The best L&D resources of June 2020

In the past few months, I've been lucky to meet amazing L&D professionals and follow others as they create insightful content for the learning sphere. In March, April, and May I've seen a huge increase in resources first meant to support us in moving from offline to online, and second in living in a post-pandemic world.

Now we are slowly but surely bringing back the conversations around learning metrics, moving from learning to performance, gaining business acumen, designing experiences rather than events, or meeting the learner at the point of need.

Here are some of the best resources I've seen this month dedicated to learning professionals.

ARTICLES

1. To emerge stronger from the COVID-19 crisis, companies should start reskilling their workforces now

If we want to help our organizations, we have to stick close to those who decide the post-pandemic business priorities. One interesting idea I got out of this article is “to build a no-regrets skill set—a tool kit that will be useful no matter how an employee’s specific role may evolve.”. In their view, this skill set should be a combination of (1) technical awareness, data visualization, analytics, (2) critical thinking, project management, problem-solving, creativity, (3) advanced interpersonal skills for leaders, (4) self-awareness, self-confidence, and self-reliance.

2. Learning analytics: ten questions L&D detectives must ask to assess the impact of learning

“The key to an effective learning solution is making sure it aligns with your business goals and objectives.”. The bottom line of finding those business goals and objectives is acting like a detective. Being curious and asking the right questions. I find this list of questions really useful when assessing the needs of your business and drafting your learning strategy.

3. Five things to include in your learning and development strategy

A pretty straight forward article mentioning what you should account for in your learning & development strategy. (1) Align with the strategic focus of your organisation, (2) Outline approach to L&D in terms of vision, goals, metrics and strategic objectives, (3) Outlines clearly how L&D supports performance and organisational skills gaps, (4) Identify the learning options available and the how to access, (5) A clear communication plan.

“Designing a winning strategy is the art of asking questions, experimenting and then constantly renewing the thinking process by questioning the answers. No matter how good today’s strategy is, you must always keep reinventing it.”, Constantinos Markides

PODCAST EPISODES

1. Big Behavior Shifts Start with Small Nudges

I follow Humu closely since I deeply admire Laszlo Bock and how he and his team use data to shift behavior. There are three things that I got out of this episode. (1) You gotta solve real problems, so you should prepare for digging deep. (2) "If you want people to behave differently, the environment needs to change.”, so don't use nudges just for managers, use them for the whole team. (3) Don't ask for input if you are not ready to follow-up on your findings.

“If you want people to behave differently, the environment needs to change.”, Laszlo Bock

2. Moments in L&D

A great conversation about going from learning to performance, curiosity, jobs to be done, Learning Pros as Business Partners with Alice Collier-Niblett, Danny Seals, and Adam Harwood. A recurring question they mention is how can we be where our learners are?

3. The Future of Learning & Development

This Podcast episode featuring Serena Gonsalves-Fersch brings back the discussion on L&D skills we need to acquire or improve. She talks about understanding how adults learn and disseminate information, performance consulting, understanding how a business makes money, analytics, data science, and how we will use data to impact business and individual performance. This you have all heard before, but she mentioned one more thing that I found interesting. “If we didn’t control has its taking place, learning hasn’t happened.”. I wonder where it is actually useful to lose control, so we can focus more on the things that matter?

REPORTS

1. 2020 Workplace Learning Report

I liked this year’s combination of data & case studies from the LinkedIn Report. Although the top challenges of L&D were not a surprise - measuring impact, driving engagement, turning managers into champions, and upskilling/ reskilling, the case studies they shared can serve as inspiration: Linkedin Case Study, Kellogg Case Study, MGM Resorts Case Study.

2. Equipping managers to become great leaders

“Managing team performance and accountability” seems to be a primary concern for first-time managers. This CoachHub report is an interesting dive into how managers feel about development opportunities, remote work, and what fears, and desires they have. Since the results probably differ from company to company, it would be interesting to run our own internal research on how first-time managers feel to make sure we come back with appropriate learning experiences.

3. The State of Work: A Report

The main findings of this Slack report are (1) People crave connection to their organization’s strategic vision, and (2) Without insight into that organizational vision, people struggle in the workplace. They describe three types of workers, aligned, unaligned with the strategy and knowledge workers, and showcase how alignment affects engagement and what are some tactics to reach employees with strategy information.

BOOKS

Design Thinking for Training and Development

You have probably heard about Design Thinking before, the problem-solving technique applied, especially in product development. Learning designers have been trying to use it to come up with reliable solutions for a while now, but the truth is the framework is not 100% applicable to L&D. This book puts together Design Thinking and ADDIE to build a problem-solving framework applicable for L&D, has all sorts of amazing examples, and is definitely worth reading.

LINKEDIN CONVERSATIONS

“Lack of learner time” 

Let’s assume for a second that it’s not that people don’t have the time to learn, but we are doing something wrong. I went through Sam’s post and draw a list of things it seems we are doing wrong and the solutions we have at hand.

Why do people “don’t have the time to learn”?

• Because we ask them to step for hours outside their workflow to learn;
• Because what they learn during those hours is usually not the solution to their problem;
• Because even if we do have the right solution, we don’t always know how to pitch it;
• And sometimes because learning it’s not part of your organization’s DNA.

What can we do better?

• Get to know your learners. What are their needs? What problems are they trying to solve? When do they need to learn? How are they learning right now?
• Tailor your solution to solve their problems and deliver it in their moment of need;
• Stop assuming just because they work for your organization they should be available for your learning programs. Start pitching and get them excited about your solutions. 

ONLINE EVENTS & WEBINARS

Learning Out Loud - Essentials skills leaders need to develop to prepare for the future of work

Learning Tech Talks - Less Friction, Less Fiction

OFFBEAT - THE ACTIONABLE L&D NEWSLETTER

This month was a full month for Offbeat, the actionable newsletter for L&D professionals. We welcomed 200 subscribers and sent 4 editions, one for each Sunday of the month. Here's every issue so far:

• 6/ Technology and L&D, a romance novel
• 5/ Lack of learner time is not the problem
• 4/ Moving from learning events to learning experiences
• 3/ Are we learning the right way?
• 2/ Learning in the flow of work
• 1 / The one where it all began

If you want to get curated L&D resources every week straight to your inbox, subscribe to Offbeat - https://www.offbeat.works. I'm putting all my passion into making this newsletter great for L&D peers, so any feedback is more than welcomed.