Advice to L&D Professionals Facing COVID Redundancy

If you are here because you have been laid off, then I am terribly sorry. This is the type of content I do not like producing. We did record a webinar version, but I also appreciate many people do not have the headspace for yet another hour of screen time. So, here is the skinny on what was discussed.

I am old (not wise) enough to remember the two major economic downturns of this century: the first after 9/11 and the second (much longer) in 2008. Those were very grim times. Whilst they are certainly not at the scale and velocity of our current situation, there were patterns observed in the L&D industry that may offer clues to the future.

In most companies, the L&D function was the very first to be trimmed. It was an easy cost line item to cut. But our industry responded. In 2001, it was the birth of digital learning. Companies wanted to produce content cheaper and outside of the classroom because budgets were battered. The LMS gained popularity when companies in insurance and finance had to comply with the Sarbannes-Oxley Act. Around 2008 we saw the rapid proliferation of large content libraries as well as rapid authoring tools. These were an answer to the lean L&D team who could no longer hire coders or build bespoke content.

Now my disdain for the LMS, canned content, and all things eLearning is pretty evident. It is a hornet’s nest I have kicked more than once. The point here is that L&D does find other ways to evolve and this COVID situation will be no exception. The differences today are the speed to which we went digital and the massive chasm between consumer-grade and corporate-grade digital experiences. That sentence is critical reading for anyone in the industry. L&D has not kept pace. If you will not acknowledge this gap, you might be left behind.

So, what now with the new normal?

If you are leading a team or are a senior L&D professional, there are two main things you need to do: 1) Get a direct line to your CEO today and determine the new business goals. If you do not have that type of access, go as high as you can and talk to the PMO as well. The latter will be able to tell you which projects are mothballed and what is priority. 2) Ditch the annual plan. Any content not directly aligned to business goals should be shelved. If you cannot prove you are contributing to ROI, do not do it. Now more than ever you should be the best strategic partner you can be.

Of course, none of this is new. We have had these discussions for eternity. Now it is real. Bring it on.

As an instructional or learning experience designer, you might be considering rapidly upskilling into converting ILT to VILT. Personally, I would not recommend it. Yes, there is a deluge of opportunities in this space and I totally endorse anyone doing this work right now to keep the rent paid. However, treat this as a short-term solution. If you invest too heavily in this skill, once the initial wave wanes, you will be one among millions who are specialists in the field. You will not be as competitive. Likewise, the tools we use today and what is understood as an online classroom will change rapidly. Facebook announced last week they are getting into video conferencing. Google only took a hot second before they made their Meet product free to users. Do not make this a career leap just yet.

I would offer the same advice when it comes to picking up a rapid authoring tool. Long before COVID-19 we at NilesNolen were steering clients away from building courses in favour of other media types. Creating a SCORM package is like having a coat you can only wear in one city…and it has a really ugly pattern from the 00s. To my point earlier, our audiences are now experiencing digital on a scale never seen before and their benchmarks will rise by default. There will be no more tolerance for subpar content and clicking X to close is too tempting.

So, what should you focus on? First, you might not be in the mental place to even consider upskilling right now and that is something to acknowledge to yourself. I have given up scrolling through bread-baking artisans and miracles in crochet whilst I have a vodka and soda and wipe off sloppy crumbs from my pyjamas. Be gentle on yourself. When you are ready, think of how to get ahead of the curve. If the need for commercial-grade experiences is coming, then consider graphic design or videography. Not your jam? Time to learn to write for digital like journalists do. In all the transformation work we have done, the hardest role to fill was finding talented writers. Always. The inverted pyramid is you new BFF.

If I had to place bets on what will be the emergent EdTech out of all of this, it will be what I call the invisible LMS. Pieces and pockets of this functionality are already starting to bubble up in companies like Sparks and Filtered with MS Teams. What prevents this technology now from being mainstream is a lack of skills in the industry in fields like data and marketing automation. Even if this tech is a slow burn, either of those skills will make you stand out from the crowd. 

Finally, if now is not the time for a career pivot, then think strategically. There are pockets of innovation and new industries being carved out. All of these will need L&D professionals to help with onboarding and warp speed change. Think sanitation, medical waste recycling, logistics, e-Commerce, cybersecurity, grocery and food supply, to name a few. Read up and target these companies. Likewise, with WFH the new normal, do not limit yourself to your postal code. Your new role may only need to be in a similar time zone.

We had a lot of technical tips and tricks in the webinar on how to leverage LinkedIn, but other people are way smarter than I am, so refer to those experts. The big takeaways on the topic were to be your authentic self online, and to know most really good jobs are rarely posted. In the case of the former, when I was able to be honest about my opinions, I attracted the opportunities I wanted. Yes, I have plenty of detractors in my InMail (yay!), but the quality of my network for the work I love to do drastically improved. For the latter, speak with Amanda Nolen. She is the expert on the hustle.

I wish things would improve, like, yesterday. But that is unrealistic, and this is going to be a long-haul recovery when that even begins. I do not have words of wisdom and have screwed-up a million times, but hopefully sharing these experiences will help you stumble along with fewer bumps and scrapes. Also, take this advice in the context of your current situation and what may not apply to you. In the meantime, stay healthy and look out for each other.  

The Elephant in Our Room

Credit to Seth0s from Pixabay

Credit to Seth0s from Pixabay

I never censor myself on my blog. Mostly because when I went independent, I was so relieved to run about the interwebz without a leash (Pro Tip: If your employer wants to own or control what you post on LinkedIn, it is time to swipe left and move on). Still, this article has been sitting on my desktop for over a month and the idea of pressing “Publish” is daunting. I do not want to be the face of this issue, but we all need to talk about it.

There is a disparity between men and women in leadership in our industry. Worse, this gap is widening, which is sobering news. I hear from women on a regular basis about this topic and as I listen to their frustrations, there are so many similarities. This leads me to believe there are collective things we can change together.

Side note: I am well-aware I am speaking from a place of privilege as a white hetero female, raised with access to good education. But it is the only experience I have. I hope other voices will come forward.

Firstly, this is not an “us vs them” exercise. I am thankful to the many men in my network who have helped augment my work and coach me, and other females, along the way. I truly believe this is a time when we need to collaborate to reach parity and why I get twitchy about female-only initiatives. Male-only institutions got us into this debacle so let’s not exclude. 

So, what are some of the barriers? Well, one of the first observations is most venture capitalists are male. This is where the money, and therefore power, is. I have been sat in front of VCs several times and mostly as the only female. I am not suggesting all VCs are sexist assholes, but in those rooms, I have seen great ideas simply fizzle out for a lack of appreciation. It is human nature to gravitate towards solutions confirming our own biases and experiences.

Some VCs expect diversity (great!) so companies know they have better chances for funding if they have a few token women hanging about (not so great). This hit my naive self like a punch to the gut when in my hotel room one evening. I scrolled through my Instagram feed and saw photos from a fancy dinner. Unbeknownst to me, the men I had pitched with that afternoon were celebrating. When I asked why I had not been invited, the answer was: it simply did not occur to them. And I believe them. I was flown in for one purpose. And whilst no one likes more than me to be tucked into bed before 9PM, I also missed access to the highly valuable deeper conversations, networking and decision-making.

Diversity is being invited to the party; Inclusion is being asked to dance. Or even better, as Daniel Juday puts it: Inclusion is being a member of the party-planning committee. That VC experience and others are why I advise women to carefully consider roles where you are “the only”. Because we have been overlooked so often, when we are included, we are eager. Not so fast. Be mindful of how your brand is being used. The last week of February is traditionally when us gals get a gajillion requests to be profiled for International Women’s Day. It’s like the Head of Marketing yells, “quick! Rustle up some ladies so we look good!”. But your brand is not values clickbait for someone else's profit. Seek companies and partners who are already diverse beyond gender. Personally, when I see bro culture, I walk away. Even if it means losing a contract or revenue. These are hard choices but now I am at a point in my career when I can. I want others to get to the same position.

There are other ways we can collectively hold our industry accountable. In an industry like L&D, there are lots of start-ups elbowing their way to the market. Unfortunately, investments are made in the technology and HR departments are seen as a luxury. This can breed toxic culture because there is no oversight or accountability for bad behaviour. It is an open secret which vendors have terrible D&I track records. A quick look at Glassdoor.com (once you get past the company planted rave reviews to counter bad PR), you can see who is dodgy. And yet, our prominent industry leaders still do business with them. Consider the following example: In April, it came to light the CEO of DataCamp had sexually assaulted a curriculum lead. The company handled it a thousand ways horribly. Just last month, Human Capital Media under CLO Media brand, ran an email campaign for a webinar sponsored by....DataCamp.  This is not an isolated example. Business may be business, but we need to think who we endorse, if not only out of self-interest because when a scandal hits, your brand could be tarnished too.

Another elephant in the room is the Non-Disparagement Clause. When something inappropriate happens in a workplace (again, lacking an HR department), a rent-a-lawyer chases you to sign an NDC before you are paid salary owing. This means you can never speak about the incident or criticize the company, lest you be sued. The culprit gets sent to the naughty step by way of sensitivity training, but keeps his job. You are left scrambling for employment.

I have signed an NDC on two occasions. Once early in my career when I was not in a financial position to decline. The second was later and whilst morally I did not want to sign, I just wanted out as fast as possible. I would love to see our industry come together to support people in an NDC situation either financially, or to quickly network them into another role. In the meantime, if you are in this situation, ensure the NDC goes BOTH ways. Oh, and call me for drinks.

There is a lot more I could write on the topic, but for now, I want to hear your opinions. Other industries have seen the downstream effects of homogeneous teams: Crash test dummies used to be the size of the average male, putting female passengers at risk; Google voice recognition is 70% more accurate with male voices; and even the average smartphone is designed for a larger male hand. Imagine our own blindspots for our diverse consumers if we are not inclusive ourselves?


Pancakes & Waffles & Junk Science

By now you have probably read about the female empowerment training turned PR nightmare for EY. The Huffington Post broke the story about a course delivered to senior women executives at the consultancy firm that featured juicy content such as “Women’s brains are 6% to 11% smaller than men’s” and “sexuality scrambles the brain”. There was even a cute analogy involving breakfast dishes: “Women’s brains absorb information like pancakes soak up syrup, so it’s hard for them to focus. Men’s brains are more like waffles. They’re better able to focus because the information collects in each little waffle square.” As a Canadian, I am deeply offended our sacred elixir, maple syrup, was brought into this debacle.

Personally, I am not a fan of female-only events in the workplace. I believe we need more dialogue and problem solving together. Also, the last time I attended one of these I was advised by a chirpy facilitator to read the sports pages before work so I could contribute to conversations with “the men”. She was less friendly to me when I asked if “the men” were coached to read The Handmaid’s Tale. I should probably have a hazard sign on my backpack. Luckily I did not heed her words of wisdom and still happily work alongside many fantastic men (some who do not even watch sports!).

Twitterverse and LinkedIn were predictably lit up about the course. In this era, this is definitely not the type of exposure any company wants, especially when there is a war on talent. EY is going to have a tricky time attracting female leaders after this SNAFU. Many commenters were questioning how on earth this workshop ever saw the light of day, let alone became part of an executive programme for hi-po women. Call me cynical, but I was not surprised at all. 

Think about the millions of courses on soft skills such as leadership, coaching, empathy, listening. How many of these are even based in anything other than someone’s anecdotal experience they have managed to patchwork into a workshop? I am not dismissing the valuable wisdom of experience, but let’s face it, an awful lot of people refer to themselves as “CEO” on LinkedIn when they are in fact an independent consultant. Call yourself a guru to the right person and you can up your hourly rates by 20%.

Here’s the problem: as we move forward with automation, AI, robotics, and more, the skills innate only to humans will become paramount. I would personally argue this has always been the case, but anyway (take a moment to read some of Ed Monk’s thoughts on the topic). Our ability to incubate skills like learnability, adaptability, communication, will be key. Sadly, there is a lot of money to be made in soft skills and a lot “experts” come out of the woodwork.

The reason I was not surprised at the situation at EY is because I have seen it so many times before: a provider walks in with a slide of “facts” pandering to confirmation bias and a cheque is cut before the end of day. Myers-Briggs is a perfect example. It has been debunked so many times as astrology for the workplace, and yet thousands of companies still use it. Why? Because it seems scientific to slot people into 16 neat personality types.

In the case of EY, my guess is the vendor (publicly acknowledged as Marsha Clark & Associates) had a great sales pitch and topics such as women in leadership are easy pickings. Add this to the dozens of women giving rave reviews about the programme on LinkedIn, and it probably seemed fit for purpose to a decision maker. Sexist content aside, the whole premise of the course is not even based on fact or research. Her (now deleted) website made claims like, “Women ask more questions and therefore learn more when there are only women in the group”. Not surprising there was no citation for this bogus statement.

So how do you separate the slick but suspect content from ones who will deliver against performance outcomes. Here are a few tricks I have learned over the years:

  • Don’t fall for the logo parade. Yes, it is nice to know if a vendor is operating at a Fortune500 level, but dig a bit deeper. Did the company purchase or pilot? Did they send a handful of people to a session or actually implement? Look for the Head of Learning on LinkedIn and ask for their candid experience with the vendor.

  • Listen for junk science red flags. Do they refer to bogus claims like left & right brain learning, or learning styles? If yes, ghost immediately

  • Are their client testimonials purely level one feedback? Learner satisfaction is one thing, but what was the impact on performance? If there are no metrics they can share, be suspicious

  • Is their content rooted in respected and peer-reviewed methodology? Basically, you want to know if they just made a bunch of stuff up

  • Define what soft skills are for your organization. For example, leadership and coaching come up as a core gaps, but there are different styles. Research and experiment with what aligns with the culture your business aspires to

While this news story made for a lot of humour in the generally dry field of L&D, the end result should be vendor accountability for fact-based content*. Our responsibility is then to challenge too-good-to-be-true slide decks, and ensure precious time and money is invested in quality experiences with performance outcomes. Oh, and no more team building trust falls.

*etiquette note: please don’t hijack the comments to promote your curricula, gracias



The Invisible LMS

I bought my parents iPhones awhile back so we could stay in touch, especially since they moved north of the city. I am a hardcore downtowner and if I cannot see the Toronto skyline with the CN Tower, I break out in hives from anxiety. I can’t do nature.

With my parents’ adoption of new technology, my mother lovingly transferred her daily nuggets of wisdom from my voice mailbox to WhatsApp format. For example, this:

OopsMom.jpg


Still, our wifi umbilical cord keeps us connected. This has been particularly beneficial as my parents share their struggles with living outside of the city. In the latest saga, my mother was frustrated with the number of seagulls circling (and pooping) around their property. Her solution? Using the power of YouTube, she dialed her Bluetooth speakers up to ten and played audio of a distressed seagull on loop for an hour. The birds left. And for any environmentalist readers out there, do not blame the storyteller on this one. If you can take on my mother, more power to you.

I am guessing the seagulls told their friends, because I got another update. This time, there was a robin repeatedly pecking at his reflection in a window of their house. My ever-creative mother decided this was an appropriate solution. I honestly love her with all of my heart.

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So, what do texting fails and bird wrangling have to do with an invisible LMS? Well, the more I think about how we upskill people using platforms, the more I believe we are trying to combat human nature, rather than work within our constructs and habits. We build or buy a platform and push people to consume content on it, out of context of their work environment. Now, this can function with various degrees of success, but there just might be a better way.

Much has been written about learning in the flow of work. And I really, really, want to believe in it. It is extremely powerful for the right content to be available at the point of need. It enables teams to be more efficient and achieve performance goals quickly. However, the more I see it in action, it is less about learning with a capital L. Instead, it is short-term, targeted, performance support, or even knowledge management, not deep skills development. Quite frankly, we also need the latter.

Sometimes, L&D support can be eliminated completely. I was using PowerPoint and wanted to delete a header from the master slide. In laziness I searched in the embedded help function. Much to my happiness, when I clicked on the search result, “remove header”, it just removed it from my document. No pop-up window with a step-by-step how-to. It was a completely frictionless experience.

But this is not what I mean by an invisible LMS. An invisible LMS would have some elements of learning in the flow of work, such as surfacing content at the point of need. But more importantly, it would also do the same at points of influence and engagement. And there would no longer be an LMS/LXP as a destination.

You probably do not even realise it, but by the minute or second, you are being touched by numerous marketing platforms as you go about your normal habits on your smartphone or laptop. That sweater you put into your virtual basket but never proceeded to checkout? Now it follows you, appearing as ads on Facebook. A google search for a discount flight to Paris will ensure all things magnifique will show up in your news feeds and don’t forget the baguette! I recently ordered a Billie Eilish hoodie for my best friend’s teen daughter and my Twitter feed still has not recovered.

Now, these campaigns can also be nefarious, but imagine if we wore a white hat and took some inspiration from some of these tools like Eloqua or Hubspot? We could target our audience in meaningful ways, nudge them through deep learning campaigns, all within their own tools and without logging into an LMS. And if you are not familiar with campaigns, click here for more.

Your day might look more like this: You open your laptop and the screensaver is a reminder message about leadership culture. You log in and there is an email invitation to listen to a relevant podcast in an identified 15-minute open slot in your calendar, which you can accept or decline. You start reviewing your Slack notifications and a chatbot shares a link to an article with a synopsis and why it is a recommended read based on your role and goals. You go into your time tracker and a pop-up asks if you want to change the language to Spanish because you just completed Level 4 last week.

Those are a few examples and sure, having them all together could result in a lot of initial noise. However, by examining what people respond to, it would lead to more sophisticated campaign designs that are meaningful and impactful. Learners could opt-in to campaigns they are interested in or be enrolled based on demonstrated activity. And of course, they can opt out at any time, or if they do not engage with any activities, they are phased out of the campaign. Add in AI and machine learning and there are loads of possibilities.

I have long voiced my dislike for the LMS. As for the LXP (or whatever the cool people call it), these are truly improving. Unfortunately, there is simply shiny thing fatigue. Another site or another app is anathema to the integrated experience people have outside of L&D. By flipping the model to be invisible, we become an internal part of the work life DNA.

Like what you’re read? Visit the blog for more articles, or let’s connect on LinkedIn.

Why I Said Stop Building Leadership Courses

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I put up a post on LinkedIn last week that had quite a few readers clutching their pearls. It said, “No one. I repeat: NO ONE needs to build another leadership course”. Some took objection to the uppercase letters, others thought I was dismissing the skill entirely. Either way, I clearly touched a nerve to those with leadership training near and dear to their hearts. So, here’s an extended version of my opinion.

Google search “Leadership Training”. There are over 3,400,000,000 results. If only 10% of those hits are valid, there is still a ton of content, nay a shit ton, out there. We need to digest what already exists and find out what works, and, what does not. Leadership is a very difficult and complex topic, few do it well…even fewer teach it well. So, people build more courses to fix this perceived gap. It is a never-ending and very expensive loop. Which leads to my next point:

Psst…a lot of courses are ineffective. Like a LOT. Some estimates place only 10% of learning is delivering results. Having sat through dozens of leadership training sessions by different vendors, I would agree. But do not listen to my own anecdotal and humble opinion. The smart folks at Forbes and Harvard Business School are doing their own deep dive into the topic, which makes for compelling reading.

Now before you start sending me hate mail about why your content is the exception, the content is not necessarily the problem, although it certainly can be. I am glad to see trust falls have gone out of fashion – do not touch me ever, thank-you-very-much. The real issue, according to HBS is, “many HR professionals find it uncomfortable or impossible to confront senior leaders and their senior teams with the truth. They find it hard to tell them about how their leadership, organization design and policies and practices are the root cause of failures in strategy execution”. Applause to that truth bomb.

When a client says to me they want a leadership programme, if you dig deeper, it is usually code for one of the following:

  • Oops. We hired jerks and no one wants to work for them

  • We promoted strong individual contributors into leadership roles, and they are sinking

  • We do not have a succession plan (BTW – this is an HR, not an L&D problem)

  • Our competitors have leadership academies, so we want one

Let’s break it down a bit. Leadership training is not going to fix toxic culture. The best designed learning experience, complete with coaching, paced reinforcement, and heck, throw in an app, will do nothing. Fire your assholes, even if they are bringing in top revenue. They are costing you more in reputation and attrition.

Not everyone wants to be a leader. On my original post a few suggested I was personally lacking leadership qualities. Well, you may be right (albeit rude). I am the “I” in “team”. I do better as an individual contributor and carve my career towards my strengths. Only twice have I truly enjoyed leading a team (I am looking at you, Toronto Titans!). So, can the ladder upwards not include people management? One CTO I worked with refused to have direct reports because he knew he was not a good people leader. He was smart. For some, leading is a difficult distraction from what they are really excellent at.

Regarding the last point, of course everyone has some form of leadership training. However, make yours count. Two of my final suggestions are:

Go to the experts. Tasking your L&D department to build a Leadership Course is like asking your accountant to be your dentist. Do not have your own leaders be SMEs, because they are not. Work with people who know the skill well and have demonstrated success in this area. No, not a bunch of happy quotes, but actual tangible impact. If you cannot afford experts, at least curate from smart sources rather than wasting more money internally developing.

Challenge the C-Suite to define what they want leadership to be. There is not one style and some models out there are doing more harm than good. Kevin Miller MCIPD had a great point when he said we need, “a lot more high-quality focus on human-centred leadership skills, development of EQ, empathy, resilience, trust building, vulnerability, outsight, listening and practical coaching”. Some leadership styles I have been urged to adopt were just gross (see point above about jerks). We can do a lot more in this space

To be honest, I could have chosen from any number of topics for my post. No one should be building more courses on project management, coaching, communication, etc. The market is saturated with these too and is there really anything new to say? Skim from the best. I only selected leadership because in the past week, I have gotten no less than 23 emails advertising masterclasses, apps, webinars, and more, on the topic. It pains me to see companies, and my clients, get sold on solutions which do not address the real problem, and likely will not be effective. At the other end, there is a person trying to navigate their career and stay employed. Let's be smarter.

Annual Planning: The L&D Frenemy

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I am not known for my stellar decision-making capabilities, particularly when reacting impulsively, or after the words, “Here, hold my vodka”. One fateful summer night, the City of Toronto was laying fresh cement sidewalk. As luck would have it, someone (thankfully not me) did not notice all the caution signs and tripped right into the wet concrete, leaving behind two massive footprints, plus one elbow-print. The city workers were not impressed, but hey, it was an accident and they said a crew would repair it the next day.

Something I had always wanted to do is write my name in cement. Since the sidewalk was already ruined, why the heck not? I grabbed a stick and gleefully went to write my name. It does not take long to write Lori. When I finished, I expected to see my friends giving me the thumbs up. Instead, their jaws were wide open in shock.

I did not write Lori in the ruined sidewalk slab. I left my name in the pristine slab beside it. Um, oops.

So, whilst this is an example of a spectacular lack of planning and the consequences, there are equally damaging outcomes when one decides to plan obsessively. For example, the annual plan used by L&D departments.

Look, I get it. It is incredibly neat and tidy to begin the fiscal year with a list of courses to develop and get a dopamine hit when you tick each one off the list. It makes stakeholders and CEOs happy, and everyone gets a bonus in December. As a “bonus”, you end up with a curriculum on one of the following topics: Project Management, Leadership, or Presentation Skills. Enjoy taking care of that pet rock.

If you ask an L&D leader for their biggest challenges, a common complaint is no seat at the table with the business. As a consultant, I see all sides of the table and this is not an oversight.

It is a fact universally acknowledged when someone starts a group chat, someone else immediately creates a sub group chat, minus the people they think are annoying. Sorry L&D people. We are not invited.

Consider the following common experience: there has been a crisis and employees need to quickly know about a new operating procedure or there could be potential injuries and impacts to reputation. Learning is contacted but because the annual plan and budget has been set, there are no resources available. So, either a vendor is brought in at a very high cost, the content waits in the queue, or the business goes ahead and develops their own solution. BTW, nothing triggers an L&D professional more than a non-learning professional building content #ForReal. You will hear them passive aggressively pound at the “click next” button several cubicles away.

The business expects L&D to be agile, but there are agreed upon deliverables promised to stakeholders. Still, the annual plan is your frenemy. Yes, it makes you feel secure, but it is preventing you from moving forward.

I have written about triaging learning requests before (see here). Basically, it means prioritizing projects daily based on what will deliver maximum ROI to the business. Here are some more details on how it works:

Compliance content is considered steady state. You plug into your calendar the resources and budget allocation and consider it an unavoidable annual deliverable. My personal suggestion is to invest the absolute minimum into compliance training. There is so little room to be innovative, it is a CYA exercise, and has endless content reviews. Thank U, Next.

Next, plan for your big rocks, but not only on an annual basis. These are the large business initiatives which will require learning interventions. Pre-allocate 40% of your resources to these initiatives. You might be thinking, but all my resources are already dedicated to these projects! Yes, because the front-loading has been allowed via the frenemy annual plan. Use data and performance consult to only commit to projects with tangible ROI.

Thirdly, and this is where it gets jazzy, amend your intake process to capture the following:

  • Does this request have a risk (reputational, monetary, etc.)?

  • Is this request revenue generating?

  • Does this request align with the identified business priorities?

  • How many people does this impact?

  • What if nothing is done?

Now you have critical information to rank projects against each other and determine which have higher priority. Work should then be reprioritized daily (yes, daily), based on what will have the most positive impact on the business. So, if we think back to the crisis above, that request would be a heart attack and move to the front of the queue. Other projects with less critical impacts would be deferred.

I will not lie. Many stakeholders disliked this model because they wanted their work to be first. But these are people complaining in an emergency room about their stubbed toe when a spinal injury gets wheeled in. This reprioritization model means L&D is a better strategic partner, not wasting resources, and delivering better value.

Pro-tip: I recommend Workfront as the best tool to manage this type of model. I do not work for them, but it is the only software I have found to give the agility, reporting, and ability to reprioritize quickly.

Reconstruction meant I assumed my inadvertent vandalism would be destroyed. I was pleased to see not only has the sidewalk not been replaced, the new building is a liquor store. Yes, any North Torontonian buying wine will see a worse for wear LORI. Thankfully I did not add my surname.  

Learning in the Tsunami of Work

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There is a train bridge in North Carolina which is 11 feet and 8 inches high. Unfortunately, this is not enough clearance for large trucks. After several accidents, the city:

  • installed signs

  • lowered the speed limit

  • installed a sensor that triggers an LED blackout warning sign when an overheight vehicle approaches

  • added a suspended padded bar to hit the roof of too tall trucks, and

  • implemented a red-light system to give overheight vehicles 50 additional seconds to rethink their choice

Yet at least once a month some poor individual rams into the bridge, which is affectionately called, “the can opener”. A very enterprising truck repair company installed surveillance cameras at the site and built a website www.11foot8.com. The collection of 140+ videos of people destroying their vehicle roofs, plus some funny commentary, makes for compelling viewing on a cold winter day (I lived through the polar vortex of 2019 – no judgement, please).

It is comfortably easy to laugh at someone’s misfortune, especially when they are so oblivious. It also flatters the ego a bit to think, “I would never be that stupid”. Well, not so fast. I have legit asked if there are beans in a bean burrito. And in a store that only sells black and white clothing basics (it is in the name of the brand and on every sign) I sincerely asked a sales associate if a shirt was navy blue. I could go on, but my invitation to join MENSA is clearly not just lost in the post.

But all of this gets me thinking about learning in the flow of work and what does it really mean? In the case of the bridge, they physically installed what we L&D professionals would consider just-in-time job aids, at every possible moment. To be fair, they have reduced the number of incidents, but the can opener is still fed regularly. And raising the bridge or lowering the road are not possibilities for several reasons, which only proves learning will never fix shitty design (I’m looking at you, software developers).

Look, we build a lot of content to plug performance holes, but these need to be surfaced at the precise moment of need to add value. This is not something we are good at. Likewise, SCORM content can only live tethered to a platform, which is a pain. So is the LMS, as a matter of fact.

Then there is the issue of notification fatigue. This used to be an overflowing email inbox which migrated into text messages. Now, you open your mobile device and every app is buzzing for your attention. People are drowning in this. How do we insert learning, and most importantly, have tangible impact and not be another wave in the tsunami?

It may seem counterintuitive, but the first step might be to focus less on new technology. Not forever, mind you. Simply pause for a bit and survey what already exists and consolidate platforms to streamline the noise. Then use data to locate the digital pub for your company. Find the place where people are already going and place your content in those locations. However, no one likes to see their teachers at a house party. Make sure you are facilitating, not controlling.

Approach learning solutions holistically. For example, my mobile device determined via GPS that I grocery shop on Saturdays around 14:00. Interestingly, one weekend a coupon for toilet paper was pushed out to me at 13:45. To some, this might be a bit Big Brother is watching. On the other hand, I saved $2 on loo roll, which face it, does not really have to go on sale. How could we similarly intersect value content into daily work?

Be comfortable not everything is learning with a capital L. Add “locate” to the bottom of the Bloom’s Taxonomy pyramid.

With the increasing complexity and diversity of skills, there are plenty of tasks people only do once. So, place what they require where and when they need it. Digital Kleenex box.

To insert learning into the flow of work, you need to truly understand the workflow. Ironically, I think we used to do this very well a decade or so ago, but like many trends in L&D, it has fallen out of fashion. It is important to understand the systems, environment, and processes, and design around those, rather than shoving a curriculum onto a learning platform (or ecosystem, or LXP, or NGLP, or whatever the cool kids are calling it). Put down your rapid authoring tool and spend a week on the shop floor.

Finally, fewer courses and more resources. Nothing new to say on this topic.

Personally, I do not think we really have the technology infrastructure to truly have learning in the flow of work in a meaningful way. This will develop as we get closer to an Internet of Things for the work environment, but that’s another blog post for another time.

As for www.11foot8.com, it is likely a problem with a limited lifespan. With driverless cars, drones, and AI, there is a good chance the height will become obsolete. We can cross that bridge when we come to it (see what I did there?). Until then, I will keep visiting the website every once in a while to procrastinate.