This posting is a guest article – originally published as a LearningAlert email newsletter – by Calhoun Wick, Chairman and Founder of the Fort Hill Company. Cal graduated as a Rockefeller Fellow from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut and continued his studies as an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. A consultant, educator and researcher on improving the performance of managers and organisations, he is also co-author of The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning: How to Turn Training and Development into Business Results. His research led to the concept of Follow-Through Management® and the development of web-based tools that improve results by increasing follow-through and learning transfer.
Our article, The New Finish Line for Learning in the July, 2009 issue of ASTD’s T+D Magazine (and available here as a PDF file) explains why learning professionals must manage learning as a process and embrace improved on-the-job results as the new gold standard.
Whether you prefer the metaphor of relocating the goal posts, raising the bar, or extending the finish line, one thing is clear: the new economic reality is that great level one evaluations aren’t enough anymore; to stay funded, learning must deliver and document positive business impact. This LearningAlert provides highlights of that article and actionable ideas you can use to start moving the finish line of your own learning programs.
If the finish line of learning is on-the-job performance, what does it take to reach the checkered flag? It takes end-to-end planning and management of the entire learning process with special emphasis on driving follow-through, transfer, and application; more fully engaging managers; and better post-program support for participants.
Other business functions that have instituted rigorous process thinking (TQM, Six Sigma, and Lean) have realized significant productivity gains. When we view training through the lens of process thinking, it is clear that the instructional portion of the process is just one link in a long chain of causal elements that contribute to the desired performance improvement. As with any chain, the strength of the instructional link does not matter, if there are other weak links.
Moving the finish line out in time acknowledges the way adults learn best and the recent research on the importance of what Anders Ericsson calls “deliberate practice” to achieve great performance. You need to drive follow-through to encourage participants to set aside time to deliberately practice their new skills post-program.
Our follow-through management systems, Friday5s® and ResultsEngine®, were developed with post-program practice and the new finish line in mind. Experience has proven that without a scalable mechanism to ensure post-program action, support, and collaboration, the likelihood of performance improvement is sharply diminished. Conversely, active management of the follow-through period can boost return on the same program by 50% or more.
As we noted in the last LearningAlert :
managers have a profound effect on whether or not training is used and produces results.”
In fact, when we examined instances in which the process of converting learning into results broke down, the evidence overwhelmingly pointed to lack of manager support and engagement in their direct reports’ learning and learning transfer. Obstacles that prevent managers from being more actively engaged include lack of skill or knowledge on how to assist their direct reports, unclear expectations, and a lack of clarity about what was taught in the program. It is virtually impossible for training to reach the new finish line for learning without on-the-job support from managers. Helping them be more engaged and effective is key to “getting your money’s worth” from training.
Ideas Into Action
- Use process thinking to analyze your learning programs to ensure that all elements required to reach the new finish line have been contemplated and addressed. The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning can serve as an invaluable framework for facilitating this analysis.
- Make follow-through an integral part of every program. Make sure your participants explicitly understand the importance of post-program practice and the need to follow-through.
- Provide your managers with clear expectations, an easy-to-follow process, a mandate to spend the time, as well as data on how much they contribute (or detract) from reaching the new finish line.
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