My Last Words: Celebrating Progress, with Concern

“When thereis nothingleft to say, lift your head up high, smile, andwalk away like you own the world.”

—Author unknown

Amazingly—andno one is more amazed than me—this is my 100^thand final monthly “Marc My Words” column. I started writing this column in2010, the same year the original iPad was introduced (ancient history, right?).I’ve tried to cover a broad range of topics, adding a little humor andcontroversy along the way, celebrating progress where possible, with concernwhere necessary. But mostly, I’ve tried to educate as best I can.

Favoritecolumns

Looking backover 100 columns, I have some favorites. Like when I found great training inunexpected places, such as in bartending and birding courses, orwhen I took a fanciful look at training issues, like a counselingsession with training itself on the couch, a new spin on a classicChristmas poem,or silly new yearpredictions. I’vealso been harsh when necessary, highlighting examples of terribletrainingand bad trainingprocesses. Iam proud to have helped promote new ideas, including performancesupport, ecosystems, and content curation, as well aschallenge training’s sacred cows, like instructionalobjectives, ADDIE, LMSs, and eLearningitself. Lastly,I hope that my every-September back-to-school columns inspired some of you togive back to public education in your community.

Celebrate,but be cautious as well

I’ve covered abroad spectrum of topics over the years and tried to point out both the good andthe not-so-good in our profession. In my view, here are the ten areas where wecan celebrate our progress, but still be concerned about where we’re headed:

1. Celebrate: We see ourselvesas professionals. But compared to many other professions, we are not professionalized. This reduces our influence. We’retried to fix this over the years with a variety of certification programs, butfor many reasons the results so far have been mixed to downright disappointing.Have we drifted too far from strong academic programs and robust internships toa plethora of short-term workshops (along with weak credentialing, aka “certificatesof completion”) as the preferred professional development strategy for ourfield? Can you imagine a doctor, an engineer, or even a schoolteacher beingcertified the way we do it?
2. Celebrate: We are strong advocatesof learning technology. But sometimes, we advocatetoo much. Our obsessiveness with the next big thing can get in our way ofusing the technology appropriately to a larger end. As I have said many times,technology is not strategy, andthinking or acting that it is will likely not end well. And remember, it’s muchmore the people who use the tech, not the tech itself that determines success. Puttingthese tools in the hands of people who don’t know how (or are not motivated) touse them effectively will only make matters worse.
3. Celebrate: We are a mix of agreat diversity of fields, and our experiences are invaluable to the L&Dfunction, and the business. That said, we are often too transient, spending only a short part of ourcareers in L&D. The high churn rate in our ranks impedes our progress as a profession.We will surely benefit if more people with deeper experience stay longer toserve as role models and champions of our craft. Let’s strive to make our fielda longer-term career choice for more people.
4. Celebrate: We embrace soundlearning sciences and research. But we also tend to embrace “quasi” learningscience and popular, but unfounded fads. We need to hold any new approachor technique to the fire of higher standards of evidence than we currently do. Ourtoo frequent short-sightedness often gets in the way of giving new ideas timeto percolate before the next delicious vogue comes along.
5. Celebrate: We are focused oncertifying people for their jobs. In many cases, training is an essential partin getting employees ready for work, but weoften have a weakness for simply counting people who show up for class (orlog in to a course) as enough to confirm them as trained. This is false compliance, a disaster waiting tohappen. Attendance isn’t competence.
6. Celebrate: We have fostereda vibrant commercial marketplace. Across the spectrum of what we do, frominstructional design to eLearning and technology, we are supported by adiversified and dynamic consulting and product industry. But we must be carefulthat the industry’s agenda doesn’tcompletely dictate our agenda. We must be advocates of our own future. Strongerclient-side voices must be heard.
7. Celebrate: We support thenotion that hard evidence of learning’s effectiveness and efficiency is whatreally matters. But too often, we put evaluation and measurement on the backburner, or relegate it to a trivial activity that pales in comparison tobuilding the product. If we can’t do a better job of showcasing our worth andvalue, in terms of performance and organizational impact, we’ll get what wedeserve.
8. Celebrate: We strive tobuild quality courses and other solutions, and we’re getting better at it. But there are still too many terrible productsout there that are boring, poorly designed, don’t teach, too expensive, orshouldn’t have been built in the first place. Do we push too hard to get theproduct out, quality be damned? And, are our fixes to these problems too muchlike putting lipstick on a pig? We need more rigorous, universal standards toassure consistently high product quality, or we could be the subject of criesof “fake training,” to paraphrase a popular term.
9. Celebrate: We have elevatedthe role, importance, and visibility of training, learning, and development. But we have struggled mightily to transition toperformance improvement. Corporate universities, for many years the holygrail of our value proposition, have not fared well recently. We need to take avery hard look at our future direction and come up with new ways to be valuableto our organizations, or all our accomplishments may be for nothing.
10. Celebrate: Finally, andperhaps most importantly, we are justifiably proud of what we do. Unfortunately, we sometimes believe our own story a bit toomuch. Although learning and development programs may die of many ills—budgetcuts, indifference, changing attitudes, and shifting priorities—thecoup-de-grace is often our own hubris. When our budgets are cut, or our work iseliminated, we are often the most surprised. Perhaps by being more open andproactive to changing what we do, how we do it, and how we are perceived, we willreduce our exposure here.

When JonStewart left The Daily Show in 2015, onthat last day, he challenged his audience not to be silent in the face of whatis mediocre or wrong. “If you smell something, say something,” he advised. Thesame should be said for us. We do good work, but not everything is perfect inthe L&D world, including eLearning. We can do better by challenging what wesee as holding us back, as individual contributors, and as a profession, and suggesting abetter way. Yes,celebrate how far we’ve come, but also know we still have lots of work to do.

Newadventures are calling

People ask meif I’m retiring. The answer is a firm yes andno. I’ve been in this business more than forty years, starting out ineLearning’s stone age, when early CBT was built with keypunch cards (look itup). I’m working less lately, but will still be professionally active for sure,particularly in my writing and speaking. I’ll have more to say with TheeLearning Guild, but it’s time to end my monthly commitment to this column. Asone of my heroes, Neil deGrasseTyson, oncesaid, “Being atthe top of your game is not a forever thing.” Despite all that I’ve learned, seen, and done,there are new voices that need this space more than I do. We will all be thebetter for hearing them, and for celebrating progress with them.

I appreciateall the “appreciates” and comments I’ve received from readers. My highestdesire in writing “Marc My Words” was that these columns would be of value toyou, help you in your work and your professional advocacy, and perhaps make yousmile. My thanks also go to the leadership of The eLearning Guild, particularlyDavid Holcombe and Heidi Fisk, and especially senior editor Bill Brandon—a joyto work with—for allowing me the honor each month to say something I hope hasbeen useful to The Guild’s tens of thousands of members around the globe, aswell as the learning and development community at large.

When I began these“eMusings” (thanks Heidi!), I promised my wife that it was better than the slogof writing a third book. Well, I guess I did write that book, only just 1,000words or so at a time, and it took me more than eight years and 100 columns todo it! It has been one of the great privileges of my career.