Performance Improvement
I’m speaking in Toronto next month at the SkillSoft Canadian Perspectives conference and have been developing my presentation, which is based on this post and a previous one, on the changing role of training. The presentation is scheduled for one hour but I have taken the highlights and condensed it to less than 5 minutes, which is the time limit for Jing, which I’m trying for the first time. It’s also my first time using Apple’s keynote application.
This is an Adobe Flash file (*.swf), including audio, and should open in a new window:
References:
Related: Complexity, Connection & Learning by Dave Pollard
Update: This post is featured on The Working/Learning Carnival along with several other interesting articles.
Marketing and training have certain similarities - gaining attention; getting your message across; and changing behaviour. When Seth Godin says that mass marketing is dead, I ask if mass training is far behind:
Marketing had an arc, one that started with personal, local interactions between real people and rapidly morphed into very corporate anonymous actions aimed at the unwilling masses.
Mass marketing really came into its own after the Second World War, and most prominently in the US:
With the foundations in place [high rate of savings, few consumer goods, end of war, interstate highway system], the “mass” aspects of marketing came into existence in the form of mass demand, massive stores, and mass communications.
Compare the rise of mass marketing to mass training. The wars (1914-1945) brought about the systems approach to training, the basis of instuctional system design (ISD), still used by the military and emulated by much corporate training. Both of these mass, one to many, systems appeared at about the same time. They were used to achieve economies of scale and depended upon good one-way communications systems. Both marketing and training at the mass level depend on a limited number of “channels” available to the individual. That has changed.
Why does Godin think that this is the end of mass marketing? Social media:
Social media’s growth in the last three years, though, gives marketers an inkling that there may be something else going on. Sure, they can run
spamads on Facebook, but they don’t work. Social media, it turns out, isn’t about aggregating audiences so you can yell at them about the junk you want to sell. Social media, in fact, is a basic human need, revealed digitally online. We want to be connected, to make a difference, to matter, to be missed. We want to belong, and yes, we want to be led.
Since many (most) people can easily connect with people and information, and are starting to find ways to make a difference in their learning, why would they want to follow a pre-set training program designed in a one-size-fits-all fashion? It actually goes against human nature. Each one of us wants to be unique.
Good trainers know how to personalize and contextualize their sessions, but social media can reinforce this continuously, not constrained by time or space. Successful organisations will move from a training focus, and even beyond a performance improvement focus, to a connecting and facilitating one, with tools such as social media to do this. In an always-on, totally connected work environment, how else could you help people to work and learn? You could design a new course, but that may no longer be a viable option in the near future.
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Advice on implementation comes from learning professionals, not software geeks. Jane knows social networking tools as well as anyone in the industry; Harold has his finger on the pulse of bottom-up learning and open source approaches; Clark is a passionate advocate of cognitive design, applying what we know about how people think to the design of systems. Jay is the thought leader in informal learning and the convergence of work and learning online.
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Last year I wrote that Instructional Design Needs More Agility, saying that it’s time that the training industry develop its own agile approach or risk becoming redundant. Continuing on the theme of faster and more flexible development, Daniel Lemire thinks that programming could use the greedy algorithm as a basis to manage projects. I mentioned on Twitter that I thought that a “greedy approach” was similar to agile programming and Daniel replied:
@hjarche greedy here means: don’t think globally, make the best choice locally, and the end result will be ok. So, yes, it is agile.
My experience in larger projects is that we spend too much time in planning and then freeze that process once we start development, even if the plan is no longer relevant. In smaller projects planning can be almost non-existent, with a quick decision on what model/approach to use and then it’s off to meet whatever was stated in the contract. Building in agility or the greedy algorithm at the onset seems to give more options to the development team, who now have the responsibilty of confirming that they are on course as they continue to refine the product.
I received several comments on my last post on Learning and Performance in Balance. This post came about as I examined the role of training and development (T&D) in the workplace. My contention is that many organisational learning initiatives don’t achieve what they set out to do. They don’t enable learning at the individual level unless the person is already motivated and few are connected to performance objectives at the organisational level.
Instead, I think that a better approach would be for the organisation to focus on measurable performance and give workers the time and support to direct their own learning. The T&D function then provides support, but not direction, and also provides a feedback loop to develop better performance support from the organisation. This goes with Klaus Wittkuhn’s statement that:
It is not an intelligent strategy to train people to overcome system deficiencies. Instead, we should design the system properly to make sure that the performers can leverage all their capabilities.
The diagram that I developed is an attempt to show that workers know best about learning, given the time and support needed, while management understands the necessary performance indicators for the organisation to succeed.
There was some concern that such an approach would allow workers to prepare for their next job and rob the current organisation. This is a possibility but as the work environment becomes more complex it is better to have employees with diverse interests and skills who can adapt to changing circumstances, instead of only being able to deal with the current state. Management must support learning, but it is too far removed from the individual worker to be able to direct it. The real experts today are those workers closest to the problem, as I responded to Virginia Yonkers:
I think that a better approach in complex organisational environments, where there are few good practices, only emergent practices, we should look at the Cynefin Model. In a complex environment, “… in which the relationship between cause and effect can only be perceived in retrospect, but not in advance, the approach is to Probe - Sense - Respond and we can sense emergent practice”. My view on this is that it is better if the Probing happens from the bottom-up and then management’s role is to support these individual probe’s of sense-making. The “experts” are now those who are closest to the problem or challenge - the knowledge workers.
I’m not advocating for a Utopian state of affairs in the workplace as regards learning. We need to allocate resources better and one way is to focus on what people do best. Management deals best with what is measurable. Individuals handle all the variables that affect their lives and know what is best for them. They’ll do what they feel is best for themselves anyway. As Karyn Romeis comments, “There is just too much just-in-case, sheepdip stuff still around. There is ample evidence that, for many managers in the corporate world, training provision is a box-ticking exercise.”
Finally, Dave Ferguson reminded me that even in workplaces that require defined processes and standardization, the workers have the ability to improve things, but need support to have these implemented. This can be the role of the T&D group in the 21st Century - to communicate what the workers have learned in such a way that management can understand it. This is a reversal of the top-down role of the industrial era.
If you scratch the surface of training and development in any organisation you realize that management doesn’t really care about learning; they want measurable performance. This is understandable and paying lip service to the learning organisation, et al, is a waste of time. At the organisational level, performance should be the only measure. However, there is much that cannot be measured and new work processes and skills are emerging in our digital economy. Management is usually the last to know about these, so they won’t likely be planning learning activities to support emergent processes.
In a complex work environment, where innovation is more important than following established procedures, responsibility for learning should be delegated to the lowest level - the individual worker. These workers should be encouraged to collaborate in their learning activities, with little or no direction from above. Bottom-up emergent processes are better in a changing environment because those at the coal-face best understand the issues, even if they may not be able to articulate them.
I would suggest that in a knowledge-intensive work environment, where workers already have some degree of autonomy, it would be best to give them complete control over their learning. Just drop the organisational learning function and concentrate on performance. Management must then keep open communications with workers and can develop tools that will support emergent processes as they develop. Management will always be one step behind in this process, but that’s better than being completely out of touch.
It is a better balance to let workers direct their learning and collaborate as they see fit (within limits of privacy, security, etc). The modern organisation should get out of the learning business and into the business of supporting its workers.
My thanks to recent posts on this subject by Tony Karrer, Michele Martin and Clark Quinn.
This thread starts with a presentation by Clark Quinn, which includes an examination of what he calls ePerformance tools. I think Clark’s work adds some clarification to the field and i agree with the intent to move away from the all-encompassing “learning” word, which is overused and misused.
Tony Karrer picks up on th ePerformance theme and notes:
I like the way he [Clark] stepped through the transition from thinking in terms of courses to thinking about broader uses of technology to support performance. His terminology around elements of what goes into ePerformance is a bit different than what I discussed in the learning circuits articles. The concepts are fairly similar.
This is followed by Stephen Downes take on the subject:
The main benefit of a term like ‘ePerformance’ for employers, I would say, is that there is no chance that learners will think that there is any intrinsic value to themselves in the transaction. Because if they did, then they would want to own the process, which is totally not what corporate e-learning is about.
I disagree with Stephen because a move toward performance and away from learning as the main objective of organisational interventions is much clearer. The intervention is focused on some type of desired performance that is made clear to both the organisation and the worker. The organisation wants stuff done and wants to be able to measure it. The worker wants to be able to show that it has been done and in return there is a financial transaction. This does not preclude organisation-sponsored learning activities that are not directly equated to performance, and these should be encouraged in the modern workplace where much knowledge work can not be finitely described in performance terms. A focus on performance would have the advantage of avoiding “fire and forget” training events that waste everyone’s time.
My own working definitions of these terms [these are not robust, dictionary definitions, but just my own way of putting each term], which I often discuss here and with clients are:
Performance - something measurable and observable to achieve an agreed-upon objective.
Performance Support - tools and processes that support the worker in the desired performance, including, but not limited to, job aids.
Training - an external intervention, designed only to address a lack of skills and/or knowledge.
Education - a process with its main aims of socialization, a search for truth and/or the realisation of individual potential.
Learning - an individual activity, though often within a social context, of making sense of our experiences.
This means that doing training does not directly equate to performance improvement. Well-designed and conducted training can increase skills and knowledge if the individual is motivated and has the requisite abilities. So I would say that performance can be defined at the organisational level and training can be conducted by organisations. Education is a social activity, usually run by the state or a non-for-profit institution. learning remains an individual activity, with all of the variables of the human experience and much less clearly defined or controlled.
Organisations should get out of the learning business and focus on performance. Organisations can direct performance but they should only support learning. Individuals should be directing their own learning.
Via Green Chameleon, I came across Nathan’s blog post on his project methodology of Clarify, Simplify, Implement - great advice, and so simple. Later in the same post, Nathan gives some more advice that should have anyone in the training business questioning their value proposition:
Zero training
Every user is time poor. They have no interest or time for attending training sessions. Training is the first and biggest hurdle to adoption of your new system and process. While complexity exists and training is required, users can always reject or work around the process with a politically acceptable excuse - “It’s too hard”.
Our aim, through simplification, is to make people’s life easier, reduce the burden on their time and remove all the excuses. The reward is adoption, engagement and relief that that finally it’s been done the way everyone always thought (individually) it should be.
Training is the last resort, and usually the most expensive solution, when all other performance support options won’t work.
Stock markets are shaky and a financial crisis seems inevitable. What does that mean for e-learning or learning 2.0? Will the training department be seen a critical business function and online collaboration skills essential for maintaining a flexible learning organisation? Or will training and education be seen as luxuries in a time of belt-tightening, layoffs and uncertain markets?
I think that it will be difficult for training and education to be heard above the clamour for scarce resources and investments. Much of the e-learning market is still courses online and it’s hard to give a direct measure of value per course in times when each dollar is counted. Just think, what are the perceived business costs if a course is canceled or put on hold? Learning-related initiatives will need to have clear long and short-term value so that executives will not be able to ignore them. Whether you’re a vendor or inside an organisation, are you ready?
On the other hand, creating performance support tools can be a much more obvious business case. If you’re not in the performance improvement field, you may have to be soon.
Coining the term eLearning was the beginning of a problem that is the root of the issue in Tony’s post, where he looks for better terms to describe different interventions, suggesting ePerformance.
And the answer is that there is not a well known term to describe kinds of eLearning solutions that are not typical courseware. I talked about definitions of eLearning a while ago and the basic conclusion I came to is that when you say the term, while it could mean a wide variety of possible solutions - most people think of formal training delivered electronically (virtual classroom, courseware).
The term elearning has been co-opted, especially by software vendors, to only mean courses online, when it could mean much more. However, if one wants to really question our terms and definitions, there is an inherent flaw in using the word “learning” anyway. More accurate descriptors of our various endeavours would be instruction, training, education or performance improvement. I don’t see any great value in creating new terms for interventions that don’t help with our understanding.
For education and training via the Internet we have courses online, and can further describe these as synchronous, asynchronous, instructor-led, facilitated, collaborative, etc.
Barry Raybould’s 1991 definition of performance support as “a computer-based system that improves worker productivity by providing on-the-job access to integrated information, advice, and learning experiences“, only needs to be updated to include network-based systems.
I’ve used the above diagram before to show how I describe the difference between instructional and non-instructional interventions, with the course being a prime example of an instructional intervention while an information job aid is a good example of a non-instructional intervention. Allison Rossett, in Job Aids and Performance Support, provides this definition:
A helper in life and work, performance support is a repository for information, processes, and perspectives that inform and guide planning and action.
Rossett’s definition could easily describe communities of practice or personal knowledge management as performance support. I believe that the main reason behind any confusion in our terms is because we used learning and elearning to describe what is really instruction. There is a clear difference between instruction (whether it be in the form of training or education) and performance support. We don’t really need a new term, we need to get rid of the old one - learning - which is an internal process and cannot be something that is done to us externally. And yes, I am also guilty of using the term learning inappropriately.
