Bob Mosher (BM): Greetings
friends, and welcome back to another Performance Matters Podcast. I am honored
to once again to be joined by my dear friend and colleague Con Gottfredson.
Today’s is going to be an interesting
podcast because what we’re trying to do is add some clarity to the journey
toward The 5 moments and Workflow Learning in general. There’s so much buzz out
there about doing this, which is wonderful, but at the same time with buzz
comes noise and confusion and this pandemic has really challenged traditional learning
approaches like never before.
We’ve received a lot of feedback
around, “I want to join this journey…my organization wants to be a part of
this.” And then almost the very next thing that follows is, “uh… how
do I start?”. Starting is one thing, but everyone doesn’t start from A. Depending
on where you are as an organization, depending on your efforts in Workflow
Learning, depending on your efforts in The 5 Moments of Need—if you’re just
familiar or have the certificate—you’re not starting at A; you might be starting
at L, or F, or S! So, part of starting is knowing where you are on what we are
calling “A maturity model journey”.
Con can you get us started on what we
mean by ‘maturity model’? And why one, frankly, matters when it comes to successfully
starting and then making this journey?
Conrad Gottfredson (CG): Well, if we don’t
know where we are, and we don’t know where we are going, how in heavens name
will we ever get to where we need to be?
That’s what a maturity model is all
about. It’s a map, so to speak, that helps us see where we are and
also chart a course of where we need to be based upon the unique circumstances
of an organization when it comes to learning. The model provides the means for
getting to where we need to be, starting first with an understanding of where
we are.
There’s never been a time where we have
needed, as you said Bob, the clarity required to chart and make that journey—where
we’re impacting an organization’s ability to perform is at the speed of change.
Enabling effective performance in ever-changing work environments really does
matter. The maturity model we’re talking about today is that gift that helps us
know where we are and where we need to go to accomplish this.
BM: Let’s clarify a word that we’re
going to use throughout this, and it is ‘Capabilities’. A lot of maturity
models are based on competencies. As we will outline the model in a bit, we
have taken an intentional pivot on capabilities.
Why is that word rather than
competencies, so important to us and this model?
CG: Well, for us the word ‘capability’
is more tactical. Competency tends to have a broader meaning that’s more
difficult to target and measure. So, capability is where we’ve determined that
we need to focus on because that is something we can tactically pursue,
achieve, and measure.
BM: To ensure we’re all comfortable,
let’s put the stake in the ground here. This maturity model is not something we
have created out of thin air, there is a lot of rich history behind it; it
started as far back as June 2015! When we first started talking about this and
many of you, if you are not familiar with it, we’d love to have you join, we
have this very rich performance support online community which has been around
for well over 15 years, and along the way the organizations that were members
of that struggled with this challenge of knowing where they are, where they
want to be, and how to get to get there.
The model we developed then was more immature relative to now, in many ways
because we were so focused on performance support and we failed to address the
entire learning and performance ecosystem. But, we had a performance support
advisory council made up of five wonderful industry professionals that were
heads of very large learning organizations. They worked together, as
practitioners, to come up with ways in which we could look at this. So, that
was the beginning of putting this into some form of order, and as you’d hope it
has matured quite a bit since then.
Con, let’s talk a bit about the benchmarking
data that we’ve also worked on. How has that come into play as an important
part of the effectiveness of this model in your opinion?
CG: In January of this year we looked
at the work that had been done on the maturity model by the performance support
community and we also began to look at the rich data that we had gathered over
the two years of benchmarking work that we’d done against The 5 Moments of
Learning Need and it’s broader view of role learning and performance support
can and should play in organizations. This includes, of course, Workflow
Learning.
So, we began in January with real
intent looking at the benchmarking data that we have gathered from two
benchmarking summits, and with some significant work created what we now have
as a model for determining where an organizations is and needs to be to adapt, learn,
and perform at the speed of change.
BM: And the key thing, I think out of
this, is it spells out the next steps you would take in your journey to
level-up.
On that note, Con, could you please
share the fundamental layout of the maturity levels?
CG: We’ve identified four stages of the
journey.
Stage 1 is where most organizations
are today in the traditional learning model, looking at Workflow Learning, but
not quite being where they need to be with all those capabilities—all the way
up to the summit, the 4th stage, which is where every
organization ought to strive to be. Certainly, it’s a daunting summit to just
go after and climb to, so the model presents levels of capabilities, if you
will, to reach that summit to the degree that organizations see that they need
to get there.
The good news about all of this is
that the maturity model allows an organization to realistically and
systematically make their way along this journey, because that’s really what
it’s all about. It’s a journey of developing capabilities in a prioritized way
based upon the readiness of the organization to allow you to get to where you
need to be.
Listen
to the full episode to learn more about the three categories of
capabilities, how best to assess your current state, and one of the most
critical capabilities needed in today’s landscape.
Don’t forget to subscribe to The Performance Matters Podcast to stay up-to-date on all the latest
conversations and guests in The 5 Moments space.
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