VIA VB7009 Embedded Board - Rear I/O (VIA Gallery/flickr.com)

The value of learning embedded in work

Learning strategy

Learning that is embedded into work resolves the dilemmas of (formal) learning that requires stopping work. What we learn as we work, we learn in order to apply, and such a learning process does not usually require dedicated resources.

For those of us who see ourselves as “doers” and oppose our way of doing to that of “thinkers”, we may only reluctantly acknowledge that what we do involves continual learning. It is context, we insist, that provokes a more explicit search for new knowledge, validation, or solution. And that is, in fact, the point: doing is a form of knowing. We rely on experience to address what is familiar. However, even when taking on a task that is similar to one we have done in the past, we may need to adjust, adapt, and change.

When we become mindful about learning, we can use any assignment – even mundane tasks – to more explicitly trigger learning.

Photo: VIA VB7009 Embedded Board – Rear I/O (VIA Gallery/flickr.com)

Smoke (Paul Bence/flickr.com)

Should we trust our intuition and instinct when we learn?

Learning strategy

How much of what we learn is through informal and incidental learning? When asked to reflect on where we learned (and continue to learn) what we need to do our work, we collectively come to an even split between our formal qualifications, our peers, and experience. As interaction with peers is gained in the workplace, roughly two-thirds of our capabilities can be attributed to learning in work.

We share the conviction that experience is the best teacher. However, we seldom have the opportunity to reflect on this experience of how we solve problems or develop new knowledge and ideas. How do we acquire and apply skills and knowledge? How do we move along the continuum from inexperience to confidence? How can we transfer experience? Does it “just happen”, or are there ways for the organization to support, foster, and accelerate learning outside of formal contexts (or happening incidentally inside them)?

Most of what we learn happens during work, in the daily actions of making contextual judgements. Such learning is more iterative than linear. Informal learning is a process that is assumed (without requiring proof), tacit (understood or implied without being stated), and implicit (not plainly expressed).

The experience we develop through informal learning shapes our sense of intuition, guiding our problem-solving in daily work. Our narratives reveal that most of the learning that matters is an informal process embedded into work. The most significant skills we possess are acquired through trial, error, and experimentation. Informal learning has the capacity to allow us to learn much more than we intended or expected at the outset. This makes such learning very difficult to evaluate, but far more valuable to those who engage in it – and potentially to the organization that can leverage it to drive knowledge performance.

The lack of mindfulness about informal and incidental forms of learning is a byproduct of the fact that such learning does not require overtly thinking about it. Undoubtedly, though, there are tangible benefits to reflecting upon individual or group learning practices. As George Siemens argued in Knowing Knowledge, informal learning is too important to leave to chance (2006:131). This is why we need the organization to scaffold the processes and approaches that foster learning in the informal domain.

Reflection aids in informal learning, but carries the risk of embedding errors in the learning process when such reflection is private or too subjective. We must be connected to others to make sense of what we learn. When the institutional environment is highly political, this diminishes the incentive to learn more than the minimum needed in order to satisfy the demands of our senior management. Informal learning requires us to be mindful (to care) about what we do.

Photo: Smoke (Paul Bence/flickr.com)

Factory whistles (pwbaker/flickr.com)

Wishful thinking

Learning strategy

Stopping work to learn remains the ideal. After all, many of us carry the memory of residential higher education as a powerful moment of personal growth, at the end of our teenage years and prior to entry into the workforce.

Formal learning in the present includes both in-service workshops and trainings as well as various forms of continued professional development (CPD) offered by training providers and higher education institutions. These were traditionally face-to-face and are increasingly delivered at distance (online).

Why do we wish so earnestly for more formal learning? Our expressed wish reflects our willingness to stay current and improve. However, wishing for more time to stop work and engage in formal learning is likely to remain wishful thinking because of at least four factors:

  1. Time – time is the scarcest resource and formal training requires stopping work to learn, in a learning culture that values task completion.
  2. Applicability – learning formally then requires additional learning processes to transfer and apply what has been learned (the applicability problem).
  3. Relevance – much of what we need to know in our work is in the tacit or informal domain and is therefore not taught formally anywhere.
  4. Currency – in many areas of work, formal courses are costly or difficult to update to reflect the most-current knowledge and practice.

Like the wish for more meetings, more communication, or more resources, the yearning for more formal training is an improbable proposition that fails to properly consider the value of continuous learning embedded into the work.

As a team, we need to accept that we cannot control or prescribe learning the way we could in the past. We need therefore to accept that there will be different initiatives and solutions – and that no one solution fits all.

“Unfortunately, we have been too busy to engage fully” is a standard one-liner to justify lack of involvement due to the “high burden of workload that everybody has” in formal learning initiatives or efforts that set aside time for exploratory dialogue. “Nobody has time for it.” We find that wanting more formal time to stop our work and ‘learn’ is a misdiagnosis.

When formal learning events take place, attending them may be difficult to justify due to urgent priorities. Furthermore, the content and format may be disappointing and make it unlikely that someone who attends will do so again.

Nevertheless, what is interesting is that proposals to stop in order to learn, reflect, or discuss tend to arise following specific incidents which make us mindful of the need for such learning – for example, in response to requests from senior management or upon realizing that we have missed a common target due to lack of regular communication across silos. Dedicated time for dialogue, to take stock, or to reflect on what has gone wrong (or right) may in fact serve as a temporary corrective, a signal to acknowledge that something has gone wrong by stopping routine work or business as usual.

We just need to keep in mind that most continual learning is informal, and that some of the most powerful “aha” moments are incidental learning, i.e. we come to a new insight when we least expect it. That suggests alternative approaches to foster the kinds of outcomes we expect from setting aside time that we do not have. Even when we are successful, we need to learn to look further into the links between actions and outcomes.

Sunrise Over Cape Yamu Phuket Thailand Panorama (Kim Seng Suivre/flickr.com)

3 critical questions for the new Humanitarian Leadership Academy

Events, Learning strategy

This morning, I’m looking forward to the London launch event for Save The Children’s Humanitarian Leadership Academy, touted by the Guardian as the “world’s first academy for humanitarian relief” that “may revolutionize” the sector. I ask the following three questions as a sympathetic observer: the Academy’s focus on the learning need for improved and scaled capacity in the face of growing humanitarian challenges is spot on. Now comes the execution.

  1. Is the Academy a platform or a hub? There are two possible roles for the Academy: as a connector, hub or platform for others and as a platform of its own (developing and delivering its own content). They certainly can overlap, but then how will the Academy both collaborate and compete for limited resources with already-established specialized training organizations? Is it a knowledge broker, catalyst, and connector – or an implementer? How will Save The Children – which has invested so much in the launch – step back to allow the multi-stakeholder governance model to succeed and recognize that the thought leadership this calls for may reside outside the confines of its established organizations and networks?
  2. What is the Academy’s learning strategy – and how is it different from failed attempts of the past to build capacity through training? What will be the relationship between those who know, those who do, and those who teach? What new learning models will foster cross-cutting leadership, collaboration, and analytical competencies needed – not just technical skills already taught elsewhere? How will it impact the trajectories of humanitarians at different stages of their professional lives? How will the Academy resolve the applicability problem? So far, the Academy’s approach appears to be based on formal learning through training. Can its organizational model foster the kind of informal and incidental learning that is responsible for much of getting things done in humanitarian work – as well as for innovation? Last but not least, how will educational technology be mobilized to help divest of the legacy of face-to-face training that is inefficient, ineffective, and cannot scale to meet the coming humanitarian challenges?
  3. Is it sustainable? DFID’s initial commitment covers 40% of the very ambitious business plan of £50m, and, more recently, the Academy’s touted partnerships with the private sector. This question, from my vantage point, is closely related to the learning strategy question. This can’t be only about more resources for training – even after rebranding as capacity-building – without first rethinking the why, who, and how and, second, reimagining learning beyond training. And that will require the Academy’s new governance to focus first and foremost on the “transformational” aspects of the project.

Photo: Sunrise Over Cape Yamu Phuket Thailand Panorama (Kim Seng Suivre/flickr.com)

Empty Seats (Jon Candy/flickr.com)

Workshop culture

Learning strategy

We live in a “workshop culture”. On the one hand, it is costly and exclusionary. Few can afford to travel, and the organization finds it more difficult to afford and justify the expense of moving bodies and materials to meet. Its outcomes are difficult to clearly identify, much less measure. They often contribute to communication overhead. Their format and content may be superficial or stiffen participants through overly formal approaches, thereby stifling creativity.

On the other hand, occasions to physically meet with colleagues in the network are increasingly rare. “I meet everybody not even once a year,” bemoans a senior manager.

In between, we have learned to blend online and face-to-face communication. Yet, we strongly feel that there is high value to those face-to-face exchanges, even if some of that value may not be immediately tangible. The formal work of a conference may itself be productive because of its process (including reflective practice) and outputs but also because of the informal learning (shared experience) and opportunity to connect and socialize with others.

Workshops, conferences, and other types of formal meetings provide an occasion for “closer chatting”, especially during social activities outside the formal event.

When we organize meetings, we pay attention to the coffee breaks, lunches, social outings, and other “in-between spaces”, recognizing their value to build trust in relationships, pursue individual negotiations, and even agree on what decisions will be made when we return to a formal setting. We may even feel that “when you want to solve something, it’s probably outside the meetings” or that “the most important things are decided outside meetings”.

Yet what we recognize as important in such processes is usually not related to the knowledge acquisition or transmission of formal presentations or training, which are often the explicit purpose of the events and correspond to formal learning. Therefore, we need to rethink now only how we organize workshops and meetings to support and foster the informal and incidental learning that matters, but also why we organize them.

Rusting away along the river Congo (Julien Harneis/flickr.com)

Emergencies kill learning habits

Learning strategy

We recognize that large-scale, complex emergencies have a dramatic impact on many aspects of our work, including what and how we learn.

Some may feel, based on experience, that emergencies kill learning habits. We put everything on hold – including the things we do to stay current – to focus on the emergency response.

However, the disruptive power of emergencies and their intensity fosters new, informal learning and provokes incidental learning indispensable to solve new problems in new ways. That is real-time innovation.

Therefore, because emergencies and the change they bring are a constant in our work, we need to harness their disruption and intensity to ensure that lessons are learned and applied – before, during, and after. This requires new approaches, tools, and a change in mindset. We need to retain not only what we learned, but also how we learned it.

Photo: Rusting away along the river Congo (Julien Harneis/flickr.com)

Nails (Adam Rosenberg/flickr.com)

Applicability

Learning strategy

Applicability is the brick wall of formal training approaches. Not only do we first have to stop work to attend a training, but once the training is completed, the challenge is then to figure out how to apply what we learned to daily work. It is estimated that, on the average, applicability of a well-designed workshop using the best participatory methods (such as simulations, dialogue, problem-solving, etc.) is around ten percent.

Nevertheless, we apply new knowledge and skills from formal training, especially on managing teams or administration-related tasks such as finance or procurement, not directly related to our core technical skills.

Yet, many of us have fond memories of formal training – irrespective of whether or not we were able to apply any of our learning to our work. Despite difficulty in recalling both the content of formal training and how we were able to apply, we remain willfully optimistic about its relevance. In some cases, we even express satisfaction upon training for a skill we already have.

We recall days spent in training as enjoyable experiences, perhaps because they release stress related to task delivery, provide space for reflection, and facilitate new relationships and network formation. Most formal events may not be designed as social spaces, but contain them nonetheless. Implicitly, we are referring to benefits of formal training other than applicability to our work – those whose legitimacy may not be recognized by the organization.

Individual expectations around formal training are not necessarily around applicability, even though this is ostensibly its purpose and justification. Despite formal training’s intrinsic flaws, its social spaces give us room for specific kinds of continuous learning that is precious – and difficult to obtain in other ways.

Photo: Nails (Adam Rosenberg/flickr.com)

The Longest Carpet Fringe (Theen Moy/flickr.com)

Formal learning of the past

Learning strategy

Formal learning in the past includes formal education and qualifications obtained. They serve as credentials of value to establish that we know – part of building relationships of trust – and provide frameworks of reference (“shelves”) to make sense of new knowledge. From the past, we also draw on personal experience, attitudes, and values acquired or developed in formal education but also from personal life, family and community.

As working professionals, we may think of higher education as a “thing of the past”. Nevertheless, formal qualifications matter for our personal brand and remain the prevailing currency in hiring practices. We draw on frameworks, tools and methods we learned in formal study. Foundational elements obtained through formal qualifications may be mobilized as fall-back or to drawn on an “overarching discipline of thought and the rigor of thinking” to help “navigate informal learning”. “We learn foundational elements through courses,” explains George Siemens, “but we innovate through our own learning” (Siemens 2006:131).

Photo: The Longest Carpet Fringe (Theen Moy/flickr.com)

Jello in mid-air while running (Tony Cyphert/flickr.com)

Faster

Learning strategy

We need to learn faster, to deliver results faster. We find ways to accelerate knowledge development.

And yet, although we acknowledge the need to focus on task completion, we accept that our shared learning takes time to build trust and deepen understanding before it can be turned into action.

In many cases, we know that the most powerful forms of learning come from surviving stretch assignments – where we tackle new tasks or problems that appear unsolvable that appear to be beyond our capacity and experience. Stretch assignments – not explicitly named or recognized as such – are common in our resource-scarce environment, despite our risk-adverse culture.

Ahu Tongariki, Easter Island, the Navel of the World (Yulin Lu/flickr.com)

Trust

Learning strategy

The strategies we use to anchor and filter rely on building trust in our working relationships. Learning together is grounded in a shared culture of openness and trust. For example, we trust each other to keep communication to the point. We mobilize different networks of trust, internal and external, based on need. This mutual trust is important as it provides for fast updates, problem-solving, and other forms of dialogue and inquiry – while limiting exploration and avoiding excessive detail.

Photo: Ahu Tongariki, Easter Island, the Navel of the World (Yulin Lu/flickr.com).