If you’re in L&D, just what do you do?

What do you do?

It’s a simple enough question, but for many L&D people, this is a question we dread. The reason? As soon as the person says it, you know how they will react to your answer:

“Oh, so you’re in training.”

To which the only possible response is a rather inadequate “Yes, sort of.” But by then it’s too late. They have already formed a picture, based on their 15 plus years of schooling, of what you do. You teach people. By standing in front of a classroom. Because that’s what training and skills are all about, isn’t it?

There is nothing wrong with training; it just isn’t what most of us do. We design e-learning courses or learning strategies or facilitate social learning. Even when we are doing something close to training – such as delivering workshops – there will be fundamental differences between our roles in reality and in the minds of our interlocutor.

Yet we ourselves are least partly to blame for this situation.

Why?

Because we give the wrong answer.

Bob Mosher, Learning and Performance

I’m delighted that Bob Mosher will be talking at the Learning Technologies Conference in London in January His subject, of course, is Learning and Performance.

I’ve known Bob for well over  decade and it’s great to have him talk on a subject that is very dear to his heart, and on which he has a slew of useful insight to impart.

And as well as delivering this talk, the Friday following the conference (27th Jan), Bob will be delivering a half-day workshop on Performance in the Workplace in west London.

Bob’s point on performance and learning is that there are 5 points when we need to learn things, and classical ‘push’ training (in the classroom or online) only really addresses two of these. His mission – along with his colleague Dr Conrad Gottfredson - is to move workplace learning from inputs to outputs, from the activity of training to the outcome of increased performance.

Bob’s workshop focuses on the performance support part of all this, in particular looking at moving learning into the workflow and accelerating  employee time to proficiency

The listed fee for the half-day workshop is £199 but Bob has kindly agreed an  admin-only fee of £49.99 for visitors to this blog. That includes VAT, refreshments, and lunch.

If you’d like to know more, just follow this link on Bob’s Performance Support Workshop.

Disclosure: I have no financial interest in this workshop of Bob’s, or in promoting his work, or that of Learning Guide. I just know that what Bob has to say is valuable to anyone working in organisational learning at the moment.

Four things L&D must do to stay relevant part 1

The world of learning at work is changing and we need to change with it.

This is not a matter of adopting some new, hyped technology nor of championing the latest fad in training techniques. The shifts in how we work in the West are fundamental and long-lasting and are not susceptible to superficial solutions. We are now in a global economy where most organisations derive their value from their people’s knowledge, skills and attitudes.

This will demand fundamental changes in how people develop themselves at work.

QR Codes and learning, Webinars and Twitter

In an hour’s time I’ll be hosting a Learning and Skills Group (LSG) webinar with Paul Simbeck-Hampson on QR codes, mobile tagging and learning. It promises to be fascinating. If you’re keen on following the reaction to this and other LSG webinars, just scan the QR code here to go straight to the Twitter feed. Thanks to Paul for the presentation and the code!

(90 minutes later) We’ve just finished the webinar, and it was a cracker. I realised that I’d missed something from this blog post: to find out more about QR codes, I’d recommend starting at Paul’s blog entry on the subject.

(23 hours later) Two more reflections on this webinar, which had about 140 attendees, plenty of interaction and a slew of positive feedback.

First – Paul took it very seriously, and had lots of material to draw on. He kindly tweeted this at the end:

I learnt preparation, rehearsal and content are the keys to effective Webinars – thanks @DonaldHTaylor

This is very gracious. It’s also right. As with all LSG webinars, we put a lot of time into preparing this session. In particlar we considered:

• where to ask open questions to generate audience interaction
• slide layout and the text/graphics balance
• what Paul would say in his ‘loose script’
• ensuring flow and momentum throughout the presentation
• the balance of the general and the specific
• fail-safe procedures in case anything went wrong
• practicalities of handling Q&A at the end

The second point: this was a very successful webinar because of the time Paul into rehearsing it and – crucially – because of the content he had. More than any other kind of presentation, webinars need good content. Paul’s had plenty of that and as a result he has generated (at current count) over 70 requests for his free 22-page paper on QR Codes and mobile tagging.

You can find out how to request the free report, and read Paul’s reflections on his blog entry.

You can listen to a recording to the presentation here.

You can also read David Hopkins’ views and reflections here.

Thoughts from TrainingZone Live on the future of L&D #TZL11

Today I had the pleasure of delivering a couple of workshops at TrainingZone Live 2011 in London.

The sessions were on “What makes a good L&D department” and we focused on the delivery mechanisms and skills needed to do our job well now and into the future. Martin Couzins did a 4 minute interview in the lobby just before lunch. Click the picture to listen.