Lessons from the conference at #LT22UK
There’s a lot in this post, just saying.
First of all, big gratitude to Fiona McBride for asking me to be part of the blog squad at Learning Technologies conference. The all access pass we gain as part of the quid pro quo is always appreciated and I went to quite a lot of conference sessions. I’m not going to try and repeat the content of those speakers, but more about the things I’m left with and the questions I’d like to ask.
Psychologically Safe Environments
The keynote from Matthew Syed raised some really interesting questions on how we cultivate a psychologically safe working environment, where dissent, critique and challenge can take place without negative repercussions. He’s a really good thinker and speaker, and really makes the content of his talk accessible because he relates it to everyday situations. So, although Growth Mindset might be an important part of his talk (and whether or not it’s a valid theory isn’t really addressed), he shares examples that help to embed what it could enable for teams, organisations and individuals. I don’t think L&D are concerned about creating psychologically safe environments for learning to take place. We’re more concerned about programmes and courses and digital content. Yes, those things matter, but if you don’t have a psychologically safe environment where performance can be tested, challenged and developed, then what good was the course or content?
Matthew also spoke really well about the need for diversity in teams as a basic element of effective organisational success. If your team is only made up from a particular demographic, you are closing yourself to other possibilities and other thinking which can drive an organisation forward. Yes, select from the best, but make sure the pool of candidates is a diverse mix in the first place and that your criteria for selection are free from bias. I think in L&D what this means is ensuring we use organisational data to understand who is accessing our programmes, courses and content, and doing real analysis on any groups not accessing. How do we reach those people who might not assume they can access programmes or the apprenticeship levy and enable them to achieve more?
Skills Development in Organisations
Catalina Schveninger and Amanda Nolen spoke about the how to develop skills and talent across the organisation. Catalina really made great points about having an aligned purpose across the People functions. Talent acquisition, talent management, talent development, organisational development, HRBPs and comp and bens all need to be focused on developing organisational skills, and this can’t just be limited to the remit of one function. Amanda reinforced this by arguing that for future skills, we need to take a really hard look at where those skills are coming from. We can’t expect universities or colleges to develop the numbers we need, so we need a dual approach where organisations are growing the future skills themselves and creating job opportunities for those people in newly created roles and teams for organisational success. Catalina also discussed the better use of organisational data to identify skills gaps and then develop solutions that work to resolving those over time. I really appreciated this talk for the thinking around stronger collaboration amongst the people functions and really good thinking on how we can build future skills.
Learning Data and Analytics
The talk from the Novartis and Novo Nordisk team (Tim Dickinson and Peter Manniche Riber) about learning data and learning analytics was super interesting. I think what they helped surface is that L&D can be better at both understanding how to gather learning data in better ways, and then how to analyse it’s impact. How do we do that? We ask better questions about what makes a difference and draw stronger correlations with data. Digital content alone will not change behaviour, so how do you embed digital content into career pathways and behaviour change programmes? How about testing content with one team, but withholding it from another team and doing some real A/B testing. Does that help us determine if there was performance improvement due to the intervention?
They also shared some great stuff about how we can use platform data to analyse the quality and effectiveness of the content. What content is being accessed? How often? Did the curated resources get used? If not, why not? If they did, what feedback do we have on performance? How are we following up with the line manager and employee themselves to identify impact of completing digital content?
Humans are Becoming More Stupid
Or so argues Dr Itiel Dror, and honestly it makes sense. Well, individuals are becoming more lazy and stupid, although overall we’re more knowledgeable and intelligent as a species. Itiel gave examples saying that we have amazing capability from technology to automate highly complex workflows (think car manufacturing), coordinate global supply chains (think iPhone production), and have self-driving cars. And at the same time we have forgotten how to use our memory for phone numbers, or routes to get to long distant destinations, or how to write well worded emails or letters. As much as technology is helping us to advance as a species, it’s also making us more stupid. The implications of this at work are quite profound. People are on their devices all day long, and when we need them to perform further/higher, we’re already at a peak level of activity. Our brains can only handle so much activity until it needs rest and can’t do more. I think the implications here for project work, and for high performing teams is to have much more improved insight into cultivating an environment that looks after wellbeing and resilience of its teams in those peak periods so they’re not burning out.
The Digital Learning Shift
This was a super interesting session with the Fosway team, David Wilson and David Perring. I always appreciate good research, and we just don’t have enough in the learning space. In asking the question, “How advanced is your use of technology to support the learning experience?”, most are only offering a basic experience. We don’t get clarity on what basic means, but it’s answered by the industry itself, so however L&D itself thinks of basic experience is what they’re saying is happening. Many companies report they are delivering a learning strategy, but it’s only in the area of compliance and regulatory training that results are very effective. In all other areas, there is much to be done to achieve very effective learning strategies. There remains a strong skew of investment towards digital content (and as I said in the last post, there is a lot of money being invested into digital content platforms).
There was a lot of love for David Wilson calling for stop to the phrase “Netflix of Learning”, because it’s just the wrong thinking for learning solution design or learning tech adoption - as I wrote about in September, 2020. Additionally, David made the point that the skills agenda cannot just be focused on future skills such as data science, coders and AI, but has to also address everyday skills such as lorry drivers and tradespeople.
A final point worth mentioning is David Wilson making the point that if you’re going to invest in a hybrid working model, then digital enablement has to be the standard, and there has to be digital literacy across the workforce.
Agile in L&D
This was a really great set of thinking from Jodie Pritchard, Richard Kerridge and Sebastian Tindall. Three very different organisations all making real efforts to build capability in agile methodology for developing digital learning solutions. Anytime I hear about agile development in L&D I can hear trainers and facilitators all claiming to use agile development principles for course design, and it’s just the wrong understanding of what agile development actually achieves. That’s where I think this session stepped up and helped us to understand that using agile is a team effort and doesn’t happen in silo. It fundamentally requires the team to be collaborative and designing together everyday - not just leaving it to one or two people to come up with an idea and iterate the idea. It’s about actual design and product development so you have a working solution - not a course of a workshop. And that’s the key thing here, these teams are all developing actual solutions that can be deployed into the organisation, not just more courses or workshops - but digital content and assets that people can actively use immediately. They gain regular feedback and iterate each asset created so it gets to be a stronger solution.
Learning Engagement
I chaired a session at the end of Day 2 on learning engagement with my panellists Mitja Kulcar, Adam Hodgkinson and Suzanne Rosenberg. Again a real mix of industries, size and complexity of organisations. As a panel Q&A, I was running around with the mic, so didn’t get to make my own notes from the session! Some key things highlighted:
Don’t rely on just one form of marketing or communication - experiment and try different things e.g. postcards to people’s homes, or short videos as well as posters and blogs.
Make your LMS / digital content a compelling place to come by using the language of the business. People don’t easily associate the language of learning with business outcomes, but they can understand business outcomes and the motivations for achieving them.
If possible, reward people for completing digital content, but the rewards have to be things they can actually do something with e.g. vouchers. Otherwise adopt/use a recognition scheme.
Work with senior leaders to engage them and spend time 1:1 with their teams to help them understand what the learning team can achieve - emails are efficient but not always effective for engagement.
