The Five Moments of Learning Need (#ASTDLN)

These are my live blogged notes from ASTD Learn Now Session with Conrad Gottfredson and Bob Mosher of Ontuitive (formerly LearningGuide Solutions). I am a co-facilitator for this 1.5 day conference, along with Bob, Conrad, and Chad Udell of Float Learning. About 55 learning colleagues gathered here at the lovely Hilton in San Francisco.


“I don’t care what they know, I do care what they do.” 


It’s all about APPLY.


Training is good and New and More. Getting them started, keeping them going.


Need to help them CHANGE and SOLVE.  This is part of the APPLY world.


Throw out the word “informal learning” – try to get the CFO to pay for informal learning. Instead, let’s shift to the word “performer support” – that’s a defined, measurable word.  


Note that it’s “performer” and not “performance” – it’s more human.  Performance support is the enabler, the solution that we build.


“Performance is reality. Forget everything else.” Harold S. Geneen CEO of ITT
In today’s dynamic world, I often need to learn at that moment of APPLY. Apply is time sensitive – I can’t get out and hunt down something in an LMS right now…


The new challenge of learning = knowledge aggregation. In today’s world we’ve got too much knowledge and info.  We’ve got access to more than enough stuff.  We live in a world of abundance. (In the olden days, you needed the expert up there to get it out to the people).  We have been in a pile on mode for 20 years.


We need to support the learner DURING, BEFORE and AFTER…


We can’t survive in a world of “I’m going to help you when you’re in the problem…”  -- that shouldn’t be all they have.  We need to prepare them…


Allison Rossett: “If we were better at before and after, we’d have fewer durings.”


Which of these five moments of need does your organization address thoroughly?

1. New
2. More
3. Apply
4. Change
5. Solve

We have been blending training, not blending learning.


Most of us have structural frameworks to do #1 and #2…we haven’t had methodologies for 3, 4, and 5….


The pyramid – the learner sits at the top at the moment of need. 

At the top: process, steps, concepts.


Sometimes that’s not enough and they want resources: references, learning, people (this is not good to bad hierarchy)


(Don’t confuse modality with design.)


(2 clicks, 10 seconds -- people will take bad stuff fast over good stuff that's hard to find.  We need to get people to the right things quickly).


Example:
In your class on the new software program -- teach them what it can do, talk them through scenarios. Don't show all the steps and the clicks and the drop-down menus.  Show the steps in an EPSS...


Bob now demos a LearningGuide built into a Salesforce.com implementation.  On a page, you click a LearningGuide button -- it brings up a whole list or links and info for the entire pyramid.  It's context sensitive.


Can do this same thing for a soft skill process -- Bob shows a graphical dashboard for a job requisition process.  Each step of the hiring process is shown and you can click down to find the steps/tasks/training resources (they pyramid) etc.


This type of system can sit on top of an LMS. So you can do tracking.


We overteach.  Let's stop doing that.  We don't have the time anymore.

The Changing Nature of Business & Its Impact on Learning (#ASTDLN)

These are my live blogged notes from ASTD Learn Now Session with Conrad Gottfredson and Bob Mosher of Ontuitive (formerly LearningGuide Solutions). I am a co-facilitator for this 1.5 day conference, along with Bob, Conrad, and Chad Udell of Float Learning. About 55 learning colleagues gathered here at the lovely Hilton in San Francisco.

• Economic disruption can happen in one part of the world and carries its impact across the world…disrupting our businesses.
• Technological disruption
• Demographic churn
• Political instability (the economic consequences of terrorism and upheaval)

The challenge for organizations: to learn at the speed of change.  We must continuously undergo new skill cycles to prepare for new competitive cycles.  Who hear can really plan for three years from now? Who can say, we’ve got our learning solutions in place? It’s like we’re all trying to change tires on moving trucks.


So what is the new normal? How do we learn at the speed of change?


“The consequences of standing still look worse than the consequences of taking a chance on change.” Denis Pombriant


3 fundamental functions that have to work together within an org to help adapt:

• intelligence function
• strategy function
• learning function (we have to learn from strategy and give it back)

Today we need to be dynamic learners:

• 1957-1981 = Permanent Learning – one-time learning for permanent qualification
• 1981-2004 = Continuous Learning – for ongoing qualification
• 2004-2009 = Dynamic Learning – rapid, unlearning, relearning, collaborative, self-directed learning at the moment of need

The nature of the leader in the new normal….from leader as expert to leader as learner….personal credibility based on personal learning agility…it’s a different set of leadership skills.


If you want to live in LearnNow…you have to live in the world of SUSTAIN. It’s not training anymore. We can’t keep a classroom mentality. We need to live in sustain and transfer. Get out of the brick and mortar or the LMS.


For a new learner, training is still the right starting place. We don’t advocate cutting training. We do advocate changing it A LOT.  Training helps you get to mastery. But mastery does not get you to sustain. Knowing stuff does not mean doing stuff. 


The LMS plays in the red zone = training. 


To get to sustain, we need to embed performance support across this whole spectrum.


In the sustain stage, what if people could keep raising their own bar…innovating, maintaining mastery, continuing to learn while getting better?  LearnNow techs including EPSS (embedded performance support solution – not electronic…, social and mobile help this.

John Maeda The Art of Leadership #LSCon

Opening keynote session with John Maeda, President of Rhode Island School of Design. I’m at Learning Solutions in Orlando today – hosted by the eLearning Guild.  Forgive typos and poor grammar!

The Art of Leadership

Maeda was tenured faculty at MIT – professor by day, student by night as he got an MBA.  And then four years ago he became college president with no training! So he bought books. And now he’s been learning about art and design.

Four things he’ll talk about today in regards to leadership: build from foundations, craft the team, sense actively, fail productively.

Build from Foundations:

Get your hands dirty. Artists are dirty – covered in chalk and paint. For the first year at RISD the goal is to break these artists down so they can learn to see again – stop drawing the buildings, but just drawing the shapes – the essence of what you’re really seeing…and not what you’re seeing in your mind.  This helps you get to the WHY of why you’re doing something.

Hilary Austen, Artistry Unleashed (a book) – case study of how artists think and takes apart 3 zones of knowledge:

• Directional Knowledge (Identity): I’m an artist, a programmer. A sense of what I want to be.
• Conceptual Knowledge (The How): I’m going to learn and make sense of this. Gather the skills and get the concepts.
• Experiential Knowledge (Doing): Get my hands dirty and figure it out.

This stream of learning is mastery. And as you’re doing, you start changing your conceptual knowledge - “hey that’s not how it really works.” And then you change your identity - “I’m not that kind of artist; i’m this kind.” This is the lifetime pursuit of excellence.

Craft the Team:

Great teams can enable; bad teams disable.

In Japan – these wooden buildings have been standing for thousands of years…how is that possible? Choosing the right materials – they went to the mountain and took trees from the north side of the mountain to build the north facing walls, etc.

Choose the right materials.

Your materials are your people.

How do you get individuals to work as a team? It’s the fundamental question and it’s a hard thing to do.

“There’s a WE in WELCOME.” Human power of welcoming people – it’s not coming through dialogue boxes or hashtags. It’s coming from people.

Most leaders use “we”.

Marshall Ganz – no books, works at Harvard, has YouTube Videos you can look for that talk about this  – simple principles of leadership based on common sense and the wisdom of the ancients – think of it as a spiral with three parts:

• Every leader leads through the stories that they tell. Through stories that move you through action. You will only act if you engage. Engage is not normal – you have to get out of autopilot.
• The story of self – who am I, where do I come from.
• The story of us – who are we and how are we connected and similar.
• The story of now – the world has changed; we have to work together to make a difference.

Every leader that is successful follows this pattern. Leaders need these stories because they’re usually leading a change. Leaders aren’t necessary if change isn’t needed. If everything is certain, you don’t need leaders. You need leaders in times of uncertainty.

Individuals can’t hear you unless they can feel you.

Sense Actively:

Artists are always doing the wrong things at the right now. They’re trying things.

Flying kites – the only time you can see the wind. Artists fly kites.

The wind (the forces of change today that we can’t see):

• He shows a chart of earnings and income vs. cost of medical and college costs. 
• The monopoly on information is being disrupted…times are uncertain…we need leaders.
• Organizations and hierarchy – this is being disrupted. It’s awkward because everyone can talk to everyone. This is terrible for those who are happy at the top. It’s morphing into a network – and it’s disorganized and feels a bit odd.  And it’s a trans-organization network – you can friend your competitor (you know what they’re doing and what they’re eating!).

Fail Productively:

Leaders are often challenged to listen when the listening is hard. Leaders are often connecting people – they hope to make connections between people.

Leadership = Traditional Leadership and Creative Leadership

• symbol of authority vs. symbol of inspiration
• yes or no vs. maybe (comfortable with ambiguity)

Ben Horowitz’s blog.  The secret of a CEO is to never tell anyone you’re having a psychological meltdown. “If you manage a team of 10 people, it’s quite possible to do so with very few mistakes or bad behaviors. If you manage an organization of many more it becomes quite impossible.”

A lot of leaders are used to

Redesigning Leadership (book by John Maeda and Becky Bermont) – chronicles first two years of being president of a college.

Humanity and Technology

The disruption of TVs, computers, mobile (a tv on your face…)

Technology realizes progress at light speed…electrons travel at light speed; people don’t.

Technology…delivery text, images, music, movies…there’s a pattern across CD ROMS to browsers to phones…we’re kind of stuck in this loop now.

Design = making solutions; Art = making questions

Artists ask why..why not? It’s not about auto-pilot…

VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) – characterizes how we feel now. It’s sounds scary, but we can work with it with a different VUCA (Visioning, Understanding, Clarity, Agility). This is the antidote to the now. Building common understanding.

 

Art and science are merging again. Scientists are inspired by artists.

Design makes something desirable. It makes you want it.  (Think Apple products!)

Turning STEM into STEAM – adding the arts back into science.  Bringing the left and right brain together.  (STEM = Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics)

The Accidental Instructional Designer: A Learning Solutions Workshop!

On March 19, I'll be leading a one day workshop in Orlando as part of the pre-conference program for the eLearning Guild's 2012 Learning Solutions conference.

From the workshop description:

Most of us working as instructional designers got here by accident, by showing an aptitude for training or expertise in a particular subject matter area. And now, here you are, responsible – in some way – for the design, development, and/or delivery of eLearning. And now you’re actually passionate about what you do. So now what? This workshop will help answer some questions: What does eLearning look like today? What flavors does it come in and do I need to be an expert in all areas? How do I know when to use what kind of eLearning, or whether eLearning is even the right choice?

If you're an accidental instructional designer looking to get better at what you do and willing to explore some new ways of looking at things, then please join me in Orlando!

There's still plenty of time to sign up.

The CBT Lady

In the spirit of trying to explain to people what I do for a living, I was trying to explain to someone recently what I do for a living.

“I help organizations design and deliver online training programs…”

The guy made a cross with his fingers and hissed at me saying, “Oh no, you’re the CBT Lady!”

Visions of hairnet covered lunch ladies. I haven’t recovered yet from this one.

The CBT Lady?

“Oh no. You create those horrible things that we have to sit through. Every screen is locked out.  And there’s a test at the end and if you get one question wrong you have to take the whole thing again!"

I then tried to explain, “We create elearning that is NOT that…we try to do that much better…”

“Oh no, the CBT Lady!”

Two weeks later.  Same guy. He introduces me to his wife. She and I start chatting about what we do. “She’s the CBT Lady!”  And then she starts hissing at me.

It was all in good fun. But seriously. This is how our industry is perceived by the world -- by those forced to suffer through hours of clicky-clicky blah-blah at the hands of the CBT Lady.

Whatever you do, don’t be The  CBT Lady.  I’m begging you.

Photocredit: “Always be nice to the lunch lady” by MelvinSchlubman

Write the Questions First...

"Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." ~ Rainer Marie Rilke, from “Letters to a Young Poet"

Words to live by. And, it turns out, words by which to design instruction.

Read more in Kineo Top Tip 64: Write the Questions First

Kineo Event in Los Angeles Feb 28th

If you're an elearning professional in the Greater Los Angeles area, please join us for a fun and informative networking and sharing event on February 28.  


Kineo clients from the entertainment and technology industries will be presenting case studies, and I'll be leading a conversation, along with Kineo's Tanveer Makhani, on mobile learning for  the enterprise.

Date:  February 28, 2012

Time:  8:30 AM – 11:30 AM

Location:  Warner Bros. Screening Room, Burbank, CA

For more information email events@kineo.com

Bring yourself, bring your elearning friends and clients!  See you in Burbank!

Photocredit: Hollywood by tolomea