Play, Learn, Perform – How learning needs to change (Part 2 of 3)

Teaching a person to fish, not to just give the rod

There’s a difference between knowledge based learning and performance based learning.

The knowledge based type is very much focused on providing the learner attain the right level of knowledge to supposedly perform after they have completed their module, paper, term or degree. And of course, what better way to assess them than to test them on their knowledge retention and the claim to success is of course how well they’ve scored at the final assessment.

But we’ve all heard of top students who didn’t continue on their blaze of success when they’ve moved on to the next level. You’ve all heard of high school valedictorians who fail in university, graduates with first class who failed big time in their roles at work and the list goes on. In the world of corporate learning, I’ve heard many business leaders who complain that despite the time and millions of dollars spent, their employees cannot perform at the level they want even if they had completed the certifications to the highest level.

The key here is to change the paradigm towards performance based learning. What does that mean? For example, the measurement of success for learning of a sales programme should be simply of how much better they perform as sales people – NOT how well they perform at the assessments! Another example – how successful is a university graduate? The ability to perform at work or to establish themselves independently after graduation. The reality that many of us have yet to grasp (or blissfully ignoring) is that there are just too many unemployed graduates without employable skills or school kids without the right skills to survive as adults or certified graduates who still cannot perform at the workplace. And this reality comes back down to learning programmes that provide them with the proverbial ‘rod’ of knowledge.

A person with a rod might have someone to run through the manual on how to use it – that’s formal learning per se. But for that person to be really good at it, what they really need to learn is – how to find the best fishing spot, what’s the best time of the day to fish, what kind of bait for the fish they wish to catch, the dangers of fishing and other practical experience that comes with experience. For L&D professionals, we’ve come to know this as learning on the job.

We need to move learning to another level. Teaching a bus driver on how to operate the vehicle isn’t enough and neither is providing them with guidelines of Dos and Don’ts. The aim should be to provide the kind of learning which not just enables them to perform on the job, but also to perform on a consistent level across time.

Think about it this way – just because we provide someone with knowledge doesn’t mean the person is inclined to practise or apply the knowledge they have.  If we send a person to a training programme or induction to provide them with some information about what they should do or how to do it – there’s a possibility that they may not use it when they are expected to. There must be appeal – either a push or pull factor, which can be personal or social or regulations that drive the practise. Of course for it to be sustainable across a longer duration time, it’s best that we strive for personal appeal. And this should be renewed from time to time or even upgraded along with the person’s individual development and needs.

What I am saying here is that we need to set a new end-goal for learning and it has to be performance. And we need to be clear about what end results we want to see from any learning initiative upfront first.

Change the rules for learning

We’re all different. No one is the same. No one person thinks the same way as another, no one does things the same way, no one is motivated in the same way and no one learns the same way as another. We may try to cluster people into groups and find patterns, but we all know that it’s not the same at the end of the way. In other words, there can be no individual learning style, regardless of all the theories that are out there.

But the prevalent reality is that when it comes to learning, individualisation has always been strangled right on the pre-set – how many of you have attended classes that you disliked? How many of you have been forced to complete dreadful e-learning modules? How many of you have been stuck in group discussions that cornered you into awkward questions that you would rather not answer?

We’re all victims of structured learning at some point in life. If you never felt that, you probably an easy to please customer and in my many years in learning, people like that are rare. But while people differ in terms of learning preferences – one thing you cannot take away from people is the sense of achievement. Of course, the key here is that we must also let them control their sense of achievement, which has several parameters like what to learn, how fast they learn and how much they learn.

The thing about formal education is that we try to control all of these and once we’ve synthesised a certain formula, we often destroy their sense of achievement because the ‘achievement‘ isn’t something the learner owns – it was conceived by someone else, it probably isn’t to the level they want or done at the speed they want.

And we must remember that formal learning, while effective as it is, all the control often ends of killing or draining the motivation of the learner. For learning to be effective, it’s important to create a safe learning environment for the learner – it simply means the space where they can make mistakes, learn from them and prepare them to do better the next level.

Can we provide learning where we can tap into the learner’s motivation and sense of achievement? Can we let them learn at their own pace, in a way that’s effective and challenging to them? Can we let them choose the way of learning that’s most appealing and effective to them? Can we allow them the freedom to make mistakes and not be bogged down by judgmental assessments? And of course, to have all of that whilst having gained an increment in knowledge.

In other words, we also need to open up learning and be flexible in the various modalities for learning to occur. When you design a learning programme, we need to expand beyond the boundaries of formal learning which can be timeline, place, tools and people. Shift the empowerment from teacher to learner driven where we entrust the learner to take charge of personal development and progress.

We need to have courage to explore and try out new things, allow for more than one way for learning to happen and of course, to measure the success of learning based on performance, not just knowledge or competence. This also will mean the shift of responsibility of driving learning to the business owner – for example, if you want your sales people to perform better, you need to go beyond sending them for training. You need to back that up with personal and team reflections, coaching and feedback plus recognition, culture building and team building to keep the motivation in good health. Leverage on opportunities from social media to facilitate social learning, crowdsourcing of ideas and other forms of utilisation.

Gone are the days when L&D people can implement formal learning programmes with impunity and business leaders delegate the responsibility of learning to L&D people in a carefree manner. The reality of today is – if you want your people to perform, to be engaged and to effectively learn – no one is in a better position to know and facilitate learning than business and line managers. If they don’t step up on the mantle of learning enablers, they’ll forever remain in their cushy (and soon to be obsolete) roles as performance drivers.

(To be continued … )