Three Questions Series: #1

Toby Harris, Head of Solutions at Filtered.

?? What's one thing you're most excited about around the future of work and learning?

Toby: It's not VR, AR or even AI that I find most exciting. It's the adoption of workflow tools like Slack and MS Teams. After decades of email and static sites, we finally have a place to put stuff that isn't separate to work but is amenable to learning new things. 

If YouTube is the world's biggest consumer learning platform then SharePoint used to be the corporate world's equivalent. Now we have something a bit like Slack to host learning and discussion rather than clunky SharePoint sites, the possibility of using bots to build an integrated learning, people development and performance management hub that people both use and enjoy using is here.

?? What's your approach to your own learning/self-development?

Toby: I try to listen out for learning recommendations and try to make time to follow up on them. When I do, if it's knowledge I can't apply here and now by sharing in some way (which is best) I save links and notes from my research into large Word documents that I find easiest to search and work from when I need to put that stuff into practice. 

I get recommendations from people, from newsletters and automated recommendations for my sources. But I also set time aside to research something new when I know it might be important. I tend to start with peer-reviewed sources like meta-analyses and work outwards from there. If I find something interesting and usable, I'll check its references and look for counter arguments. I also read a lot of books.

?? Current favorite learning-related resource, writer/speaker, anecdote or quote?

Toby: It's work by Anders Ericsson on high performance, recommended to me by my colleague James Tyas. I've read it in the form of a long academic article called "Giftedness and evidence for reproducibly superior performance: An account based on the expert performance framework", and I've yet to get to his book, Peak. 

High performance is not about uniquely talented individuals or genetics. But it is about hours and hours of focused practice. Not just doing something, but systematically trying to improve the way you do it. We always talk about performance in L&D. I highly recommend you look at the scientific research into high performance if you see yourself as a performance consultant.

Please join the discussion via the comments, and check back at #3Q4 to follow this series.

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