The evolution of technology has dramatically changed how people learn, but is your organisation keeping up?
If you’ve ever worked in a large company, you may have experienced that feeling of dread; that all-consuming sense of impending doom. It starts in your gut and then sweeps over your entire body and is usually triggered when you see something like this:
“Great news! You’ve been assigned some new learning.”
Thud. Your head hits the desk. It’s another notification from the Corporate LMS.
You initially go through a rapid process of trying to deny the inevitable, attempting to hoodwink yourself into believing that ‘this one may be different’, ‘better than the last one’ or even, dare I even think it, ‘optional’. But these thoughts never last long. Deep down, you’re already accepting that it will be ‘mandatory’ and probably not even remotely relevant to you or your role.
A traumatic rollercoaster of emotion and anxiety, all before you even read the full message or launch the course.
But why is that?
The ever-growing plethora of connected devices, wearable tech and addictive online services has fuelled an entire generation of on-demand junkies. No longer content to wait for anything, people expect access to what they want, when they want it, on any device and in any location. Whether it’s shopping, entertainment or information, it has to be now. And if they don’t see what they want within seconds, they’ll go and look elsewhere. Tolerance is at an all-time low.
And that’s not the only change in this new breed of tech-addicts with an insatiable appetite for everything instant. Generic, one size fits all experiences are no longer acceptable either.
People don’t just want things fast; they want them personalised too. From offers to recommendations and especially with learning, there is one fundamental need;
It has to be relevant to them.
If you haven’t already seen it, ‘Meet the Modern Learner’ may well be worth a look. Bersin by Deloitte’s infographic is a snapshot of the challenges facing learning professionals today.
It suddenly becomes clear
Now that we know what we know, it helps explain the why the long winded, generic, spoon feeding information based courses of old are no longer appealing. It shouldn’t really come as a big surprise that they aren’t being ‘pulled’ as expected. And it does, to a degree, explain why organisations feel compelled to ‘push’ them by making them mandatory.
The underlying message to take away is this;
If you create something that is actually useful, people will find it, use it and share it — all on their own
So what does this mean for your organisational learning?
Well, that depends on your current strategy. If you’re still creating lengthy online courses and masses of content, then STOP!
Ask yourself one question;
Do you actually want to make a difference?
‘That’s a ridiculous question’, I hear you say. ‘Surely, if you are investing time, resource and budget into a project you’d expect to see some results’, right?
You’d be surprised how many times I’ve been told ‘no’ when I have asked clients this. For some organisations the mandatory ‘tick box’ elearning is still enough, with completion numbers and pass rates being the only metric measured. And that’s if any metrics are ever pulled at all.
You’d be amazed how many glazed looks I’ve received when asking stakeholders ‘how they plan to measure success’ at a project kick off meeting.
Now, if you find yourself agreeing with the above, that’s absolutely fine. Just keep doing what you’re doing and trust me when I say, you won’t be alone.
However, if you feel your eye twitching uncontrollably and your blood pressure rising at the mere thought of not making a difference, then maybe it’s time to explore other approaches.
Here are 5 top tips to get you going
1. Plan to measure success
Before designing anything, establish how it will improve performance and which business results it will impact. If it doesn’t do either — don’t bother.
2. Provide the right support
Stop dumping information into epic courses — most of this will exist elsewhere and if it doesn’t, it probably should. Work with the wider business areas, talk to product and process owners to ensure they have fit for purpose support tools available to users.
3. Encourage self-sufficiency
To improve performance, you have to change behaviour. To do this you need to point people to where they can find what they need when they need it — this helps to develop a resilient and problem solving mind-set.
4. Create short, meaningful experiences
Focus your efforts on creating task based challenges. Adults learn best when faced with challenges — we inherently want to succeed and will instinctively pull on whatever we need to — whether that’s existing knowledge, previous experience or by finding new information.
5. Freedom of choice
Don’t force feed people ‘everything’ under some deluded notion that it will all stick. It won’t, and people will resent that you have wasted their time. Never assume that people know nothing and allow them to decide for themselves what they need to succeed. Adults are much more likely to ‘trust’ in a solution if they discover it for themselves.
With all that said
Am I suggesting that all ‘courses’ should be outlawed or banned? No of course not. There will always be a need for some formal training interventions, to transfer base knowledge or to introduce a new concept, at least in the foreseeable future.
What I am suggesting is that you aim to reduce course content to a minimum and focus your efforts on enabling people to get better at their work.
It’s not rocket science
When it comes to improving performance with tangible results, sometimes it’s better to leverage one behaviour to actually change another.
If we know the modern learner prefers short, task specific learning experiences; why on earth would you create long, knowledge focused courses? But then again, I guess that leads us back to the original question I asked earlier;
Do you actually want to make a difference?
