Learning transfer

Editor's Notes

• #11: small capacity of working memory, many small bites of learning, digested over time, may be more efficient than large blocks of time spent in workshops. The key is getting people to pay sufficient attention to new ideas, something the“e-learning” industry has struggled with.. Perhaps any behavior change brought about by leaders, managers, therapists, trainers, or coaches is primarily a function of their ability to induce others to focus their attention on specific ideas, closely enough, often enough, and for a long enough time.
• #12: “ A tremendous amount of brain power is wasted every day because managers still think their job is to tell people what to do,” he says. But, in reality, “workers know much more about the work they are doing than the boss does.” Being told what to do can actually sap their motivation for the job. “The suggestions managers and co-workers typically make are always a crap shoot: You scramble for ideas and hope that one will fit,”Mr. Rock says. “The problem is that, even if you do have a winning idea, the person still won't do it because the suggestion came from you. So, in a sense, it is a game you don't want to win.”
• #17: Formal learning—riding the bus—is great for novices. It’s useful to have help getting the lay of the land and getting to the destination. Training departments are very talented at setting up bus routes. Informal learning, what the bicyclists do, is most appropriate for people who already know the territory. They want tips on the new shortcuts and the essence of a topic. They want to plug the holes in their knowledge, and they won’t sit still for bus rides to their destinations. Here’s the irony: The cyclists are the high performers. Raising their performance 5 percent blows the roof off. (Whereas raising the performance of novices 5 percent doesn’t even register.) When it comes to learning, most corporations are spending the most money where it will do the least good.
• #20: Work is a demanding, pressure-packed, rats-inthe- maze race with the clock to get the job done. Home is a comfortable, private space for sharing time with family and individual interests. Neither work nor home, a World Café is a neutral spot where people come together to offer hospitality, enjoy comradeship, welcome diverse perspectives, and have meaningful conversations. Shared spaces encourage dialogue.
• #22: You’re going to spend your entire life learning so you might as well get good at it. Embracing mindfulness is your first step. You’ll need to be flexible, look at things through different lenses, reflect on what you see, try new things, run thought experiments, and pay attention. A mindful person often cuts off the mindless auto-pilot of aimless living
• #24: Is it possible that the learning and development profession might enjoy such dramatic advancements? What could happen that would catapult us to an entirely new plateau of results? And where is that breakthrough most likely to occur
• #27: as entering activities in a planner or adhering to a checklist, is the best kind of management. If employees create mechanisms to help them remember new behaviors or to eliminate inappropriate behaviors, that’s a more powerful tool than most external influences
• #28: Space learning events over time. One change that many organizations have implemented is to space learning events to create opportunities for application and then coming back to report, evaluate, and be reenergized. Create buddy systems or support groups. At the conclusion of any learning event, buddy systems can be created or lunch groups established to keep the implementation of learning moving forward by meeting on a regular basis. Coach online or by telephone. A regularly scheduled telephone call from someone available to discuss implementation steps or any challenges that a participant has encountered has been shown to greatly increase the degree of implementation. Encourage mentorships. Similarly, someone inside the organization who can mentor another employee performs a valuable service. By periodically touching base, a mentor shows interest in his or her participant’s progress and offers assistance when needed. Initiate job discussions. A manager or supervisor who regularly provides reminders to practice new behavours
• #29: in the implementation and follow-up process. While the benefits of having a mentor call every week or two to discuss an employee’s progress is obvious, email is a more economical vehicle to reach participants. An email can serve as a friendly reminder, ask for a brief assessment of progress, and encourage participants to plan their next steps to meet commitments made during the learning process. By combining email contact with telephone contact, refresher sessions, and the opportunity to complete further assessments, such as 360-degree feedback surveys, you enhance Phase 3’s potential for success. You can aggregate and analyze the data compiled through those processes in many ways. You can find out which participants are following through with their commitments; you can analyze the type of goals or commitments participants are selecting (and ignoring); and you can evaluate those goals and provide more challenging ones at a later date. Comparing the effectiveness of one training or development intervention with another is also now possible.