The
Performance Paradox
I believe that for L&D professionals to be become
truly effective one of the changes we need to make is to stop focussing so much
on learning. I realise that sounds a
little crazy because helping people to learn things is what we are all about –
isn’t it?
I have participated in many beautifully facilitated and
wonderfully crafted sessions with clear & focused learning outcomes,
including interactive activities which involved participants in sharing
experiences and from which we were
all able to identify things we had learnt.
(OK – perhaps I exaggerate - I’ve also participated in some sessions
which were dull, overly filled with slides and poorly run – but that’s another
story). But if what we are learning
isn’t relevant to what we are doing in the workplace, if there is no
encouragement given to use what has been learnt, if there is no compelling
incentive to overcome our human tendency to return to what we were doing
previously, then what chance is there that what we have learnt will have any
impact at all on what we do at work and the results we achieve?
We need, as L&D professionals, to focus not on
learning but ‘performance’. Unlike
school teachers we are not in the business of ‘education’ but in the business
of business – well at least of enabling the people in our organisation to
contribute more effectively to achieving the organisation’s objectives. So,
that means that we need to keep our focus on ‘performance’. As Clark Quinn puts it in ‘Revolutionize
Learning & Development’ ‘The focus of learning and development is to
prepare people, but we need to focus on people doing, and work backwards to how we prepare them.’ (2014)
Everything else that we do follows on from this focus on
performance.
If we are identifying needs – we need to consider not
just the knowledge, skills & behaviours that learning addresses, but
anything that impacts on the overall performance of individuals & teams. So that means considering factors such as:
access to equipment; resources; systems & processes; management support;
information & feedback provided; or organisational culture and deciding if
they could be affecting performance and if so, addressing these issues
alongside any learning needs.
There will be times when a learning solution simply isn’t
the most effective answer. Increasingly,
we don’t need to have all the knowledge to do our jobs effectively in our
heads, but at our fingertips – in performance support tools and accessible
through our network of colleagues & external contacts. In our complex and fast-changing world, we
can’t possibly manage to have all the knowledge we need within our heads, so we
have no choice but to learn to access it as & when we need to.
This means designing learning solutions that may run
alongside performance support tools or with other changes designed to address
these other factors which are impacting on performance.
By focusing on ‘performance’ from the outset, we do aside
with concerns about the ‘problem of learning transfer’ because it is hard-wired
into our thinking right from the start.
Evaluation of the impact of L&D becomes more straight forward – we
focus on the impact that the total package has had on – you guessed it –
performance – using the measures used by the organisation.
So, it makes perfect sense - let’s focus less on learning
and more on performance! Sometimes less is
more.
(This post was originally written for CIPD ToolClicks LinkedIn Group and published in March 2015)
Rachel
Burnham
12/11/15
Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D
professionals become even more effective.
I am particularly interested in blended learning, the uses of social
media for learning, evaluation and anything that improves the impact of
learning on performance.
Follow me on Twitter @BurnhamLandD
