Imagine consulting an architect and having them start a conversation with, “I have designed lots of these, I know exactly what you need.”
You would probably be reluctant to work with the architect, who believed they had the answer, before even understanding what you wanted to build. The risk is too high. How could they possible design what you really needed.
Now imagine meeting a potential architect who, instead of racing to a solution, wanted to know lots about you, your lifestyle, your vision for the property, how you would like to use the space, who needed to be accommodated and what ways would they need to interact with the building. And this was just the beginning.
This second architect also wanted to know about the site, and when appointed did significant analysis of the site, long before coming up with a design. While all the questions posed by the second architect may take a bit of time, how confident would you feel that this second architect truly understood what you wanted and needed?
Which architect do you think would come up with the best solution for you and your unique needs?
Now let’s think about designing learning. The story of the first architect is very like saying every development need is a training need, and that is simply not the case!
Training is often not what people need. Training only works when there is a gap in knowledge, skills and attitude, although, developing attitude through training alone is quite difficult.
Many times, organisations know they have a performance gap, and with the very best of intention, try to fill this gap via training. Then, once the training is over, they wonder why it didn’t work. Sadly, training was never going to work, no matter how good the program or the trainer or facilitator were.
Instead of looking to training for the answers, we need to think about on-the-job performance, and learning instead. Skilled practitioners, much like the architect in the second example above, will ask lots of questions to understand the performance requirements, learning gap, the workplace environment, the people who need to be part of the solution and a whole lot more.
Then, knowing that they will begin to design total solution which could look more like a journey than a training program. Why would this be the case?
A model generally getting significant traction in the learning and development space is 70:20:10. This model suggests that 10% of percent of learning and performance comes from formal training, 20% comes from workplace relationships, including coaching and mentoring, and the other 70% comes from on-the-job learning.
Without challenging the exact percentages, most people in the workplace recognise must of their leaning is on-the-job. If you think back over your career, you will probably find significant learning which occurred on the job. You will probably also find several people how have deeply contributed to, or significantly influenced, your development.
The challenge for many learning and development practitioners has been factoring in all the ways people learn in the workplace. It is easy to track training, we can count it, measure it, and easily budget for it. The problem is, that training does not equal performance. What if we could maximise the potential 70% identified in the 70:20:10 model?
While it is great to think about learning, when we get down to it, workplaces want and need performance! They are not educational facilities, totally committed to learning, instead workplaces are businesses which need to foster performance and generate results. To do this, we need to focus on more than training if we want to consider all of the ways in which people learn and refine their performance in the workplace.
What if:
- rather than coming up with a training solution as the default position for any perceived gap, we started by identifying the desired performance?
- understanding the workplace environment and all the factors influencing performance, we then designed something that looks more like a journey, factoring in a lot of informal activities?
- this design involved multiple players, from within the workplace?
- this solution looked less like s single training program, and more like a total system?
How do you think it might be different?
If you are ready to explore how learning could lead to results, book a chat and explore how you could get better results.
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