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In a recent article from CLO magazine, they profile an organ procurement organization that shares information across the country to ensure that patients are getting what they need in time to save their life.

It’s this approach that I think many more organizations could adopt and apply some structure too which would translate into tremendous value.  In today’s world we can not inject people with the information they need…there’s too much.  We must make it easy for them to find.

A community such as it sounds has been formed in organ donation group, serves as an ongoing conversation of ideas and information that is always easily accessible.  What opportunities does your organization have to increase the access to your information?

Enjoy your holiday weekend!

I just read a great article in Fortune magazine about Social Network Analysis (SNA) and the benefits it can yield in an organization.

To me this is further fodder on what have been relatively obscure tools coming more into the mainstream and being refined for use with progressive learning and development departments.

Orbital RPM has just launched a SNA with one of our large clients as a way to find the best candidates to make up the ‘core group’ of a community of practice.  This is being implemented in a very large, traditional organization that has always relied on traditional training for its team members. 

 We will be using the same amount of money the organization would have spent on designing, developing and delivering a one-time course…an event…but instead we will be engaged with them for a year.  Helping sustain their learning community, manage the knowledge that’s flowing and integrate new-comers.  What a bargain!

It’s projects like these and articles like the one in Fortune that will allow us to chip away at the conventional mindset commonly applied to the training arena.

LCB is at it again this month with another great big question - or is it a great, big question?  And…has it been a month already???

The question for March is:

 What would you do to support new managers?

Ray Sims was the first to post and proposed utilizing audio self-paced learning, coaching and a community of practice.  Ray is targeting two areas that have been proven to speed someone’s integration into a new role:

1. Quickly becoming part of a network
2. Relevant knowledge is distributed through-out a long period time

There is too much stuff for people to remember; especially when starting a new role.  Learning to me is about providing easy access to information at the time people need it.  Audio learning, coaching and a thriving community will certainly go a long way in providing muliple access points to the information a new manager will need.

I feel there is also room for another piece here as well.  If learning is about access to information, how do you ensure new managers will experience lasting change in skills, mindset or behavior?  Just as they develop at anything else…practice.

An integration period is a prime time for new managers to participate in an action learning project.  In an ideal world their groups would consist of other managers at various stages of their management career.  The initial sessions would immerse the new manager in activities to heighten self-awareness (i.e. a 360 degree assessment conducted in their former position, a Myers-Briggs or DISC report, a natural abilities test, etc.) after which participants list which areas in which they would like to develop.  Next, the managers are exposed to some foundational content (my favorites are Appreciative Inquiry and systems thinking) that will be the concepts to which they’ll be held accountable throughout the program.

A relevant, timely business challenge is presented to the participants and they are responsible for all data collection, solution design and execution.  All the while a learning coach acts as an embedded reminder to participants of their individual development goals as well as referring them back to concepts from the initial workshops.  Over the course of a few months participants present a solution to the business challenge.  Throughout the time they have been forced to reflect on their own behavior and new concepts via the action learning coach.

It is only through being made to apply the concepts that participants will be quicker to adopt any new behaviors, mindsets and skills needed to be a manager.  Along the way a cross-functional network of managers of varying tenure will be formed and provide a solid foundation for knowledge transfer and knowledge management.  This will also serve to support the overall company-wide community that Ray suggested.  As the grayer managers move on, relationships have formed and developed the infrastructure for the insights, experience and stories to be passed on to the newer managers.

This combination of learning and development create a killer combo for the rapid on-boarding of managers.  It’s not successful because the new-comers are going in to management roles, though.  It’s successful because the new-comers are human and that’s the way we learn and develop.

The beauty is that this is a foundation that can be tweaked for positions all throughout the organization - not just managers.

This month’s Big Question on Learning Circuits Blog is: 

Are ISD, ADDIE and HPT relevant in a world of rapid elearning, faster time to performance, and informal learning?

In a world where products, targets and strategies adjust constantly the application of these models (ISD, ADDIE, HPT) will be greatly diminished.  As the roles of knowledge workers expand and require them to use information that changes quickly it will be more important for the workforce to have easy access to information rather than them be required to retain it as the result of a well-designed course. 

I use the term ‘greatly diminished’ because I don’t feel the models will become obsolete or completely irrelevant.  The in-depth analysis and often time consuming design and development associated with these approaches can still be leveraged for content that is not likely to change.  For an organization to invest the time, money and resources required for formal training it must be for something that will prove relevant for a long period of time.  For topics that meet this criteria, there will still be relevance for the models of traditional training.

For all other learning required by employees (what Jay Cross and many others consider to be 80%) a new approach to learning is required.  The models used by learning professionals will need to expand to include cultivating communities of practice, managing knowledge, facilitating open-ended dialogue, creating performance support tools and embedding their deliverables seamlessly into the workflow of their workforce.

The models listed in this month’s Big Question were designed for a type of training that was relevant for the needs of an environment different from today’s.  As times have changed our approach as learning professionals must as well so that they provide the learners what they need for success.

In a Chief Learning Officer magazine article titled “People, the Neglected Part of Technology”, author David Miller explains his perspective on how learning and knowledge management should be integrated with the implementation of new technologies, such as a new ERP package (i.e. SAP).  He even provides a specific statistic from the Gartner Group that says, “when 17 percent of the total program budget is spent on these initiatives the chances of success go up significantly.”

I found David’s points to be applicable beyond tech implementations and to all of organizational learning.  I like reading articles where I find myself subconsciously nodding my head in agreement as I read and that happened numerous times throughout this article.

David calls on the combination of the usuals for learning such as “telling the learner, showing the learner and letting them try” and adds to that the elements that will support the more informal channels that allow people to build on what was formally designed for them.  He suggests strengthening the network, cultivating communities of practice and providing just-in-time access to information that people can call upon at the moment it is needed. 

Doing the above creates what David calls a “culture of shared experiences” allowing organizations to capture the often elusive tacit knowledge of how work really gets done.  This results in people having access to the information they need as opposed to “sterile, clinical information found in manuals and training courses.”  This concept can be applied to any training, regardless of the topic.

Follow David’s advice and you’ve got the diverse learning and development portfolio that will do more than just allow you to implement technology effectively - it will put you on the fast track to being a true learning organization.  How will you know if you’ve done it correctly?  David advocates the use of a balanced scorecard for establishing and assessing the metrics associated with the learning initiative (nod, nod).

A recent report in Chief Learning Officer magazine stated that 90% of all sales training programs resulted in only moderate increases in sales and those increases lasted for just a very brief period of time (90-120 days). 

The report was compiled by ES Research (ESR) Group and it lists some specific findings; the main message, though, is that most sales training doesn’t stick.

For organizations looking for sales training, ESR’s report confirms that many vendors can fill the need of a training event that will boost sales for a brief period.  I encourage people to look at how a training vendor will sustain the momentum created in training. 

Can the vendor cultivate a community of practice for the sales positions?  Will they seed a knowledge management repository to capture the best practices of participants as they take the foundational concepts and make them their own?  How about action learning assignments for sales managers that have them optimize the sales function within the operation of the rest of the company?  How can the networks of informal learning be supported around the initial sales training?

There are countless things that could be done that would extend the effectiveness of a sales training initiative.  I believe that the selection of a training supplier takes a back seat to exploring some of the options that can be implemented that would complement the content that is delivered.

P.S. Sales training certainly has a high profile due to its direct link to organizational performance but the lessons learned from this report could be applied to any area of learning.