

It may be the Year of Rabbit according to the traditional Chinese calendar, but 2011 will also be the year collaboration in learning really takes off (at least in those organisations brave enough to embrace it). You can see some of my thoughts on this in my previous blog post, but here’s a recap.

Learning professionals know and accept that what we would traditionally label training (including elearning and more traditional group and one-on-one interventions) is responsible for about 20% of what an employee learns about their job. As Jay Cross has previously noted, much of the research pointing to this figure pre-dates the rise of the Internet, so today formal learning probably accounts for even less workplace knowledge. The balance of a worker’s know-how comes socially, from discussions with colleagues and others, observation of others performing their jobs, etc.

Collaboration tools such as micro-blogging software (e.g. Twitter, Yammer), wikis, blogs, discussion groups, etc. open up exciting opportunities for people to access relevant information where and when they require it. They allow the organic development of just-in-time (JIT) resources from the very people who do the work. This approach has the added impact of showing workers they are trusted and valued enough to contribute to the vast pool of practical information that results, which in turn can assist with driving employee engagement.

Consider how much time is lost in your own organisation simply looking for appropriate, reliable information. Just-in-time performer support is becoming increasingly crucial to business performance, and strategies that improve access to these resources will show a positive return in the form of better core-business results – the ultimate measure of whether any learning or support intervention has been successful.

There will still be a place for formal training in the new world of enhanced performer support, especially in speeding the induction of new hires, but increasingly, I’m predicting we’ll come to see more opportunities for workers to participate in the creation and maintenance of just-in-time support resources for their colleagues – and even for employees of other businesses where an organisation is brave enough to pool knowledge with other companies (I well understand the fear of losing proprietary information or some kind of business advantage by doing this, but I think if it is done wisely there are big opportunities for win-win results).

Why do I think it takes a measure of courage for an organisation to go down this path? Two issues, really.

1. Traditional organisations’ reluctance to provide a forum for any and all of their staff to provide a service that has traditionally been the domain of training and compliance business units. Many of us have already either seen or heard about executive-level resistance to the idea that all employees have equal access to create performer support material (for instance, by contributing to a wiki). What if they post the wrong information? What if they post inappropriate content? These concerns fail to recognise the inherent self-correcting properties of communities of practice where numbers of people have access and a measure of ownership. If you doubt the quality of the information that can be provided by practitioners who are largely untrained in learning principles, or the ability for this type of community to quickly identify and correct inaccuracies, I urge you to take a look at the SAP Developer Network (http://forums.sdn.sap.com/index.jspa).

2. Traditional training managers can be very territorial when it comes to what they see as their “patch.” In addition to the kind of concerns noted in point 1, above, the existence of quality self-help resources for staff could be seen as some kind of threat to the relevance, or even existence, or a Learning and Development team. Of course, the availability of accurate, timely information to support performance at time of need removes the “need” for a whole swag of “just in case” training that is either never put into practice back on the job or is not put into practice soon enough to protect it from being forgotten (though need is the wrong word, there). Taking the leap into self-generated performer support, though, helps to free trainers to use their time and skills where they’ll make the most difference – as skills coaches and mentors whose work consistently contributes to bottom-line performance of the business.

The availability of cost-effective resources to facilitate wide collaboration (including open source software that enables wikis, discussion groups, chat and even web conferencing) presents the chance for organisations to reconsider the effectiveness of the performance support being offered to their people. I’m hoping that its use grows rapidly this year, as more and more examples of positive business impact come to light and organisations overcome fear of the (to them) unknown. I won’t say the possibilities are endless, but the upside is definitely worth the effort.

Of course, you can’t look at learning in 2011 without mentioning mobile learning. Although a few commentators thought it was a fad that would quickly pass, I think it’s much more. The combination of social learning opportunities and truly portable devices to access that material opens further exciting opportunities.

The following article is reproduced from ASTD’s website. It provides some interesting thoughts and suggestions for why social learning (mediated by electronic tools) is useful for organisations and how it can be used. At The Salvation Army Employment Plus, we use social learning software to support our more tradition forms of training and development activities. Although I wouldn’t advocate using social learning software by itself to induct new staff (the onboarding process Pacalin talks about in the article) there are definite advantages in using it to reinforce learning and to provide staff at all levels of the organisation with access to timely and relevant inforamtion. As Pacalin notes, it also allows us to identify people who can act as subject matter experts (SMEs) in certain fields. We’ve also found that online communities built around wikis, blogs, etc. quickly become self-correcting, as users identify and correct inaccurate information posted by others. This has completely removed one of the chief fears of our executive group with the utilisation of social learning tools - that people will spread practices and inforamtion that is outdated or simply incorrect, and jeopardise standards. 

We have certainly found social learning tools to be an excellent addition to our learning and development toolkit. 

Why Organizations Need Social Learning
By Laurent Pacalin

 The world has changed — people now live and work in a world where Google gives the answers, where a mobile phone is the lifeline to the Web and to your GPS location, and where Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter link people to each other in their own way. By leveraging these tools and putting them into meaningful parts of the learning experience, social learning tools enable organizations and their people to make sense of this radically changed day-to-day world and achieve their business and learning objectives.

How to leverage social learning

Enterprise social networking provides organizations with an unprecedented level of knowledge about its talent. Management can look at who are the most valuable contributors and where knowledge lies. It provides the organization greater agility in responding to a changing business environment.

Onboard new hires: how long does it take for people to get up to speed?

Onboarding via social learning provides a getting-started experience tailored to the need and role of the individual. Supplemented by search, social learning enables new employees to discover and succeed almost immediately.

Cultivate knowhow through sharing informal knowledge: why wait for people to figure out what is trusted information and what is most important to learn?

What it takes to succeed in a job is more than a job description. After all, why don’t people just read the instructions and then immediately know what to do? The reason is that knowhow is transferred through insight, behavior, and trade knowledge not necessarily reflected in a formal training document.

Accelerate effectiveness and increase performance: what can be done to create additional levels of success for high performers?

High performers produce 10x or more the business results of average employees. They have learned that the law of success includes knowing what to ask and of whom, rather than ―knowing it all‖ themselves. Connecting people of deep knowledge on specific areas of interest makes the strategies and efforts of high-performing employees multiply in the business outcome. If a high performer can produce more effectively by networking with just a handful of key connections, imagine what can be accomplished through access to groups of hundreds of other high performers.

Harness informal learning: why spend money to create content when the highest-quality and most trusted content can be incorporated into learning for free?

The industry is aware that 70 to 80 percent of training budgets are spent on formal learning, but as many studies indicate, nearly 80 percent of what people actually learn within a job role is achieved informally. Learning is ultimately a change in behavior — and people learn through a triangulation of people, context, and need. Social learning funnels trusted content to the fore of learning’s view and can even be used to transition key informal learning objects into formal processes.

In other circumstances, a community’s knowledge need flares up and is a hot topic for but a few short days, weeks, or months, and then burns out. Formal objects will never meet the needs of these flares. But informal schemes of user-generated content, wikis, blogs, threaded conversations, and ad hoc virtual connections via meetings and conversations can meet the demands of these transitory learning experiences.

Transform your workforce: Do hierarchies really reflect the “wirearchy” of your business?

Identify key nodes in your organization by analyzing your social networks using dynamic network analysis. Who used what resources with what frequency, and with whom did they share? In the maps of teams, see what competencies and skills map to those teams and networks. Get beyond the skill level of individuals and start to identify team, group, and organizational competencies. Identify which collections of people are most skilled at solving the problems of the day. The hierarchy can’t reveal the difference between two regional groups of identical solutions consultants, but network analysis can reveal that one group excels at user interface customization while the other group excels at CRM integrations.

Prepare for succession: Why can’t organizations figure out who will succeed when they are advanced in the organization?

The formal measures of slating people for advancement miss the key textures of why people succeed at the next level. Creating a social fingerprint of the type of person that succeeds at the next level and then matching that pattern against those that meet your formal criteria is a start. In addition, social learning fast tracks people to connect to the networks and sources of learning that will accelerate the right people. For example, in nominations for leadership development, people can learn these skills from mentors with matching learning histories. Internal recruiting can match social learning experiences with transcript and profile information to meet internal need for talent.

Nurture employee networks: Why don’t people connect inside their current organization with people formerly in their role? In the learning they are undertaking? With people who went to the same school they did? With those who want to achieve the same career goals?

From the unified profile made visible as the hub of interaction in social learning, the workplace opens up because now instead of people seeing their world as a job role with colleagues and a manager, they see their workplace as a world of connections to people who share their experiences. For example: 

• If I am a new hire, then I may want to connect to recent new hires.
• If am taking on a new role, I can access people across the organization who currently or previously held my role.
• Through “alumni” of different types, I can pursue the learning that was most effective for those before me and I can discover learning experiences that interest me most.

People and social learning 

No aspect of people’s careers is untouched by the social learning experience. In today’s world, the shelf life of knowledge is short. People understand that what they learn, the knowledge they harvest, is perishable. People seek modern working environments where they are encouraged to stay current and connected. Business outcomes depend on the speed of such knowledge transfer and sharing of knowhow. Social learning tools keep employees engaged and empowered through the most powerful learning tool in the marketplace—each other.

Laurent Pacalin is senior vice president and general manager of People Learning at Saba. As SVP and GM of People Learning, Pacalin is responsible for driving the strategy and global execution of Saba’s Learning offerings, including Saba Social Learning solutions that leverage Saba Centra web conferencing and Saba Live business enterprise networking platforms for a social and collaborative learning experience.