Learning Conversations

It's the "holy grail" of workplace learning professionals - for their interventions with individuals to have a direct impact on the organisation as a whole.

All the time that learning is seen as something that's separate to work, that link is somewhat tenuous.

Sometimes it will be necessary to send an individual away for an extended period of time, to develop new skills or absorb new ideas. That's fine, as long as they are able to immediately practice those skills, or implement those ideas when they get back to work. If they don't, then much of the investment made in them will be wasted. This is primarily down to simple forgetting, but also a diminution of confidence that takes place when you take away the support structures of the "course".

In my experience, there are three ways to alleviate this problem:

1. Extend your interventions into a longer period of time, so that they include post-course elements, such as coaching, just-in-time support materials, just-in-time support people, action learning sets etc.
2. Cut your interventions into much, much smaller chunks, delivered over a longer period of time, so that they can be used, and then put into practice immediately.
3. Build the interventions into chunks that can be used at the point of need - whether on a self-service basis, or as part of coaching, support or management. There's no point giving someone a book on using Word, if all they need is the chapter that explains how to use stylesheets. And there's no point giving them that chapter if no-one asks how they're getting on with stylesheets in their work.

These methods aren't mutually exclusive. But the key thing to remember is that real learning takes time and ongoing reinforcement.

Further reading:

The neuro-science that every learning professional needs to know: http://www.brainrules.net/the-rules