Stories

Tag: learning strategy

  • Dinosaur

    Dinosaur

    “You’ll become a dinosaur if you don’t learn.”

    People in the organization recognize the need for change, see its value, see their own roles in the process, are willing to adopt new approaches, and possess the competence to move forward with change: At the individual level, we strive to consider each task, however mundane, as an opportunity to learn. Continual learning requires cooperation and collaboration with both internal (dialogue and inquiry) and external (connect to external systems) interlocutors. It is not “not knowing” that is the problem. It is often the lack of doing – a form of knowing. Meaningful connections are made explicitly based on need, rather than prescription, often to solve the problems at hand. Feedback is the key element in how we continually learn. We use feedback to adjust, acclimate, and adapt. We strive to leverage the tension between the learning we do to deliver results and the learning we do to explore and innovate. We acknowledge that this is difficult, but recognize that it is indispensable in order to keep up with the pace of change and to improve our preparedness for the unknown.

    Photo: Triceratops skeleton on display in the Galeries d’Anatomie comparée et de Paléontologie at the Jardin des plantes in Paris, France (personal collection).

  • One size does not fit all

    One size does not fit all

    How does an organization’s leaders recognize, encourage, and reward both existing learning practices and positive change in learning behaviors that foster informal and incidental learning?

    Learning strategy recognizes the value of learning in all its forms, including informal and incidental learning, formal qualifications, and in-service formal education and training. One size does not fit all: the diversity of learning options also reflects the highly personalized nature of how each person organizes their own learning.

    However, learning strategy identifies learning activities that requires stopping work and dedicated resources as both difficult to apply and unlikely to be sustainable over time. Most of the learning that matters is, in fact, already embedded into daily problem-solving, dialogue and collaboration with colleagues and external partners.

    Members of the organization develop individual and team learning strategies as a matter of necessity – to get things done. Hence, the learning strategy seeks to recognize existing practices at least as much as it aims to encourage new ones. Strengthening learning culture requires cultivating a learning habit in people and in the culture so that a spirit of inquiry, initiative, and innovation predominates.

    Photo: Sewer grill ecology (personal collection).

  • Nothing that we do can be taught

    Nothing that we do can be taught

    Many people in the organization recognize the need for change, see its value, see their own roles in the process, are willing to adopt new approaches, and possess the competence to move forward with change. “Nothing that we do can be taught”, they say, “so the challenge and the learning need is almost constant”. At the individual level, we strive to consider each task, however mundane, as an opportunity to learn. Continual learning requires cooperation and collaboration with both internal (dialogue and inquiry) and external (connect to external systems) interlocutors.

    It is not “not knowing” that is the problem. It is often the lack of doing – a form of knowing. Meaningful connections are made explicitly based on need, rather than prescription, often to solve the problems at hand. Feedback is the key element in how we continually learn. We use feedback to adjust, acclimate, and adapt.

    We strive to leverage the tension between the learning we do to deliver results (execution) and the learning we do to explore (innovation). We acknowledge that this is difficult, but recognize that it is indispensable in order to keep up with the pace of change and to improve our preparedness for the unknown.

    Photo: Continuous Movement (Matt Otto/flickr.com)

     

  • 7 actions imperatives of learning strategy

    7 actions imperatives of learning strategy

    The learning strategy recasts the evidence-based seven dimensions of learning culture (used to measure learning culture and performance) as action imperatives. In order to improve performance through learning, the organization needs to take specific action to:

    1. Create continuous learning opportunities
    2. Promote inquiry and dialogue
    3. Encourage collaboration and team learning
    4. Empower people toward a collective vision
    5. Connect the organization to its environment
    6. Establish systems to capture and share learning
    7. Provide strategic leadership for learning

    For each action imperative, analysis is grounded in the narrative of individual learning practices reconciled with best practice drawn from the vast research corpus on learning culture and performance. Patterns emerging at the juncture between narrative and evidence may then be formulated as general and specific recommendations, while carefully considering feasibility and risk in the organizational context and environment.

    Photo: Pinwheel tessellation, version 2, reverse, backlit (Eric Gjerde/flickr.com)

  • 12 questions that learning strategy seeks to answer

    12 questions that learning strategy seeks to answer

    Learning is the acquisition of knowledge, skills and competencies (behaviors) through experience and study. We all want to learn, so why is it so difficult to stop work to make time for learning, despite our best intentions? In exploring possible solutions to this question, learning strategy emerges from the existing practices and strengths of the organization – together with a diagnosis of where it needs to improve knowledge performance.

    Learning strategy examines how knowledge and learning can be improved, starting with mundane, routine or recurring questions and frustrations of daily work life, such as:

    • What can I do when I have too much e-mail?
    • How often should we meet as a team?
    • How can I experiment and innovate when I have so many urgent tasks to deliver?

    The strategy also answers questions about how we work together as a team and with people outside the organization (partners, beneficiaries, customers…):

    • How can I best learn from and with those we serve?
    • What is the best way to stay connected with co-workers who are halfway around the world?
    • How should we onboard new staff?
    • How can we support each other to do better as we work?

    Learning strategy also guides the organization in developing context-specific, best practice and evidence-based answers to questions such as:

    • How do we detect patterns and trends that matter for our work?
    • How do we make decisions in the face of information overload or, on the contrary, when we are faced with uncertainty?
    • How do we get the “eureka” moments when trying to solve difficult problems?
    • Why are our information systems (sometimes) difficult to use – and its specific case: why do we hate our LMS?
    • How can I identify and adopt technology that can make it easier to communicate, share and learning with my colleagues?

    Last but not least, learning strategy outlines what we may expect or ask from our managers and leaders, who have a key role in encouraging and developing people as well as in advocating for broader organizational change that recognizes the value and significance of learning as a key driver of the organization’s performance.

    Photo: Rainbow of Ribbons (Fleur/flickr.com)

  • Make a wish

    Make a wish

    Is the CLO really the ‘fifth wheel’ in the organizational strategy wagon? Learning leaders tend to roll their eyes upward in sour-faced agreement about ending up as an after thought – after strategic alignment has been completed everywhere else in the organization, or being considered as a support service to enable and implement rather than a partner. So, what to wish for?

    First, I would wish for an organization that is mission-driven. This is what everyone wishes for, of course, so let me try to be specific. The mission should inspire, giving everyone something to strive for, to encourage people and structure to reinvent themselves to face global complexity – with clarity that reinvention is a constant, not a one-off. It would require strong leadership, not command-and-control, but modelling the values and practices of the organization and the acceptance that uncertainty requires calculated risk-taking, now and tomorrow. Such distributed leadership requires a strong, vocal chief executive attuned to the hyper-connected, perception-driven world we live, and can be brought to life only by a talent and learning team that excels at hiring, developing and retaining people who don’t fit traditional profiles, who recognize misfits as potential superheroes. The people function needs to be fast – keep a potential candidate waiting for months, and she’s gone.

    So, what does such a profile look like? We all recognize that most of the learning that matters is embedded into work… and then go back to organizing workshops, building online courses, and demanding resources so that people can stop their work, go off and study. Therefore, unless she is a digital native, our L&D misfit cum superhero sidekick may have to unlearn her own vestigial L&D workshop and training culture and its overemphasis on formal training  – and figure out how the lead the organization through that same process. How? Like an anthropologist, she should be able to unpack, read, and decipher the organization’s learning culture, invent new ideas to capture and share informal and tacit learning, and engineer embedded, adaptive systems to institutionalize these ideas. Immerse, observe, and learn to connect the dots between learning culture, strategy, and mission, knowing that culture drives performance.  Through this process, iterate ideas, experiments, and pilots, and do it fast enough and often enough to collapse the distinction between ‘stuff you try’ and operations – stretching the organization’s knowledge performance a little more each time. Think in the yoga of organizational development: stretch and stretch, but accept that you won’t get there the first time. Accept what is ‘good enough’, knowing that you get to try again, and that what is perfect now would not be so tomorrow, anyway. This circles back to leadership for learning – with the learning leader as sidekick, depending on the vision and the will of the chief executive to bring such a vision to life.

    The mantra is to maximize efficiency and effectiveness to become a strategic business partner. On efficiency, technology’s economy of effort removes the necessity of distinguishing between internal staff development and the needs of your external audiences (customers). This is key to working frugally with minimal human and financial resources. However, the organization should be skeptical of claims that efficiency or scale trumps effectiveness. Witness the slow agony of the LMS, the massively profitable industry of clunky content containers that require massive investment but depend on transmissive, behaviorist pedagogical models of the past, fail even at the purpose of compliance for which they are designed, and seldom deliver tangible knowledge or performance outcomes.

    I believe that it is reasonable to proclaim that in our knowledge-based economy, an organization’s ability to learn is key to both its survival and growth. However, this raises expectations about the relevance of the learning function, its outcomes and return on investment. And yet, even with perfect alignment, we are adding small, single-digit percentage points to performance and business results that, in many contexts, will not be measurable at the time when they matter most, if ever. Here is how Doug Lynch sums it up:

    The news isn’t all bad. The theory of human capital development suggests that if we develop people, they will become more productive. The problem is, empirical research suggests between 66 and 80 percent of the variance in performance is not captured by human capital development models. At best, we are able to impact 34 percent of the performance variance. And yet, the space seems to operate like learning is an elixir, curing any ill.

    The elixir fallacy results in part from our own legitimate search for relevance, alignment, and results. At the end of the day, you will be asked to “land it”, to demonstrate with fireworks and marching band how learning altered the organization’s DNA and made a difference. But what if that takes time, and looks more like a process of grains of sand washing up on the beach rather than a maelstrom of disruption? What if the part of L&D practice that matters is really, as Karen Watkins calls it, the “little R&D”, the unimpressive, slow-and-gradual process of trying new things, experimenting, getting it wrong and then right…?

    So, the last item on my wish list is for an organization that acknowledges that strengthening learning culture requires a mixed methods approach, alternating  between slow, gradual change-over-time that leverages smart technology and pedagogy that can impact everyone in the organization with shock-and-awe leadership and high-potential development, action learning, wicked problem solving, innovation tournaments, and other highly visible acts of disruption to shake up business as usual.

    Photo: Speaking of effigies (Dayna Bateman/Flickr).

  • Online learning 101 for humanitarian managers and decision makers

    Online learning 101 for humanitarian managers and decision makers

    I’ve just posted on LSi.io a comprehensive (65-minute) presentation intended for humanitarian managers and decision makers working in organizations without prior experience in online or distance learning. It includes numerous practical examples and case studies, as well as a description of the best available learning theory and best practice approaches most appropriate for the humanitarian learning context.

    Here are the 10 questions addressed:

    1. It’s not about technology. Really?
    2. What learning problems do you want to solve?
    3. What kind of online learning can prepare humanitarians?
    4. What do you need to know about costs, time, and complexity?
    5. Where’s the money?
    6. Do you need scale?
    7. Can you do more than transmit information with e-learning?
    8. If experience is the best teacher, how can e-learning help?
    9. Does e-learning work at all?
    10. How does all this fit together?

    This slide set was originally presented to the Assessment Capacities Project (ACAPS) on 22 September 2014. It is available for LSi.io members via this link. LSi.io is a non-profit talent network for learning leaders from corporate, academic, and humanitarian/development sectors interested in solving wicked problems. (Note: there are some display problems on lsi.io which should be fixed soon. Thank you for your patience.)

     

  • Games for health: 14 trick questions for Ben Sawyer

    Games for health: 14 trick questions for Ben Sawyer

    Ben Sawyer is the co-founder of both the Serious Games Initiative (2002) and the Games for Health Project (2004). He is one of the leading experts on the use of game technologies, talent, and design techniques for purposes beyond entertainment. He answered 14 questions by e-mail ahead of his presentation to the IFRC Global Health Team.

    1. What is your favorite game?

    I used to reference an old RPG (role playing game) called Ultima IV. But, in reality, it’s Minecraft. Just such a great achievement and fun to play.

    2. What is the worst “serious game” you have ever played?

    Most of them.

    3. What is a game, anyway?

    A game by definition is a system, defined by rules, where people engage in defined competition to achieve a quantifiable outcome either against an opponent or the system itself. There are many dictionary-style definitions. In reality, a game is a mediated experience. Whether something is a game is based on the perception of the user and their reaction to interacting with the game. Increasingly such perceptions are defined by people’s experience and expectations of the games they play or have played in life. Thus it’s possible to have many things that are, by definition, a game, but by perception of players are not worthy of that phrase.

    4. What is the difference between games and gamification?

    The former is about creating a fully cognitive experience with a more encompassing model of engagement and interaction, and the other is about trying to short circuit the experience and use just a few things in hopes that creating a “game” or an experience that instills some of the core ideas of what a game is by definition will generate a bump in engagement. They’re not the same thing. Often, gamification devolves to just creating competitive experiences based on some sort of point-scoring model that is at-best glorified industrial psychology and not necessarily a great, giant outcome of innovation or game design.

    5. Why use games for serious health work?

    There are a variety of reasons, but the biggest is that games hold strong promise to instantiate behavior change through a variety of media, simulation, and cognitive effects.

    6. If you don’t play games, can you still design one?

    Everyone can design games, some people do it pretty well, but ideally it’s professionals working with vision holders and experts that generate great games.

    7. Can games motivate learners to change behavior?

    Yes, and we have proof of that in research. That said, it’s a lot of work, and there are different approaches, and ideally they need to be part of more comprehensive programs.

    8. Can you prove that serious games can affect health outcomes? What does the evidence say?

    The evidence so far says that games which are carefully constructed by good teams, using clear theory, and building a clear model of what drives behavior change have a chance to do it. That means most things don’t, because they don’t follow the careful approaches needed to ensure the best chance for success.

    9. What do you need to understand to successfully launch a game that improves health?

    First, you need to understand what’s possible to do, and what might be worth risking to do. In terms of launching, the biggest issue is understanding how you’re going to reach and support your users such that they see the utility of what they’ll do such that it is an equal attractor alongside their enjoyment of the game itself.

    10. What are the most common myths and misconceptions about “serious games”?

    That games have to be “fun” to be effective, that games have to be more fun than the best entertainment only games, and that just because something is a game by definition it inherently provides the best outcomes we associate with our favorite games. And that this is only and predominantly about engagement and motivation versus any other factors.

    11. Who funds health games and why?

    So far, it has been government and foundation funds looking to find new breakthroughs in health and healthcare, so mostly research into the art of the possible. Beyond that, it has been private groups seeking to create new products, or new engagement models, something that generates new paths to new services.

    12. HTML5 or app? iOS or Android? Should health folks care about the choice of technology?

    They should care about having a strategy that makes them able to run on all the leading platforms for the least amount of work possible. That can mean many different approaches, but in general it should not be a process that locks you in. There are at least three great ways to achieve cross platform responsive design – and they each have pros and cons.

    13. What is the best game studio for serious games?

    The best studio is situational. The best approach is to have game designers and producers who are agnostic as to what to make, how, and for how much, help you define your game without any conflict of interest in who or how it’s precisely built. And then, based on the qualified idea of what you want and should make, to find the best available and affordable developer that fits your culture, needs, and especially the specifics of what you should make. Hire an architect before you hire the person to build your house – games are no different.

    14. What’s the best way to demonstrate the power of a game for health?

    Build one, test it, push it to the field, rinse and repeat.

  • Making learning strategic in development and humanitarian organizations

    This is the third in a three-part presentation about learning strategy for development and humanitarian organizations. It was first presented to the People In Aid Learning & Development Network in London on 27 February 2014.

  • What is a system?

    What is a system?

    Donella H. Meadows wrote the following simple, eloquent description of what is a system:

    “A system isn’t just any old collection of things.

    A system must consist of three kinds of things: elements, interconnections, and a function or purpose.

    A system is an interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves something.

    The behavior of a system cannot be known just by knowing the elements of which the system is made.

    A system is more than the sum of its parts.

    It may exhibit adaptive, dynamic, goal-seeking, self-preserving, and sometimes evolutionary behavior.

    It is easier to learn about a system’s elements than about its interconnections.

    If information-based relationships are hard to see, functions or purposes are even harder.

    A system’s function or purpose is not necessarily spoken, written, or expressed explicitly, except through the operation of the system.

    Purposes are deduced from behavior, not from rhetoric or stated goals.

    The least obvious part of the system, its function or purpose, is often the most crucial determinant of the system’s behavior.

    To ask whether elements, interconnections, or purposes are most important in a system is to ask an unsystemic question.

    All are essential.

    All interact.

    All have their roles.

    But the least obvious part of the system, its function or purpose, is often the most crucial determinant of the system’s behavior.”

    Understanding what is a system is the starting point to tackling complex problems.

    Meadows, Donella H., 2008.Thinking in systems: A primer. Chelsea Green Publishing.