In the last post I said we needed to start with a clean sheet when we design a new course – but why should we do that if we have a perfectly good solution already? We all grew up with a common understanding about how training works, and its delivery never did us any harm.
However, just because something works 'fine' doesn't mean it couldn't work a lot better. Those of us in organisations with the power to change things have the power to transform training. We can make it more flexible, more efficient, more effective, more appropriate, more digestible, more timely, more successful.
And it's not about spending more money.
Change is all around
If we look around us we see that society and work are changing rapidly – but the world of training has changed much less. It looks as though it has changed, but fundamentally it's the same thing in different clothes. We are working ever harder to preserve a system we recognise and are comfortable with, without ever asking ourselves if those that experience it are equally comfortable with it.
Today's training environment would certainly be recognisable to our parents – and to our grandparents. And just adding a layer of technology doesn't fundamentally change anything. Three generations ago all training was face-to-face and largely by lectures; two generations ago the lectures were still there but they might have been delivered via the television; the last generation has seen the rise of the internet – but that's still treated as a mechanism for delivering the message from the centre.
Looking from the other side
What we are not doing is looking at things from the other side: from the consumer's point of view - particularly new consumers. Training works but it's not necessarily the way consumers need to learn, or would choose to learn, which means it will be less effective. Today's younger worker is a different person to us. The way they relate to work is different. Their expectations are different. The social contract is different. We can not expect them to see everything else differently – except training.
The world of work has changed as well. It's faster, obviously, with instant communications transforming the environment, but it's also much more results focused. Less interest is being paid to abstract qualifications and more to concrete delivery of results. When was the last time anyone checked your qualifications? Did they feature in your last appraisal or was it about what you achieved? Bits of paper may sort out who gets through the door but once inside it's delivery that counts.
It is these two aspects, the generation changes and the business environment changes that drive the need to update training. New technology is not the driver, it is merely one of the tools we can use to make the changes we need.
Tomorrow: which generation are you: radio, baby-boomer, X or Y and how does that affect things?
2 comments:
I agree that we should approach each project with a clean sheet, but then by drawing upon the collective wisdom of years of experience. For example, when 'multimedia' arrived as a concept in about 1990, the learning technologies field became dominated by graphic designers and other audio-visual specialists. These people added something new and powerful but made no concession to what we knew about powerful adult learning. The result? Great looking stuff that didn't work. Training is fadish and trainers are quicker than most to jump on bandwagons. Yes, we are enriching our knowledge of how people learn all the time, but we're not reinventing it every few years.
Agree completely, Clive. We should not use something simply because it is new but because it adds value to what we are trying to do. We should approach each new task with no preconceptions about the solution and choose whatever will work best.
Who knows, it might even be a formal classroom course!
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