If your goal is to make people learn — you’re probably doomed to fail

My grandmother was an amazing cook, constantly baking for afternoon tea or some church fete. I treasure the sacred recipes she trusted me to guard, but the most valuable thing I gained from her was on a day I will never forget.

As usual, I was running around the house in a frenzy when my grandma stopped me and asked if I wanted to help her bake. Of course I did, I’d get to lick the bowl at the end.

As we got started, she told me “don’t touch the oven door, it’s scorching”. Naturally, it went in one ear and out the other, as I was way too busy sieving flour for cupcakes to pay any real attention. Until that is, I opened the oven to see if it was hot enough.

My hand sizzled as it melted on the oven door. Grandma sprang into action, quicker than a ninja, knowing exactly what to do. She was a real-life hero (and still is to me).

But what I took from that day still rings true;

You can’t force people to learn!

My grandmother had told me time and time again about the oven, but it wasn’t until I left the top two layers of dermis on the oven door that my brain made the correlation between the pain and what grandma had said.

Why am I telling you this?

If you’re reading this, you’re more than likely in an L&D role, so this shouldn’t come as any great surprise. But in the interest of not alienating those who aren’t in L&D, let’s recap a fundamental principle of how people develop.

It’s not until you test a theory or apply new information that any ‘learning’ can actually take place.

It’s not the reading, the listening or the seeing. It’s not the memorising of information or transfer of knowledge either.

It’s what you ‘do’ with the information; it’s how you ‘use it’ to do something differently. that triggers the all-important connection in the brain we call a learning event.

How learning takes place is a very personal thing. But the reality is, the learning itself is actually only a ‘by-product’ of testing new things or trying to do something better. It’s the experience of trial and error followed by the internal process of ‘analysis’; what you did, how you did and how it felt.

Your brain then takes that ‘data’ and determines what worked and what didn’t, what improved your performance in the task and what hindered you.

What one person learns from a given experience may differ from that of another person. And some people may not learn anything at all. And that’s absolutely fine. Because it’s not the ‘learning’ we should be concerned about.

Why is this important?

Many organisations are wasting vast amounts of time, budget and resource by trying to make people learn by dumping information on them.

“We need training so people know…”

“We need a course so people understand…”

“We need a learning module so people have an awareness of…”

I hear things like this almost every day in life.

Sadly, all of the above will almost always result in an information-dump solution that is unlikely to have any impact on behaviour. The harsh reality is this;

If your end goal is to make people learn, you’re probably doomed to fail.

You can make a course mandatory. You can make a course linear. You can even lock a user into a screen of content until every single word has appeared and the painfully-slow narration has completed.

But do any of these things mean the person has learned anything? (Hint: No)

Does passing the 10 question quiz mean someone’s performance will improve? (Hint: Still no)

All this demonstrates is that someone can remember what they read about 10 minutes ago. Frankly, I’d be quite concerned if they couldn’t. In almost all cases, information on its own will not improve performance.

So how do you make a difference?

Here are some things to consider.

1. Start with the end in mind

When people request a course, resist the urge to jump straight into design mode. If you assume that knowledge is the problem, you’ll end up agreeing to convert their 80+ slide deck into an online course. But no matter how cool the ‘engaging’ interactions are, the best you can hope for is to make a passive experience slightly less passive. Do some exploring first, ask some questions to establish the root cause of the problem. In my experience, you very often find several other ways to solve the problem.

Don’t worry about whether people learn or not, that’s almost irrelevant and shouldn’t be your end goal. What you are trying to achieve is an improvement in a person’s performance. Who’s learned what along the way isn’t really important to the business, it’s the impact it has on results that counts.

2. Identify the current performance barriers

Focus your efforts on helping people get better in their roles by establishing the root cause of the performance problem. Why aren’t people performing? Is it a cultural thing or is there a knowledge or skills gap? Is it a motivational problem? What would help? You may well find that training isn’t the answer. You may find that a small change to an existing process or a new support resource is all that’s needed.

3. Design experiences that provide a space for learning to take place.

Provide experiences that challenge people to overcome the barriers that prevent them from improving in real life. Create experiences that enable people to try new ways, test new concepts or apply new/existing knowledge. Design activities that encourage learning, rather than trying to force it.

Move away from creating ‘information-dump’ courses as the whole solution; knowledge on its own won’t change behaviour. It’s how someone uses new information to do something differently or overcome a challenge that leads to behavioural change and improved performance.

4. Signpost helpful resources

Point people to helpful resources, ideally within their workflow, so they can find what they need when they need it. If we can help people improve in their role, it’s likely to impact business performance too; and that’s what organisational leaders are looking for.

What will you do differently?

I’m hoping the above has got you thinking about how you could tackle ‘course requests’ in the future. And if you only take one thing away, I hope it’s this;

Creating courses that focus on knowledge, will rarely impact someones performance. At least not on their own, anyway.

If your aim is to improve performance, you have to incorporate experiences that allow people to practice overcoming the challenges they face in their role. Enable people to determine what they need to succeed and then point them to where they can find it.

It’s these events, the moments of trial and error, that burn new things into the memory and change behaviour. Just like my hand on the oven door.