Agile Learning - Some Further Reflections

Rachel Burnham writes: At the CIPD ‘Leaders in Learning’ event in Manchester last week, Andy Lancaster invited a group of L&D professionals to consider how we might make our learning design process more agile.  This kind of agility is about being more responsive to the needs of our organisations and the learners we work with, being quicker to develop L&D solutions and perhaps also includes an element of flexibility in what we produce and certainly in the way we produce it.  Here is a link to the Sketchnote I created at the event.

We began by exploring why there is a need for L&D to become more agile in the way we approach learning design.   This is of course related to the pace of change in organisations and in the external environment, which requires organisations to become more agile in order to survive and flourish.   I am sure I don’t need to rehearse again the impact of changes in competition, technology, legislation & regulation, plus the challenges of responding to an uncertain world in the context of global markets, austerity in government policies and Brexit. 

L&D needs to keep pace with this and be able to contribute within our organisations to both to enabling individuals to learn what they need to respond to these changes and also to help individuals and teams become more able to create this organisational agility.   Within L&D, we are often working with fewer resources to meet growing needs.  There are risks if we keep working in traditional ways, with long lead-in times to the design of L&D programmes that we will be too slow to respond to emerging needs within our organisations and/or completely miss out on meeting some needs.  There are risks both to the effectiveness of our organisation and also the credibility and future of L&D in this.

Andy shared with us 10 points to help us to move towards agile learning design.   Here are some further reflections from me on each of these points – I may have paraphrased the wording of some of these 10 points.

1.  Determine business needs as top priority and respond with urgency

This is always important in L&D.  The focus of L&D has to be on improving performance in the organisation and enabling the organisation to better meet its objectives – so I was pleased to see this coming first in this list.

When we discussed how we could overcome challenges about changing our way of working to become more agile, the group I was in identified that focusing on the real ‘pain points in the organisation’ could help to generate sufficient support, particularly from senior managers and other key stakeholders to enable us to try this different approach.   Nick Shackleton-Jones, in a session on learning design at this year’s CIPD L&D Show, talked about identifying ‘what bugs people’ ie what do employees find challenging and gets in the way of them doing their job and then finding ways to address these issues. 

2.  Think big – start small

When trying out a different approach it often helps to try out something on a small scale or using a simpler approach than perhaps you would do normally.   This reduces the risk and can make it possible to get the resources or the ‘go-ahead’ to test out an idea.   I like the idea of running lots of small scale experiments which you learn from rapidly.  This connects to the idea of ‘Working Out Loud’ and testing out ‘half-baked ideas’ publicly –  or at least within your organisation and quickly getting input from other people to refine and add to these ideas. 

Many years ago, I worked for a small organisation that was working out how to do preparatory education on leaving home with young people – a bit like doing health education, but on the subject of housing.   We worked as an action learning project and tried out lots of different approaches to this preparatory education on leaving home and how to get it integrated into youth work and schools.   We were often trying different approaches simultaneously.  As there were only two of us working in the project across the whole of England and Wales –– one of our ‘rules of thumb’ when testing out an idea was to work with people who were already ‘hot to an idea’  ie we would search out volunteers.  Once we had tried out an approach, we would then work with people who were ‘warm’ and who perhaps needed a bit more support, encouragement or even challenging to try something out.

3.  Commit to a speedy development process

This is about our attitudes, but also about making it happen.   It would be worth identifying what causes the particular hold ups in your organisation.  I also think that clearing space in the diary now to be able to start on a new project in this different way would be a good starting point.

4.  Include learners in the heart of the design

I want to ask ‘Aren’t we doing this already?’ and of course we should be, but that doesn’t mean we are.  Often we rely on input from other stakeholders and the voice of learners is overlooked.  If you want to explore this further it is worth looking at Towards Maturity’s work in this area or a recent research report from Good Practice intriguingly called ‘The Secret Learning Life of Managers’.  Both of these pieces of work go far beyond asking learners what they would like and explore how learners learn in practice and what they actually do when they are faced with a challenging task at work.   There is a lot of interest now in developing our understanding of how learners learn effectively and in particular how they use technology to do this – there is the potential to develop this understanding much further through the use of learner analytics. 

But this point, also suggests involving learners in creating their own learning solutions and resources.  And so this also links to point 6 below.

5.  Curation rather than creation

The widespread availability of digital content in many different forms – blogs, video ‘how-to’s, infographics, flowcharts & other diagrams, podcasts (audio files), written guides, sets of FAQs – means that another change in L&D is to curate content rather than needing to create all your own content.   Curation involves searching out relevant materials, selecting the most appropriate, explaining why this has been selected and making this easily available to people who will find it relevant (everything from simply recommending it in an email, through to hosting this selection of resources within a digital platform such as a Learning Management System (LMS) or Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) such as Moodle or Blackboard).

Curating content and only creating content when it is specific to your organisation and not available elsewhere, can contribute to agile design of learning.

If you want to find out more about curation, I would recommend looking at the work of Martin Couzins and he can be found on Twitter @martincouzins.

6.  Create your own low cost content

The wide spread availability of smart phones and access to a range of free or low cost digital tools is making it much easier for L&D professionals to produce all sorts of materials in many different formats.  

This can also be extended to getting learners involved in creating their own content.  This could be through participation in communities of practice, perhaps an online group on the organisation’s Enterprise Social Network (something like Slack or Yammer) or thorough a LinkedIn group or less formal ‘Personal Learning Network’ such as via people connected through Twitter or some other social network.  It could be a colleague creating a useful job aid in the form of a flowchart explaining a process initially produced just for their fellow team members.  It could be a short video clip recorded on a smart phone.  The possibilities are pretty much endless.

Not everything needs to be produced to a Hollywood level of polish and gloss.   Something that is timely and highly relevant to your particular need can have just as much impact. 

7.  Scaffolding social collaborative discussion and learning

This is about using frameworks to provide some support and structure to help people get started in using these approaches for learning at work.  In a way it is an approach to providing a half-way house between a traditional highly-structured approach to a learning programme and a more collaborative approach in which learners have more input and direction of their own learning.   Look out for the work of Julian Stodd if you would like to find out more – he can be found on Twitter @julianstodd.

8.  Don’t be limited by resource availability

One of the potential barriers to agile learning is that we limit ourselves, because we focus on resource limitations, whether that is the availability of rooms, particular trainers or digital resources or finances.  Overcoming the latter was the focus of a session at this year’s CIPD L&D Show ‘Doing More with Less’ with Andrew Jacobs and Stella O’Neill  – here is a link to a Storify of the tweets from this session – look out for session E3.

9.  Learner access any time, anywhere … which includes digital

This is perhaps one of the most challenging areas, as it does require some technical expertise to identify the relevant digital platform for your organisation and situation.   Do take time to think this through.  Take advice.  Think not just about what will work here and now, but what would have some longevity and be sustainable for your organisation.

10.Don’t be a perfectionist – iteratively improve

As an individual this may be one of the most challenging of these tips – I know I always want to have any learning programme I’m associated with to be as good as it possibly can be.  However, that can be at a cost of all the other learning needs that go unmet and the missed opportunities.

As a parent, I have found it valuable to allow myself to not worry about being perfect – I like the concept of the ‘good enough parent’.  I have chosen where to place my priorities as a parent – home cooked food with lots of vegetables and fruit, a bed-time story every night and lots of hugs, but it does mean that the house is dustier than I would ideally like!  In a similar way, we may have to rethink our perfectionism in L&D and decide what can be let go.

These are some of my thoughts on agile learning design.  What does this prompt for you?  What can you being doing differently?

Rachel Burnham

11/7/16

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. 

'Developing Agile Learning' CIPD Leaders in Learning Sketchnote

This was live Sketchnoted at last night’s CIPD Leaders in Learning event in Manchester.  Andy Lancaster and David Hayden facilitated the session and there was much discussion.   I have tried to capture key points from the session faithfully.

 

Rachel Burnham

7/6/16

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. 

The Nature of Prejudice - Revisiting Allport's Scale

Rachel Burnham writes: With the reporting this week of a 5 fold-increase in the recording of race hate crimes since the announcement of the results of the EU referendum, I have been reminded of the work of Gordon Allport.

Gordon Allport wrote in 1954 a book titled ‘The Nature of Prejudice’ which explored how prejudice and discrimination operates in societies and in particular the growth of anti-Semitism in Germany in the years leading up to the 2^nd World War.  It has been used since to analyse many situations across the world such as segregation in America, Apartheid in South Africa, the treatment of Gypsy and Traveller communities in Europe and genocide in Rwanda.  It has also been used to think about prejudice and discrimination in organisations, not just on the basis of race.  He distilled his thinking on this into a model, which I think is worth revisiting in the light of recent developments in the UK. 

Thinking around discrimination and the nature of prejudice has of course developed since then and in particular work on unconscious bias has added considerably to these issues.  Nevertheless, I think it is worth looking again at Allport’s Scale. 

Allport’s Scale identifies five broad forms in which prejudice manifests and these are:

·       Antilocution or ‘speaking against’ – this includes sterotyping, ‘jokes’ and negative media portrayals of groups.  Allport identifies that the language and the way we speak to and of each other influences the way we treat each other.   When there is ‘speaking against’ that is wide spread and goes unchallenged, then it is more likely that the other manifestations of prejudice will be found.  Unchallenged ‘speaking against’ will be seen as permission by some people that discrimination is acceptable and some people will act on this and move right up Allport’s Scale.

·       Avoidance – Individuals in the ‘in-group’ will distance themselves from people perceived to be in the ‘out-group’.  This can be individually or can be institutionalised.   Where there are already divides in a society (eg due to patterns of housing, school admission policies, access to work) this tends to allow confirmation of sterotypes and the negative portrayals from Antilocution.   Where people  don’t work, socialise or have meaningful contact prejudice can flourish.

·       Discrimination – Individuals and groups are denied access to opportunities and services.  

·       Physical Attack – Individuals and property are subjected to attack. 

·       Extermination – Allport referred here to the systematic killing of a group, but it can also include the murder of individuals and also where individuals are driven by their experiences of prejudice & discrimination to suicide. It can also include situations where people are driven out from an organisation or from a community (or country?).

Allport offers a description of how prejudice affects a society.  I think its importance is in the recognition it gives to the impact of both ‘speaking against’ and ‘avoidance’.  It suggests that tackling these two areas are crucial in challenging what is happening in the UK today.

This is not new.  We know this.  But it is easy to let things drift.  It is easy to be distracted by things that seem more urgent. It was easy to be complacent about progress towards a fairer society, particularly if discrimination is not part of your day to day experience.   But not right now – now it feels urgent and at the heart of what matters.

Rachel Burnham

3/7/16

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. 

Northern Powerhouse - Changing Mindsets

Rachel Burnham writes: Last Wednesday, in my role as Public Policy Adviser for CIPD Manchester, I had the pleasure of chairing a Public Policy meeting for the branch at which Ed Cox, the Director of the Institute for Public Policy Research North (IPPR North), discussed with us the ‘Northern Powerhouse – Rhetoric or Reality’.   The IPPR North is the northern base of a think tank focused on public policy issues and they have carried many pieces of research and produced publications on the Northern Powerhouse and related topics.  Since our meeting last week they have launched a ‘Blueprint for a Great North Plan’, which sets out the steps they believe stakeholders across the northern region need to be taking now to make the most of the Northern Powerhouse idea. 

This post is based on my personal reflections from this session and on my additional reading on the Northern Powerhouse.  Here is a link to a Flipboard which brings together some of these reports & articles and includes a basic introduction to what is meant by the Northern Powerhouse.

The idea

One of the points from our meeting was just how much the idea of the ‘Northern Powerhouse’ has captured the public imagination – certainly here in Manchester – if you are reading from down south that may of course not be the case at all!   Almost unlike any other government initiative, this one has fallen on open ears in the North  – that is not to say that everyone shares the same understanding or that there aren’t critiques of it, but it has achieved a widespread recognition at least.   It picks up on our metropolitan pride, whether for Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle or Leeds; builds on our historic achievements from the industrial age; fits with more recent re-energising of these cities, helped by actions such as the move by the BBC to the Greater Manchester area; and of course, taps into the widespread irritation with the over-dominance by London and the South-East of almost every aspect of political and economic life in this country.  No wonder we like the sound of the Northern Powerhouse!  It feels about time!

However, the ideas behind the Northern Powerhouse are about more than northern pride, but are also about how we create a thriving and sustainable national economy that works for the whole country.  So, don’t stop reading if you don’t live in the North!

The reality

The northern economy is huge – by northern I’m referring to an area that stretches from North Wales and Sheffield across the North West and Yorkshire to Newcastle.   The size of this economy is 25% of the UK economy and if the north were a country in its own right, it would have the 8^th largest economy of all European countries measured through GDP.  However, the economy of the north is growing more slowly and productivity is lower than other European countries, with the exception of Greece. 

The UK has a very large difference between the growth rate and prosperity of its capital and the other regions, particularly the North, compared to other European countries. Whilst London is continuing to grow, there are questions about the limits of this agglomeration and this has raised the issue about whether it would be better for the country to seek to rebalance economic growth through encouraging growth across the northern cities of the UK – the Northern Powerhouse.  This would be a major shift in our approach to regional and industrial policy.

However, there are many challenges facing the north: incomplete transformation from our historical industrial past; the balance of jobs & roles – the north is more effected by the hourglass effect on the numbers and types of skills required; weaknesses in transport and other connectivity issues and the impact of a London-centric approach to policy making and resource allocation. 

George Osborne’s approach has been three pronged, encouraging: agglomeration; connectivity – mainly transport related; and devolution of powers.  These have both been lauded – and also criticised for their party political agenda – as one way of generating some Conservative traction in the Labour heartlands of the North and devolution as a way of distancing Westminster from the impact of the austerity measures.

The possibility

But this approach to the Northern Powerhouse isn’t the only one.  We could take other approaches which give much more emphasis on economic growth and prosperity for all. 

We could focus on a different understanding of ‘city’ and rather than the single city approach, as in London, in which all the cities are subsumed into a single agglomeration and instead adopt a more European approach valuing the contribution made by a number of medium and smaller sized cities to a wider city-area ie the North of England.   This would recognise the different strengths of each of the major cities in the region and also the part to be played by smaller ‘cities’ such as Warrington, Burnley and Durham – which interestingly seem to be growing more rapidly than the larger cities in recent times.

It would mean investing not just in improved transport links, but crucially in education, skills and other measures designed to increase productivity and innovation.  This is particularly where we in L&D and the wider HR profession have a part to play.    And this is one of the areas where devolution may have the potential to enable us to exert influence over policy developments in education and particularly the skills agenda to more closely meet local and regional needs.  

There are many hurdles to  be faced in making the ideas of the Northern Powerhouse anything more than an appealing phrase, particularly if this wider vision is embraced, not  least the uncertainty over the UK’s place in Europe.  But I think they are worth tackling.  And I think there is a role for L&D and our colleagues in the wider HR field in this.

Rachel Burnham

19/6/16

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. 

L&D and HR - Better Together

Rachel Burnham writes: The #LDInsight chat question discussed this week was ‘How can L&D support other HR functions eg recruitment, talent management, ER?’ and as is usually the case this generated lots of discussion, thought and some disagreement.  Here is a link to the Storify if you want to find out more.

I was particularly struck again by the difference between those, like myself, who see L&D as a part of HR and those who see L&D as quite distinct and separate from HR.  This issue has come up before on other occasions in #LDInsight chats.   This is familiar territory for me as it is a subject that almost always comes up with each new group that I tutor for the CIPD Certificate in L&D for MOL Learn.  

My experience is that very many people coming into the L&D profession come seeing L&D as different and as distinct from HR.   This is usually because in their organisation L&D (or training) is organised as a separate team from HR, perhaps with few links (or few positive links) with HR and a different focus to their work.  And of course, there are some ‘trainers’ whose work is customer focused, supporting their organisation’s clients to use their products and services effective (eg with specialist software or equipment); and there are other ‘trainers’ from training providers, who sometimes model their approach more from an educational model of delivery.  It is easy to imagine that the whole world mirrors your own experience – I’ve certainly done that and often people starting out in L&D only have limited networks within the L&D profession to challenge that perception.

One of the joys of my work is encouraging conversations between fellow students to explore the differences and similarities between their organisations and how they organise their L&D work, including that relationship with HR.  And in supporting them in developing wider networks amongst the HR profession, including L&Ders, so that they have access to other perspectives and get a deep understanding of the importance of context.  I usually learn lots from this too about different sectors, different organisational cultures, specific niche markets and so on.

Sometimes, though this view of the separateness and distinctiveness of L&D and HR is also held with people with many years of experience of L&D.  I know individuals who cite poor experiences of HR within their organisation or business sector and who identify this as the root of their wish to distance themselves from a bureaucratic and rule-driven HR.  And of course there are undoubtedly HR functions who are like this.  And many HR functions who are not.  There are even some L&D teams, who I might quite like to distance myself from –  content-dumping, over-powerpoint using, push button e-learning compliance chasing, irrelevant to real organisational needs and slow to respond teams.

I think there is real value in seeing L&D as part of HR.  L&D and the other specialisms that make up HR are a bit like a family or group of house mates sharing a house – at our best when we work together.  Sometimes there are disagreements between house mates/family members about X not pulling their weight and doing their share of the cleaning.  Sometimes, the writing on the shopping list is a bit unclear and the wrong items are bought by the designated shopper.   And sometimes, everyone is sat in their own room each watching a TV programme on a different device and not speaking to each other – though in fact everyone is watching the same programme.

In fact, we cannot afford not to work together.  Just think of the damage done to an organisation when recruitment and L&D responsibilities for induction don’t work effectively.  Or when reward policies pull in the opposite direction to the change programme OD is working on. Or when line managers find that HR rules ‘prevent’ them from using ideas developed on a recent L&D programme.

But I would draw the net wider too.  I think we in L&D need to be talking and working with other teams and stakeholders too.  It is increasingly important that we have effective working relationships with IT, given how important technology is to enabling modern workplace learning.  We need to be connecting with Internal Comms – again there are lots of potential overlaps here particularly with engagement and seeing learning opportunities as a campaign rather than a one-off programme.   I also think we need links with teams such as Health & Safety and Compliance/Quality and finance.  Which is, of course, in addition to working alongside operational teams and their managers.

One of the things that I think helps to get this working together, is being clear about where the focus is in L&D.   For me, Mervyn Dinnen nailed it with his tweet in the #LDInsight chat when he said ‘Only one strategy. The business strategy. That’s the one you need to understand and speak.’  We share responsibility for delivering on this with the rest of HR and all the other functions and teams across the organisation.  

In L&D we are starting, at last, to focus more on impact on peformance, not just learning.   And this is something we need to work together on with the rest of HR and across the organisation.  It isn’t something that can be tackled in isolation.  As being our ‘precious’. 

If we focus on the business strategy and performance improvement then we will need to work together.  And we will be better together.

(The title of this blog was tugging at my memory and I realised that ‘Better Together’ is the title of a track by Jack Johnson, so here is the link.  Have rather surprised myself by remembering this piece, as I usually only remember jazz & hymn tunes!  )

Rachel Burnham

5/6/16

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. 

Productivity, Fairy Dust and Developing Effective Managers

Rachel Burnham writes: One of the major challenges facing the UK economy is the low level of productivity in the UK compared to other economies.  This is has been a long standing and growing concern, so I won’t rehearse the data around this – but do take a look at the reports and articles on my Productivity Puzzle Pinterest board if you want to find out more.

It is linked to many other important issues for the wider economy, organisations and individuals such as levels of low pay in the UK, the mix of businesses working in the UK (manufacturing, service, relationship with growth, etc) and skills agenda topics such as the skills mix available in the UK workforce.   I find it interesting that we don’t spend more time focusing on the contribution of L&D to raising productivity within organisations.   One of the challenges is that often these topics are discussed in different forums and with different groups of people – economists focusing on productivity, ‘training providers & colleges’ on the skills agenda and so on.   It would be good to get more cross-over in these discussions.

Back in February of this year, Sukh Pabial wrote about productivity and the contribution that modern workplace learning could make to that.   I want to follow that up in this post by focusing on the development of management skills.

One of the ways in which L&D can make a contribution to improving productivity and therefore the overall effectiveness of organisations is by focusing on the development of managers.  Acas has identified 7 levers that contribute within organisations to raising productivity and one of these key levers is ‘skilled managers’.  Acas have produced a helpful tool to encourage organisations to reflect on where they are now in relation to each of these levers and take action.  

We know how damaging an ineffective manager can be to the performance of the staff they manage and how the ripples of ineffectiveness can spread through an organisation causing damage to engagement, trust, communication flows and of course performance.   Yet many organisations still pay insufficient attention to developing effective skills and behaviours amongst their managers.

I remember a group of students, on a CIPD course, discussing the management development programmes within their organisations, some years ago.  One student described their organisation as relying on ‘magic’ weekends for management development – I was puzzled, I hadn’t come across this development tool before – use of horse-whispering, juggling, orchestra’s for team development, but magic for management development? Then she explained that when a manager was appointed from within her organisation, they left on a Friday as an experienced and competent team member and were expected to start back on a Monday morning as a fully competent and effective manager – as though they had been sprinkled with fairy dust over a ‘magic’ weekend!  

I have subsequently heard the CIPD’s Peter Cheese use the same phrase when arguing that ‘we have not done enough to train and support line managers’ (A20:20 Vision Joint Acas/CIPD Manchester Conference 2016).

So we need to make sure that every manager has access to the learning they need to develop the skills they need – whether it is as a first time manager in their first few weeks, a long-term manager recognising the need to improve and further develop their skills or a more senior manager taking on new responsibilities and needing new perspectives.   And we can’t rely on a one-shot development programme to achieve that or even a series of development programmes at each at key stages of a manager’s career.   
Managers, like other staff, will need support and access to relevant learning when they need it, at the point they are facing an issue, a difficulty or a new challenge.

Which brings me to the new report, ‘Inside the Heads of UK Managers’ published today by Good Practice.  This examines what it is that managers find the most challenging aspects of their role.  Perhaps unsurprisingly dealing with organisational change was top of the list of the most challenging, with managing conflicts and maintaining a work-life balance also high up there.   I found the break-down of the information into sub-sets most fascinating – for example within the respondents maintaining work-life balance was higher up the list for men than for women and coaching/training my team higher for more senior managers than for lower management.

The report encourages you to do your own research, to identify what would be the biggest challenges for managers in your own organisation and then compare this with your existing provision. It suggests using the methodology they have developed to enable you to do this.  This echoes a point made by Nick Shackleton-Jones, at the recent CIPD L&D Show, when he talked about identifying what bugs people and addressing these needs.

It is time for us, in L&D, to get real about supporting managers to be effective in their work.   I’m all for fairy dust, but let’s keep it for bedtime stories and out of management development!

Rachel Burnham

23/5/16

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. 

Get Started in Developing Your Digital Skills

Rachel Burnham writes:  This Sketchnote summarises the session I delivered in the Technology for Learning arena at the CIPD L&D Show on 12^th May 2016 on behalf of MOL Learn.

If you are interested in finding out more about how digital tools and technology can be used to enhance learning in the workplace, why not also read my review of this year's OU Learning Trends Report.

Rachel Burnham

16/5/16

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.