Stories

Category: Learning strategy

  • Onboarding

    Onboarding

    How do we get newcomers onboard?

    Onboarding refers to the mechanism through which new staff acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, and behaviors to become effective “insiders” of the organization.

    The organization’s onboarding process, for most us, was very informal and lacked structure, except for various administrative tasks. We know that there are no shortcuts, given the amount and complexity of tacit knowledge that is difficult to transfer. When we started working in the team, we may have found gaps in our knowledge, skills, or experience – including ones that no one could foresee or expect.

    Efforts to formalize onboarding inevitably run into the same difficulties as formal training. When a person arrives in a role, there are likely to be urgencies to attend to. In the process of dealing with these, newcomers have to establish themselves, begin building relationships with others, and make sense of the complexities of the workplace, often on their own (as everyone else is supportive but simply too busy).

    This points to issues at the level of the organization (beyond the team) around succession planning and handover. For example, the budget for a post does not allow for the new hire to shadow outgoing staff, and there is no established mechanism to ensure a comprehensive handover.

    Gaps in technical knowledge are possible, but less likely than gaps in “understanding how everything works together and the procedures and so on”. Other gaps will appear over time. Yet onboarding is a repetitive process, some gaps can be identified ahead of time, and there is a tangible benefit to abandoning the prevailing sink-or-swim” approach.

    Photo: Boarding Royal Carribean’s Vision of the Seas in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (Light Nomad/flickr.com)

  • Mentoring

    Mentoring

    Fostering relationships that enable and sustain collaboration and inquiry requires building trust about both technical competencies and each person’s interest in dialogue.

    Therefore, two contexts require special attention. First, when newcomers come onboard to the team, they may or may not be familiar with the general organizational context or the specific working conditions. This requires thinking through how they are brought on board (“onboarding”). Second, when a performance gap is identified, in-service coaching and mentoring may be considered, especially if stopping work is not a possibility or the gap covers tacit knowledge that is not taught formally.

    Although coaching and mentoring require specialized skills, most of us recognize that the mentoring and support we receive helps develop our capabilities. Having received support, we are also willing to provide it, with or without institutional support. When we identify a gap in knowledge, skills or experience in a new colleague, how do we provide support to address this? When and how do we mentor colleagues?

    Yet, like other dimensions of informal learning, mentoring may no longer be assumed to “just happen”. Despite our recognition of its importance, it is seldom included in formal tools such as job descriptions or performance reviews that are supposed to identify competencies, experience and achievements. This needs to change.

    Photo:  Benjamin West, Calypso’s Reception of Telemachus and Mentor (Daniel Reinberg/flickr.com)

  • Encourage collaboration and team learning

    Encourage collaboration and team learning

    Our areas of work are siloed due to limited resources and time, the huge scope of our global mandate, the high level of specialization required, and internal politics. Collaboration and learning as a team (beyond the unit level) requires leadership and concerted effort. It is hard to sustain over time.

    Yet, to collaborate we build, sustain and renew many individual relationships based on trust and need. These are much less subject to fluctuations in our environment. We may get to know each other and become friends first, perhaps because we work next to each other in the office, share lunch or coffee breaks, or engage in the same activities outside of work. Being in the field together is a powerful accelerator. We also share the commitment to the mission, despite our frustrations with the here and now. This is how, on one level, we come to establish trust, by being human together. For collaboration to lead to results, the quality of human relationships is a critical factor. “Good colleagues” are those whom we trust.

    On another level, we learn to be careful given the volatility of our environment. Perhaps we first test the waters of both technical and collaboration competencies by asking for input on a concept paper or inviting a colleague to contribute to a meeting. We observe how they behave to determine how and to what extent we can collaborate with them – and how much value can come from collaboration. Only then can we begin to be transparent with each other to achieve shared understanding.

    What about those of us who are not technical experts, but provide support, for example, for planning, project development, learning or communication? Negotiating collaborative learning is a necessity. Asking questions of others is legitimized by the recognition that your own expertise is in another area of work.

    Even though much of relationship building depends on the behaviors of individuals, our organization can do much to provide an enabling environment to foster dialogue and collaboration. We also need to rethink the rules of engagement that, in some cases, provide the appearance of consensus but slow our ability to identify and tackle a problem.

    Photo: Synchronicity of Color (DWPittard/flickr.com).

  • I have no idea

    I have no idea

    What do we do when we cannot achieve certainty?

    We increasingly accept that we need to make decisions without the comfort of certainty. It is okay to not know. It is healthy to accept the unknown as we no longer seek certainty. It is when we are no longer certain that we learn.

    In some cases, uncertainty opens the door to knowledge that we were not seeking. This is incidental learning.

    The organization still expects certainty. Some of our leaders demand it. As working professionals, we are expected to provide answers, i.e. to know. Yet our expertise is increasingly in our ability to respond when faced with new contexts (for example, new technologies, reduced budgets, or changes in political leadership), new challenges (for example, Ebola or noncommunicable diseases) where learning is the process of constructing viable but context-specific answers.

    We straddle between expectations that we know (as experts) and the unknown that is part and parcel of our daily work. There is some comfort in certainty, as well as lower risk we may value because of the political nature of our environment. This is, in part, why we may pull back, as we may fear others seeing that we do not know.

  • Patterns and trends

    Patterns and trends

    How do we navigate these rules while achieving intended purpose? When we need new knowledge, where do we go? How do we go about it? How do we limit our exploration to ensure that we can still deliver on our tasks? What if we need to upset or question assumptions about how we work in order to find the answers we need (learn)?

    Wherever we may sit in the organization – from the headquarters in the capital city to the field –, our field of vision cannot possibly span the global complexity we face.

    When we analyze a situation or a new problem, we are looking for patterns. We build the “muscle” of pattern recognition through practice. This is where we mobilize our experience, which sometimes manifests itself as intuition. As we gain experience, we learn to trust our intuition and deepen the insights we bring to dialogue with our colleagues.

    Patterning is the process of recognizing the nature and organization of various types of information and knowledge. As we walk forward with an adaptive mindset, we recognize trends and patterns in a changing environment.

    Our ability to recognize patterns is a critical skill that the organization must both foster and support, in order to make learning strategic.

    Photo: Islamic mosaic pattern (Jörg Reuter/flickr.com)

  • Dialogue and inquiry

    Dialogue and inquiry

    We learn from each other through dialogue and inquiry. We are excited that we can participate in a rich, diverse world of different perspectives and opinions. Conversation, as George Siemens says, is the “ultimate personalization experience. We ask questions and offer views based on our own conceptions. We personalize our knowledge when we socialize” (Siemens 2006:42).

    Newcomers may find dialogue and inquiry to be lacking, but this may be in part that they have yet to learn the unwritten rules of our learning culture. These unwritten (tacit) yet sometimes rigid rules of engagement frame how we may respond to each other’s knowledge needs, especially in group contexts. Confusion or even anger may result when breaking this culture of consensus.

    In formal settings, our organizational culture of consensus prevails. Disagreements are seldom expressed overtly. Decisions may be made in informal settings, and meetings then serve to make public what has already been agreed upon.

    The task orientation dictated by our learning culture and by the pressure of workload and line management expectations also leads to suspicion when one asks too many questions.

    Siemens, G., 2006. Knowing knowledge.

    Photo: Conversations.1  Stills from a music video for The Hole Punch Generation (Gwen Vanhee/flickr.com)

  • E-mail is formal learning

    E-mail is formal learning

    Technology has enabled new conversations across time and space. Yet e-mail, for example, has become a formal medium, subjected to some of the same rules of consensus that prevail in other formal spaces for dialogue. It can be argued that reading and responding to e-mail requires stopping our (other) work. We also have to figure out how to apply what we learn from e-mail to your work – the applicability problem. (The fact that it is equivalent to a postcard in terms of security is a different issue). Etiquette for a new medium must be negotiated over time, and confusion persists as different people apply differing assumptions about what can be said and how to say it.

    Photo: Express (Darien Law/flickr.com).

     

  • Eureka

    Eureka

    If informal learning constitutes an important way in which we learn, adapt and grow, it is important to be able to describe when, where, and how such learning occurs. Only then can we determine how the organization might provide or improve an enabling environment.

    We can begin such a process by recalling “aha” moments of significant learning or problem-solving that occurred outside of formal training contexts – and then asking questions about how we identified the problem, what strategies we used to tackle it, what surprised us, and, of course, what were the outcomes.

    The “aha moment” is a point in time, event, or experience when one has a sudden insight or realization. It has also been referred to as the eureka (“I found it”) effect. The “aha” moment is a kind of coming together of learning, made compelling because the solution identified may allow for perfect alignment with work. For most “aha” moments that we can recall, the problem at hand is recognized to be exceptional in some way.

    Such incidents are significant because they demonstrate:

    • the central relevance of informal learning to solve real-world business problems we face;
    • the ways in the “aha” moments of incidental learning often represent significant leaps in our ability to reframe, tackle or solve problems;
    • that informal learning is embedded into the work and therefore does not require stopping work to learn; and
    • informal learning outcomes foster complex, sometimes profound growth of individuals and teams, improving performance not just for the problem at hand but for a set of capabilities that can then be applied to future problem-solving.

    We have difficulty recalling the sequence of events and learning process that lead to such moments. The “process of learning through experience is so routine, that it becomes almost automatic and part of our tacit knowledge” (Watkins 2013:18). There is no time to reflect on what or how it happened, and no obvious incentive to do so. The sudden realization and its implications are so strong that the context for it is promptly forgotten. We retain lessons learned and are able to describe how these were applied in their work, but find it more difficult to identify and reflect on the learning processes at work. Our minds focus primarily on the take-away or the lesson and their implications, the knowledge outcome we can use.

    And yet, “if we are to capture and retain such lessons, deeper reflection is essential so that we can tell others what we learned” (Watkins 2013:18) and so that our organization can recognize the value of such insights and provide an enabling environment for them. Any learning that is retained solely by the individual is likely to be lost if and when the individual leaves, and unlikely to improve the knowledge performance of the organization.

    Watkins, K., 2013. Building a Learning Dashboard. The HR Review 16–21.

    Photo: S.S. Eureka, paddle steamer “Eureka” seen at the San Francisco Maritime Museum (Dave Wilson/flickr.com)

  • Accidents happen

    Accidents happen

    Question: Why were you looking at their data? Answer: Just out of interest to see.

    We recognize that some of our most significant learning may occur by accident, as a byproduct of some other activity such as task accomplishment, interpersonal interactions, or trial-and-error experimentation. Where informal learning may be sometimes intentional and more possibly planned, incidental learning is semi-conscious. Call it learning by accident. Call it serendipity.

    Surprise comes with a new realization, when we are not looking explicitly for answers: The element of surprise may actually be conducive to making the learning “stick”.

    Outside of “aha” moments which remain exceptional, incidental learning grows slowly through a process of accretion. New insights come when you do not expect them, whether in formal or informal spaces.

    Incidental learning is embedded into work. Incidental learning depends on context and purpose for its significance. Discovering a new way to do something new has immediate meaning  only if the learner had been personally frustrated with existing practice or had met failure with existing means.

    Why does incidental learning matter? Growing evidence has shown that informal and incidental learning drive performance in the workplace. However, we struggle with how to “capture” or strengthen informal learning – by definition fluid, relaxed, friendly or unofficial in style, manner or nature – and even more so with learning by accident.

    Recognizing the value of incidental learning does not mean that we discount or diminish the importance and relevance of other forms of learning, including traditional education and training, especially with respect to the acquisition of foundational technical knowledge and skills.

    Photo: Salvador Dali, “Chess Set,” 1971 (Andrew Russeth/flickr.com)

  • Learning habits

    Learning habits

    What are the learning habits that we perform on a regular basis to stay current? As professionals, we organize our personal learning habits in different ways that reflect our interests, personalities, and career paths. We rely on a variety of information sources, engage in reading, attend seminars and conferences, or take MOOCs or other online courses. And, of course, we connect with others. The content we seek may be directly related to our work – or conversely we may seek to acquire knowledge outside our immediate realm and field of vision.

    Some or if not most of our reading of work-related content takes place outside of work, even though some of us may choose to cordon off our private lives and succeed in doing so at least some of the time.

    We use these information sources in different ways, striving to question what we learn, sorting and organizing what we gather.  We recognize the deeply personal nature and diversity of these learning habits. Informal learning is not limited to the context of work. We may mobilize modes of inquiry or specific values to approach a problem in work, drawing on our personal lives, faith or culture, or family contexts.

    Each of us organizes such mostly informal, continuous learning in different ways. Making this strategic is not about prescribing best practice, but about recognizing the value of such practices. Our ability to quickly make sense of new knowledge – and to make it a habit – may be more important than the knowledge itself.

    Photo: 10 habits (Audrey Low/flickr.com)