The trainer's nightmare is non-linearity.
Francis Laleman
conceptual art and experience design practitioner & teacher, participatory design, cooperative learning, non-conventional facilitation, systems, agile communities, Sanskrit & Pali studies
It has been nearly two years since I have published an Incomplete Manifesto for LEAN Instructional Design. Nobody wants trainers or trainings, I wrote. What we want is learning - iterative, incremental, continuous, high-quality and great-value learning.
Since then, I have been running learning track after learning track and nurturing learning cultures in organisations from Asia to Europe and back, I have been discussing the leanification of learning with a great number of believers and non-believers from a variety of industrial sectors, and I have come across hundreds of pretty lean ideas, all contributing to the general idea that "training", as it is organised in the current mainstream L&D community, simply needs to be stopped.
Because training is a uniquely linear concept, and life, or growth, is not.
The linearity of training is expressed in a handful of attributes that are standardly used by the L&D professional - and all these attributes are problematic in one way or another.
Consider a mere few examples:
Learning Needs Analysis
Learning needs is what the L&D professional needs to hear expressed at the very beginning of her process, and learning needs analysis is what she performs. A needs analysis, however, can only be done with data expressing a current state and a desired state. Of these, only the current state can possibly be described with a level of near-certainty. A desired state is a state assumed to be the one to be reached, on the assumption that the road thereto is linear and predictable, and that all other factors remain stable or change in a predictable manner for as long as one is on the road.
Life does not work like that. Growth does not happen that way. The road ahead is erratic and the landscape uncharted. Uncertainties loom in the shadows. Changes happen overnight.
Instructional Design
Typically, the instructional designer starts with the learning needs analysis in hand and develops a learning track for the learners to be able to reach the desired state in the shortest possible time and at the lowest possible expense. In most cases, such a track is believed to be at best a training event of no more than one or a few days, during which a trainer leads the trainees through the valleys of apprenticeship to the hilltops of competence.
Throughout her process, the instructional designer is an up-front designer. This means that she is unaware of the user stories that will be true on delivery date. She works from the known to the unknown, and yet delivers a roadmap thereto.
Lead time
Textbook L&D practice is per definition time consuming. Performing a needs analysis is making a portrait of an organisation while time runs. The wider the aperture, the fuzzier the photograph. With this flou artistique as a guideline, instructional design is then expected to design a learning product filling in the learning needs as "seen" on that picture - while time keeps running.
Lead time, the (often extended) time between the expression of a learning need and delivery of the learning product, is a constant game-spoiler. We keep getting stuck with learning needs at moments without training, training at moments without learning needs, or training inappropriate for the learning needs at the time of training delivery.
At all sides, standard L&D practice, with training as its most celebrated product, is a strictly linear process in a vastly non-linear world. All the activities in a textbook L&D value chain link the current state with where we think the desired state ought to be - and do so on the assumption that the uncertainties and uncharted territory of the real world will stay far away from the organisation, for as long as the lead time to product delivery runs.
What would you do if you were a parent? - It takes a fool to plan and develop lifetime learning programs for our children, based on the knowledge of the world that we have today. It takes a wise person to know that most learning is hidden in the unknowable.
Agility.
Life is an erratic journey linking uncertainty with uncertainty. Growth is the art of constantly making choices with regard to a desired state at an attainable distance. The road ahead is less erratic with every distance shortened - and the landscape less uncharted as we are charting the landscape underway. Uncertainties, being the very matter of existence, are woven into the fabric of our being. Constant changes are our welcome friends.
"relying on periodic improvements and innovations - only improving when we make a special effort or campaign - conceals a system that is static and vulnerable."
(Mike Rother, 2010, Toyota Kata)
How to make our learning system less static, less vulnerable?
A system in which learning happens in learning events is not a learning system. Where learning happens as an event, learning is not a natural state.
Lean.
A healthy system is a system in which learning, with continuous improvement, is a natural state. In such a system, learning happens all the time, alongside every other organisational process, uninterrupted and as naturally and dynamically as breathing happens for any living organism.
In a healthy system, the linearity of a textbook L&D approach is replaced by the circularity and non-duality of the workplace - and the only linearity left is in time. Through time, we are constantly moving forward, following a seemingly erratic pathway from position (x) to position (x), but always aiming at the most desired state at that particular moment, depending on the circumstances of an ever changing world. We know where we want to be, but also where we want to be right now, where we might want to be if circumstances change, and where we might end up if that would be the best possible choice at that time.
In a healthy learning system, learning happens at the workplace (gemba) - continuously, iteratively, incrementally, and always adding practical value for the learner at any particular moment in time. Learning needs are addressed in real time, and therefore cease to exist. Learning is our natural state. We have become a learning organisation. The future is ours.
Any future is ours.
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Blissfully seasoned by a lifetime of living across continents & working as an educationalist and learning facilitator, Francis Laleman (Beyond Borders) has become fully involved with what could be called the leanification of instructional design. Taking liberally from a great variety of sources, a fresh framework is gradually taking shape. In earlier LinkedIn/Pulse posts, Laleman has brooded over Cooperative Learning (The Power Within), and proposed the concepts of Natural Learning (Birds do not attend flight schools), Lean Instructional Design (A Manifesto) and Lean Learning Organisations (A Lean Shared Learning Space).
conceptual art and experience design practitioner & teacher, participatory design, cooperative learning, non-conventional facilitation, systems, agile communities, Sanskrit & Pali studies
7 年@ Dirk Vercruysse. A first task at hand may be to break down some of the barriers I detect in your responses. Surely there is no need to create circles of "us, L&D professionals" and "them, the corporates" - and, worse, to imagine the evolving insights in how adults successfully learn and grow as a battle between "us", who know, and "them", who are unwilling to be convinced or are "not ready for this". The reality is nothing of the sort. Everybody, in whatever community or (corporate) organisation, is struggling to maximize output while enhancing quality and reducing waste. Automation notwithstanding, people continue to be essential to this process. Therefore, "learning" is at the core of every kind of human cooperative endeavour. Fulfilling a role in this process of continuous improvement has been the cornerstone of my life and work for the best part of my career. The L&D professional should not be a salesperson of training products, nor someone talking "adversaries" into "solutions". She should, quite on the contrary, be a cooperative partner, offering insights and facilitating programs aimed at the empowerment of the learning organisation. And where continuous improvement is concerned, usses and thems cease to exist.
conceptual art and experience design practitioner & teacher, participatory design, cooperative learning, non-conventional facilitation, systems, agile communities, Sanskrit & Pali studies
7 年@ Dirk Vercruysse. The word you are using is appropriate indeed: The path ahead indeed starts with a true paradigm shift. To begin with, the consultant trainer/learning facilitator should offer professional services as a "facilitator of learning" - and not as a "vendor of training". My ideal image is that of a parent, who continuously prepares, nurtures, improves and facilitates the learning process for her children. She does not deliver goods in one-day packages of pre-digested learning matter. She is on the job, always, continuously engaged, adaptive, agile, responsive to changing circumstances. She is an enabler, not a salesperson - a mentor, not a lecturer. And like a mentor engaged in a Toyota Coaching Kata (the terminology is Mike Rother's), he does not provide solutions but empowers the learners to develop themselves into solution finders.
Francis, how can the external trainer or learning facilitator adapt to this learning shift?
conceptual art and experience design practitioner & teacher, participatory design, cooperative learning, non-conventional facilitation, systems, agile communities, Sanskrit & Pali studies
7 年Thanks for taking the time to read my thoughts. Joeri, this reminds me of the brief try-out LEAN presentation you facilitated at our HRD Academy session - and the outstanding Learning Needs Analysis material I then said I have in store for you :-). I am sending this to you by seperate post, okay?