The risky quadrant

Donald Taylor asks where your learning & development (training) department resides.

  1. Are you unacknowledged prophets, with a manager or executive who understands that you need to change, but the organization lags behind?
  2. Are you facing comfortable extinction, like the once dominant but now bankrupt Kodak?
  3. Or are you in the training ghetto, disconnected from the business and unable to be part of any change?

training extinctionThe reality today is that risky leadership is needed. As Don notes:

If both the department and the organisation are changing fast, this is a great opportunity. We can invest in new procedures and systems, build our skills and experiment with different ways of working with the business, and the business – because it is also changing fast and open to new ideas – will respond. It’s in this quadrant that we find really progressive L&D teams that are making an impact. While they are undoubtedly leaders, this quadrant is also risky, because that’s the nature of change.

Unacknowledged Prophets: If you are in this quadrant I would advise you to bide your time, build up your skills, create alliances, and wait for opportunities. As Stephen Berlin Johnson says, “Chance favours the connected mind.” Get collaborative, cooperative & connected. Louis Pasteur said that “Chance favours the prepared mind“. Be prepared.

Comfortable Extinction: This is a difficult quadrant because there is no understanding of the need for change. Everything is just fine. If you are the only person in your organization without rose coloured glasses, I would try to become a lone unacknowledged prophet, preparing for the inevitable crisis. If nobody sees it, then it would be best to let the training department drift into obscurity so that others can take the lead in promoting cooperation, collaboration and knowledge sharing. Sometimes it’s best to let natural selection do its thing.

Training Ghetto: Getting out of the basement and becoming relevant may take some time, which departments in this quadrant may not have. I would suggest first moving from training delivery to performance improvement. Get someone (yourself?) skilled at performance consulting. Forget about social learning, for the time being, and focus on performance support tools and job aids. Become useful to the business by bringing practical tools that can be used right away.

So how will you get to the risky quadrant?

The right tool for the right job

In my presentation, From Training, to Performance, to Social, I describe how Human Performance Technology (HPT) is systemic and systematic, but not very human.

However, HPT, especially performance analysis can be a useful tool, if used selectively and appropriately. It does not work well for tasks that require high degrees of tacit knowledge and cooperation to address complex problems. But I find it useful for confirming that training is the optimal solution, as it is often the most expensive option, so it’s best to be sure. Some barriers to performance that are often overlooked when prescribing training include:

  • Unclear expectations (such as policies & guidelines);
  • Inadequate resources;
  • Unclear performance measures;
  • Rewards and consequences not directly linked to the desired performance.

In some cases, these barriers could be addressed and there would be no further requirement for training. Where there is a genuine lack of skills and knowledge, training may be required, but it should only be in cases where the other barriers to performance have been addressed. A trained worker, without the right resources and with unclear expectations, will still not perform up to the desired standard.

The performance analysis process shown below is based on Mager & Pipe’s book, Analyzing Performance Problems. According to this chart, training is only warranted when there is a clear lack of skills & new knowledge and the person has not done anything like this before. If there is any doubt, one should confirm that there are no obstacles to performance; there are adequate resources; NOT performing is not being rewarded; performance is not being punished; and performance does matter. My experience is that individual performance issues are often the result of inadequate resources or conflicting messages from management.

Here is my updated graphic, as the previous one, made several years ago, was a bit hard to read.

performance analysis

Having enough tools, and knowing which ones to choose, is important for any discipline. In organizational performance, it is critical because we are always dealing with complex adaptive systems. We should consider that all models are flawed, but some may be useful. But we shouldn’t get too attached to our models.

In many cases, when training is prescribed for a work performance issue, it is a case of assuming it is a “training problem” without any further analysis. I can think of two examples in my own business experience.

In one case, e-learning was prescribed to address the performance needs of nurses changing to a new nursing care methodology. In that instance, I was able to convince the client that a quick performance analysis could be used to confirm the assumption that e-learning was the solution. As a result of the analysis, we changed the intervention to the development of an online diagramming tool, because we determined that nursing staff already had 80% of the necessary skills and knowledge, but they didn’t know how to use the new diagramming and reporting procedures. The initial e-learning program was greatly reduced and job aids were created.

In another case, training was prescribed in order to get staff up to date with a new organization-wide policy. Each person received an average of 17 days classroom training. As an observer for part of the training, I would estimate that all of the classroom training could have been done in less than a week, had the new procedures and some job aids been first developed. The total cost of training approached millions of dollars, plus the cost of missed work. The change in performance appeared to be minimal, but the training provider generated significant revenue.

The right tool, for the right job, in the hands of an experienced practitioner, can often ensure that the right problem is addressed.

Scaffolding and capability building

Jane Hart’s recent post on changing the role of L&D (learning & development) explains how training departments need to move beyond packaging content and toward scaffolding and capability building.

What I like about this matrix is that it makes it easier to describe my professional services in the organizational learning area. I have highlighted my areas of focus in red. The rest is not really my business, as there are plenty of companies that do that. I used to say I did ABC Learning [Anything But Courses]. Jane’s graphic makes it  much more clear, and it’s what our new Connected Worker site is all about.

scaffolding c4lpt

Create conversation spaces

Curation is more than integration, writes Rick Segal in Forbes [via Robin Good]. Segal discusses how marketing is about curating all the conversations around a subject.

In truth, curation has more to do with the multi-participant communications flowing in the stream of social media conversation …

Now, marketing communications must be framed by the conversation, and not just by the marketer, but by all the parties to the conversation …

A conversation is not like an exhibit hall. It’s physical boundaries are potentially limitless, though most can and will exhaust in time. The membership of a conversation is certainly not always well-controlled. A new meme or raconteur can abscond with it, if we’re not careful. Not everything that shows up belongs. But the great curator, like the great raconteur, is always two or three stories or anecdotes ahead of the rest of the table.

Now think of this from a workplace performance perspective. Solving complex problems also requires “multi-participant communications”. In the network age, learning is conversation. But aren’t training courses more like “exhibit halls”? They are prepared in advance, checked for quality control, and delivered with the best look & feel. Conversations are messier with ill-defined boundaries; just like work and just like life.

Informal Learning Conversations

Personal knowledge management is akin to pre-curation. If we look at workplace performance support as curation, then creating spaces for conversation would be an obvious component. Getting all the necessary parties involved in workplace conversations can enhance knowledge-sharing and contribute to greater diversity of ideas, a necessity for innovation. I think training & organizational development can learn a lot from marketing, but of course I’ve said that before.

Work environment design for learning

Catherine Lombardozzi writes, in Time for an Evolution:

To those of you who feel like you just stepped into the middle of a conversation, a learning environment (to my mind) is a collect of resources and activities for learning. The resources may be inanimate or human; the activities may be formal or informal. A well designed learning environment is curated with a specific need in mind. It may be curated by an individual (as in a personal learning environment), by a group (such as a community of practice), or by a designer who is supporting a specific complex need that can’t be met by training or other formal programs alone.

I’ve been promoting learning environment design as a way of thinking about what we used to call blended learning, and as a way of capitalizing on informal learning resources by curating the best materials (in your judgment) and making them easily accessible by your learners.

I have taken her image and added a 70:20:10 overlay. This could serve as a decision support tool for allocating time and resources for organizational learning and development.

70 20 10

Ask not for whom the Reaper comes

My colleagues and I often get cast as informal learning zealots in pieces written to placate the training industry and maintain the status quo, especially the lucrative compliance training market. Actually, given the tone of some articles and presentations, I am certain many people think of us in even less friendly terms.

So…now you get back to Training and they’re sitting around the fire at the mouth of the Training cave hugging their storyboards to their chests like flotation devices in a water landing. They’re in a trance and chanting ADDIE over and over…rocking back and forth and hugging those storyboard for dear life. And here you come, dragging your new stakeholder relationship and your sparkling new EPSS behind you, or your cheap-as-heck Web services portal, or your SharePoint, or your WordPress site. Your silhouette looks to many of your peers like that of the grim reaper. Several are updating resumes. Others whimper softly, “Please don’t make me change.” - Gary Wise

The Grim Reaper seems an appropriate image. My colleague Charles Jennings looks at workplace learning from the perspective of Experience, Exposure & Education; with the latter accounting for about ten percent of time and effort. The Reaper looks for those who spend 100% of their efforts only supporting the ten percent. The Reaper knows that work is learning and learning is the work. Workplace learning means much more than courses and management systems. I have said many times that courses are artifacts of a time when information was scarce and connections were few. That time has passed. The Reaper is looking for those who insist on living in the past.

While the course purveyors look to “leverage” informal and social learning for their schooling tools, they should note that levers are designed to move things, and it will be the courses that move – into a darker corner. As my colleague Jane Hart shows in this image, there is a lot of room to expand as a learning and performance consultant.

In an increasingly complex workplace, many of the old models are no longer useful. Schooling, the basis of much of corporate training, is one of these. Connections to almost unlimited information show how much more powerful Pull learning is to Push, like self-taught African teens and hole-in-the-wall learning. A generation of self-taught learners outside the western schooling model is becoming the next global workforce, and more importantly, your competition.

Ask not for whom the Reaper comes – he comes for you.

Understanding behaviour

In his book Drive, Dan Pink looked at rewards, consequences and motivation at work and showed that much of what we have taken for granted is just not supported by the research. Extrinsic rewards only work for simple physical tasks and increased monetary rewards can actually be detrimental to performance, especially with knowledge work. The keys to motivation at work are for each person to have a sense of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose, as shown in this video. With this in mind, there are times when rewards and consequences are not linked to a desired performance, and this can lead to confusion or even worse. Rewards are still an important aspect to consider in workplace performance. Consider the case of medical researchers sharing their professional knowledge and findings amongst peers.

In a research-oriented work environment, it makes sense to share one’s knowledge so the whole team can be more productive. Insights from one person can save another a lot of wasted time. But what happens when this sharing is not recorded, or people are not given credit for their input? Compound this with a system that only rewards final discoveries, so that researchers have their bonus and career directly tied to their published work. Would you help out a colleague knowing that he alone would get credit for the final discovery? Would you be willing to share if the two of you were in competition for a promotion? Would you share if the company was letting go of staff based on merit, as measured in the annual performance reviews?

Klaus Wittkuhn wrote about human performance system imbalances several years ago in the Performance Improvement Journal.

It is not an intelligent strategy to train people to overcome system deficiencies. Instead, we should design the system properly to make sure that the performers can leverage all their capabilities.

Even if we trained researchers how to share their knowledge using social media tools combined with good network weaving behaviours, we likely would not get the knowledge-sharing behaviours the enterprise leadership say they want. This of course puts the knowledge management and learning support staff in a very difficult position. They know that the leadership says that collaboration is critical, but they see that the internal system has long-established barriers to real knowledge-sharing.

While a performance analysis can be helpful in determining the barriers to performance, sometimes these are controlled at such a high level that they are beyond the scope of those implementing new systems and initiatives. Perhaps the only thing that can be done is to highlight the issue by making it as clear as possible that all the technology and skills will not overcome systemic barriers. In the case of the researchers described above, not performing is rewarded.

Looking at Dan Pink’s three motivational factors, one can also say that even with a good degree of autonomy, mastery of a complex field of research, and a sense of purpose to create products for the benefit of society; there are still obstacles in creating an effective collaborative workplace. This is why anyone responsible for a collaboration project, such as promoting communities of practice, needs to look at all the factors influencing behaviour at work. There are no easy answers when it comes to changing behaviours in large organizations.

Performance Analysis process based on Mager & Pipe’s book
A
nalyzing Performance Problems

from training to performance to social

This past year I conducted an online workshop called “from training, to performance to social“. In November I will be running one on moving from training to performance support, and this will be followed by a workshop on social learning for business.

I have tried to put together the main themes in a slide presentation that covers some of my experience as well as recommendations I have implemented with my clients. My experience is that it is difficult to move a traditional training organization directly to a social learning focus and it is easier to start with performance consulting and then expand to social and collaborative learning. If you are interested in discussing these ideas, then join one of the workshops or contact me to deliver an online or onsite session with your organization.

Validation and feedback

Here is a new approach to evaluation, by Nick Shackleton-Jones:

After the event, however, the system automatically prompts the chosen peer group to reassess those same behaviours at intervals of say one, three and six months. At the end of this period a ‘change score’ is calculated: an average value representing the amont of observed behavioural change that has taken place. Knowing that they are living up to the expectations of their peers, people make an effort to change. By coupling a meaningful challenge to the event, learners will endeavour to practise what they have learned – and we can skip directly to robust ‘level 3′ results.

Which is based on an old military approach, Training Validation, as exemplified by the Canadian Army:

On-job Performance
On-job performance is an evaluation measure that aims to determine if the trainee has been able to transfer the knowledge, skills or attitude learned in the training environment to the real world of the job. Within the ASAT, on-job performance is an element of validation conducted after at least three months following the training event. There are many different approaches to conducting this form of evaluation. Trainees, superiors and peers can be queried both through written questionnaires and personal interviews, and the results can lead to measurement of the effectiveness of the course/training activity. The validation of individual training is the responsibility of Commander LFDTS.

Training Efficiency
Examination of trainee reaction, the learning process and the transfer of learning to the job against the anticipated results and resources expended is the final method of determining efficiency. This analysis is a strategic responsibility, and the results are used to modify the conduct of future courses/training.

These are good systems if training was the correct solution in the first place, but note that formal instruction only accounts for 5% of workplace learning. As I wrote in a previous post, these types of methods work very well when you know what you are trying to achieve and understand the systems you are operating in. They work well when you have established best or good practices to base the training on. But what happens in complex environments, when ”the relationship between cause and effect can only be perceived in retrospect, but not in advance”? This is the situation many workers find themselves in today.

Feedback and validation have to be part of our daily work, not just for training events. This is where PKM practices can help on a personal level, work narration for teams, and communities of practice for disciplines. Once again, work is learning and learning is the work.

The collaboration field needs to cooperate

Eugene Kim looks at a variety of disciplines in the collaboration space, using LinkedIn network analysis to see if and how they are related. The resulting map, and Kim’s explanations are most interesting for anyone doing work related to enterprise collaboration.

According to Kim:

The densest cluster is the organizational development cluster, which is left of center. There are a bunch of skills here that are tightly interconnected, largely centered around leadership development, coaching, and group transformation.

The other large, dense clusters — management consulting, participatory processes, design thinking, and collaboration / technology — are largely distinct, although there is some bridging, mostly around learning-related skills. This makes sense: A high-performance group is a group that learns, a conclusion that you should draw regardless of your starting point.

The last sentence underlines my own focus for the past decade or more. Work is learning and learning is the work. Collaboration and learning go hand in glove.

Training, HR, OD, KM, IT, etc. use different models, speak different languages and go to separate conferences. However, they’re all in the business of collaboration. They just don’t do it with each other. Given the imperatives for continuous growth today, these disciplines need to give serious consideration to recombining their organizational DNA.

Just read a few professional journals and blogs and you will see that the same workplace issues are being faced by HR, IT, OD, KM, Marketing, Communications and T&D departments. Similar complaints and parallel strategies are being developed in isolation in each of these areas. We really need to get away from our self-imposed tribes and adopt network thinking and practices.

All levels of complexity exist in our world but more of our work (especially knowledge-intensive work) deals with complex problems, whether they be social, environmental or technological. Complex environments and problems are best addressed when we organize as networks; our work evolves around developing emergent practices; and we cooperate to achieve our goals. In the network era, collaboration specialists need to cooperate. Cooperation is quite different from collaboration.

In many ways it’s a case of the blind men and the elephant. We are constrained by the blinders of our profession’s models. That’s why I like to take my models from a variety of fields, as no single discipline has a network perspective. Everyone is struggling to keep up with change but most are using outdated tools and models. As Lou Sagar commented on Umair Haque’s 2009 post, ” … the emergence of new business models are ahead of the organizational framework to embrace and manage the impact.” Not much has changed. That pretty well sums up the problem in my mind. We are all blind men unable to understand the new realities of work.

 

I believe that a wide range of disciplinary silos can be incorporated into one support function. Professionals could have a variety of roles, depending on organizational needs, but all have to be focused on the organization and its environment. Separate departments create tribes and internal cultures that may be at cross-purposes with other departments or the overall organization. With hyper-linked information and access to expertise, not only are internal departments of less value, they could subvert the organization’s future by not responding quickly and appropriately.

I am sure there’s more than one way to achieve better functioning organizations but tearing down the artificial disciplinary walls would be a good place to start. With a networked, cooperative mindset, it is possible.