Defining a Continuous Learning & Performance Strategy
The Starting Point for Making Decisions on New Learning Methods and Technology
 

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• Are you considering changing the way you approach training and learning in your organization?

• Replacing or purchasing a Learning Management System (LMS)?

• Investigating the deployment of Virtual Classroom Technology?

• Trying to foster collaboration and knowledge-sharing across your enterprise?

• Migrating classroom-based learning programs to include a blend of eLearning, or mLearning?

• Shifting from traditional face-to-face (F2F) instructor-led training to real-time context-based learning?

• Trying to find a resource to equip your training teams with the new Learning & Performance competencies?

These are all popular trends in the industry today, and there are plenty of stories to support the surge in this direction. But there is considerable confusion about how to put the pieces and parts together to create a seamless - frictionless - ubiquitous - and personalized, continuous learning environment.

Question: Why is such a good idea so difficult to implement? 

Answer: Because it's too easy to deploy!  Say what???

Editorial: That may sound like a bogus answer, but it's the most honest and direct one I can give you. Deployment is the "easy" part...and even that is not without challenges when you consider the almost overwhelming process of gathering business learning requirements, evaluating and selecting a vendor, etc...but all that is easy compared to how the "LEARNING SOLUTION" gets implemented and integrated into the business. Deployment is easy, and implementation is not...and because of that fact alone you now know why the following questions typically surface AFTER what appeared to be a successful deployment...

• Why are 80% of the owners of LMS technology not getting the results they anticipated?

• Why does shifting to on-line learning often deliver disappointing results?

• Why are many eLearning courses never completed?

• Why is getting ROI out of our Learning efforts often not worth the ROI it takes to get it?

• Why is the traditional approach to Instructional Design (ISD) becoming obsolete?

• Why is training not as effective as it used to be?

• Why are Virtual Classroom tools being used for meetings instead?

• Why don't people flock to use these new capabilities now that we're at GoLive?

• Why so much resistance to embrace the best piece of technology we've ever purchased?

• Why all of a sudden do we have all this content?

• Why is the course we just bought not compatible with the new LMS?

• Why, why, why is this so ugly?

Having been down this road several times in my own experience and through my own research and consorting with peers in this business, I've come to the simple conclusion that most companies have done the right thing...

but...

...they did it because a vendor showed up with an awesome solution and it filled an immediate need.
...they did it because the traditional way of training is becoming less and less effective.
...they did it because the traditional way of training is becoming more and more expensive.
...they did it because competitiveness demands their people are better equipped to perform...now!

...and most importantly...

...they did it before they were prepared to do it correctly - hence; they've successfully fed the beast through the purchase of a partial solution. They've created a "pieces and parts" scenario that a holistic learning and performance strategy would have prevented. They bought into technology without recognizing the ripple effects into methodologies (both to, from, and because of the technology). They also did not consider the impact on Collaboration, Governance, Related Business Applications, Change Management, Communications...and the list goes on.

Making the purchase decision to buy into learning technology highlights why need, funding, and justification are not enough, and it's a classic example where "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts".

There needs to be significant consideration and planning done around establishing a Continuous Learning Strategy first, and this demands complete, lock-step alignment with Business Strategy.

A Continuous Learning Strategy is a strategy of strategies; meaning that there are many sub-strategies that roll-up.

Figure 1.1 illustrates this concept of multiple strategies that roll up to provide a comprehensive strategy that is intended to embrace all aspects and synergies associated with learning and performance. Notice that Training and Performance Management are shown as part of a convergence. Further proof that "it ain't just training anymore..."
	Figure 1.1

The Need for Alignment of a Continuous Learning Strategy with the Corporate Business Strategy

The paradigm around adult learning has changed by critical demands of maintaining business growth and competitiveness. Learning has shifted from the traditional event-based scenario of the classroom training event (be it bricks & mortar classroom or Virtual) to a need rooted in the immediacy of job context.

I'm sure you've heard the buzzwords "just-in-time" by this point in your own research. The increasing need for the right information - to the right people - at the right time - in the right amount - and in the right format has changed the face of learning. Notice I said "information" and not training... Here's why!

Learning Must Be Implemented and Supported As a Continuum

The emphasis on learning is being pushed toward the "point-of attack". Notice also that I've been using the word "learning" instead of "training". That's because training is only a subset of the learning continuum that is comprised of three elements:

• Training - focuses on skills and delivery of knowledge both formally and informally.

• Information - focuses on available and accessible, business-relevant information used in the context of performing tasks "just-in-time".

• Knowledge - focuses on the collaboration and sharing of best practices among users.

Training as we know it will never go away. There will always be a need for "live instructor-led" classes. They may not always be F2F, but they will be "live" over a virtual medium like the Internet or over corporate backbone networks using VoIP or even using a blend with Streaming Media technology. The point being, it's a change in the approach to not just "how" you train your people, but the need to address several other considerations that need to be identified and in complete alignment with your business strategy. Consider these:

• Who gets trained? When? Where will they be? What must they be able to do? And most importantly, WHY?

• How much do you spend today on training across the enterprise?

• How do you track training history, certifications and issues driven by compliance?

• How do your workers get trained today versus how could they learn using context-based information and informal channels in the future?

• Should you buy, build or ASP an LMS?  Do you even need an LMS?

• Do you have the resident skills to keep one running if you buy it?

• Should you attempt to integrate Performance Management through the LMS or buy a separate PM App?

• What content do you own today that is compatible with new technology?

• Do you have content development standards?

• Do those standards reflect the shift to "context-based" learning?

• Is a Learning Content Management System (LCMS) needed in your configuration?

• Where will you archive your content? How will users find it? How will they gain access to it "just-in-time"?

• What taxonomy will you use? Who drives the standards? Who enforces it?

• Can your developers create SCORM/AICC compliant content?

• Can you retrofit your legacy content to meet SCORM/AICC standards? Should you even attempt it?

• Are Virtual Classroom and Collaboration technologies a good fit for your business learning requirements?

• Where does streaming media fit in?

• Do you have a Learning Governance in place? Should you have two; one strategic & one tactical?

• Do you have a repeatable Change model in place?

• Do your training team members and your HR Generalists have the requisite competencies under their belts to implement such a Strategy?

The list goes on, and unfortunately, those companies who make the ever important decision to buy an LMS, or deploy any other technology or methodology before having answers to each of these questions are limited by the technology and methods they've chosen.

Can an LMS be modified to fit? Absolutely!

Can a Virtual Classroom by interfaced with a centralized Learning Portal? Absolutely!

...but be prepared to re-apply every change you've made to re-customize the interface or application every time the next upgrade or patch comes out that keeps your application on its feet. Trust me...this was a very tough lesson learned.

So...Why Another Strategy?

Your learning strategy should be aligned lock step with your strategic business plan. The performance outcomes required by your people to produce the results required to meet your business plan must be supported by "personalized" access to training, information and knowledge resources at the right time, amount, and format, be it classroom-based or point of attack.

Deployment and implementation of technology is certainly part of that equation, but plan on spending from two to five years to get it fully implemented. In reality, you never will be completely implemented because as your business strategy changes, so should your Strategy and the sub-strategies that are a part of it.

Your Continuous Learning Strategy Should:

• Align with corporate vision, mission and business strategies

• Drive a road map to address the strategy gaps defined by gathering business learning requirements

• Improve employee performance specific to the execution of your business strategy

• Provide access to training, information and knowledge continuously and on a personalized basis

• Define methods and technologies that will enable the transition to continuous learning

• Define content standards (taxonomies) for training, learning and knowledge objects

• Positively impact bottom-line business performance outcomes

• Posture for the future by being upwardly migratable with technologies and methodologies deployed

• Integrate principles of Change Management to effective Lead Change through Strategy implementation

• Promote employee retention and attract skilled new talent

• Link Learning with Performance Management across the enterprise

Don't Overlook the Value Embedded In Your Content and Worker Knowledge

Take another look at that diagram shown in Figure 1.2. This shift from content to context-based learning has another significant implication; the changes in how you design, develop, archive, access and apply your content. Remember, context is simply content accessed and applied with specific intent.

Obviously, learning realized in the classroom had intent attached to it,...and it has it's place...but think about impacting productivity at the exact moment Learning is needed to execute a task, or close a sale, or save a valued client relationship. That's the kind of intent at the root of my passion. That's where Learning in "context" has changed not only the way we learn, but how, when and where. It's real-time. It's highly individualized - personalized, as I mentioned earlier. Even the role of the traditional training organization is changing.

The "training organization" is shifting to the role of broker and facilitator of information. Subject matter expertise and the most current knowledge base does not reside in "training" any longer. It's in the minds of the top performers, managers, leaders, SMEs, and even customers and vendors.

Implications point toward SMEs or someone other than the formal "training group" developing content. Rapid development tools are everywhere that put PowerPoint on steroids and can deliver "enough" learning where it needs to be in hours rather than weeks. It's not courses being written, it's chunks of targeted information, or information objects that are being created. Imagine the volume that can be produced with these rapid development tools in the hands of well-meaning Product Managers, just to name one stakeholder group.

Trust me when I say that a standard for content must be defined early. Why? Because as your development efforts shift to match the demands of "context-based learning", and the SMEs and other critical content owners are empowered to produce content, the amount of objects produced exponentially increases. You will experience an avalanche of content!

This increase is not only aggregate volume, it's the new format of what's developed. You will experience shifting from on-line courses to on-line performance support objects that "used to be courses". One course file may now become over a hundred discretely addressable information objects. Add to that the objects a Product Manager needs to produce when it's imperative to communicate regularly with the field.  Can you see the potential for a content explosion?

How these objects are created, by whom, where are they archived, who can access them, and how is the search function accomplished are all now mission-critical components of a content strategy. This strategy cannot be developed without the knowledge of who needs the information, when do they need it, where will they be when they need it, and what device will be in their hands when they need it?. Is it sitting in their car juggling a cup of coffee and a wireless Blackberry between appointments? If so, that has implications on:

• What gets developed?

• Who develops it?

• What authoring tool is best suited?

• What is the destination device technology?

• Who accesses it?

• Who's responsible for keeping it current?

Once again, the list goes on. If these questions are not addressed as part of your Strategy, you will be faced with a massive undertaking to retrofit all the useful content that has been previously developed to make it compatible for an on-line environment...if that's even humanly possible. Don't lose today's development efforts in a maze of databases and random hard-drives of brilliant contributors because there are no business rules in place to protect the embedded value in your content.

SMEs live in silos - not their fault - it's just a fact of life. The knowledge they possess cannot suffer that same fate of disappearing into that same disorganized maze of repositories. You must define a strategy for managing both content and knowledge that transcends the silo walls and makes access to the right information and knowledge at the right time a seamless effort. The only defense is to deploy search engines, robust repositories and define access rights and privileges across the enterprise. Did I mention the importance of a taxonomy? Defining a taxonomy will support definition of those business rules I mentioned a second ago.

A Short Summary

Obviously, what I've described is no small task. If you are starting from scratch, plan on a minimum of 18 months to have visible results. In reality you'll never be "finished" because the Strategy exists in a lock-step relationship with the Corporate Business Strategy. It changes constantly to adjust to demands of business...and so should your Strategy. It all goes back to alignment. It's a continuous process of reaching and then maintaining alignment.

Please hear the words of experience when I recommend taking the time and make the investment to develop a Continuous Learning Strategy before you start spending money on technology or implementing new methods of learning. The task of deploying and implementing this Strategy is the equivalent of eating an elephant. You can do it, but you can't eat the whole thing at once. This will take time and prioritization based upon urgency, budget and availability of human resources, but it is a task that must be done...one fork full at a time.

Human Performance Outfitters has successfully been down this road and can help equip your organization to develop and maintain your own Strategy. Use an "Outfitter" as the temporary talent you need to either complete a "State of Learning Readiness Assessment" for you...or with you...involving the internal resources you will depend upon to implement and sustain that Strategy in a real-time Action Learning approach.

• Learn to fish - this process is continual and a repeatable approach and new resident competencies are a must.

• Climb your own mountain - no one knows it more intimately than your own people.

• Navigate the white water of Change - embed a repeatable Change Model to bring consistency of expectation to Change whether you are driving it or on the receiving end of it.

• Shoot straight - when aligning Learning technologies and methodologies with business objectives and strategies.

Choose whatever combination of metaphors that work for you, but choose...

• To seriously consider where you currently have Gaps in your existing strategy.

• Prioritize what you need to do to close those Gaps most impactful to your business, and head in the direction of integrating your Performance Management requirements with those related to Learning.

• Equip your team with the skills, knowledge, tools and techniques to implement and sustain your Strategy.

• To use an Outfitter who has already successfully climbed several of these mountains.

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