Key take-aways:
Learning in the job delivers high impact
Filter out the noise of content overload
The right learning to you at the right time
High touch, high impact
You’re really interested in (organizational) capabilities, not skills. Capabilities are repeatable and keep getting better. They require the orchestration of skills and management systems: feedback loops, KPIs, and incentives. L&D doesn’t create these strategies or their supporting systems, but you need to, if you want to deliver on strategies your organization to win. Well-designed learning flows, instead of yet another online learning platform can solve your learning, engagement and in the end performance issues.
The classical learning can no longer meet the requirements of today. New forms of learning, a combination of different forms of learning, spatial and temporal flexibility and the integration of learning into the work process are becoming increasingly important.
The learning and performance architecture that enables successful and future-oriented learning and working is lacking. An architecture that supports formal and informal learning, offering employees the opportunity to build up a knowledge (just in case) and on the other situational (Just for me) in the context of work, so at the right time (just in time) at the right place (Just in place) to learn or to look up just enough knowledge to the extent and depth needed to achieve the desired performance.
We tapped deep into the decades of science on how people learn, change, and grow most effectively. These insights are collected into the 7 blocks of HILL, High Impact Learning that Lasts by Philip Dochy.
ACTION & SHARING – The more we are active, the more impact
COLLABORATION & COACHING – Interaction in small teams, with peers and coaches is key
HYBRID LEARNING – Optimal mix of online and face-to-face
MIX MODES – Mix formal and informal learning, organize spontaneous learning
INNOVATOR AGENCY – Make your own choices
INSTANT NEED – Intrinsic Motivation
ASSESSMENT AS LEARNING – Measure as part of learning
But what is the problem with today’s learning? And why do traditional platforms not work and why lean learning does.
Don’t waste your time
Move from confusion and chaos to understanding
OLD WAY
Too much, too long, too alone
Traditionally, the tendency in formal education is to throw as much information at a learner as possible. This kind of teaching is wildly inefficient and doesn’t set learners up to learn well through experience or exposure. Did you know online courses (MOOCs) completion rates hover around 4%! Spending weeks or months on in-depth courses and modules that take staff out of their work, provide too much, too soon, and end up quickly forgotten.
LEAN WAY
A simple intelligent approach
The demands on our attention are incessant, and we’ve become programmed to do several things at once? The solution to the attention crisis for learning isn’t just about length—and shorter is not always better. With content intelligence and coach-led program, you can enable everyone to enjoy high-impact learning.
To cut through the noise, we need programs that are learner-centered. We focus on the learner’s experience first and foremost and create programs that will be hugely beneficial to the learner and the company. When courses are delivered in an experiential coaching style success rates significantly go up to over 80% compared to self-paced.
Rapid creation
Just in case learning
OLD WAY
Time spent upfront planning and delivering
All that effort that goes into planning upfront, trying to cover all bases, and delivering over-engineered programs… all because training is disruptive and only happens occasionally.
RESULT
Waste of time
Too much time spent, on content that is outdated already.
LEAN WAY
Time spent iterating and learning
When workers need a specific resource you shoot a quick video with your phone, upload it, and you’re done. Alternatively, team leaders can shoot it themselves. You measure the results and iterate.
RESULT
Agile L&D that learns with the organisation
As content is so easy to create you can iterate and evolve your learning resources just like a digital product. Stay agile, respond to employee needs when they arise, and don’t get left behind, tied down by an archaic LMS while the rest of the organisation evolves.
Higher performance
Superior ROI
OLD WAY
Engagement is a metric of success
Course completion is the main criteria to success for learning platforms. We sit down and assess participants so they can learn & implement the learnings in their projects. Traditional L&D focuses on learning “engagement” despite the fact workers find it hard to remember and apply their training weeks or months after the fact. Workers end up improvising or relying on peers or managers. This causes disruption and requires staff to constantly answer the same questions.
LEAN WAY
Business performance is a metric of success
Lean learning brings L&D into the 21st century. By using simple resources that address employee problems at the time of need. Lean learning is an integrated part of the workforce — not a standalone cost centre.
Lean Learning can be uncomfortable: it requires self-awareness, honesty, and taking responsibility. But it leads to dramatic results for both the self and the organization. By questioning our assumptions, we’re better able to understand the frame in which we think, how our own decision-making unfolds, and how our thinking can block real learning. In doing so, we can uncover learning that can reshape how we work and, in turn, how our organization works.
Don’t take our opinion for it
these key points come from Harvard Business Review
- Think 80/20
Focus on the 20% of situations that show up 80% of the time. Then apply what you learn in actual situations as frequently as needed. - Apply to real-world situations
Just learning about a specific innovation methodology is not the goal. Real learning is applying what you have learned in real-world projects so that learn in real-time, shorten the feedback loop, deliver business outcomes, and encourage “aha” moments. - Leverage guided learning
Guided learning embeds continuous learning into a live application. Think screen pop-ups as-you-go that support rapid, context-sensitive, and personalized learning. - Personalize content
By using today’s latest technologies, training can be personalized so that it adapts to the employee’s needs with content and tools tailored to every single employee’s needs, learning style, and delivery method.
- Ongoing support
Providing employees with further support after a learning session via a combination of messaging, video chatbots, project management, and video call to ensure that they can apply learning to specific challenges. - Activate peer learning
When your employees want to learn a new skill, they typically don’t Google it or refer to your learning management system (LMS) first; 55% of them ask a colleague. When you account for the fact that humans tend to learn as they teach, peer learning offers a way to support rapid, just-in-time learning, while strengthening the existing understanding your employees have about concepts. - Offer micro-courses
Give employees short, bite-sized learning opportunities, on topics of relevance to an employee’s immediate challenges or opportunities. - Moving From Credits to Outcomes
Lean learning ensures that employees not only learn the right thing, at the right time, and for the right reasons, but also that they retain what they learn.
We have developed this approach based on our own experience and decades of research collected in reports from Deloitte / Columbia University – HR trends, McKinsey Research – Seven essential elements of a lifelong-learning mind-set, 4CID complex learning model by Kirschner, HILL (high Impact Learning that Lasts Model) and here. Inspired by the vast work of Josh Bersin.
