In Real Life: What Will You Resolve to Do Better in 2017?

It’s late December, and we’re onthe Internet. I’m pretty sure I’m required by web law to do some type of grand“in review” thing that looks back on a challenging but fruitful year as a wayto springboard into a promising future. I think I’ll save the look back on 2016for my Just Curious Blog and instead take this opportunity to share a few otheryear-end messages with the L&D community.

First, thanks for reading my “InReal Life” column this year! This is entry No. 9 in my ongoing series, and I’mlooking forward to digging into more practical L&D themes with you nextyear. I hope you’ve been able to use one or two of the ideas I’ve explored hereto help your people perform better on the job. If you’re just tuning in, checkout my other contributions here.

Next, I’d love to hear yoursuggestions for themes about which you’d like to see me write in 2017. Is therea particular topic you believe isn’t being discussed enough within ourindustry? Are you having a hard time bringing a new idea to life and lookingfor some shared experience? Please share a few suggestions in the comments belowor contact me directly with your ideas. It would be a great help as I continueto work on making this column as useful as possible in your everyday work.

Finally, I’d like to borrow froman overplayed year-end convention and talk resolutions. I’ve never quiteunderstood the need to plot improvement goals onto the calendar as opposed tojust doing it whenever you happen to figure out the need. This is one of themany reasons why I can’t stand the concept of annual performance reviews. Thatsaid, I do recognize the value in the reflective exercise people go throughwhen drafting New Year’s resolutions. “People who explicitly make resolutionsare 10 times more likely to attain their goals than people who don’t explicitlymake resolutions,” according to Statistic Brain. So, while plenty of people“self-promise” to use that new gym membership only to bail out by mid-February,in real life there’s something to be said for pausing, thinking about what youneed to do better next year, and writing it down.

What would a list of L&Dprofessional resolutions look like? We all bring different backgrounds andexperiences into our roles. We work for different companies with uniquecontexts and priorities. We have different strengths and weaknesses (“areas ofopportunity” for the HR crowd). While I don’t know your life or what focus maybest help you achieve your personal and professional goals next year, here are fiveL&D resolutions I believe would benefit our industry as well as the peoplewe support every day:

1. Spend more time in the operation.

The farther away we get fromwhere the work is done, the harder it becomes to understand people’s realneeds. This is a big part of what brings us to develop a complex eLearningmodule when a one-page job aid would do the trick. Find ways to get back intothe day-to-day on a regular basis so you don’t lose touch with the reality ofyour workplace. We don’t have to be the subject matter experts—in fact, wereally shouldn’t be. But we still need to know what it feels like to do thework we’re trying to help people do. This is why I “sacrificed” at least oneoff day every quarter at Disney to get back into my costume and complete afrontline shift. It was also a lot of fun and helped me earn people’s trust andrespect.

2. Don’t get sucked in by trends.

How much time are you spendingright now drooling over the possibilities of virtual reality for learning? Howis that helping the people in your workplace today? Sure, we should make everyeffort to stay aware of the latest and greatest in our field. However, thisshouldn’t come at the expense of solving our current problems. New and shinydoesn’t equal effective. Trend after trend should have taught us this lesson bynow. Keep your feet firmly planted in today while remaining flexible so you canpivot to innovative, proven ideas at the right time for your organization.

No, I didn’t just vilify or condemn VR. Well… maybe I did, a little.We’re a ways off from VR ubiquity in the workplace, folks. Let’s try to getmobile, on-demand resources to work first. 🙂

3. Design as if you had to use it.

“Would I want to do this?” It’sa pretty simple filter for solving user motivation issues when it comes tolearning experiences. I’m astounded by how often L&D pros build contentthat they would never want to consumefor themselves. If you wouldn’t do it, why would you subject someone else toit? Compliance isn’t a good excuse. Neither isscale. We must be clever and innovative in our strategies and consider usermotivation before making content design decisions.

4. Don’t measure your success with useless data.

Plenty of organizations stilllean heavily on completions and quiz scores as measures of trainingeffectiveness. You and I know they’re meaningless, but our partners haven’tcaught up yet. So, even if you have to report on this data to make yourstakeholders happy, you don’t have to base your own success on the samemeasurements. Don’t be satisfied with your work just because you averaged a 4.7on the level-one survey. Make business impact the measuring stick by which youjudge your performance. Provide insight into this impact along with thefamiliar data reporting to help your partners see the light.

5. Get outside your bubble.

“We cannot solve problems byusing the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” I’ve come acrossseveral variations of this oft-attributed-to-Einstein quote. Regardless, it’smy current favorite. We can only do so much on our own. It’s very easy to puton blinders in a support role within your organization and try to carry theweight on your own shoulders. Meanwhile, L&D teams around the world aretrying to solve the exact same problems. Don’t just wait for your one annualconference or the next local chapter meeting. Leverage online resources andstart developing a personal learning network (PLN) that can help you overcomeday-to-day challenges in your role. Given that you’re reading this column, I’llassume you already have a head start on this one.

I challenge you to draft yourown list of 2017 L&D resolutions. No, this isn’t the same as that list ofdevelopment goals you’re being “asked” to come up with in alignment with yourcompany’s 2017 strategic priorities so you can copy/paste them into your HRISonly to forget about them until next December. I’m talking about a simple, butmeaningful, list of things you want to do better during the next 12 months.And, in the spirit of working out loud, I invite you to share your resolutionswith your peers in whatever way you prefer. Write a blog post. Record a vlog.Add them in the comments below. Share your resolutions with your PLN so theycan help you achieve them through shared accountability.

I’ll go first. Next year, I wantto get back to telling more practicalstories. I have spent the majority of my career working within largecompanies where I experienced the daily realities of workplace learning andoperations. Today, my role with Axonify gives me the opportunity to “waxtheoretical” and explore new ideas that can help influence our customers andpartners to improve their L&D strategies. However, I’m starting to noticethat sometimes I lean a bit too far toward the theory and lose that footing Ialways had “in the L&D trenches.” So, as I build new articles andpresentations for next year, I’m going to revisit my storytelling approach andget back to the practical nature that yielded so much great feedback during myfirst few years of industry activity. I also plan to feature more stories frommy earliest L&D roles, especially what I learned during my time at Disney.

Thanks again for joining me as Iexplore L&D in real life. Happy holidays! Now enjoy this festive and ridiculous video of me and afew eLearning Guild folks! Ah… that never gets old!