How future proof is your learning strategy?

Everywhere you turn, there seems to be posts, blogs and whitepapers telling us what the future of learning will be like. Visionaries describing how robots will be running classrooms and yet to be invented technologies will transform the way we live, what we learn and how we learn it.

Personally, I find this all very interesting. But I do sometimes feel it’s a little misleading and somewhat subjective, as the future for some is already the present for others. It all comes down to where you are on your technology adoption journey and how you’re leveraging these technologies in your learning strategy.

Having helped many organisations to understand their future learning requirements and develop effective strategies over the years, the most common single flaw in their initial planning, is this.

When planning their organisational learning needs for the future, they focus on how to deliver their future needs with today’s technology and methods.

But is that really a problem? I believe it is and here’s why.

L&D Leaders are like animals

Let’s consider two types of L&D Leader; the salmon and the magpie.

First, we have the salmon, every year it must perform extraordinary feats of effort and endurance to swim up river, avoiding the hazards to reach the deeper waters. The salmon has no desire to look for smarter ways of doing things. They’re not interested in finding another route or technique, they just follow the others jumping up waterfalls in blind faith. When L&D functions are run this way, it can lead to situations where training becomes stagnant and users start to look elsewhere. They effectively get left behind and will eventually become extinct.

Then we have the magpie, they are drawn to the bright, shiny and new, whether they need them or not. This obsession with new things is often seen in leaders with innovation as their mantra. But when L&D functions are run this way, without proper thought behind why they are investing in things, they can often endure severe consequences. They risk being vulnerable to unexpected costs as their impulse led ‘investments’ haven’t been factored into budgets. With no use cases clearly identified in advance, they often feel obliged to retro fit existing learning solutions into the new format or try to shoehorn the new technology into upcoming projects. Inevitably, the chances of any real return on investment are slim to none.

More often than not, this can lead many to the assumption that the technology ‘doesn’t work’ for their learning needs. This can make the plethora of shiny new gadgets redundant and leave L&D functions with gaping holes in their budgets and no tangible way of financing an alternative solution.

Salmon or magpie?

With both creatures having such potentially catastrophic faults, you may be wondering where I am going with this. Am I suggesting you should be like a salmon or a magpie? The answer is neither. You need to have balance between knowing what works but also exploring new things. In the spirit of keeping the animal analogy going, we’ll say the best animal to be like is…a fox. Cunningly, they scan their surroundings looking for opportunities, only pouncing when they have established a high success rate is probable. Not wasting energy or resources on fruitless missions, they only go after things that will enrich their existence.

So you want to be a fox?

As we mentioned at the start, the technology adoption journey is useful to understand. It shows us that people generally fall into one of the following categories based on how they embrace new technology.

Recognising where you are on this journey is very important, particularly if you want to be a fox, as ideally, you need to position yourself in the early majority camp. You can’t plan to use a technology unless you understand it and how it could benefit your business. So you do need to know the landscape. But on the other hand you don’t want to buy every new gadget without thinking it through and establishing your use cases first.

Future proofing your strategy

The key to success is to add a few steps to your strategy planning process.

Do your research. Look into what technologies are on the horizon, don’t limit your searches to learning either, look for all emerging technologies regardless of industry, sector or example uses. The output from this stage should be a comprehensive list of the up and coming techs, their intended function, key features or intended purpose, along with any associated benefits, opportunities or limitations you have identified.

Next, run discovery workshops with your organisation to explore the technology as a group and then identifying possible use cases. The use cases can then be prioritised and the top three receive a deeper treatment to look at potential costs vs potential value add.

What you have now is a clear view of whether a given technology is right for your needs. This will consequently inform whether you wish to proceed to a proof of concept or whether you put the time spent so far down to research and development (R&D).

If you do choose to proceed, you can now factor these into your strategy and planning. Et voila, a strategy that is future proofed by incorporating the technologies you intend to adopt in the short to mid-term. This is likely to be in the next 18 to 36 months depending on level of investment and external adoption proving the value add.

Job done? Well, no, not quite. Your strategy needs to be fluid. It needs to evolve as new tech emerges and you evaluate possible uses with your business. The research and discovery session process should become part of your role, not just an isolated task, to ensure your rolling strategy has considered all options and be deemed future proof.

Fancy dipping your toe in?

Whether this resonates with you or not, you may be looking for a way to qualify the approach in one way or another, either to prove it works or prove it doesn’t. To save you some time, I’m going to suggest one, yes, just one relatively new technology for you to look into, so you can explore how it works and what it can offer. You can then run some discovery sessions with people of your choice to identify and work through any possible use cases within your organisation.

We’re all pretty familiar with virtual reality (VR) now and learning functions across the globe are already deploying VR solutions on a daily basis. VR is now widely accepted as a proven technology and so we have seen mass adoption across the early and late majority camps.

So let’s look at a newer, less adopted technology, the latest iteration of immersive experiences, mixed reality or MR as it is more commonly referred to.

The next big thing

Ok, so how many times have you heard that, right? This will be the next big thing. It’s not a term I use lightly but on this occasion, I do believe it’s justified.

Mixed reality will become a real game changer in learning for several reasons.

If you are unfamiliar with mixed reality, the easiest way to recognise the benefits is by comparing it to VR and AR then highlighting one very major difference. The below provides a great compairson of the concepts.

Now, because you still have your peripheral view of your current environment and can interact with both the virtual and the real, you have one huge advantage over AR and VR.

You don’t have to stop what you are doing to complete the experience, the experience can become part of what you are doing.

And herein lies the magic of MR.

Bringing it to life

Here’s a quick scenario to whet your appetite for mixed reality and help get you thinking about how it can help organisations.

A company has a small number of art galleries. They have earned a reputation for being very forward thinking and have seen a huge increase in visitors. The crowds have led to some visitors not being able to get close enough to some of the exhibits to read the accompanying information about the piece and this is starting to creep into social media posts from unhappy visitors. To add fuel to the fire, the main lighting circuit has blown, leaving some of the most interesting pieces in complete darkness. With the senior maintenance engineer at another site, only the apprentice is present and he can’t see the problem with the circuit.

So how would mixed reality have made any difference?

For the visitor

As you approach one of the fine exhibits, the image recognition in the headset triggers a holographic model of the piece in your virtual field of view. As you interact with the hologram you’re presented with an overlaid layer of additional information. Audio narration adds to the experience by telling the story behind the piece or the artist.

You can then ask your voice activated AI powered virtual assistant questions about the piece who will then deliver answers from the web verbally or visually. It may serve up access to other media like videos or animations which you can then place wherever you like in the experience and access it on demand, whenever you need it. All this without even having to get right up next to the exhibit.

For the apprentice

By using an MR headset, you could live stream what you see in real time to the senior engineer. They’ll see exactly what you see and be able to provide on the job support at the time of need. The in-built image recognition could also be used to identify the core components.

Additional information, instructions or diagnostic steps could all be delivered visually in the virtual field of view or delivered verbally through audio narration. Between the overlaid information and expert support of your senior, you have the ultimate performance support tool. You could even ask your AI virtual assistant to find the installation manual which you can then place in your virtual space for you to access whenever you need it.

Got you thinking?

I hope these two examples have shown how a business can impact both customer experience and develop their employee’s ability by leveraging the power of this technology. But this can only happen if you start planning for it.

So to conclude, success in future proofing your learning strategy lies in understanding what technologies are evolving and then determining the possible use cases you have for it. Remember, unless you’re an innovator and willing to pay top dollar ‘to be the first’ to have the technology, it’s unlikely that you’ll be looking to commit to anything in the next 12 months. But this approach will enable you to plan your learning strategy and budget with confidence. So when you do take the plunge, your use cases are already defined which should inherently improve your chances of success.

On that note, I’ll leave you with two questions to consider.

What are the problems your business is trying to solve that mixed reality could potentially help? And have you factored these into your future learning strategy?