Any formal learningsolution that lacks effective ongoing performance support leaves in itsaftermath random acts of failure. This failure generally goes undetected by theorganization unless the consequences of that failure somehow make it visible.
Even then, thedistance between training and these subsequent failure points is often greatenough to allow plausible denial of any culpability on the part of the learningsolution. Thank goodness, too, that the “grading” traditions of most schoolsystems have oriented learners in our work streams to do everything they can toavoid failure. When we throw them over the wall of our formal learning eventsinto the real world of performance they tend to work hard to compensate for thelimitations of those learning solutions. When they fail, they most oftenfail quietly.
Learning from mistakes
From ourearliest experience in formal education, we have been oriented to get thingsright—to avoid making mistakes. Those of us who design and develop learningsolutions should certainly pursue effective performance as the primary key-successindicator.
Yet, there’s aprofound lesson to learn from Cisco CEO John Chambers. When he interviewspotential leaders for his company, he rightly asks first about results andwalks through what they have done right. His next question is, “Tell me aboutyour failures.” Chambers looks for candidness in the mistakes they’ve made, butthen wants to know, “What would you do differently this time?”
Chambersbelieves that we’re a product of the challenges we face in life, and how wehandle those challenges probably has more to do with what we accomplish thanour successes.
Basketballlegend Michael Jordan, also believes failure is a mighty teacher. “I’vemissed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games.Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed.I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why Isucceed.”
Thomas Edisoncredited failure coupled with determination as the pathway to his success: “Genius?Nothing! Sticking to it is the genius! I’ve failed my way to success.”
Now, nolearning professional wants to take a chance on failure when the consequencesare significant. This is where an approach called “critical skills analysis”can help sort out tasks where failure can be a safe learning experience. Thinkabout times when you have failed—where that failure didn’t harm anyone oranything. It might have been uncomfortable, perhaps, but you learned from it—didn’tyou?
Safe failures
Learningthrough “safe” failure is most certainly a contributor to personal growth. Thereforeour methodology ought to include identifying and accommodatingthose tasks where people can safely learn when failure happens. Here’s how youcan do that.
Spend a fewminutes studying the following rating scale:
Figure 1: What kind of consequences will there be?
Consider theimplications of identifying tasks that score in the 1 to 3 range in the scaleabove. For these tasks, an effectively designed EPSS (embedded performancesupport system) canprovide a safety net that can allow complete transformation of the classroom. Here’show. By delivering two-click, 10-second access to just what’s needed to enablelearning while in the workflow, you can take these tasks out of the classroom.This allows greater instructional focus on the remaining tasks and theirrelated concepts that scored in the upper range of the “Critical Impact” scale.
Without this,most courses have too much content crammed into them for the time allotted. Inorder to cover all the content, people generally sideline proper instructionalmethodology, which forces instructors into presenter mode. Yet the critical-impactratings for some of that content call for significant investment ofmethodology.
Learning in thecontext of work
Critical skillsanalysis has proven to be the means for safely removing, on the average, 50percent of the content out of the learning queue and into the workflow; to belearned at the moment of “apply.” This is actually the optimum environment forlearning content and skills where the consequences of failure aren’tsignificant. The real world, not the classroom, provides legitimate context andpressing need.
Here’s a reality:the closer a learner is to the place and moment of“apply,” the more open and ready that learner is to learn. Consider yourown learning mindset while in the workflow compared to when you step away fromit to learn in the fabricated environment of a classroom or an eLearning course. At which of those moments are you mostmotivated and ready to engage mentally, emotionally, and physically to learn?
Experience confirms that we aremost attuned to learning when we are in the context of our work. Researchteaches us that it is also the environment where learning is most naturallyoptimized.
Timing
For example, research verifies that distributed practice, which is a corecomponent of spaced learning, is particularly beneficialif long-term retention is the goal. More than 800 experiments have demonstratedthat spaced repetition increases long-term retention in individuals by 200percent and that the optimal time to review information is just before the“forgetting” phase.
Forgetting is a byproduct of time and it is in theworkflow where the forgetting that counts happens.Therefore, it’s there where the “optimal time to review” is and we should bestaddress it. This is what an EPSS (embedded performancesupport system) can do most effectively. Performers naturally turn to anEPSS when they are right at the point of uncertainty (the forgetting phase).
Spaced repetition is also the primary agent for developing automatedskills. The ability to perform complex integrated skills without consciousthought is very important. For example, there’s much that you do while drivinga car that is automated. If you had to consciously think through everything youdo to pass a car at high speed on a busy road, you would do so at great risk. Althoughautomaticity is vital in executing complex skills, it can also presentsignificant challenges when change happens. Try driving, for the first time, ina country where you are required to do so on the other side of the road and ina car where the driver’s seat is opposite from where you have developed yourdriving skills.
It’s estimated that 70 percent ofall work skills become automated. Unlearning automated skills in order toperform in a new way just doesn’t happen in a learning event. Unlearning torelearn requires successful application over time (e.g., spaced repetition).This challenge of relearning how to perform in a new way is one of the primaryreasons why the majority of change initiatives fail.
Learning at the moment of “change”can only efficiently happen in the workflow. It’s at that moment where peopleare most ready to “relearn,” and an EPSS can meet that need within 2-clicks and10-seconds.
Performance supportdelivers learning
A third research-backed reasonwhy learning in the flow of work can be more potent than formal learning has todo with how we truly learn. David A. Kolb defined learning as “the processwhereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience.” Kolb’sview of learning was shaped by the pioneering research in experiential learningby Kurt Lewin, John Dewey, and Jean Piaget, who, with others, have demonstratedthat “learning is best conceived as a process, not in terms of outcomes.” InDewey’s words, “What we learn in the way of knowledge and skill in onesituation becomes an instrument of understanding and dealing effectively withthe situations which follow.”
The implications of this researchto the discipline of performance support is significant. The core principlehere is that optimum learning is ongoing and requires the context ofexperience. The workflow is where context resides and reveals itself. An EPSScan continuously deliver learning—in the place where all the stars align; whereskills can be fully internalized, where learning-change is best negotiated, andwhere learners are most open and ready to learn because they are in the contextof the flow of work.
Furthermore, byremoving these tasks from the formal-learning curriculum, you can reduce thescope of formal instruction (instructor-led or eLearning.) This frees upinstructional time to provide greater attention to those skills that are at theupper end of the Critical Impact Rating Scale and at the same timesignificantly reduce the amount of time devoted to formal learning.
So, if you are wondering how to justifyinvesting in performance support and you’re concerned with the time and effortrequired to add performance support to your existing workload—considerembracing the benefits of “safe failure.” It can free up the time and resourcesyou need and at the same time deliver a more effective training solution.
