Hack:
Freed Up Learning

This is what the ‘freed up learning’ organisation might look, feel and sound like if you visited it...

1. Everyone’s perspective of the organisation has shifted from being part of a machine to  being part of a living social organism; a collaborative network
2. Expectations of employees have shifted from compliance and efficiency to  being locked into the higher purpose and focused on creating value for the business
3. Control of learning has shifted from top-down, imposed, by the training & development function, through command  & control, and a focus on compliance to employee learning autonomy,  self-driven learning on demand and shared learning. The employee controls their learning with coaching style guidance from their immediate manager.
4. The learning relationship between boss and employee has shifted from being determined and organised by the boss to being owned by employee, in a flexible and open, trust based relationship with some joint planning.
5. Incentives to learn have shifted from compliance,  threat  or‘ big stick and carrot’ based on pushing the employee the learn to pulling the employee to learn  because it is purpose-driven, self-fulfilling, and intrinsic to personal and professional growth
6. Learning delivery has shifted from  being dominated by formal, planned in future events classes, courses, instruction and being trained, to conversations, experiences, just in time searches, peer learning networks & communities (face to face, & online) in order to learn.

The role of training & development is to create and maintain a learning infrastructure to enable a new learning environment in the workplace. This is achieved by:

• Re-position the training & development function to become a free standing profession in its own right. It has been a servant to generalist and strategic HR  and needs to step away from this constraining relationship, redefine its relationship with the other elements of HR and move to become directly accountable to its users and at the heart of supporting the day to day operation of the business and growth of the organisation.  Fundamentally changing the roles within Training and Development by introducing the  following key roles:
• Learning Architects who design the  Learning environment by determining the mix of platforms eg YouTube, LinkedIn, LMS, Face to Face, coaching, action learning,  online peer review,  online collaboration, Twitter, text messaging, Skype, webinars, video conferencing, online games, assessment tools, video, co-creation, creative arts, observation, peer review etc... those suitable for that organisation.   Learning Architects can come from a number of sources – not just drawn from the Training & Development teams in an organisation, but from any part of the business.  

Learning Architects work under the following principles 

• Full adoption of 70:20:10
• Building and sharing Tacit and Explicit Knowledge
• Pull based learning
• Trust based learning relationships 
• Flexible, open and easy to access solutions
• Working with solutions
• Just in time operational solutions
• No hierarchy in learning
• Your learning: your choices, your accountability & you measure impact
• Learning creates value for the business
• Always track satisfaction, impact and application of learning
• Habit of continuous improvement
• Everyone has a stake in the growth and success of others

• Learning Content Designers  & Deliverers are specialists who design  & deliver learning content on the various platforms eg YouTube, LinkedIn, LMS, Face to Face, coaching, action learning,  online peer review,  online collaboration, webinars, online games, assessment tools, video, co-creation, creative arts, observation, peer review etc..  They bring the 70:20:10 model alive The 70-20-10 model explains that learning by successful and effective individuals in the workplace is roughly 70% from experience (on the job), 20% from people you work with (colleagues, your boss, peers etc), and 10% from formal training & development interventions (courses, workshops etc).
• Learning Curators or Guides who introduce individuals to the organisation’s learning environment as part of the induction / on-boarding process.  They help each person to navigate their way around the learning environment, explain accountabilities, and offer possible suitable choices initially until the person is sufficiently knowledgeable and confident to go it alone.  Learning curators are responsible for maintaining the learning content & tracking environment, adding new content, handling any disputes eg inappropriate  behaviour, as well as actively facilitating learning eg as online moderators or discussion leads, and acting as a booking agent for face to face learning etc...
• On-boarding processes change.  On-boarding begins before the person arrives in the organisation. Immediately after the post is accepted the person is given a time to be greeted (online) by a learning curator. The focus of on-boarding is on ‘learning how to learn and being a reflective practitioner’.  Self-assessment tools are used to ascertain how the person prefers to learn, their reflective practitioner level of knowledge and skills. Baselining their role based/professional skills, knowledge and abilities as well as capturing strengths and opportunities for growth.  The organisation needs to analyse and better understand the talent that is about to join them to create their career path.   Role & responsibilities as a learner are made clear in the recruitment and selection process i.e. habit of continuous improvement; no hierarchy in learning; your learning: your choices, your accountability & you measure impact as well as learning creates value for the business. Learning curators register the new employee (from a partnership for example) with their learning account.

• Induction and Compliance training needs for health & safety, governance, data protection, diversity, required ways of behaving/conduct etc. are still present  but have migrated into the wider learning environment and no longer just delivered via SCORM compliant e-learning packages.  During induction the core task for the new employee, their line manager and learning curator is ‘learning to learn  efficiently and effectively’ - equipping the person about personal & organisational learning processes, as well as understanding and managing their own personal change processes.

• Performance management (PM).  What gets measured gets done’ within PM so ‘Habit of continuous improvement’ and ‘learning creates value for the business’ performance measures are introduced. One core task of the manager is to nurture every one of their team to make progress along their career paths, recognising that they are “whole people,” whilst still delivering business results.  Both manager and employee are held to account for the career path’s implementation.  Manager and employee need to be able to access the tracking system in the organisation's learning environment whenever they want- eg daily. It will show learning activity such as inputs like attended a workshop, but also contribution levels, amount of sharing and active participation in operational learning networks, impact measures (operational problems solved, project lessons learnt acted upon, & business value created) and also changes in skills, knowledge & ability levels. Five broad individual PM learning measures here:
  • Knowledge Development
  • Relationship Development
  • Process Development
  • Team Development and Succession Plan Realisation
  • Process delivery

Within the manager’s PM process there are new measures eg their performance as a coach to their team, a continuous improvement team measure, value creation index, quality of the team succession plans etc... Much more sophisticated metrics are needed to begin to link cause and effect between learning and change / improvement / growth / compliance etc...

• Reward system changed to more explicitly reward organisational learning & value creation for the business.  This uses the data  and metrics from the PM & the tracking system in the learning environment  to generate for example, team’s most valuable learner, most valuable team, coach (manager) of the year , collaborative project of the year etc....
• Succession planning changes. Grade or hierarchy based only learning minimised i.e. on an exception basis within an organisation and it is devolved to teams.  In each team a viable succession plan comes out of a systematic process of team learning, cross team training, joint planning with resource backup, and job rotation etc. It is a collaborative project approach to targeted employee development, in which everyone has a stake in the growth and success of others. as well as him or herself.

• Working with solutions.  Increasingly we work in partnerships, loose hierarchical relationships, virtual joint initiatives, pop up groups, projects etc... and the learning needs to support those ways of working.  Learning Architects need to build learning environments so that ‘not being an employee’ is no longer a barrier to accessing the learning content and sharing forums.   Learning curators register the person (from a partnership for example) with their learning account and on-board the person as they would a new employee.