The Difference Between Education, Training, and Learning

In our 30 years of consulting to organizations both big and small – it has become very apparent that most workplace training fails for one fundamental reason…

People don’t “get” the difference between education, training, and learning.

As an expert in the field, we often speak at industry conferences and always start with this distinction.

It is amazing to hear many people in the audience exclaim “ohhhh.”

Here is the distinction:

Education is something we’ve all experienced.

It is formal. It is typically done in large groups.

It is mostly a one-way flow of information.

It’s usually an expert imparting knowledge - which often takes the form of facts, rules, or underlying theories.

At the end of education we expect people to “know stuff.”

Training is more outcome based.

At the end of training you are expected to be able to do something or to behave in a certain way.

And training is dependent on education because you often cannot do new things without understanding certain facts or rules.

For instance,  you can’t hit a golf ball with accuracy unless you understand how your body position changes the trajectory.

But above and beyond that – there are many different techniques for hitting a golf ball …which can be learned through training.

Finally, learning is achieved when you have internalized something.

It is the point where somebody says “how do you do that?” and you don’t even know.

You forget what it was like to be a beginner.  

You forget what the steps are – you just do it.

So if we want to get to learning – which we do – how is that accomplished?

Three ways:  experience, spaced learning, and reflection.

First Experience – not all learning is done in the classroom or in a formal, prescribed setting, right? Think of all the things you’ve learned in your life. A well-known example is teaching a child not to touch a hot stove. Rarely do any of us actually teach that. If we were to educate the child we’d say “don’t touch that stove, it’s hot!” or  “be careful, you’ll get hurt” or the simple NO! 

But none of those words mean anything.

Inevitably we all touch a hot stove and IMMEDIATELY learn what we’ve been “taught” but didn’t internalize.

So – if you truly want someone to learn something – they have to experience it.

Next, spaced learning or practice.

Think about when you learned to ride a bike or drive a car.

 You didn’t take a class and then miraculously know how to do it.

You practiced over and over – repetition, yes, but also - you practiced over the course of many days or weeks - - spaced practice.

We simply do not learn something once, and change our behavior or our capabilities immediately.

And third: reflection.

Reflection is something only an adult human can do.  

Have you ever punished your child by saying “go to your room and think about what you’ve done.” That is futile. They can’t do it.

But you know that internal monologue you have running in your head… as you drive or when you’re in the shower …where you’re constantly reflecting on what has happened and whether you were satisfied with the outcome or not? That’s reflection.

In order to learn - people need time to reflect.

Sadly, we rarely allow for that in the workplace.

We put people into 2 hour or 4 hour training classes and then release them back to their jobs where they get inundated with new and urgent things… and that’s the end of that.

And then we wonder why people don’t change their behavior … despite the fact that we provided them “training.”

So -  to reiterate:

Education, training and learning are different.

When people get to the point of having learned – they have internalized the content.

They know what they are doing…

why they are doing it…

when they should do it…

and how their behavior might have to change based on changing circumstances.

Three Predictions for Workplace Training - Post Corona Virus

Across the world, the universe of the “workplace” has suffered a stunning blow in the last few months and many industries and companies will come back as a contracted version of their former selves. One department that is likely to take a hit is training and professional development. Here are my predictions for what T+D will look like in the coming few years.

Note: This article was originally published by Training Industry Magazine.

Prediction #1 virtual training will really take off – for 2 reasons 

As a consultant who specialized in designing and delivering virtual training for about 15 years, it always amazed me when I encountered a client to whom it was all new; but I had one or two clients such as this each year.  There are two important reasons why I predict virtual training will become more in demand than ever going forward. (Note: Virtual training is conducted live, with other participants and a facilitator, as opposed to distance learning or e-learning, which is really self-study,)

First, now that many companies have made the switch to work-from-home (WFH) they realize it’s not as impossible as they feared. One of our clients is a call center who finally started work-from-home options due to the virus. A call center customer service rep is definitely not a role that requires sitting with others in a central location – but the client was simply resistant to the idea of WFH. Now that they realize people can work from home, it’s not such a hard sell to get them to accept people learning from home as well.

The second reason virtual training will take off is because it is so affordable. Post-corona virus, those companies that are still in business are going to have to use their resources wisely. During the Great Recession I managed a new-hire on-boarding process for a client for five years. We onboarded approximately 300 people, in 10-12 groups, throughout the year, all virtually.  Virtual training is convenient, affordable, and logistically a lot simpler.

There are also a number of reasons why virtual learning is a preferable methodology for adult learners, such as spaced learning and built-in time for reflection – but that is fodder for another article.

Prediction #2 companies will realize the value and necessity of cross-training

When I first became a consultant in the early 1990’s, one of the first projects I worked on was a cross-training project for a manufacturing firm in which everyone on the manufacturing floor was “upskilled” (to upskill means to teach a current employee additional skills) to be able to backfill at least two other positions.

The curriculum was designed to require them to learn five new topics in total, but the remaining three topics were allowed to be knowledge-based (such as understanding more about procurement or finance) as opposed to skill-based. The objective of the training was to have each employee paying the company back in multiple ways.  For example, a machinist who had additional training in finance was more likely to complete routine maintenance knowing that the cost of maintenance vs. repair was enormous. 

I thought the “multiple skills” idea was quite brilliant and have been amazed, over the course of my career, by how few companies do it.  What is more prevalent in training – especially in the last twenty years – is training for depth, not breadth. If someone enters a company in a finance role, more than likely all their company sponsored training will be focused solely on finance. They will never be exposed to marketing or HR or operations. Through training, companies have kept employees in silos and by doing so they have hobbled their agility. Companies will be forced to lay off their over-abundance of marketers (for example) while simultaneously hiring salespeople because not one of those marketers was cross trained in sales.

This shuffling of people like pieces on a chess board has all sorts of negative ramifications, such as recruiting costs and a loss of company history / knowledge; but again, that is fodder for a different article.

Prediction #3 – subject-matter-experts will be more in demand as trainers than ever before

Having been a consultant for nearly thirty years, I have seen this pendulum swing back and forth a few times. First there are fully staffed, centralized training departments who run training like its own business with marketing and sales, delivery of a product / service, and requests for feedback. Then an economic shakeup swings the pendulum to focus on what is truly needed for individuals to learn and that is the transfer of business-critical knowledge from those who have it to those who do not. This often means direct contact between subject matter experts (SMEs) and newbies, eliminating the “middle-man” of the training department.

Training and development has always been seen as a cost-center (which it is not) and is always one of the last functions to be brought back online after an economic downturn.  But a lack of a training department doesn’t stop the need for training such as new-hire onboarding or skill-specific training. In the coming years, companies will redeploy resources and the training will more than likely be done by individuals who are subject matter experts.

While using SMEs as trainers is a great cost-saving tactic, it doesn’t result in the best training outcomes. SMEs aren’t knowledgeable about the best ways to transmit content to learners (hint: lectures are not the way), and they tend to start at a much higher-level of capability than their audience because they forget what it was like to be new and unskilled. They have the “curse of knowledge,” as this 2017 TICE article explains. The best way to utilize SMEs as trainers could be an article - or a book - all its own.

As business returns to “normal,” companies will be altered in many ways. Underlying those changes will be the need for cost-savings and efficiencies which can be achieved, in the realm of training and development, through virtual training, cross-training, and using subject-matter-experts as the deliverers of training. The next decade will see a “bold new future” for training and professional development; will your organization be ready to adapt?

Succession Planning? Start Here.

Many organizations are facing an impending loss ofleadership as the last of the Boomers are getting ready to leave the workforce.With the start of a new decade upon us, now is the time to plan for the next generationof leaders. But where to start? If your company does not have a leadershipdevelopment program in place, or if you haven’t really given much thought to howyour company will make an orderly transfer of leadership responsibility, 2020is the year to focus on this critical planning.

Below, I’ve outlined the first three steps in successionplanning. So as not to get overwhelmed, address them slowly over the next sixto twelve months and your organization will be ready to smoothly transfer thereins of leadership as the Boomers in your company begin to retire.

Step 1 - Consider who is next in line for leadership 

The outcome of this step is to determine where you want toconcentrate your leadership development efforts in order to achieve the most ROI.Do you want to concentrate your efforts on those who have been with yourorganization the longest and therefore understand its inner workings andculture? Or do you want to concentrate on younger generations who are lookingfor professional development as a primaryperk of employment and who may be with your organization longer, as aresult?

To gain better insight, take a look at who you presently employand what generational cohort they belong to. Currently there are fourgenerations in the workforce, the Boomers, Gen X, the Millennials and Gen Z whoare just entering the workforce. It is logical to assume that Gen X, being thenext generation after the Boomers, would be next in line to lead in yourorganization, but there aren’tenough of them. In addition, in a recent study conducted by TheConference Board, of data collected from over 25,000 leaders acrossindustries, it was determined that Gen X have been stymied from moving up thecorporate ladder by Boomers who have stayed on the job longer than previousgenerations. What this means is that there are a number of generations in yourworkforce who have not been indoctrinated into leadership development orleadership roles.

Determining where to apply development efforts is a criticalfirst step in determining your company’s leadership pipeline.

Step 2 - Determine What Skills Your Future Leaders Need

Once you determine who you’ll want to develop (as anaside, I advocate developing everyone as if they were going to be afuture leader; a rising tide lifts all boats, after all) you’ll need to identifywhat skills they will need to support your organization in the future.

To accomplish this, there are three sources of data you’llwant to collect and consider:

 1 Look at the jobdescriptions of each of your current leadership roles to determine what skills areidentified as necessary in today’s environment. This is just a baseline, as weknow that today’s business environment is accelerating and changing at a pacenever experienced before and what your organization needs today may not be whatit needs tomorrow. Be sure to identify leadership skills and behaviors, such asmanaging a team of five or fiscal responsibility, and not job tasks such asmonthly reporting. If possible, “read between the lines.” For instance the taskof “standardize procedures to improve efficiency” really means having theleadership abilities of analyzing, forecasting, and planning.

2 Pay attention to what industry experts and yourprofessional association are doing in the realm of the “future of work” andwhat is predicted for your industry. Some of the current concerns includeartificial intelligence and robotics, consumer pressures (suchas related to the environment), and changing buying habits – all of whichwill require your company to adapt. What do you need to start training yourfuture leaders for, today?

3 Hold one-on-one interviews and ask your current leaderswhat prepared them for the role they hold today. Most often you’ll learn thatformal development is not credited as much as mentorship, on the job learning,and a wide array of experiences.  Theseinsights will help you to decide the best course of leadership development, foryour organization, going forward. For example, you could put four future-leaders through an off-site leadership development program or you might chooseto institute a job rotation program for everyone at your company. The twooptions might cost the same amount, but will return vastly different results.  You’ll want to thoughtfully consider howpeople truly learn leadership in your organization.

Note: Be very concerned if the majority of responsesare, “I learned it at my previous job,” because that means you are doingnothing to develop leaders in your organization and are instead relying onother companies to develop them and hoping you can then hire them away. That“strategy” puts your company in a very precarious position; the topic ofanother article entirely.

Step 3 – Consider How You Will Develop Leadership Skills

Once you have identified the skills that should be developedin your future leaders, you’ll need to determine how to get them those skills.  Creating a formalized leadership developmentprogram is a time consuming and arduous process – which is why most companiesforego it and instead cross their fingers and hope their future leaders will“appear” when needed.

Sending people out for leadership development can be cost-prohibitive and because of that, the number of individuals that get developed is generally far fewer than is needed by any organization. A smart option for most companies is to mete leadership development out to everyone, through easy-to-implement activities such as reading groups or lunch-and-learns, and on-the-job projects such as a multi-discipline initiative. Over time, small and consistent development opportunities will build the leadership skills your organization needs and alleviate succession planning concerns.

Once you have considered and acted upon these first three steps in succession planning, you’ll be well on your way to ensuring that your company has a leadership pipeline capable of continuing excellent work despite a rapidly changing business environment.

Note: This article was first published by Training Industry Magazine.

Can One Employee Take Your Company Down?

Your company is doing great work. It is creating jobs where they didn't exist before... you are contributing to the betterment of society... have you considered whether or not one employee could bring that all to a screeching halt?

Since February of 2017, with the recording of Travis Kalanick's (former CEO of Uber) poor behavior as he berated an Uber driver, displayed all across America, there have been frequent episodes of bad behavior demonstrated by numerous corporate leaders. In just the last month we've seen:

• Adam Neumann, the CEO of WeWork was forced to step down after the filing of the company's pre-IPO paperwork shone a light on suspect financial dealings which ultimately benefitted Mr. Neumann to the tune of millions of dollars. The IPO was withdrawn, the company has laid off over 4000 employees, and its estimated value dropped 40 billion in the blink of an eye. See more here.

• The Houston Astros baseball team fired their assistant General Manager for verbally attacking 3 female reporters after a pennant win in October. In addition to a social media onslaught faulting the organization and how it handled the incident (initially accusing one reporter of fabricating the incident and then taking 3 days to admit to it and holding the AGM accountable), the team will be fined by Major League Baseball, and the way that the incident was handled is now inviting scrutiny of the company's culture, which will result in further public relations embarrassment and could see the departure of many others in leadership positions in the organization. This incident, and the stress it caused the whole organization, may have just cost the team the 2019 World Series. See more here.

• The CEO of McDonald's resigned this past week, saying this: "Given the values of the company, I agree with the board that it is time for me to move on." The values of the company? The values, that as CEO, he was most-responsible for upholding? See more here.

Now, you might argue that these are people in positions of power and it is often the case that with power comes the belief that you are above "following the rules." But a leader is also responsible for the "unwritten rule" that he or she sets the acceptable behaviors and culture of an organization through their example.

When Does It Start?

We cannot assume that only those in the "higher echelon" are behaving badly (and costing their companies money as well as reputation). Think of the myriad of "little" ethical violations that occur in companies daily: taking home office supplies, failing to report a breakdown in product or process because "it's not my job," refusing to cooperate with another department or colleague, giving a customer favorable terms over other customers, the list could go on and on. At what point does a "little" ethical violation bloom into something that is egregious and damaging to your company financially or reputationally?

These types of incidents are precisely the reason why The Training Doctor created its Leadership From Day One development approach. By developing leadership behaviors such as ethics, decision making, and self-management early in one's career, incidents like these should not occur down the line. If all of your employees are immersed in a culture that supports the good of all (the company, its employees and customers), you'll make a bigger impact on the world and sleep better at night.

Are you at risk?

As a business owner, do you presume that your employees are behaving ethically? Do you know your organization's culpability from actions committed by your employees? Especially your senior/leader employees who have more of a "platform" to do harm to the company?

It is never, never too soon to start developing leadership characteristics in your workforce. Don't wait until you've already promoted someone to a leadership role to start to foster the skills they need to lead themselves as well as others; it is harder to rewire behavior than it is to develop it from the start. When you start leadership development early in your employee's careers, it becomes an ingrained and reflexive behavior as they move up through the ranks.

Go to our contact us page if you'd like help establishing a leadership development program that starts with everybody. Today.

You Need a Leadership Development Program that Starts at Day 1 - and here's why

We wait too long to start leadership development. A 2016 meta-analysis of leadership development programs determined that most leadership development begins at age 46 AND leadership development almost always begins after someone is appointed to a leadership role. That makes little sense. Wouldn't you rather have an employee that learns feedback skills or problem-solving or strategy at the start of their career, rather than at the end?

There are a number of other approaches to as-we-do-it-today leadership development that are illogical - here is a sampling, with the rationale for a "better way."

• Leadership development programs are generally short-term (one week, 10 months) and generic - leaving the individual to figure out how their new knowledge and skills apply to the work that they are doing.
  • You want a development strategy that integrates work with learning and outputs.

• To be cost-effective, companies generally are selective about whom they will send through leadership development - sacrificing hundreds of capable individuals for the development of a few. Do you really want only a few people in your organization to be fully capable in their roles?
  • When leadership skills are integrated with regular activities and duties – starting on day 1 – the costs are minimal and absorbed daily, you don't need a "special event."

• As leadership development is currently administered...ROI is iffy. If your organization has 15 individuals, in 10 different disciplines, who have gone through leadership development this year - how do you associate their output with the learning?
  • When the learning process is integrated with every worker's role and responsibilities, you can easily connect output to increased knowledge and skill through various measure of productivity.

100% ROI 

Whenever I ask business owners and managers this question they are always a bit dumbfounded at the logic of it: Would you rather increase the capabilities and competencies of 15% of your employees? Or raise 100% of your employee's skills by 15%?

If every employee made better decisions, took responsibility for problem-solving, communicated better with their colleagues and other departments, understood who their stakeholders were... and more "leadership skills"... the efficiency and productivity of your company would be boundless.

But that "training" needs to begin on the first day they walk in the door. Your company should have a 3- or 5- or 10-year plan for the development of every employee. It should include skills building in the role they were hired for as well as broader, more business-acumen topics like risk, finance, and strategy.

And most importantly - it should include exposure to all areas of the business. Too many poor decisions are made because HR doesn't understand Ops, or Marketing doesn't understand Finance. When individuals understand the "big picture" of how your company operates - and they make relationships with people in other functions - companies run more smoothly, efficiently, and profitably. But they need to develop those skills at the start of their career, not the end.

Developing the Solid 70

When your organization decides who gets training – who gets chosen? In terms of performance, employees can be classified as A players, B players and C players.

A players are your superstars – and make up only 20% of the typical staff. C players – those whose performance is passable but not great – make up another 10%.

The bulk of employees are B players – the solid 70. B players are the heart and soul of organizations. They do consistently good work. They represent your company – and your success. When a customer has an interaction with your company there is a 70% chance they are dealing with a B player. You want your B players to be the best they can be. Too often companies have such limited availability of training that it goes to the A players.

If you’d like to develop your solid 70, you can find a number of suggestions in this earlier posting. But it doesn’t have to be your responsibility to figure it out! During the next round of performance reviews (assuming your company still does them) ask individuals what they are interested in, what they would like to attempt or test, and what skills they would like to develop. 

No matter how good your A players are, they will never make up for the “solid citizen” B players. And the more you can incrementally increase the B player’s skills, the more your organization will benefit.  

Are You A Slow Thinker? Good for you!

First, a quick tutorial on Fast and Slow thinking – or System 1 and System 2 Thinking as popularized by Nobel Prize winner Danny Kahneman - in case you are not familiar.

Fast / System 1 Thinking

System 1 thinking can be thought of as our “immediate response” to something. When the alarm goes off in the morning – we get up. We don’t stop and ponder – what is that noise? what does it mean? should I get up right now? There is an immediate understanding of the information coming in and an immediate and knowledgeable response to that information. (Caution! This sometimes leads us to applying bias to situations that do in fact require more thought, and System 1 can be manipulated through the use of priming and anchoring.)

System 1 also enables us to do several things at once so long as they are easy and undemanding. System 1 thinking is in charge of what we do most of the time.

However, you want system 2 to be in control.

Slow / System 2 Thinking

System 2 thinking is the kind of thinking that requires you to struggle a bit. In this short (4:22) video featuring Kahneman, he gives the example of being able to answer 2x2 vs. 17x24.

The latter causes you to pause and put more mental energy in to arriving at the answer. If you’d like to try a fun activity to test your slow thinking ability, click here. Or watch the famous Invisible Gorilla video which illustrates that when System 2 is concentrating on one thing (counting the number of passes) it cannot concentrate on another (seeing a gorilla walk through the frame).

With practice System 2 can turn in to System 1 thinking, as in the case of a firefighter or airline pilot. Once sufficient application of System 2 thinking has occurred over an extended period of time and in varying circumstances, it becomes “easy.”

System 1 is all about “knowing” with little effort – as an expert is able to.

System 2 Thinking in Learning

What does System 2 Thinking mean for learning in organizations? Quite a lot, actually.

In a recent blog post by Karl Kapp, in which he describes purposefully causing his students to struggle, he states, “Unfortunately most learning is designed to avoid struggle, to spoon feed learners. This is not good… The act of struggling and manipulating and engaging with content makes it more meaningful and more memorable.”

Another important job of System 2 thinking is that it is in charge of self-control. This is an important skill / quality in the workplace. It allows us to measure the information coming at us and respond appropriately (which means, sometimes, not responding at all). Controlling thoughts and behaviors is difficult and tiring. Unfortunately many people find cognitive effort unpleasant and avoid it as much as possible (so says Kahneman in Thinking Fast and Slow).

Because of this tendency, we need to make teaching thinking skills a priority in workplace learning and development.  This could be a challenge. Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School, says that older Americans may be better equipped for serious thinking because they didn’t grow up with smartphones and can “stand to be bored or more than a second.”

And a study conducted at Florida State University determined that a single notification on your phone weakens one’s ability to focus on a task. The ability to focus is crucial not only in completing tasks but in learning new things as well. The ability to focus without distraction and to perform cognitively demanding tasks is THE job skill of the future.

Better Learning Through Interleaving

Interleaving is a largely unheard of technique – outside of neuroscience - which will catapult your learning and training outcomes. The technique has been studied since the late 1990’s but not outside of academia. Still, learning and incorporating the technique will make your training offerings more effective and your learners more productive.

What is it?

Interleaving is a way of learning and studying. Most learning is done in “blocks” – a period of time in which one subject is learned or practiced. Think of high school where each class is roughly an hour and focuses on only one topic (math, history, english, etc.). The typical training catalog is arranged this way, as well. Your organization might offer Negotiation Skills for 4 hours or Beginner Excel for two days. The offering is focused on one specific skill for an intense period of time.

Interleaving, on the other hand, mixes several inter-related skills or topics together. So, rather than learning negotiation skills as a stand-alone topic, those skills would be interleaved with other related topics such as competitive intelligence, writing proposals or understanding profit-margins. One of the keys of interleaving is that the learner is able to see how concepts are related as well as how they differ. This adds to the learner’s ability to conceptualize and think critically, rather than simply relying on rote or working memory.

How Does it Benefit?

Interleaving is hard work. When utilizing interleaving, the brain must constantly assess new information and form a “strategy” for dealing with it. For example, what do I know about my competitor’s offering (competitive intelligence), and how am I able to match or overcome that (negotiation skills)? While the technique is still being studied, it is suspected that it works well in preparing adult learners in the workplace because “work” never comes in a linear, logical or block form. You might change tasks and topics three times in an hour; those tasks may be related or not –the worker needs to be able to discriminate and make correct choices based on how the situation is presented.

Interleaving helps to train the brain to continually focus on searching for different responses, decisions, or actions. While the learning process is more gradual and difficult at first (because there are many different and varied exposures to the content), the increased effort results in longer lasting outcomes.

What’s interesting is that in the short term, it appears that blocking works better. If people study one topic consistently (as one might study for a final exam), they generally do better – in the short term - on a test than those who learned through interleaving.

Again, the only studies that have been done have taken place in academia, but here is an example of the long-term beneficial outcomes of interleaving. In a three-month study (2014) 7th-grade mathematics students learned slope and graph problems were either taught via a blocking strategy or an interleaving strategy. When a test on the topic was conducted immediately following the training, the blocking learners had higher scores. However, one day later, the interleaving students had 25% better scores than the blocking learners and one month later the interleaving students had 76% better scores! Because interleaving doesn’t allow the learner to hold anything in working memory, but instead requires him to constantly retrieve the appropriate approach or response, there is more ability to arrive at a well-reasoned answer and a better test of truly having learned.

How Can You Use Interleaving?

As mentioned earlier, although concentrating on one topic at a time to learn it (blocking) seems effective, it really isn’t because long term understanding and retention suffers. Therefore one must question whether there was actual learning or simply memorization. If your goal is to help your trainees learn, you’ll want to use an interleaving process. Warning: Most companies won’t want to do this because it is a longer and more difficult learning process and the rewards are seen later, as well.

Make Links

The design and development of your curriculum(s) doesn’t need to change at all – simply the process. First, look for links between topics and ideas and then have your learners switch between the topics and ideas during the learning process. For instance, our Teaching Thinking Curriculum does this by linking topics such as Risk, Finance, and Decision Making. While each of those is a distinct topic, there are many areas of overlap. In fact, one doesn’t really make a business decision without considering the risk and the cost or cost/benefit, correct? So why would you teach those topics independent of one another?

Use with Other Learning Strategies

Interleaving isn’t the “miracle” approach to enhanced learning. Terrific outcomes are also achieved through spaced learning, repeated retrieval, practice testing and more. Especially when it comes to critical thinking tasks, judgement requires multiple exposures to problems and situations. Be sure to integrate different types of learning processes in order to maximize the benefit of interleaving.

Integrate Concepts with Real Work

Today’s jobs require people to work on complex tasks with often esoteric outcomes. It’s hard to apply new learning to one’s work when the two occur in separate spheres and the real-world application isn’t immediate. Try to integrate topics to be learned with the work the learner is doing right now. For example, for a course in reading financial reports (cash flow, profit/loss, etc.), rather than simply teaching the concepts with generic examples of the formats, the learners were tasked with bringing the annual report from two of their clients (learners were salespeople). As each type of financial report was taught, the learners looked to real-world examples (that meant something to them) of how to read and interpret those reports.

Ask the Learners to Process

Too often we conclude a training class by reviewing what was covered in the class. Rather than telling the learners what just happened, have them process the concepts themselves. This is easiest to do through a writing activity. You might ask the learners to pause periodically, note what they have learned, link it to something they learned earlier, and align it with their work responsibilities. For instance: I will use my understanding of profit margins and financial risk to thoughtfully reply to a customer’s request for a discount or to confidently walk away from the deal. It’s not about the sale, it’s about the bottom line. The process of writing helps the learner to really think through the concepts just taught and it allows them to go back over their learning in the future to remind themselves of the links they made within the curriculum and between the curriculum and work responsibilities. Interleaving enables your training to be more effective and your learners to be more accomplished and productive.

Invest in Critical Thinking = HUGE ROI

Some organizations still believe training is a cost-center rather than a money maker.

But the right training, applied at the right time, can have exponential returns! According to this short report on Critical Thinking, published by Pearson in 2013, the return on investment for critical thinking tends to be extremely high. Research has shown that when training moves a $60,000 a year manager or professional from “average" to "superior," the ROI is $28,000 annually. (emphasis, ours) 4

How would your organization like to make $28,000 per year, on each of its managers? We can help. It's what we do.

Teaching Thinking Through Synthesis

Synthesis

According to Bloom's Taxonomy   Synthesis refers to the ability to put parts together to form a new whole. This may involve the production of a unique communication (theme or speech), a plan of operations (research proposal), or a set of abstract relations (scheme for classifying information). Learning outcomes in this area stress creative behaviors, with major emphasis on the formulation of new patterns and structures. According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, one definition of synthesis can be:

a combination of thesis and antithesis into a higher stage of truth

What do these definitions mean for us in the training department? How can we teach thinking through synthesis? Here are a few ideas:

• In relation to Bloom's definition - ask your learners to read a case study, whitepaper or even an article on a topic and then distill it down to (options:) the most important idea, the most critical sentence, a sentence of their own making, three key words.  If you are working with a group of trainees, give each of these assignments to different individuals or small-groups and then compare and contrast their responses.  This process requires people to truly think about the content and how to express that content in a way that is easy to remember and agreed upon by all.

• In relation to Merriam Webster's definition - have learners read two opposing articles, whitepapers, etc. and then come up with a new, balanced viewpoint or stance.  Rarely are ideas completely opposed, so working with the ideas to identify their common ground is very useful in having a well-rounded understanding of a topic.

Entry Level Employment Skills - What Do Employers Want?

Last month SHRM and the consulting firm Mercer issued a joint report titled EntryLevel Job Applicant Skills.

They assessed 15 skills and attributes employers commonly look for including dependability, communication, creativity, and integrity, to name a few. The top "vote getters" (skills or attributes deemed most important) were:

• Dependability and Reliability

• Integrity

• Respect

• Teamwork

Interestingly, these are all soft-skills and attributes rather than the hard-skills (communication, problem solving) that many employers are saying candidates are missing at the entry-level. Less than a quarter of the survey respondents said mathematics was a critical entry-level skill.

The #1 tactic suggested for securing entry-level positions was career-related internships. Internships are able to help a potential employer assess the skills bulleted above. Panel interviews are the most widely used interview technique for assessing the desired attributes.

This study / survey has interesting implications for training...

• If candidates lack these attributes... can we train for them?

• Are these attributes prerequisites to skills training or entirely different from them?

Stop Teaching So Much! Learn to Chunk.

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We recently reviewed a day-long course on coaching which was actually an excellent class, the only thing it suffered from was the typical: Too much content!

The course taught 4 different coaching techniques and their best-use given a particular type of workplace situation or a particular type of worker, and then participants were given some time to choose one of their own workers with whom they thought the technique might work. Finally, they were divided in to trios to practice the technique.

This learn-and-practice process was repeated four times for each of the four techniques.  The problem with this course was that the learning outcomes were just not going  to be that great. It is impossible to learn four different techniques, and remember  when they apply, and the nuances of usage, when you get back on the job when you've been taught them all in one-fell-swoop.The expected learning outcomes for this class just weren't being achieved, despite excellent content and a "reasonable enough" teaching strategy.

While it certainly takes longer to teach in chunks, and allow participants real-world  practice and application, it does lead to better learning outcomes.The next time you are designing a course - especially one that requires practice in order to master - ask yourself: Will people really be able to do Skill #1 when they are back on the job if that information and technique has been "over written" by additional knowledge and skills by the end of the day?

Chances are, you can achieve much better learning outcomes by chunking the content and the periods of teaching, and allowing your participants to have time to not only reflect on what they learned, but also put it in to practice, and then reflecting on how effective that practice and its outcomes really were.

Teaching Thinking Through Debate

man at podium

Remember the debate club in high school? It was an excellent tool to help young people think critically about various issues and honing their communication skills to be able to intelligently articulate issues. With debate season upon us in the United States, this is an excellent time to point out the thinking skills that are developed through using debate.

Debate requires someone to construct an argument. That argument can be pro or against, but it must incorporate research, analysis, reasoning, and sometimes synthesis and evaluation in order to establish and substantiate one's position. Debate also requires the debater to master their content, to practice both listening and speaking skills in order to counter the opposing side, and to not only be able to verbalize but also to speak persuasively about their position.

These skills are known on Bloom's Taxonomy (here is a quick and easy definition) as higher order thinking skills. Debate takes one beyond the ability to research and "know" information to the ability to construct something and do something with that information.

An additional benefit of using debate in a learning curriculum is that it helps people to understand how to deal with conflict in a constructive and measured way. Countering an opposing argument does not mean name calling, introducing distracting or off-topic issues, or simply blustering louder than one's opponent.

In a previous blog post, we discussed the importance of using questions to help think. In the context of debate however, questioning skills are more musings: What is my position on this topic? What do others say? How do they substantiate their positions? Am I in agreement or disagreement with others? If I am in disagreement with others, how can I substantiate my own position? These types of questions require the skills of research, analysis, synthesis, reasoning, clarifying ... in other words, thinking skills!

Debate as a thinking skill can be used with any topic and in any industry and is best taught in teams (at least 2 individuals) which helps to expand one's thinking as well. Working with one or more teammates requires collaboration skills in order to create a premise, rationale, and presentation.

All in all, debate is one of the best learning strategies you can employ, in order to boost your employee's thinking skills.

Where Have All The Corporate Universities Gone?

The simultaneous impact of several major forces contributed to the decline of Corporate Universities.

Organizations began to adopt a bottom-line approach focused on cost cutting to improve efficiency during the global economic meltdown of 2008. Investments in learning and development initiatives declined, which impacted leadership commitment towards sustaining CUs.

Second, professional associations, consultants, and leading organizations shifted their attention towards talent management. Organizations became inwardly focused on improving and developing their existing human resources..

Third, the changing demographics exacerbated socio-cultural pressures on traditional universities and questioned their legitimacy and value in society.

Because corporate universities were established to closely approximate traditional universities in terms of developing cutting edge knowledge and innovation, they were affected by these contextual factors, and suffered from decreasing interest. A shrinking global market, privatization of education and a spurt in the private online education providers, and the increasing demands for complex skill sets demanded individualized approaches for developing the full potential of human resources.

What happened to the "L" in L+D?

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L+D stands for Learning and Development. In years past it was referred to as T+D which stood for Training and Development. We guess at some point there was a shift towards sounding as though we were doing more for our constituents than simply training them.

Unfortunately, the truth is, we are still T+D. Where is the L in L+D?

In the last decade-plus, training budgets have been cut, time allowed for training has been drastically reduced, coaching has been all but wiped out, and "learning strategies" have become self-service, self-directed, eLearning in many organizations (choose from this menu of management classes).

But true learning requires a long tail. It requires interaction with others in order to vet multiple ideas and arrive at the best one, or perhaps a hybrid-NEW-best idea. It requires coaching. It requires experience that informs future experiences and what one "knows to be true." Learning and development is a misnomer and perhaps a sad relic of what we thought this profession would become during the rise of corporate universities (see Where Have All the Corporate Universities Gone? below).

Organizations are consistently announcing that their businesses are suffering from a lack of skilled employees and a lack of bench strength for management, and yet there is little being done to ensure that our role in L+D is actually focused on the L. This truly requires the L+D department to have a seat at the table, to help organizations strategically plan their future through their people, but that vision is, sadly, far from reality in many organizations. 

Teaching Thinking through Analogous Associations

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Analogous: Comparable in certain respects.

The story goes that James Dyson - the founder of Dyson vacuums - hit upon his innovative vacuum design by observing how a grain processor got rid of the "dust" (answer: through a funnel / vortex).

One of the deficiencies in our society is that even when we bring the smartest people together to solve a problem, they are often the smartest people on the same topic. Thinking capability can be greatly expanded by looking to analogous fields. Possibilities abound when we contemplate "similar but different" perspectives..

When considering community planning, include sports managers, biologists, and airport general managers for their insights into shared and coordinated spaces..

When tackling photography, include astronomers, glass blowers, and forensic scientists, who all understand how light and shapes are intertwined.

For newer, better ways to "crunch numbers" look to national security intelligence, proficient gamblers, and infographic artists who all see numbers as a representation of something else.

In our experience, expanding your thinking through including analogous fields suddenly makes you the "smartest person in the room."

Reading for Fun - and Comprehension

reading on tablet

Do you prefer reading from a printed page or a digital screen? Do you comprehend more when reading from paper than from a screen (or vice versa)? Does your age play a role in your preference? What about your attitude? These are all questions which have been studied in the last 20 years or so - in other words - in the "digital age." While definitive results elude us, here are some of the more common findings:

• People approach computers and tablets with a state of mind less conducive to learning than they approach reading from paper

• E-readers prevent people from navigating long texts in an intuitive and satisfying way

• People report that when they are trying to locate a particular piece of information, they can recall where it appears in a text - not so with digital displays of the same content

• These navigation difficulties subtly inhibit reading comprehension

• Reading digitally leads to more difficulty in comprehension because it is more physically and mentally taxing

• When reading from a screen, people spend more time browsing, scanning and hunting for key words

• When people really like an e-book they go out and buy the paper version! According to research by Microsoft, people see e-books as something to use, but not own

Makes you re-think the delivery modality of your training materials, no? Learn more about the research in this area by reading this Scientific American article (on line, of course).

What is the Business Goal for this Training?

It is surprising how much training exists that doesn't have a real connection to the goals of the business. Perhaps these are legacy courses left over from a time when there was a need and organizations are still offering them. But these days you want to ensure that any training that you are asked to develop anew has a clear business goal.

In discussions with the business process owner who is requesting the training, be sure that they can articulate what the expected business outcomes are for the training. Not only does this assure you that they have truly thought through the need for the training that they are requesting, but it also establishes an ROI point for you (which is something else that is seldom targeted in training design).

If a sales manager requests training in negotiations or cross-selling - you can be relatively sure that there is a business outcome expected from that training. If a sales manager instead asks for team building or training on a particular software - dig a little deeper to find out what they believe that training would accomplish for the business / their business unit.

If an operations manager for a manufacturing facility asks for a course in quality control or machine calibration - there is probably a link to the output of that department. If, however s/he asks for forklift safety you may want to investigate how that will positively benefit the department and its deliverables to the organization.

Not only will asking "How does this training link to the business goals of the company / department?" save you time and money by not developing courses that have no real relevance for the business, but you'll be seen as a thoughtful contributor to the business overall rather than an order-taker of training requests.

Teaching Thinking Through Self Assessments and Inventories

Thinking

We all learned Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and the fact that the pinnacle is self actualization - but what does that actually mean?

Self actualization: the realization or fulfillment of one's talents and potentialities...

Unfortunately most people don't reach the pinnacle of self actualization because they have not been taught a way to achieve it. Using self assessments such as Gregorc, Myers-Briggs or Glenn Parker's Teams and Team Players, can greatly assist individuals in thinking introspectively.

Myers-Briggs helps you realize that not everyone sees the world the same as you or reacts to things in the same way as you do. It helps one to contemplate whether there are alternate forms of response to certain situations. It also helps in understanding that a response which is different from yours is not in any way incorrect.

The Gregorc inventory helps an individual understand their working style preference which can assist in playing to one's strengths as well as helping an individual understand reasons why they might be getting stuck. For instance, an individual who is concrete-sequential may be an excellent worker but may appear as though they cannot manage multiple priorities due to their need for completion of activities in sequence.

Sparking an individual's ability to think introspectively, to appreciate their strengths and weaknesses - as well as others, enables individuals to think in a more broad manner about their actions and those that they work with in order to achieve the best workplace outcomes. Understanding and appreciating that we are not working at odds but rather have complimentary skills is a huge breakthrough in thinking for many individuals.

When Millenials Take Over: An Interview with Maddie Grant

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What compelled you to write this book?

My co-author Jamie Notter and I have been writing and speaking for many years about how social media has been changing how we lead and manage our organizations, not just how we communicate and market to customers - which led to our 2011 book, Humanize: How People-Centric Organizations Succeed in a Social World.

In that book, we spelled out how this was happening - social media pushing organizations to become more decentralized, more authentic, more trustworthy, more collaborative, more generative... And four years later, in 2015, we started to see how the advent of the Millennial generation entering the workforce was going to be a HUGE catalyst for these changes. The oldest Millennials are in their early 30s and are starting to fill management roles - and when that happens, they will not wait around to change organizations in ways that make more sense to them, having grown up in a digital world.

So our new book, When Millennials Take Over, helps companies understand this huge generation--which will be the dominant generation in the workforce for decades to come--and the impact it will have. We specifically explain this disruption in ways that are positive and forward thinking, to combat the current misguided discourse of complaining and negativity around the Millennial generation. 

If you could distill your message down to just one - what would it be?

All generations need to understand each other better and work together to bring our traditional organizations into today's reality, in order to be more successful in the future. 

How can business use this book to assist them in the work that they do?

The book is designed for executives at all levels to better understand Millennials and how to attract, retain and learn from them. The four main chapters are divided into four big themes - Digital, Clear, Fluid and Fast, explains why Millennials care about these capacities, and shows examples of how to build these capacities for your company.

Many of the specific examples in the book lead directly to HR processes and structures - recruitment, onboarding, performance management, and of course anything related to culture are things that can hugely impact the success of an organization and we believe HR has a much bigger and more strategic role to play than we are seeing currently. There are huge opportunities here and the book points to many ways to start. 

Do you have a personal motto that you live by?

Our motto is "proceed until apprehended", coined by Florence Nightingale. The secret about our book is that it was EASY to find many examples of companies doing amazing things - because there are actually many companies experimenting with different ways of working, which are NOT "how we've always done it." We are asked by hundreds of people at middle or lower levels of organizations how they might get started changing things, and we always say just try experiments and show small successes. Nobody can argue with data that shows that small experiments are working.

The more of us that try new things, the more data we can show that proves that positive change is needed--and working.

Maddie Grant, Founding Partner, WorkXOmgrant@workxo.comwww.workxo.com @maddiegrant