"The biggest loss in opportunity for the learning function lies in the fact that it has rejected informal learning." p. 36 of Learning in 3D: Adding a New Dimension to Enterprise Learning and Collaboration
The corporate learning organization is responsible for the development of the organization's employees so that positive business impact is realized. Sadly, much of what is built is not designed to make an impact. Did you catch that? I said, much of what is "built."
Informal learning means many things to many people. To me, it means determining "non-learning" initiatives which lead to performance improvement. What if there were a group of say five people who interviewed functional teams and documented lessons learned for various projects. Then, that team built a wiki documenting the lessons learned. Finally, they communicated the wiki to employees and drove the improvement and helped foster wisdom of the crowds (i.e. the wiki just gets stronger overtime). So, it's a team of learning professionals who document and promote lessons learned and ensure those lessons lead to more successful projects in the future.
Wow, a learning solution that didn't involve the building of subject matter (product documents, and so forth), nor did it involve lecture. It's just a creative idea to improve performance. That's the role of corporate learning. Implement creative ideas that improve performance.
There once was a learner who went to a course, he listened and listened, but the trainer grew hoarse. The learner fell asleep after counting some sheep, and the the corporate learning group built a budget for more...
1 comment:
Good post old friend. We continuously struggle with the notion from the business that their people must be "trained" in my current organization. Managers want to be able to say training has happened so they can hold their employees accountable for accomplishing their work. Informal learning really isn't even in the equation. Some even consider if performance improvement/training isn't conducted the classroom it isn't considered training. Therefore because they don't consider these interventions training, they don't hold their folks accountable for it.
A key statistic that businesses are becoming more aware of is that roughly 70% of learning that occurs for companies occurs outside classroom and only 20% through formal learning programs (see http://marciaconner.com/intros/informal.html and http://welearnsomething.blogspot.com/2009/10/embedded-learning-and-making-bed.html). We are currently exploring a 70-20-10 model (http://www.princeton.edu/hr/learning/philosophy/) at our organization, which would be quite a leap. In model this where most of the training delivered would be experiential and "delivered" outside the classroom, and only 10%through formal training. As someone once said you often learn best when you don't realize you are learning, which is the case with informal learning.
Post a Comment