I read a really interesting BBC article describing how there is strong evidence that universally praising children can de detrimental to their growth, and encourages a ‘fixed mindset’ rather than believing they have the capacity to grow and learn (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13128701 ) . Of course the ELLI research ( see http://rsvpdesign.co.uk/trainer-training/ ) supports this article (both for children and adults) and we are heartened by the almost universal interest in ELLI from any organisation we speak to. There is also good research from other areas that children who value the idea of ‘I am someone who can learn’, and that ‘I can learn from mistakes’, are motivated to ‘grow and learn’ and ‘resilient’ when it comes to challenging learning situations. These type of children grow into valuable employees. I know some educational colleagues who wish they had praised their own children more for effort when they were younger, and now choose to celebrate ‘failure’ as a learning opportunity, even as their children have grown up.

It has prompted me to continue to think about how organisations can generate the same motivation to learn as the people who have all the successful and well researched characteristics of effective learners. I’m convinced that this motivation has to come from an organisational culture that respects individuals as capable of learning and change, and that their leaders should behave in a way that is consistent with that. This would mean abolishing ‘lists of approved training courses’, educating managers and individuals about the science behind effective learning, paying more attention to informal learning than formal learning, re-writing the charter for L&D & OD (or even seeking to phase them out, and give their responsibilites to line managers), and using ‘learning language’ in business contexts so it is seen as being fundamentally critical to achieving any organisational mission or goal. In fact research seems to suggest that’s what organisations who ‘thrive’ actually do – now we just need some good tools to help organisations achieve this …

RSVP Design has created a new joint venture – Mobile Learning Design – and we hope to create some tools that take advantage of the personal nature of mobile devices (smartphones, tablets etc.) to provide formal and informal learning support when people need it, rather than when it is offered. Please get in touch with us if this subject is of interest!

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As the spring weather moves towards summer my runs on the mountains and moors of NW England become longer, and I can once more indulge myself in extended and deeply-reflective hours of solitary endeavour. These long runs allow me to follow chains of thought that are difficult to maintain through the complexities of a busy work-life, let alone the happy chaos of home and family! Last weekend I found myself on the familiar terrain of a green ribbon of sheep-cropped turf crossing a sun warmed limestone plateau, perfect for fast miles and expansive thinking.

What occupied my mind was the way in which my work as a designer of learning has changed in a relatively short time, and how these changes might be interpreted to indicate deeper changes in organisational learning.

Not many years ago I would work with clients to define a design brief by asking questions such as “How many people will attend?” “For how long?” “Who are these people?” and  “What do you need them to be able to do when the leave the room (that they couldn’t do when they entered)?” This type of question defined the parameters of the learning environment and allowed me to get creative within clearly defined boundaries.

Not many years later I found that I was seeing a move away from this event-based approach. I was working much closer to the power-centres of client organisations, and now the questions were “What organisation-level changes are you trying to achieve?’ “What are the behavioural obstacles and opportunities?” and “What tools and processes do your leaders need to embed these changes?”. The learning environments were less defined, more business-relevant and called for much more depth and subtlety from me as a designer.

More recently still the shifting balance that is rapidly moving emphasis away from formal learning towards informal learning have required a whole different approach and a different set of questions. In 2011 the need for organisations to be agile, responsive and learning-efficient is apparent in every sector, although the results of a failure to achieve these conditions are frequently masked by more fundamental economic failings. Recent conversations with learning and development professionals in these organisations suggest that many are struggling to address these new challenges. Many are caught in the professional paradox of never before having had more responsibility for the future learning needs of their organisation, yet never before having so little control over the ways in which these needs can be addressed.

Perhaps the questions that I now use to frame a design brief are ones that could effectively be used to interrogate the more general learning landscapes within ambitious organisations? The kind of questions I now find myself working with are  “What are the learning needs of the organisation?” “Who are the people, inside and outside of this organisation, who could contribute to this learning?””What are your peoples’ strengths, and weaknesses, as learners?” and “What support do they need to take individual ownership of the organisation’s learning needs?”

None of these are easy questions to ask, or to answer, when learning and development is under such extreme pressure to deliver. Arriving at effective answers is business-critical, yet will only be achieved if we recognise that we can’t manage the learning of others in any meaningful way, but we must find ways of supporting their learning to benefit our organisations.

Not an easy route, nor a short route, but a challenge to be relished – a bit like this run!

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Very often, when I describe and demonstrate RSVP Design’s range of experiential learning activities to L+D professionals, consultants and HR advisors, they respond in a predictable fashion. Something along the lines of…

“Yes, I do use games and learning activities like these with some groups but I couldn’t possibly offer these to some of my clients – they are much too senior.”

There seems to be a belief that the more senior a leader or manager in an organisation, the less likely they are to respond positively to learning through the ‘metaphor’ that a well-designed learning activity or simulation offers. It is perceived that these activities add value, for example, to a team-building event or to a management skills workshop for young employees but that they are, in some way, inappropriate for more senior leaders. There is a fear and anxiety about offering a form of learning that is seen as too trivial for senior executive education.

“I couldn’t offer that at Board level – they simply wouldn’t engage with it…..”

Our experience is exactly the opposite. The more senior and successful leaders are in a business environment, the more likely they are to engage with the learning activities we offer and to play, experiment and challenge their own learning and performance. They ‘get it’. They have the ability to see beyond the presenting activity and understand the processes it mirrors. They are also confident enough in themselves that they have nothing to prove – they are ‘comfortable in their own skins’ and able to demonstrate a willingness to step outside of their comfort zone -even if it means short-term failure – in order to develop their own, and their organisations’, performance.

Ben Bryant, a skilled and experienced psychologist, is  Professor of Leadership and Organization at IMD. He commissioned RSVP Design recently to work with him on perhaps the most senior programme we have ever delivered. The participants built geometric shapes out of plastic construction components, raced wheeled vehicles along the floor and connected complex webs of coloured ropes in order to solve a puzzle. They were completely engaged and immediately able to make the connections between what they were doing and the leadership capability they were at IMD to develop.

Ben explained this to us from a psychologist’s perspective. He confirmed that it is all about ego. These leaders are so senior they’ve left their egos behind. They don’t have to prove themselves – their track records stand for themselves. They can make the connections, see the big picture, be confident in their own abilities – confident enough to allow themselves to play, get things wrong, make a fool of themselves, knowing that that is crucial in learning and innovating. They can see the parallels in the ’simulated world’ and the ‘concrete world’.’

In contrast, we experience much more resistance from more junior team leaders and managers – the very people for whom these activities are often chosen. Many of them are likely to be working from a position of uncertainty and anxiety and they need to keep proving themselves to their teams and colleagues. They are reluctant to step into the unknown – concerned about losing the respect and confidence of those they manage. Asking them to leave ‘ego’ behind is a much bigger challenge. So, offering an experiential exercise becomes high risk for the facilitator and participating is high risk for the manager. It may be rejected as ‘demeaning’, when in fact it is just too scary!

Knowing this can help the learning designer to choose and frame appropriate activities and consider the appropriate level of ‘confrontation’ that the activity, and the facilitation, offers. The more successful and senior your team, the more likely they are to respond positively to the challenging experiential learning opportunities you offer. For all sorts of reasons, primarily to do with organisational politics, senior leaders are starved of in-depth, unfiltered, authentic feedback. Well researched, well-designed and well-facilitated experiential learning provides a rare opportunity for senior leaders to tap into the support and challenge that they are hungry to receive.

For more information about RSVP Design’s work with Senior Leadership teams, please contact us via the website

http://rsvpdesign.co.uk

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Everything that I am reading at the moment from the ‘movers and shakers’ in the world of organisational, management and leadership learning convinces me that there are some exciting new insights that are going to bring about a real revolution in our understanding of training and learning in the workplace.  Here are a few , probably contentious suggestions I’d like to make, based upon the trends that I’m hearing and reading everywhere, that might help us to move this revolution along!

1. Recognise that informal learning is significantly more powerful, and more highly valued than formal learning. Therefore, shift the investment (both time and finance) away from the design and delivery of formal programmes (face-to-face or online) and transfer it to creating and supporting informal learning.

2.Remove the word ‘training’ from your corporate vocabulary. If the concept of ‘training’ goes, so does the idea of learners being controlled and  ‘processed’. We train animals for obedience: we engage human beings by helping them to learn.

3. Embrace new technology but don’t impose it: create multiple ways in which people can easily access and use a variety of media to gather the information, knowledge and expertise they need, when they need it. Divert your training budget to create multiple informal spaces and learning environments. Create resource centres, both physically and on-line, filled with versatile materials that are freely available to individual learners for use whenever they need them. (cf. Apple’s introduction of itunes university). And believe that anyone using these is ‘at work ‘….not playing truant or abdicating their responsibilities!

4. Ensure that Performance Management is a developmental, learning process: link learning and performance by setting goals that use the framework,   “I need to learn X in order to be able to do Y”.

5. Only appoint managers who understand and use effective developmental coaching. No matter how good their technical skills are, if they don’t have great people development skills, don’t promote them into managerial positions.

6. Replace formal conferences with open space, cross functional gatherings, with specific outcomes, and facilitate groups as they  they tackle issues of real organisational importance in an innovative atmosphere.

7.  Measure project success against performance and learning criteria. Build learning reviews into every process. Ask, “What do we need to learn to be successful in achieving this project? How do we incorporate that into our plan?”

8. Scrap any meeting that is a presentation or exchange of information available through other media. Replace these  with ‘learning exchanges’: group reviews of learning, how to share and apply it and how to impact anyone who would benefit from it.

9. In a market place in which more and more potential employees are well-qualified and ‘certified’, start to focus on learning with new employees before they join. Interview and recruit with a focus on what candidates have learned, how they learned it and how they will continue to learn throughout their employment. Select those who understand and are motivated by learning. Take every new employee through a personal coaching session around their own Learning Power: create a personal learning record that stays with the learner for life and replaces the CV.

10. Remove any responsibility for L&D from HR. The functions are fundamentally different. Create a ‘learning support’ function staffed entirely by skilled facilitators and coaches and give them free rein to create personalised learning programmes. Integrate personal learning goals into daily work.

OK – there are a few details to work out, I concede……

What do you think?

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As you may know, RSVP Design are great fans of the HBDI ‘metaphor’ of the 4 quadrants of the brain and the thinking styles we associate with them. We’re always interested in relevant and scientifically based validation of how we use our brains to receive and process information about the world around us and I was fascinated to watch this video clip from the RSA. in it, renowned psychiatrist and writer Iain McGilchrist talks about how the ‘divided brain’ has profoundly altered human behaviour, culture and society. I found it fascinating – especially in relation to ‘attention’, ’simplified reality’ and the difference in right and left brain focus.

Have a look – the first few minutes are a little slow but then the pace picks up and it really stimulates some new insights.

http://www.thersa.org/events/vision/vision-videos/iain-mcgilchrist

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It is 25 years this month since I began to work in the ‘development training’ business and recognised the power of using experiential learning activities. Since then, much has changed in our knowledge and understanding about why and how we use experiential learning and in the organisational landscape in which we offer our services. Here are a few of the things that have changed since I began my chequered career through learning and development!

1. My first programme in 1986 was a twenty-one day residential programme for young, high potential graduates on a management development programme for a major retailer. In three weeks of personal development we could change lives! I can’t see many employers releasing their staff for a continuous period of twenty-one days in 2011. We have become skilled in achieving powerful results from short, relevant activities and targeted interventions that really focus the learning on specific outcomes established in advance. Examples are our ‘bite-size’ workshops that can be delivered in 2 hour modules: have a look at this example around the theme of ‘Breakthrough Thinking’

http://rsvpdesign.co.uk/shop/breakthrough-thinking-workshop-p-31.html

2. Almost all structured experiential learning was done in the outdoors. We offered a full range of adventure and outdoor activities and it was an essential requirement of every programme that participants found multiple ways of getting wet! Since then, we’ve been able to use the power of experiential learning by creating smaller scale but carefully designed activities that can be offered in classrooms, seminar rooms and offices as well as an outdoor environment. The RSVP design website gives you a broad choice of activities we’ve developed over this time!

http://rsvpdesign.co.uk

3. We had to type, Tippex and photocopy all of our paperwork: we thought twice about making a change to a programme! Who would have imagined the potential of modern technology to offer learning through electronic and mobile media and to bring together learnign groups from around the world? Contact us to check out RSVP Design’s work in the field of mobile learning and our connections with Dynamically Loaded – breaking new ground in learning using mobile technologies.

4. We were learner focused: everything we did was designed to meet the needs of our learners. Over 25 years I’ve experienced a move away from the needs of the learner to delivering ’sheep-dip’ training to meet organisational targets. However, more recently, as organisations have been forced to recognise the need for flexibility, adaptability and resilience in the face of change we are starting to focus on the learner again. We’ve recently had the honour of being selected to bring a new model of ‘Learning Power’ to the business world: it is an exciting initiative for 2011 and one we are convinced will make a genuine contribution to organisational learning.

See our new work on ELLI: the Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory

http://rsvpdesign.co.uk/trainer-training/

I could list many more changes – I’d be really interested in hearing how you feel our profession has changed and developed, what we do better now than 25 years ago – and what we may have lost in the process of change!

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All at RSVP Design Ltd would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Our offices are now closed until Wednesday 5th January and we look forward to working with you in 2011.

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I am delighted to announce that Interel Inc. from San Francisco and RSVP Design Ltd. are forming a new partnership that will see their respective product portfolios merge and both organisations work together to continue to support customers around the world with the most effective activity-based learning tools and learning design support. Although RSVP Design and Interel have worked together informally for several years this is a new development in formally providing all shipping and logistical support for both sets of products. Interel in the US will support all US customers and RSVP Design in the UK will support all non-US customers – both sets of products will be available for purchase from either location.

Key product designers Boyd Watkins, Geoff Cox and Ann Alder have worked together before but this announcement signals an intention to provide a truly global and probably unparalleled level of experience in designing effective learning environments.

You can download the official press release here: RSVP Design & Interel Press Release

Please visit the RSVP Design online store to see the additional Interel experiential learning devices now added. Larger scale devices like Pyramid, Network and Mosaic provide some fantastic new tools for large group meetings and for use in outdoor environments.

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I’ve just written a review of a book for the next International Association of Facilitators’ Newsletter and it connected so well with RSVP Design’s current work on ‘Leadership Learning’ that I wanted to share it.

Learn Like A Leader: Today’s Top leaders Share Their Learning Journeys

Marshall Goldsmith, Beverly Kaye, Ken Shelton, editors

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=learn+like+a+leader&tag=googhydr-21&index=stripbooks&hvadid=7249040148&ref=pd_sl_8whh7c494j_e

Those of us involved in leadership learning know the power of story-telling and metaphor in bringing to life lessons from personal and shared experience. This collection of short articles from ‘thought leaders’ specialising in the development of organizational leadership draws on personal experiences – particularly memorable events – through which they gained valuable insights and understanding that they have been able to apply in their own personal and professional development. The stories are human – the authors describe the learning they achieved from recognising their own failures and shortcomings and facing up to these. They speak with warmth – many referring to people who had a profound impact on their younger selves – and also with excitement about the potential learning that still lies ahead.

‘Learn like a Leader’ is unusual in the panoply of leadership writings in that it focuses not only on what great leaders have learned but also on the learning process. It reinforces the concept that being an effective learner is one of the most powerful abilities a leader can develop and that ‘learning to learn’ is an investment that will be repaid time and time again. One of the authors, Frederic M. Hudson, says

“Learn how to learn, unlearn and re-learn. Make learning your central business. Live on the outer edge of your reach, not on the inner edge of your security.”

Modern life, society and organizations are fundamentally performance and target-driven. Executives and operational leaders at the coal-face often claim that they are too busy dealing with the ‘real-world’ issues they encounter on a daily basis to be able to allow time for learning. These writers, most of whom have proven expertise in mentoring, coaching and counselling senior leaders, all understand that the underpinning capability that allows all other leadership activity to happen is the ability to learn and change. They encourage active learning as an end in itself, not a peripheral activity that we might ‘get around to’ when business performance has been achieved. Jim Collins summarizes this beautifully,

“Look at the world through a learning lens rather than a performance lens and behaviour changes.

For a true learning person, performance is not the ultimate why of learning. Learning is the why of learning. And until we grasp that fact and organise accordingly, we will not  – indeed cannot – build the elusive learning organisation.”

My own recent work has brought me into contact with significant and recent research about how we become effective learners and how we can enhance our own learning power – and support others in enhancing their capability as learners. A specific model that has emerged from a 10-year study at the University of Bristol in the UK has identified seven dimensions of learning: the seven core capabilities that make us powerful learners: learning and changing, critical curiosity, meaning making, creativity, strategic awareness, resilience and learning relationships. In this book, the authors touch on all of these and their stories bring to life for me the dimensions in action.

Stratford Sherman understands the importance of seeing yourself as a being capable of lifelong learning and change:  “I have understood that strength of character is the ability to change when change is needed.”

Jay Galbraith illustrates the need for critical curiosity and creativity with his description of the professor who taught him that the importance of a question is not the answer to the question, but the question itself. Chip Bell reinforces this when he speaks of his father’s ‘perpetual curiosity’ and Joel Barker describes his swimming coach, driven by a desire to ‘never stop experimenting.’

The repeated references to mentors, guides, parents and skilled professionals is a powerful testimony to the importance of developing strong learning relationships. Perhaps the most moving of these is the story from Frederic M. Hudson of his ‘wise nurse Susan’ who, throughout his childhood illness when he was paralysed with polio, provided him with the motivation, resilience and methodologies to take control of his life, find a vision for his future and will himself to recovery.

Jim Collins refers to the need to become a strategically aware learner, “Becoming a learning person means responding to every situation with learning in mind…setting specific learning objectives and developing explicit learning mechanisms.”

In summary, this book is simple and engaging, grounded in sound learning theory but with the ‘personal touch’ that makes it immediately accessible. For anyone expecting guidance on how to lead, it may be disappointing. It offers no advice, no didactic leadership principles and no checklists! However, this is part of the book’s basic premise: self-discovery.  As Peter Block says,

“Why do we prescribe behaviour and ask people to practise, copy and imitate? Doesn’t this demean the human spirit and destroy what is part of the individual?”

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This was the question I was asked this morning by an interviewer who telephoned me and wanted to include my response in an article for a training journal.It was 1130 and she wanted to go to press by lunchtime, so I was asked to think on my feet!

She modified her question and said, “What are the five most important things Learning and Development specialists can do to ensure that the training they offer is really learner-centred?”

In the 10 minutes I was allowed, I came up with the following five. I wonder what yours would have been?

1. Understand how learners really learn. The work the University of Bristol has been doing on ELLI seems to have defined the key dimensions of learning: everything effective learners do. Tim Small of ViTaL Partnerships said of the lead researcher Ruth Deakin-Crick, “If there was anything else that effective learners do, Ruth would have found it. We believe this really is the ‘DNA’ of Learning”.

2. Make learning problem-based and purposeful. Adult learning needs to be relevant and useful to the learner, helping them to solve problems, generate innovations and make their lives more rewarding. Tap into the desire to solve relevant problems and use these as the basis for your learning design.

3. Identify and use past and current experience. Link new learning to what is already in place. Identify if and when it conflicts with what is already ‘known’: explore how to integrate new pieces into old patterns.

4. Use simulation. Simulations allow us to explore and rehearse in a safe environment, encouraging experiment and risk-taking. What we learn in the ’synthetic’ world we can transfer to the ‘concrete’ world. In relation to this, there are some interesting figures related to computer based simulation in the report below. Dr. Geoff Cox’s doctoral thesis suggests this is also true of behavioural and ‘physical’ simulation, although the figures given here only apply to computer simulations.

Overall, declarative knowledge was 11% higher for trainees taught with simulation games than a comparison group; procedural knowledge was 14% higher; retention was 9% higher; and self-efficacy was 20% higher.

For anyone wanting to review the whole paper you can find it here: A Meta-Analytic Examination of the Effectiveness of Computer-Based Simulation Games

5. Attach emotion to learning. Emotion drives behaviour. If we attempt to learn in an emotionally ’sterile’ environment we are unlikely to become engaged and motivated enough to press for real behavioural change. This is why experiential learning – with its associated frustrations, anxieties, challenges, satisfactions and passion – remains such a powerful technology.

I’d be interested in your additions to my top five!

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