Is your learning strategy actually improving business results?
When a learning need is identified, it’s quite common for organisations to become reactive. Immediately jumping into solution mode to try and resolve the presenting symptoms. Typically, this will involve the creation of masses of learning content or hours of ‘self-contained’ elearning to force feed users with the ‘knowledge’ they need and be expected to ‘remember’.
Tight timescales, decreasing budgets and hard launch dates, all contribute to a general desire to just ‘get something out there’. It’s something I’ve heard a lot over the years.
These pressures usually result in the frenzied series of ‘bouts’ we all know and love. In the blue corner, the SME who sees the epic 500-page manual they’ve created as their ‘life’s work’ and demanding that everything is included. In the red corner, the learning designer trying to rationalise and negotiate with the SME without demeaning the gravitas and relevance of such meaningful work. Both parties wrestling over the inclusion or omission of every single word. Just when the learning designer senses victory, the SME executes their signature knockout blow! They insist ferociously that the course must be mandatory and have gated progression. Boom!
The designer is on the ropes. They know this goes against everything we know about adult learners. With any consideration for the user experience thrown firmly out the window, the poor user can only hope that enough information sticks to scrape through the obligatory 10 question quiz. Sound familiar?
This is possibly the biggest single point of failure in learning design
In my opinion, this approach is fundamentally flawed and here’s why:
1. The presenting symptoms don’t always reveal the root cause of the problem
2. Focusing on knowledge is unlikely to change behaviour
3. Without changing behaviour, it’s unlikely to impact business results
Focusing on ‘what people need to know’ will generally just lead to content creation. In my experience, this will rarely have any significant effect on business performance.
If you truly want to improve business results, then it makes sense to move away from designing what people need ‘to know’, and towards what people need ‘to be able to do’.
It’s by changing behaviour that we can impact business performance the most
Enable people to deal with the most common tasks now and provide the support tools they need to help with less frequent tasks later. Instead of creating courses, create experiences that challenge the user and nurture learning with the support resources available. Encourage people to find the information they need when they need it, rather than trying to memorize everything. This not only enables the courageous learning designer to prevail over the mighty SME and create less content. It also helps the user to develop a resilient, problem solving mind-set too.
Not convinced? Consider this:
You’re driving in an area you’ve never been to before. No, you don’t have Sat Nav but you do have a map.
Now, do you need to memorize the entire map, or do you just need to know how to use it when you come to a crossroads?
The key takeaway here is this:
Know where to find what you need, when you need it, rather than trying to remember everything
So, how can you apply this concept to your learning strategy? Here’s an approach to consider if you want to improve business performance:
1. Determine the goals and strategic focus of the business
2. Find out what metrics or KPI’s that the business goals relate to
3. Work with the target audience to understand the tasks they need to complete that impact these metrics
4. Understand the challenges people will face when completing these tasks and what they need to succeed
5. Design experiences that enable people to internally assess what they need to overcome the challenge
6. Provide access to the resources, performance support tools or training people may need
7. Use the metrics identified in the second step to determine the effectiveness of the solution
With traditional approaches that focus on knowledge, there is a risk that any information transferred will only ever get as far as the short term memory. By designing experiences, you can provide the perfect conditions for the all-important ‘learning events’ to occur: That internal process of self-assessment that analyses ‘what you did, how you did and how you felt’ when faced with a task or challenge. It’s this very process that helps the brain group items together aiding in longer term retention and easier retrieval. It is also this process that triggers behavioural change, which can ultimately have a significant impact on business performance.
One small change
If you want powerful data that demonstrates the impact of your learning strategy, focus your efforts on the tasks that directly impact business results. Using this approach to designing for ‘what people need to do’, rather than ‘what they need to know’ is a great place to start.
If you want to take it even further, try incorporating reward mechanisms in your learning experience design and inject the mighty dopamine into the equation too.
