Get back to the 70's

14:00:00 Learning Boffins 0 Comments






 When I started work in adult learning it was back in the day you worried if a bulb would blow in the overhead projector, you carried a crate of ‘stuff’ into the training room and flip chart under your arm, so I see myself as a traditional trainer. I believed totally in formal learning and the need  for me and my trainers in my company was perpetuated and grown by my immovable belief. I saw 70:20:10 as a threat to all I loved; the smell of the felt tip pens, being the ‘sage on stage’ and teaching, teaching, teaching!

What I didn’t understand was that I was part of a long learning chain. My learning chain was one that started with a conversation with someone who perceives there is a need and ends up with improvements being made by the person who has to do the job. All the way through the process the person who is least involved is the individual who has to make the changes to their behaviour or learn new skills. As we all know a chain is only as strong as its weakest link ….. Was I the weakest link?  I would like to think not but in the chain inevitably there was a weak link. It might have been in understanding the goal, having a crystal clear objective,  in doing the needs analysis or in the instructional design. When you opt for formal training the learning chain is longer than it has to be in my opinion. It is as if the ‘solutionising’ has been done to the leaner, not for them. 

That is quite rude and I don’t mean it to be, in fact there are so many L&D departments who make this work for them and they engage their learners and care for them more than you would believe possible. What I am coming out in support of is the 70 in the 70:20:10 model and as an old fashioned talk and chalk trainer I never expected to do that. But the reason I am now an advocate of the model  is that it shortens the learning chain and illuminates the weakest link.

Reflect back to ancient history when apprenticeships were the norm, (400’s to 1400’s) were widely used training practices. The solution for learning was all about the relationship between the expert and the learner. Then as now an apprentice has a long term goal and the apprentice learns on the job.  This is a much shorter chain, with less opportunity for misinterpretation of the outcome required and immediate assessment by the SME.  

During the 1800’s in the industrial revolution fast up skilling became necessary to build the workforce as quickly as possible. Workers moved from the agricultural skills they had seen used all their lives to unknown skills.  This started the practice of Vestibule training where rooms were set up with all the machinery found on the factory floor and an SME would put the trainees through their paces.  This was also known as ‘Near the Job Training’. This was a slightly longer learning chain and relied on the SME being able to recreate on the job conditions but gave them the benefit of not interrupting the productivity.
Skip forward to the 1940’s and Job Instruction Training. Step by step (structured) on the job training method in which a trainer (1) prepares a trainee with an overview of the job, its purpose, and the results desired, (2) demonstrates the task or the skill to the trainee, (3) allows the trainee to mimic the demonstration on his or her own, and (4) follows up to provide feedback and help[1]  Again a short chain. The argument against JIT is that originally it was used for manual work. My response would be that most jobs require understanding and then there is a physical output of some kind. Even customer service has a physical output so I am now firmly converted to the 70.Keep the chain as short as possible; don’t overcomplicate a learning process we pretty much had nailed back in 400 BC.


Rachel Kuftinoff
Learning Consultancy Director

[1] Read more: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/job-instruction-training.html#ixzz471LSe5ik

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Helping you to effectively… Support Social Collaboration

16:08:00 Learning Boffins 0 Comments


Outside of work, people use and engage with social media platforms on a daily basis for personal learning. For many, particularly those existing Gen Y employees, and the Post-Millennials just starting out in the workplace, it’s second nature to use these platforms as a way of learning and accessing knowledge. The world of learning and development (L&D), at least from a provider point of view, has embraced this trend. There are now several companies in the market that have developed platforms to support social learning in the workplace. But while many L&D departments have followed their lead and welcomed this shift in learning, not everyone is where they need to be.

Our consultancy team has direct experience of advising clients on implementing, managing and maintaining the support for social collaboration.

A growing number of organisations are looking to introduce social and collaborative learning elements across their businesses, and we know that supporting social communities requires a lot of work — both up-front and in terms of ongoing maintenance. Despite their informal nature, social communities are unlikely to grow organically.

Careful planning is needed to ensure a social learning platform meets its objectives, through a strategy that will help to grow and nurture the community at each phase of its development. Our consultants can advise on the best way to do this, and can help you understand the impact social communities are having on the business.

The diagram below highlights the areas where we can support and advise:




The benefits of social collaboration


•  Increased collaboration across the business
•  Engaged employees who learn ‘at the point of need’
•  Easier access to best practice processes
•  Recognised subject matter experts for your community
•  An empowered learning community — employees in control of their own learning journey


Examples of Success


From our experience and through our support we can achieve the following with your social communities:
•  34% more engagement
•  133% more likely to reduce silos
•  80% increased chance of sharing best practice across the business

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Behavioural Economics and Learning: How Needs Analysis breaks the Conspiracy of Convenience

16:00:00 Learning Boffins 0 Comments



Training is expensive, right? So it stands to reason that people do whatever they can to do less training or find cheaper training, right? Well, no: a lot of the time – particularly when organisations commission a new training programme – almost the opposite happens.

On the surface, cost efficiency is always a key consideration: business area managers want the best deal for their staff; the L&D team want to find the most cost effective solution for their (internal) customers; and providers of training want to give the best service at a competitive price.

But, just as we are reluctant to change our energy provider even when competitors are offering more cost-effective services, there are other motivating forces at work. These lead us to take an apparently irrational course.


Conspiracy of Convenience


In the training world, I observe ‘The Conspiracy of Convenience’ (this has been seen by others like Charles Jennings and Nigel Harrison). It goes like this:

1. A business area has a problem. The manager decides training will fix it, so s/he requests training from the L&D department.

2. The L&D department source a suitable training solution from a training delivery organisation.

3. The training delivery team (either internal or external) delivers the training solution to the business area.


Vested Interests


The key point about the Conspiracy of Convenience is that all three parties have a vested interest in pushing up the cost of training:

· Business area managers know that training is a safe option. They won’t be criticised for asking for training and, by doing so, they are seen to be working to solve a problem. Sure, training costs money, but it lets you ‘outsource’ solutions to problems – that’s much easier than other solutions like redefining job roles and processes, or changing obstructive organisational structures. Even if training doesn’t solve the problem, the link between training and business improvement is ambiguous, there won’t be any comeback. So business unit managers are keen to do training.

· The L&D department exists to serve the business. It’s in their interests to find training solutions on request, and the faster the better, to provide a good service to their internal clients. It is not in L&D’s interest to challenge a business unit about their choice of training (if they do, the business will source training direct from a third party in future and cut out L&D altogether). It’s much easier to give them the answer they want, ASAP, and without asking difficult questions like ‘what’s the business problem are you trying to solve?’

· Training delivery teams have a vested interest in developing and delivering as much training as they can. To internal teams it represents job security. To external companies it represents vital revenue. There’s no criticism of the quality of the training here, but we cannot deny the underlying commercial reality that leads delivery teams to provide more training, not less.

All three parties work on the overriding assumption that training is A Good Thing and the more training, the better it will be. It’s such a deeply-held assumption that we don’t even bother to say it, leave alone question it. For each stakeholder the most convenient outcome is to encourage training, but together it happens in a way that leads to wasteful training spend.

Finally, none of the stakeholders have much interest in asking the question ‘how will this training improve the performance problem?’

Individually, each party seeks to be cost-efficient. I’m not suggesting any malevolence here – quite the opposite – everyone genuinely wants a good outcome. But together their need to be seen to be doing something constructive, to find a quick solution, or their subconscious self-interest, all conspire to generate a solution that may be ill-thought-out, unable to solve the problem at hand and a lot more expensive than it needs to be.




Break the conspiracy – Needs Analysis


To avoid this situation, you need to break the conspiracy. You need something outside of the commissioning triangle of business manager / L&D / delivery team. It needs to be done by someone capable of challenging the presumed need and the solution. Needs Analysis (and this may also be called Performance Consulting) is one answer.


There’s no ‘T’ in Needs Analysis


Notice I deliberately do not say ‘Training’ Needs Analysis because that presumes the answer is training (even though others may already have decided it is). Needs Analysis looks at the ‘need’ in the business or performance sense. It is a brief and high level assessment which asks two main questions:

1. How is the problem affecting business performance?

2. What sorts of interventions would reduce or resolve that problem?


Needs analysis should consider the presumed solution and challenge that approach. In my experience there is always a presumed solution, often about right, but rarely well-thought-through and usually missing important details:

· What other approaches would improve the chances/extent of success?

· What is missing/overlooked from the presumed solution in order to ensure a good outcome


Benefits and Challenges


Huge benefits may come from focusing onto the root cause of a problem rather than simply addressing the symptoms. My best example from years ago involved a request for mass training on the responsible use of email: this was completely avoided by a technical solution, restricting access to the organisation’s global address lists.

Similarly, spotting what’s missing from a solution will transform outcomes. For example, the embedding of training is invariably overlooked or under-resourced and falls down the crack: business managers conveniently assume behaviours change forever after 3 hours in a classroom; and L&D see embedding as the business’ responsibility.

Breaking the Conspiracy of Convenience will not always be welcomed, because it makes it much less convenient for those involved in the cycle! Needs Analysis may be seen as slowing the process down when all the parties want to get to some shiny new content. It asks difficult questions about business problems which we’d rather not acknowledge. Traditionally it would fall in the remit of L&D, but in today’s world of stripped-back L&D, the resources (and frankly the skills) are just not there.

However, the wider business ought to welcome rapid and insightful Needs Analysis. It’s an important tool for any L&D team, to break the Conspiracy of Convenience and get learning properly focused on where it makes a difference.

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Understanding your L&D function through a gap analysis using our Operating Model Review™

16:00:00 Learning Boffins 0 Comments



Last week I posted about data analysis and its use in performance improvement among the elite levels of sport.  If you have not read this post you can do so here.  The conclusion drawn is that it is important to understand the strengths and weaknesses of an entity before en-devouring to improve it.  One of the ways we help our Clients understand their L&D function at Capita Learning Services is to complete an Operating Model Review™.

There are often good reasons why processes and conventions develop — historical, political or sometimes just out of convenience. As businesses grow and develop, so do operational practices, which can lead to inefficiencies, as well as bloated and unnecessary costs.

Despite operating with the best intentions it can be difficult for a business function to take a step back and evaluate its processes objectively.  An external review can offer a more detailed insight into where improvements can be made.

Our consultancy team has developed a number of tools to assist in identifying waste within L&D that can help you to create a more efficient, cost effective and agile learning function. We frequently find ourselves working with organisations where learning provision has been static for some time: our learning Operating Model Review™ service is the perfect solution here. We can help you by carrying out a strategic review of your organisation’s L&D function using our proprietary Learning Maturity and Continuous Improvement Models™.

This approach allows us to identify strengths, weaknesses and recommend areas of improvement — including re-skilling L&D personnel, changes to learning technology and learning content, as well as recommending which processes should be managed internally, and which could usefully be outsourced.

We empower you to use your existing assets to the maximum, whilst helping you to define a future state for your learning organisation that focuses on business benefits.

Our operating model review focuses on all the areas of your organisation’s L&D function


The benefits of an Operating Model Review™


  • • Optimal efficiency of your L&D function
  • • Clear lines of sight to those areas in greatest need of focus
  • • Clarity around what’s already working well in your business
  • • A board-ready report and business case that can help you adapt your operating model to define a future state for your learning organisation


Examples of Success


Our experience in operating model reviews has seen us:
  • • Identify how a major pharmaceutical company could reduce its total cost of learning by 20%
  • • Highlight a transformation path for a global IT services company — recommending a greater use of learning technology, less reliance on inflexible ILT, reduced costs and a reskilled L&D team
  • • Demonstrate to a major global insurance company the extent of the change necessary to achieve a 30% savings target in L&D across five European countries, while causing the least impact on workforce skills

If you have any questions regarding the Operating Model Review™ or you think that this is something your organisation could benefit from then please do not hesitate to get in touch with us at consultancy@knowledgepool.com

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Data Analytics – Helping to focus learning, set L&D direction and most importantly…win the Masters!

16:15:00 Learning Boffins 0 Comments


It is no secret that I am a golfing nut!  My wife is understanding enough to let me play at least once but often twice a weekend and when not on the course I am often practicing, watching or learning more about the game.  Last weekend was an exceptionally special time for UK golfers due to the fact that Danny Willett won the masters.  He is the first UK golfer to do this since Sir Nick Faldo won in 1996 thus ending a 20 year drought.  Obviously this took a tremendous amount of skill and perseverance but it also required an understanding of what he was good at and perhaps more importantly not good at.  This is a lesson we could all benefit from.


The pro golfer and data
Professional golfers and by extension their caddies are known for their meticulous preparation before any event.  Preparation revolves around training, technique, nutrition but also about how the player is performing on any given week and what a player’s tendencies are.  They gain this knowledge by looking at data or past evidence of performance.  They track all manner of data points but some examples are in the table below.  Within this table I have included the stats for Danny Willett as well as the previous winner of the Masters, Jordan Spieth.  It is worth mentioning that Spieth is the current world number 2 and was favoured to win the competition even half way into his final round on the Sunday.

Statistic
Danny Willett
Jordan Spieth
Driving Accuracy %
62.27%
63.72%
Greens in Regulation %
70.14%
63.70%
Sand Saves %
66.67%
56.25%
Left Rough Tendency %
11.11%
15.00%
Right Rough Tendency %
14.81%
8.57%
Overall Putting Average
1.583
1.522
Putting from 5'
87.50%
78.57%
Putting from 6'
66.67%
69.57%
Statistics taken from Official PGA website and represent available figures for the current 2016 season

As mentioned previously the above stats are just the tip of the iceberg.  Nether the less there are data points that point to areas where both Danny and Jordan may focus their practice and learn from their numbers.  For example both players see a significant drop off in putts they make from 6’ or more.  They may choose to improve putting at this range or they may decide that they want to improve their chipping or irons so that they are more often within 5’.  The strategy of improvement will be player dependant and again more data on the success of either approach will govern their eventual strategy for practice.

I also previously mentioned that a pro golfer will also understand their tendencies.  Again, in the table above you can see that Jordan Spieth misses the fairway to the left (left rough tendency) more often than he does to the right.  This might prompt him to start aiming slightly further up the right when he tees off, or alternatively change the shape of his shot to ensure he hits more fairways.

Data in-the-moment is just as important as averages across a large period of time
Understanding data across a season or even a career is important to a golfer but during the Masters it became apparent that in-the-moment data was equally important.  During the final round on Sunday Jordan Spieth was leading by 5 strokes but in just three holes he would drop 7 shots and loose his leading position at the Masters for the first time in two consecutive competitions.  This ‘meltdown’ as some have called this is best summed up on the 12th hole where Jordan took 7 shots on a hole that should only take 3.  The cause…he wasn’t paying attention to his tendencies that week.  In a post round interview Jordan admitted that all week he had been hitting this weak shot to the right off the tee and on the 12th hole that is precisely what he did.  Unfortunately for him that meant his ball found a river.  What is interesting about this is that fact that Jordan and his caddy knew that he was tending to hit it right.  What they didn’t do is listen to the data and then learn or make adjustments accordingly.  In stark comparison Willett made no errors on his final 21 holes of the competition.  Perhaps he was listening to what his data was telling him of his play across the four days of the competition

My Personal Learning
After realising the importance of data in performance I decided to track my own stats.  I started this process a little over a year ago using a relatively inexpensive piece of technology designed specifically for golf called Game Golf™.  Essentially it tracks my stats in a very similar way to the PGA tour albeit with less granularity.  On one of my first rounds I shot 14 over the par of the course.  At this time this was playing to my handicap.  My stats were as follows:

Score
Putts
Fairway Accuracy %
Greens in Regulation %
Scramble %
86
29
54%
22%
29%

At the time I thought “not bad stats for an amateur golfer”.  However I knew things could be improved.  After drilling further into my data it became clear that I was losing a lot of my shots by missing the green or not being close enough to the hole when I was on the putting surface.  So for the next few months I focused heavily on my accuracy from around 125 yards and in, as well as on chipping and putting.  The results of a round in early May (4 months later) are below:

Month
Score
Putts
Fairway Accuracy %
Greens in Regulation %
Scramble %
Jan
86
29
54%
22%
29%
May
76
27
38%
56%
50%

My experiment had worked.  I had more than doubled the number of greens I was hitting in regulation and there was a 66% increase in my ability to scramble (make par or better if you miss the green).  Now all I needed to do was improve that driving accuracy!

How does this apply to learning in business

The Individual Learner
At an individual level it shows how improvements in performance or knowledge can made in short spaces of time.  The key is to ensure that any time spent on improving one’s self is focused in the right way and at the right area.  It is all too easy for us to slip into our comfort zone and improve the things we find interesting and are often already good at.  Identifying our deficiencies and tendencies can open up the possibility that our performance can far exceed what we previously thought achievable.

As an L&D Function
The lessons for the individual hold true for the broader learning function.  The complexity of the data could increase, as may the number of data sources, but when you distil it down it is all about understanding gaps and also not forgetting to notice the strengths.  Where an individual is striving for increases in their own personal performance an L&D function is trying to improve performance in relation to business goals.  The magic happens when you can identify a potential gap that, once filled, will directly result in reaching that business goal.  It could be reducing L&D spend, upskilling a division of the workforce, making learning more accessible, etc.  The key is that there is evidence of a gap and the decision to improve an area or take decisive measures has not been reached based solely upon ‘gut feeling’.


The reality is whether you are trying to win The Masters, beat your best round of golf, or achieve a business result, good analysis of reliable and relevant data can often get you to your desired goal faster and more efficiently.

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Keeping momentum with an Online Community

11:09:00 Learning Boffins 0 Comments


When discussing social online communities on several occasions I have heard ‘we have set up a community but no-one is using it!’ Of course there is no way we could force people to use communities, but there are certainly ways to gently nurture and encourage users to be engaged in an online community. Having looked at various research pieces and from the experience of having our own online community, below I have listed 5 ‘nurturing’ tips:


1.       Keep it simple and make it easy to contribute: Don’t over complicate a community, don’t set too many boundaries and don’t organise different levels and rules to it. Keep it simple, state the purpose, keep the message straightforward and allow people to contribute easily.

2.       Maintain relevance: If people begin to see the relevance of why they are part of the community and can identify the benefit they are getting out of it they are more likely to be engaged. Ensure users understand ‘what’s in it for them’ before the community has even started out.

3.       Never expect 100% participation: Nielson (2006) identified the 90-9-1 rule for participation inequality in social online communities. In summary he stated that 90% of an online community are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action. But this doesn’t mean that lurkers are not engaged with the community they are just using it in a less obvious way. So don’t get hung up on activity levels.

4.       Ensure there is a business need before creating a community: If there is a business need that can be supported with the set-up of an online community, this automatically gives it is purpose and immediately people can identify with that and engage, but if the need never existed then it is difficult to get participation.

5.       Curate relevant content regularly: Appoint a community manager who can oversee the community and they can have the role of dropping in relevant content on a regular basis, helping to build momentum and keep users engaged. Certainly don’t flood the community with content and certainly not with irrelevant content, but maintain a pulse and react to the community. If there is a lot of activity for example step away and on lulls step in by dropping questions or content.

Nurturing an online community is a continuous activity and remains until the community stops. I have only listed 5 tips here and there are others, these are tips we have used with our own community and from research we have seen that they are effective. Feel to share others that have worked for your online communities .....

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A clearer learning experience with a Curriculum Optimisation

16:00:00 Learning Boffins 0 Comments



Reduce the strain on your L&D teams by helping learners access relevant content in a more timely, enjoyable and efficient way


Providing up to date content to learners is a common mandate for L&D teams. However this constant creation of programmes and training material can lead to a learning catalogue cluttered with unused programmes. It is not uncommon for us to see the number of learning solutions in an organisation reaching several thousand, of which less than 10% are being used. This presents a challenge for L&D teams to manage these ever expanding libraries and also makes it very difficult for the learner to find relevant content that addresses their immediate learning need.

Our consultancy team understands that a well-managed curriculum should be at the heart of every learning department. We focus on three core areas to help you achieve optimisation:

1. Curriculum design
2. Content development
3. Developing standards for efficiency and consistent content


Curriculum design


Businesses often find that as they grow, their learning curriculum becomes oversized, outdated, or held in silos (typically by business unit, country or subject area). We can help you reshape your organisation’s learning curriculum to more closely align with your business goals. This can includeour vendor independence any or all of the following:


Align with competency frameworks:

Mapping preferred or recommended learning against your organisation’s competency frameworks.

Extend the scope:

Broadening your curriculum to include new areas that are required to address business needs and improve business performance.


Refresh:

We will recommend updates to your curriculum, including the removal of redundant or outdated content.


Academy design:

Structuring and signposting curriculum content, so learners can quickly and easily find learning that is relevant to their development needs.


Modality shift:

Changing the delivery medium for your learning - often in response to the adoption of 70-20-10 philosophy - so to make better use of technology, or to reduce the reliance on expensive instructor led
training (ILT).


Content development


Our expertise in learning enables us to recommend sources for the development of new learning content, whatever the modality.  We can help you with the design, development and project management of new learning assets. This can be individual content items, content for learning programmes, or a suite of content for a curriculum area.  We cover all learning modalities - from traditional ILT, to the latest mobile, social and informal learning approaches.



Developing standards for efficiency and consistent content


For organisations with an extensive learning curriculum, the quality and consistency of content development can become a problem.  If you have multiple development teams and training suppliers, it’s essential that standards are implemented to ensure a consistent and reliable output.  We can help you to create effective standards and guidelines for your learning content design and delivery, covering use of technology, academies, metrics and tracking.


Benefits


1.  Improved organisational performance - all curriculum content is chosen because it addresses organisational goals
2.  Improved user experience - learners can be directed straight to the content they need without the distraction of irrelevant or redundant content
3.  Consistent quality of learning content across multiple providers
4.  Less risk of development projects overrunning
5.  The ability to convey organisational messages (values, tone, brand, etc.) across all materials

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