Training today. It's just different.

Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine- or so the saying goes. But the more things change the more they stay the same. It’s a matter of perspective. When I was a child my father worked for IBM. They had a dress code that was more like a uniform. It included a blue pinstripe suit, white shirt, and wingtip shoes. IBM was a post war company that besides revolutionizing the PC industry- developed some innovative HR practices in their day. They no longer have the strict dress code. They still have one, albeit arguably it’s just different. Today’s trends in learning are centered around social learning and media, web 2.0 technologies, the latest and greatest Learning Management Systems (LMSs) and authoring tools… But at the core of the conversation remains employee development, albeit arguably it’s just different. There remains the need for the application of sound instructional design and use of adult learning principles. Everything else is just the suit we wrap it in. In past years we wrapped training in the more formal blue pin stripe suit and wingtips. It was defined, it was a more formal event and we accessorized it accordingly. Today’s learner arrives with different expectations shaped by an upbringing influenced by the internet, mobile technology, Facebook, Wikipedia, and a host of other technologies that have accelerated the speed of business. They expect everything quicker and are far better at multitasking. So as professionals we have to speak to their needs and strengths.

Over the last two decades training has migrated from a formal classroom environment to elearning. There are two big causes for this; First is cost, I can develop an elearning course once and deliver it to thousands. Classroom training and its associated costs like travel, a physical venue, and room capacity is much more expensive to deliver to thousands. Then, when you factor in the remote workers formal training becomes prohibitively expensive to implement.

Regardless of the training methodology you predominantly use, your employees do train each other.  They also learn from others in the industry, they learn and improve upon their jobs all the time.

In a recent post from  CMS Wire, Deb Lavoy pointed out:

"Social Business" is not about technology, or about "corporate culture." It is a sociopolitical historical shift that is bigger, broader and much more fascinating.

Social Business is not about technology, or corporate culture…it’s about people doing what comes naturally to them. Learning from one another, and teaching one another.  That’s how humans are wired to pass on information.

-Steven Hornak

Steven is a co-founder and Managing Member of Collabor8 Learning, LLC, an instructional design and performance management consultancy. His firm collaborates with organizations to enhance the way they develop their people. To learn more about Collabor8 Learning, click here.

Steven can be reached at             305-791-1764      , steve@collabor8learning.com or via Twitter @smhornak.-

Are learning coaches roaming your company's halls?

In reading this article aptly titled “Schools’ instructional coaches change the game”, I was struck by the following observation:

“… instructional coaches were originally launched to help school districts strengthen professional development to meet the needs of all learners.”

The schools are getting in on the learning coach action, and as we noted in a previous blog- we feel instructional designers must do the same. Today’s workforce, with its five generations collaborating physically and virtually to accomplish the mission, has needs that cannot be efficiently met by bottlenecking “training” within the confines of human resources.

Similarly to the classroom in the article, some of these needs include:

1. Guidance in interpreting performance data for their team and identifying knowledge/ skills gaps,
2. Working collaboratively to spread best practices across job functions and roles,
3. Disseminating instructional methods, design principles, and adult learning theories, and
4. Establishing communities of practice and learning networks within the enterprise.

This learning coach strategy shifts the onus for learning to everyone’s shoulders in the organization. Learning should be a competency in everybody’s job description―and everyone should be measured on how well they learned and applied their new knowledge, skills and abilities to execute their jobs. It should be the learning coaches leading this charge, and stepping outside of their traditional classroom or design roles and weaving learning into the work flows of their organizations.

Much as improvements are being witnessed during early test of this tactic in school settings, organizations and in particular human resources executives should be experimenting with roving learning coaches as well.

- Alex Santos
Alex is a co-founder and Managing Member of Collabor8 Learning, LLC, an instructional design and performance management consultancy. His firm collaborates with organizations to enhance the way they develop  and train their people. To learn more about Collabor8 Learning, click here.

Alex can be reached at 786-512-1069, alex@collabor8learning.com or via Twitter@collabor8alex.

Is HR Failing to Lead the Social Revolution at Work?

Do companies need social media? Ever notice HR leaders shying away from this question, typically being led by the Marketing or IT group? Why is that? Why do our HR leaders focus more on the risks vs. the potential rewards of implementing this technology within the enterprise? And when HR leaders DO chime in, the conversation is shifted to the organization’s social media policy or lack thereof, the HR handbook, or some other compliance topic of little strategic benefit to the company. It’s almost like HR dumbs down the conversation or ignores it altogether.

It seems every day there is a new article, blog post, tweet, and other commentary questioning whether companies “need” social media. It’s akin to asking, do companies “need” a website, email, PC’s, or mobile phones? The answer is obvious. Of course no company “needs” social media, although many will likely turn to Facebook’s Marketplace when looking for a buyer for their failing business.

As Human Resources professionals (and learning coaches―a.k.a. instructional designers), one of the things we’ve learned is that the medium is not the message1. Just as we've been learning for years without all of the technology at our disposal today, companies have been conducting business for years without social media and will be conducting business for many years to come without it. So, stop fussing about whether your company needs social media- the answer is... it doesn't need it.  As a profession, we should stop obsessing over hypotheticals and focus our energies on the needs of our companies we can meet―via social media or otherwise. This is where our greatest opportunity for impacting the bottom line lies.

Here’s a list of what companies do need, and by all means feel free to add more to list with your comments below:

• a productive and engaged workforce able to compete and succeed in today’s global market,
• a means with which to attract, recruit, communicate with, and provide challenging work to the digital natives entering the workforce,
• a dynamic intranet, where employees can connect and quickly locate information, expertise, and each other to collaborate and execute the organizations plans,
• to stop mass marketing their products and services via mediums where their message is lost in a sea of useless noise, and to engage their customers in a very personal, authentic and focused manner,
• a “new and improved” vision for their learning management system, one that can accommodate learning events and opportunities not conceived of in the HR department- but born in “the field”, informal learning, and enables employees to learn from one another up, down and across the organization―geographical boundaries be damned,
• a means with which to capture some of the knowledge that’s about to walk out of their doors when baby boomers accelerate their retirement after this economic malaise we are currently in, and finally
• a good dose of leadership from their head of Human Resources to collaborate with their IT department, and educate the c-suite on how social media can and should be considered as part of their talent management strategy―and not just their marketing mix, to meet some of these needs

Social media technology has the potential to transform the enterprise and how we work, but only when implemented as part of a larger human resources strategy, with clear goals and objectives, and when applied to needs it can effectively meet. When implemented in pursuit of one of these goals above, and tracked with appropriate metrics, HR leaders will be able to demonstrate the value of implementing these systems, and not simply the risks which are so prominently written about that make the news headlines every day.

1. Clark, R. (1983). Reconsidering research on learning from media. Review of Educational Research 53(4), 445-59.

- Alex Santos
Alex is a co-founder and Managing Member of Collabor8 Learning, LLC, an instructional design and performance management consultancy. His firm collaborates with organizations to enhance the way they develop  and train their people. To learn more about Collabor8 Learning, click here.

Alex can be reached at 786-512-1069, alex@collabor8learning.com or via Twitter@collabor8alex.

Is it time you change your job title from Instructional Designer to Learning Coach?

We've been writing plenty lately on some of the amazing social technology that is evolution-izing workplace learning and performance. Yet, in speaking with fellow ID's, it's clear to me that Instructional Designer is no longer an adequate title for us in the corporate world. In the Instructional Design competencies published by the International Board of Standards for Training, Performance and Instruction (ibstpi®), one of the design and development competencies reads:

• Develop instructional materials (Essential)

Anyone else have an issue with this thinking? Here are my $.02. Is it essential for a designer to develop instructional materials that address real and identified gaps in performance, of course. But this statement limits design and development work to "push" instructional strategies. I'd like to see competencies without this limitation.

I believe a better competency for a designer to posses in this day and age is:

• Develop instructional materials, systems, and guidelines for learning to flourish formally, informally, and socially

Or something to that effect. Today's designer needs to not only be able to push learning out to the organization, but to encourage, compel, and make it possible for others to pull the learning they need in order to perform. In this regard, the role of the designer is evolving into what I feel is more of a "learning coach". At times, yes, you are developing instructional materials. But at other times, you may be moderating a product forum for your organization where learners are exchanging product questions and answers across the globe- and you are ensuring their information exchange is accurate and focused, while tagging it for future reference by others in the organization. In this scenario, you are not developing instruction, but managing a virtual environment where learners can teach and learn from each other.

I believe the role if the instructional designer is dramatically changing, and as professionals we must adapt or perish. No longer is learning hierarchically trickling down through our organizations, it is happening everywhere. As bearers of the learning and performance torch, we must enable our learners to learn what they need to perform, wherever they are, and on whatever device they prefer to access it. Our adaptation should include a revision of the competencies that encompass the skill set expected from each and every one of us.

What do you think- Has the profession and our roles changed sufficiently to warrant a revision to the competencies of every instructional designer?  How is your role changing at your organization?

- Alex Santos
Alex is a co-founder and Managing Member of Collabor8 Learning, LLC, an instructional design and performance management consultancy. His firm collaborates with organizations to enhance the way they develop  and train their people. To learn more about Collabor8 Learning, click here.

Alex can be reached at 786-512-1069, alex@collabor8learning.com or via Twitter@collabor8alex.

Learning via microblogging in the Enterprise

Learning via microblogging in the EnterpriseIs learning at your organization stuck in traffic logjams in what was supposed to be your company's information superhighway? Want to kick it in to high gear? Fight the urge to join the endless email chains and conversation threads and cut right through the muck with microblogging!

Microblogging is dramatically altering the way information is consumed. In essence, a microblog is a smaller version of a standard web blog. When we say smaller, we mean much smaller- you typically have 140-400 characters or less to get your point across quickly and succinctly. Microblog entries are labeled by the social network and its administrator, to reflect the information it is encouraging community members to share. You may have heard of them called “status updates”, “tweets”, or simply “messages”.

In an enterprise setting, a company might label microblog posts as “project updates”, “bright ideas”, “customer feedback”, or even “what would you improve around here?” in 140-400 characters or less, of course. Via these small messages, users can broadcast ideas, updates, images, and links to pre-recorded media like podcasts or videos. Furthermore, posts by users can be indexed by the use of hashtags (“#” symbols) so that they can be easily searched for in the future. One-to-many conversations can take place in real-time, regardless of geographic boundaries.

The technology provides an informal collaborative environment that can streamline the flow of information for your organization, its partners and suppliers. Experimenting with this technology is relatively inexpensive, and there are several open-source platforms on the market that you should review carefully. Your goals and budget obviously play a large part in your selection process, but so should considerations such as how much customization your organization demands and whether or not your users will find a more bare bones feature set attractive.

Many organizations are crafting learning experiences using micro-blogging tools, and productivity gains have been documented by several organizations. The Harvard Buisiness Review has a nice chronicle of a few of these written by Jeanne C. Meister and Karie Willyerd, two trailblazers in the implementation of social media tools to advance learning and development (L&D) objectives.

While much focus remains on the marketing and crisis management potential of microblogging technology, less has been written about its potential to teach and enable learning in the enterprise. Yet early adopters in several industries are finding success at invigorating learning at their organizations with this technology, and we feel its potential to transform how L&D initiatives are carried out hasn’t even been scratched. Treading carefully, it’s time for Human Resources to lead this charge!

- Alex Santos
Alex is a co-founder and Managing Member of Collabor8 Learning, LLC, an instructional design and performance management consultancy. His firm collaborates with organizations to enhance the way they develop  and train their people. To learn more about Collabor8 Learning, click here.

Alex can be reached at 786-512-1069, alex@collabor8learning.com or via Twitter@collabor8alex.