LXPs make sense in a post-COVID-19 world. 2/2

In my previous blog, I tried to reason out why L&D is in for a long but tough journey towards LXPs. This world is a funny place. Post COVID-19, this journey (specifically) now seems to me a quick & painless one. This pandemic served as a worm-hole for all the leaders to position digital transformation at the center of their business strategy.

In case you’re still wondering why it still makes sense. Here’s a list that might help you see what I’m seeing.

Humans: We, as a race have been hijacked by the technologies. Our attention is being continuously fought for by the best minds combined with algorithms that might already know us better than the person who’s closest to us.

Having said all of this, this is probably the only time in history that we as a race have been exposed to so much information. We’re not capable of processing all this information with our current physical specs.

We as humans are thus listening to more of playlists, watching curated content and timelines to narrow the information that we consume, only to realize that it’s contributing to the same problem. There’s just too much information.

Yes, I intentionally forgot Netflix because who is even watching Netflix with all these insane webinars happening.

Learners: We, as learners come to the workplace from a world that’s filled with ‘too much information’ to realize that our professional world is moving too fast and we might just get left behind, to adjust with this reality, we need to learn where the world is headed.

But there are 2,316 courses that will teach me how to ‘Python for Beginners’ and 545 out of those are rated 4.0 out of 5.0. It doesn’t end there; our employers want us to do the courses that they’ve specially designed for us to ensure that we get better at what we do.

We have 24 hours in a day in which we got to figure out a way to be physically & mentally fit along with the fact that we have to be supremely productive, because now, in this world, we’re competing with everyone in the world and not just the people from our locality/country.

Employers: Just for funsies, if we have to empathize with the employers, we will realize that one of the key objectives of a business is to be profitable. In order to be profitable, we’d require the business to have employees that are productive & capable of delivering on what’s asked of them to reach the objectives of the business.

If the employees can’t manage the expectations, the employers train them and expect the employees to learn and perform. Well, that’s a fair ask, isn’t it? However, there are few questions that need to be asked and probed into by the employers. These questions need to reveal answers & insights on training effectiveness & correlation to performance.

Only then, perhaps, we will objectively know that training really aids the employees, in turn benefitting the employers.

Else, employers will just play it safe, go for someone with education & experience.

Analytics: Even in its nascent days, data analytics has made heavy progress in what it can do & achieve. Descriptive, Diagnostic, Predictive & Prescriptive analytics can now do things that some of us (including me) think that is magic. The quantity & quality of data that can be measured can help us identify when an employee is planning to quit, when the employee is feeling motivated to perform/learn, what skill sets does the organization lack or specialize in etc. This business intelligence is what can lead the transformation in a big way.

It’s inevitable: This will result in humans wanting to get better, learn faster & grow exponentially. We will have to experiment and figure out better ways to learn. Perhaps, LXPs fundamentally feel that it is, as a philosophy operating in this space. We need to dig deeper, think harder about this problem, of how we learn & grow.

(I’ve laid down these points as pieces of an unsolved puzzle. I want to now tie them together with LXP. It’s a long shot, I know!)

This is what I think LXPs are aiming for & they’ll get there soon-ish

A. LXPs are inherently designed to grow around the human, according to the likes, dislikes, interests & behavior patterns. So you can design your timelines from scratch and this time the algorithms will help you fetch information according to your interests, behavior & motivations. Separating the signal from the noise.

B. LXPs can become intelligent to understand the learners' capabilities and offer the most appropriate content or even assessments or recommendation instead of bombarding the learners with learning content worth 5453 minutes, leaving the learners with specific daily/occasional learning targets. This would help save learners a lot of time and mental hassle. The motivational reward loops & social learning can even make it interesting for the learners to increase their engagement with the LXPs MoM, QoQ, YoY

C. LXPs can theoretically provide business intelligence for the employers with regards to Descriptive, Diagnostic, Predictive & Prescriptive analytics of the learners for the employers & learners. To help the learners get better & faster, effectively

It’s inevitable, we’re in a new world now. Hope you got to see, what I am seeing.