Don't Compromise!

The perplexing myth somehow persists that ‘work’ is something that happens in one corner and ‘learning’ happens in the other – like two boxers who never actually engage. Yet getting learning and work to embrace each other should surely be seen as critical? Would you vote for comparative ignorance as a strategy for success in the most challenging year in decades?

Corporate learning should be a fairly self-explanatory phrase for a laudable activity, although some people’s reactions might make you believe otherwise. As one voluntary sector training organisation website mentions in its guidance on pre-planning before attendance:

Some delegates even feel guilty that they will be away from their place of work for a day or two, as the perception of their colleagues may be that they are going on a ‘jolly’!”

In a world that values taking action – and evaluates whether it has been taken – the focus in learning and development will be on organising, buying or delivering training interventions. Evaulation processes and value systems are tools like any other: they can, if we are not careful, shape the scope of our actions. When we have only a hammer, everything becomes a nail.

Unless we also value and measure the impact that they make, the danger is therefore that programmes won’t connect their content with their ultimate purpose – better performing employees and organisations. It is easy to be efficient – and to be complimented or even rewarded for it: it is far more challenging to be effective.

Writing in the Financial Times’ Business Education Soapbox recently, Todd Warner posed questions that every learning and development manager should ask themselves:

How wide is the gap between learning and application at work? Are programmes targeting outputs and actions that make a difference in the real world? How effectively are those actions being tracked? How is learning being better integrated into the day-to-day fabric of an employee’s life beyond anything “programmatic”?

For an organisation’s learning and development activity to move from efficiency to effectiveness, it is precisely these gaps that must be closed.  Imagine a patient visiting a doctor with obesity. They have faced up to an issue that must be resolved, and they have taken the first step to resolving it. No doubt the doctor will diagnose their condition, and prescribe a change of diet and physical exercise regime. Job done? Well … no, at that point the patient is still obese. The critical factor is now for the patient to implement – and stick to – the change of lifestyle and choices. And they may need support and encouragement to help them to do this.

In the world of learning and development, programmes need to incorporate this final step, and to do so rigorously. Ensure that technology is applied intelligently, devise the most appropriate criteria for evaluating success – and make sure we have correctly diagnosed the initial problem. Otherwise we may simply relive a version of one well-known old chestnut about the conundrum of behavioural change:

Giving up smoking is easy. I’ve done it hundreds of times.”

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