It's Time to Give Learning a Seismic Nudge (part 1)

By Conrad Gottfredson

In every organization we visit, we meet remarkable people who are fully engaged in the vital work many still refer to as “Learning and Development.”  (Bob and I, of course, prefer “Learning and Performance Development.”)  Like almost everyone we know and meet in this profession, we love this work.  We don’t believe there is any work more personally rewarding, more organizationally important, or more professionally frustrating.
You may have noticed a hint of that “professional frustration” in Bob’s latest blog article, “I’m Sick of Trends.”  Actually, a trend is only frustrating if it is taking us in “a general direction” away from where we ought to be going.  And, as we watch trends, too many of them seem to be leading us in circles, keeping us stuck in traditional learning mindsets, building partial solutions that only address the Moment of Learn New, and possibly the Moment of Learn More.  Meanwhile the Moments of Apply, Solve, and Change are mostly ignored or at best treated insufficiently as an afterthought or performance support add-on. Yogi Berra best described this prevailing pattern when he was driving to Cooperstown New York. He told his wife, “We’re lost, but we’re making good time.” So it seems to be as we look across the learning and Performance Development landscape; a lot of hard work leading to nowhere.
Berra also wisely observed, "You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you are going because you might not get there."  This insight actually illuminates a crying need in the work we’re doing. We need a unified, clear, overarching vision to guide us in what we do. This lack of vision is probably the greatest source of Bob’s and my professional frustration, as we track trends. You see, we look at trends through the lens of The 5 Moments of Need.  This has provided us a unique vision that allows us to judge whether or not a trend will lead us to a better place or nowhere really helpful.
Bob and I have spent some time discussing how we can engage all of you in establishing a global unified vision of where we need to be going, so we can all align our efforts and produce trends that will actually take us where we need to go.  We have identified the following five competencies, as a start, to help initiate this vital discussion.
  1. Produce 5 Moments of Need solutions that deliver measurable organizational Impact
  2. Foster a performance mindset.
  3. Optimize learning in the workflow
  4. Establish and sustain fully integrated 5 Moments of Need technology infrastructure
  5. Implement agile ISD practices
We need your collective wisdom to help us not only hone these competencies into a unified vision of where we need to be going, but to then help us orchestrate a seismic nudge to help align our industry with this vision.
The great news is, organizations are actually pursuing these competencies. Some have been doing so for many years. Last year we completed a year-long benchmarking “Summit” that focused on these five areas of transformation. The Summit was a remarkable experience.  Its final reports are laden with rich data points, best practices, and lessons learned.  This year we are in process of broadening our benchmarking effort to allow us to build upon what we’ve learned in order to establish a compelling vision.   If you’d like to participate in helping us trigger this seismic nudge, let us know and we’ll get you involved.
Meanwhile, stay tuned.  The next blog article will provide a detailed description of why we believe Learning and Performance Development teams everywhere need to flat out pursue these competencies and become 5 Moments of Learning Need competent.
And, if you’d like to read-up a bit more on any of these five competencies, the following table provides a listing of blog articles Bob and I have written in support of each of these competencies. Note: Some of the links are to the Performance Support Community, which is members-only, but it is free to join.

Competency
Blog Link
Producing 5 Moments of Need solutions that deliver measurable business Impact
Foster a performance mindset.
Optimize learning in
the workflow
Establish and sustain a fully integrated 5 Moments of Need technology infrastructure
Implement agile ISD practices
Continue reading Part 2 of "It's Time to Give Learning a Seismic Nudge".
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GREAT Learning is ALL Around Us!

By Bob Mosher

Ok, stay with me on this one… I DO have a point to make in the end of all this rambling! :) I’m a technology geek at heart and absolutely love the times we’re living in.  The other day my new refrigerator’s water filter needed to be changed.  How did I know that?  NOT from the taste of the water; it was totally fine. NOT from the color of the water; it was as clear as ever!  But from the warning my refrigerator gave me on the front of the water and ice dispenser.  It knew when I purchased my frig and began using the filter.  It knew how much water I had consumed over the past several months.  And it knows how long a good filter should last.  So, it gave me a 6-day countdown to have it replaced, WITH a warning that grew more daunting as the final day approached.
So, I’m MORE than ready to replace the filter for the first time (that’s important).  I open the door to look for the make and model which is prominently displayed on the inside frame.  It’s nicely embedded at the moment of need (hint, hint). My intent of finding this information was to “Google it”, find their website, and do some research on “changing water filters” for this particular model.  Upon examining the label, I notice that there’s a QR code sitting alongside the model number.  I quickly take out my smartphone from my back pocket, scan the code, and am taken directly to my specific refrigerator model on the product section of this manufacture’s enormous website.  As I look at the bottom of my phone display (notice, NO scrolling involved) I see “commonly asked questions” and guess what the first one is?  Yep, you nailed it, “How to change a water filter”.  I click on the link and am taken to page of directions with a video at the top explaining how to change the filter. Problem solved in just about 3~5 minutes!!
Now, I REALLY hope you’re seeing some incredibly important and powerful connections to what we do for a living every day!?!?!  This particular manufacture is NOT in the L&D space.  They didn’t direct me to the user-manual.  They didn’t post an “800” number to call for assistance.  They didn’t have a link on their home page directing me to their L&D Team or their LMS!  They did some amazingly fundamental and powerful learning and support things that were designed, yep DESIGNED, right into the experience.  First, they anticipated my performance problem for me. They understood the context of the tasks I perform in using their product.  They took steps to know my behavior, track it, and begin preparing me in overt and escalating ways BEFORE the problem occurred.  Second, they embedded the support right into the workflow at my point of need.  I didn’t need “training” on that. The resource fit perfectly, both in location and context. “Two clicks and/or 10 seconds”, that’s as long as my attention would last, and that’s how quickly I was guided to my answer.  Third, the technology to answer my question was perfectly matched and embedded in the context of the problem.  It was literally in my back pocket!  And finally, they took me RIGHT to the appropriate resource to help me, giving me two options, but clearly recommended the one they felt was most helpful.  AMAZING, and a powerful way of looking at learning and support.
Notice I keep using “learning and support” in the same sentence.  That’s because that’s the new range of offerings we need to build for.  In fact, I would argue that if you build for support FIRST, you BUILD less learning/training!  This company is highly motivated by the same things we are:
  1. Lower their support costs - We need to lower our help desk and post training support costs.
  2. Optimize their support resources while reducing in-home visits – We need to decrease the overhead of expensive learning resources, such as the classroom, while optimizing their impact and use.
  3. Increase their customer satisfaction - We want to empower our learner’s confidence around self-improvement and owning their own professional development.
  4. Increase their customer loyalty and sell more products - We want to increase our ability to create better and more impactful learning products which those whom we serve want to continue to buy.
The exciting thing is that we CAN do all of these same things right now IF we choose to do it!  If we’ll be brave enough to look at learning and support through a different lens. If we’ll risk enough to produce a different product in the first place.  If we’ll have different conversations with those we serve. If we build and grow different levels of expertise and skillsets within our L&D Team. AND finally, if we’ll invest in the new and emerging tools that already exist in our industry to create these new and exciting learning and support experiences. I know, a lot of “ifs”!  But I have seen more and more organizations, from EVERY imaginable vertical, and of every shape and size begin to do this successfully and consistently.  The time is NOW!  Let’s not let a refrigerator manufacture show us up!  Let’s learn from all the amazing learning that’s going on around us and lead through our example.
*** BTW, did ANYONE try scanning the CR code above??? I just couldn't resist :)

 More resources on The 5 Moments of Need.
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When it comes to Navigating the Workflow, Context Trumps Content

By Bob Mosher

Personalized learning, Workflow Learning, 5 Moments of Need, 70:20:10, Informal Learning,,, call it what you want, moving learning away from events and into everyday work is one of the hottest topics in our industry right now.  I speak to at least 3~5 learning leaders a week who are struggling with making the “transformation” (another HOT topic) from a training department/university model to a performance centric/workflow-oriented design shop.  The journey is NOT an easy one.  There’s a lot of history and, frankly, baggage to get past here.  When you’ve been designing for “training” first, shifting that focus is very hard.  But until we do, the transformation we want just isn’t going to happen.

While I was observing a learning leader trying to pitch this reorientation to their key stakeholders and decided to do a little informal research of my own.  I noticed that he kept saying the words “course” and “curriculum”, so I started counting.  Let’s just say I stopped at around 20 within the first 10 minutes of his pitch. “Well, that’s just semantics” you say?  Nope, it’s a mindset!  In the “old” days, content was king.  Our orientation out of the shoot was to first build a course or, later, e-learning.  All of our initial analysis and design was oriented toward that even before we met with our “SME’s”.
This new transformation starts with a reorientation around the outcome and related deliverables.  Workflow learning assets are typically not training assets, although training assets are often in the blend or mix. The most powerful assets often take the form of performance support assets such as checklists, decision trees, videos, learning bursts, social platforms and LOTS and LOTS of user-generate content. Those are the tools of the trade when it comes to designing for this brave new world.

But how to you fundamentally make the shift?  It starts with switching from a content first mindset to one of context, and there are two types of context we need to better understand.  The first is the workflow itself, which by definition is the context in which our learners work every day.   It amazes me how little we truly understand about the actual job tasks our learners perform on a daily basis.  The workflow is made up of processes, tasks, and the knowledge that supports the performance of those tasks, in that order!  If you watch how training is traditionally designed, it doesn’t map to this sequence very well.  This approach starts us on a journey toward the wrong outcomes and deliverables.  We need to start with the performance outcome and context first and work back into that.

Now, even when the workflow is identified, and even design for, missing the second type of context can also get us into trouble.  Let me share a quick story to try and demonstrate where we typically go wrong.  I was recently asked to evaluate a workflow portal a company had designed.  They had done a great job with their workflow analysis and, according to the learners, had clearly outlined the job context they worked in every day.  Once the portal was launched, although utilization spiked in the beginning, it quickly began to drop off over time.  When they a deeper look into why, they discovered that the learning and support assets that had made available within their workflow design were overwhelming, seen as random, and inconsistently designed across the portal.

This particular learning team had been pulled into the “if you build it they will come (and consume)” phenomenon.  Even though the workflow mapping aligned, once the learner tried to access the best type of learning and support asset based on their performance need, the choices were not contextually presented in a way which made the most effective opinion apparent.  Learning and support assets have a contextual component as well.  Even though the asset is “correct”, meaning the information or instruction can be found somewhere within them, the way in which the asset supports the need is what makes or breaks their effectiveness.  Some assets are informational, others are instructional.  One may take 15 minutest to watch or read, while another is a quick 30 second interaction.  One may go into great detail, when only a high-level overview is needed.  The list goes on and on. Each of these contexts matter and can make an asset helpful and effective, or it can make it overwhelming and confusing.

When we move learning and support into the workflow, the context at every level is king!  A poorly designed job-aid can trump a perfectly written lesson if it fits the context and need at the time.  Mastering these new design principles, and the methodologies that support them, are often the tipping point in making these overall transitions a success.  It’s up to us to make the mind-set shift both as learning leaders, and as the ones supporting our teams who produce the deliverables.  Let’s change the vocabulary of learning.  Let’s set “courses” and “curriculum” on the shelf for a while and start talking in the language of the context of the work to be done!

More resources on The 5 Moments of Need.
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The Three Beacons of Workflow Learning

By Conrad Gottfredson

There are over 50 different theoretical models we can look to as guides in the discipline of learning and instruction (see Instructional Design Theories.) I’ve taken deep dives into most of them and drawn upon many of them throughout my career. But when I look at them through the lens of the 5 Moments of Learning Need, Experiential Learning Theory has been especially helpful.

In February 2016 I posted a blog briefly describing this model (Experience is the Real Source of Learning and Development). It recognizes that real skill development occurs while performing work.  Learning may be initiated outside the flow of work, but until learners adapt what they were taught to their real-world environment and integrate all they have learned and experienced with their existing skill-sets, they haven’t truly learned. Until they actually apply what they have learned by adapting and integrating it into their own flow of work, learning outcomes from the “initiate” phase are temporary, fragmented, and unproven.


For many organizations, pushing learning in the workflow, where employees learn as they do their work, is uncharted.  In reality there is quicksand at every turn.  And, depending upon who an organization is listening to, the path to workflow learning can split and take many directions. Sadly, we’re seeing too many of those paths lead back to the same old things we’ve been doing “out of the workflow”, just rebranded and micronized.

Yet, if we can navigate the workflow learning path wisely, we can actually enable continuous performance improvement that is measurable and accelerated. This requires putting in place a performance support infrastructure that allows employees to initiate their own learning while they work in addition to pausing or stepping away from their work to begin to learn. 

Every organization needs to understand that they have these two options for initiating learning (in and out of the workflow.)  Both are vital if they want to optimize their learning investment. For over 20 years we have consistently found that, on the average, half the skills being taught outside the workflow could be safely initiated while people are actually performing the work of the organization.  (see A Case for Targeted Learning)  Think of the savings of lost work time and formal learning investment this could bring to organizations!  

In 2016 I posted another blog titled: Hopping On the Right Workflow Learning Bandwagon – 5 Guiding Principles.  (see: Hopping-on-the-Right-Workflow Learning Bandwagon - 5 Guiding Princi...)  I described 5 guiding principles in the blog the first of which is especially vital for any organization seeking to push learning fully into the workflow. Here’s that principle:

“Minimize time-away-from work.  An effective workflow Learning strategy must minimize the extent people have to stop working in order to learn.  Optimum learning occurs while people actually perform their work. This is a sweet spot for the discipline of performance support.  A properly designed EPSS can provide instant access to 5 Moments of Need support for every task people need to perform in their flow of work. Within 2-clicks and 10 seconds these performers can access a listing of the steps for a job task they don’t know how to perform.  With another click, they can access greater detail around those steps and follow them as they actually perform their work.  As they do this, they are most certainly learning in the best classroom—their own workflow.  The EPSS is their job-coach.  If by chance the steps aren’t sufficient, then another click provides access to the supporting knowledge they need to understand regarding that job task.  Or if they need access to reference resources like policy information, a decision support tool, etc. they can be access them with a single click within the context of the job task at hand.  And, if, by chance, there is time and need, they can access learning resources specific for that task.

In an EPSS all of these resources are intentionally orchestrated to facilitate successful job performance at the task level.  Every time people use an EPSS to support themselves in the work they do, they are learning in the workflow.  They are learning as they navigate through the rugged challenge of “Applying” what they have learned formally to the realities of their workflow.  They are also learning when they use the EPSS to follow the steps for a task they’ve never performed.  They are learning when they use the EPSS to Solve a problem that has cropped up.  They are learning as they use the EPSS to adapt to Change.  And, they can even use the EPSS to briefly pause their work to access micro-learning “Bursts” that target the same job task (thereby helping them learn something New or More about it.)       

This is a very different proposition than just making learning solutions available in the workflow.  We’ve been doing that for a long long time. Before we had 24/7 access to eLearning courses, we had video training; before that printed tutorials, and before that on-the-job training.  The challenge with these on-the-job learning solutions is that they often require people to stop working, move through a learning experience of some kind, and then resume work.  In this model, learners face the same challenge they do with classroom training.  Once they complete a self-learning module, they still have to figure out when and how to apply what they learned to their actual work.  Workflow learning shouldn’t be defined merely by where the learner is when she learns.  That is part of it. But it also needs to be defined by the degree she is able to learn while she performs her work.”

As you take the steps needed to be able to initiate learning out and in the workflow, you enable your organizations ability to reinforce competencies and values in the context of work.  Competencies and values aren’t operationalized through teaching alone. They only become operational when they are reinforced while employees perform the tactical work of the organization.  A performance support infrastructure makes this possible.  First it frees up the cognitive load required for performing the tactical work of the job (see When it Comes to Higher-order Thinking Performance Support is a No ...)



This provides employees the mental bandwidth needed to connect to broader behaviors and values as they perform their tactical work.  We recently watched a global procurer of gourmet coffee shut down all their stores for a day of training in response the public outrage associated with a few employees failing to live their values. That was a costly attempt to fix a problem that would never have occurred if they had in place a performance support infrastructure that also reminded performers of specific values in the context of performing their work.

It will never be enough to teach about competencies and values.  They must be reinforced in the context of work.  An EPSS can make those associations and be the means for that reinforcement.
As you move forward in your efforts to embrace workflow learning, you can safely navigate that uncharted path as long as you keep sight of these three realities:
  1. Real skill development occurs while performing work
  2. Continuous improvement begins and ends in the workflow
  3. Competencies and values must be reinforced in the context of work.
They are beacons to help you avoid the quicksand and sort through the many voices and views in this vital journey.





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Beyond Kirkpatrick: Measuring Performance in the Flow of Work

By Conrad Gottfredson

In 1959 Donald Kirkpatrick introduced four levels of evaluation to the learning profession: reaction, learning, behavior, and results. Thirty years later, Gloria Gery courageously informed us all that we might as well just weigh our students before and after learning, rather than use the metrics we were using then and still using now to determine the effectiveness of what we do for organizations.

To Gloria’s credit, she offered revolutionary insight regarding how we could break free from evaluating learners’ reactions and learning mastery (Levels 1 and 2). She proposed a way for us to validate the transfer of learning to the workplace and measure actual business impact by measuring performance in the flow of work (Levels 3, 4, and beyond).

According to Gloria, this validation of transfer can only happen within a performance support framework empowered by an EPSS, “because the connections between performance support [instances] in the actual work context is so much more direct than the distance between training events and work performance.”

Last year the Performance Support Community completed a year and half long 5 Moments of Need benchmarking effort.  One of the areas of focus was measurement. Because a 5 Moments solution extends L&D’s reach into the workflow via an EPSS, it provides unprecedented opportunity for continuous measurement and reporting. We wanted to understand how participating organizations can adjust their measurement strategies for gathering and reporting “business impact” because of this.
One of the primary outcomes of this part of the benchmarking study was the modification and validation of 18 “business impact” outcomes initially proposed by Gery.  The following figure shows them categorized into 5 areas.


Figure 1: Business Impact in Five Areas
Gathering measurement data for these outcomes requires a performance support infrastructure with at least one fully functioning EPSS.  The EPSS must be properly designed to facilitate this measurement.  In addition, the technology behind the EPSS must allow two key functions:
  • Targeted usage monitoring
  • Spot verification via micro-polling    

Targeted Usage Monitoring

A fundamental reality of performance support is that people will choose whether or not they use it. That choice is based upon how helpful the performance support solution is at the moment of need. If it’s helpful, performers will return. If not, they abandon ship quickly and are reluctant if not resistant to returning. So, if a performer, for example, accesses the steps of a specific task multiple times, you can confidently know that those steps are proving helpful. In addition, whenever a performer demonstrates a pattern of accessing a specific resource associated with that task, then you can also confidently assume the resource is proving helpful. By targeting specific tasks and the types of resources associated with those tasks, usage monitoring can provide a valuable ongoing data stream to help determine business impact.

Spot Verification via Micro-polling

In the realm of workflow performance, job tasks aren’t all equal when it comes to the consequences of failure.  They are all important to the success of the work, but some have significant to catastrophic impact if performers fail to successfully complete them.  These “high impact of failure” tasks and their associated resources merit periodic (spot) verification of successful completion as a second data point along with consistent usage. This spot verification can be accomplished via micro-polling.  Obviously, this needs to be done purposefully with restraint.  But this verification adds credibility to usage data and provides expanded capacity to measure business impact. 

How Usage and Spot Verification Work Together

One of the five key areas for business impact, shown in figure 1 above, is increasing profitability. Here’s how an organization can go about gathering specific measures on this area via an EPSS.

Measuring Reduced Time to Changed Performance:

Suppose a Moment of Change occurs that requires a performer to unlearn and relearn a task using the EPSS for guidance. The beginning of the Moment of Change is time stamped by the occurrence of a change in content in the EPSS. The end time is also stamped when the performer successfully completes the task. Multiple visits to the same task-level support, then, strongly suggests successful performance over time. This can rightly be interpreted as “changed performance” or “proficiency.” You can also include spot checks to verify successful performance by micro-polling performers.   
Specifically, then, to measure reduced time to changed performance, you would do the following:
  • Push notification of the change(s) with a brief description of and direct links to those places in the EPSS that would help performers navigate the changed performance.
  • Track usage patterns for all changed tasks and their associated resources that would influence successful performance.
  • Confirm via micro-polling successful performance of tasks with changes (especially where the impact of failure is significant to catastrophic) via micro-polling.

Measuring Reduced Time Spent Supporting Others:

When employees are engaged in self-support or peer support, they aren’t performing the work that furthers the mission and success of the organization—and the work for which they are being paid. The purpose of an EPSS is to be a digital coach and provide 2-click/10-second access to just what’s needed, when it’s needed, to successfully perform their work. As such, EPSSs are specifically designed to reduce support costs in this area.

The cost of self-support includes the amount of time performers take to solve a problem, figure out how to perform a task, find resources needed to help execute the work, or make a decision. Once an organization has baseline data regarding the amount of time employees spend remembering how to do things, finding resources to do their jobs, and solving problems when things go wrong, it can begin to track EPSS usage patterns. These can be correlated with the baseline data to substantiate reduced self-support costs. Usage patterns to consider are:
  • Revisits to a task area and to its specific resources.
  • The types of resources accessed.
  • The amount of time performers spend in a given task area working with those specific resources.
These patterns provide data points that can help draw reliable conclusions regarding time savings when compared against the baseline data. For example, monitoring resource access times and comparing that to baseline time required to find resources without an EPSS can generate helpful support cost reduction data.

Measuring Reduction of Work Stoppage to Learn:

Work stoppage costs organizations. One of the fundamental costs of formal learning is that learners, in order to participate, stop working. The time required to adapt what is learned to the workflow also costs. When things go wrong and learners stop work to solve the problem, more productivity is lost, which costs even more.

An EPSS allows organizations to safely push, on the average, half of the learning requirements completely into the workflow where performers learn while they perform their work. This reduces work stoppage to learn. In addition, an EPSS can dramatically reduce the time it takes to achieve effective performance in the workflow. And, as mentioned, at the Moment of Solve, an EPSS can reduce work stoppage by providing 2-click/10-second access to just what’s needed to solve the problem. Reduced work stoppage alone can pay for the investment in building and maintaining an EPSS.

These, of course, are just three examples.  But targeted usage monitoring and Spot verification via micro-polling can provide similar measurement support for the remaining 15 criteria.  There is a measurement strategy for each one.  As more organizations mature in their EPSS production capacity, they will be more prepared and able to pursue these and many other measurement capabilities.

This year bodes well for advancing in our capacity to continuously measure business impact.  The 5 Moments methodology is being embraced by more and more organizations.  We are rapidly reaching a tipping point with organizations ready and capable of measuring performance in the flow of work.  If your organization has an EPSS technology infrastructure in place and at least one deployed EPSS, you’re ready to measure performance in the flow of work.  Exciting isn't it!

More resources on The 5 Moments of Need.
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