Through the whole of my professional career in people development I’ve held a deep and immoveable belief that people learn best when they are face-to-face. Our unique capacity to read meaning in faces has been one of the key drivers of human evolution, and to attempt to structure interpersonal learning without using this gift seems a bit like trying to appreciate art without looking at it. We can utilise other senses but, without that immediate and authentic visual feedback, it’s difficult to know the effect that our behaviour is having. So up close and personal is my preferred way of working, but just recently I’ve been led to question what face-to-face really means.

The basis for my recent questions around how much physical proximity we actually need to work effectively in developing interpersonal skills has been my growing understanding of the power and potential of mobile communications devices. This understanding has grown through our early design work on an iPad App that will support the Center for Creative Leadership’s excellent SBI feedback methodology (link) As ever my approach to a job like this is to ask myself how I would design the learning if I was given an ideal environment, unrestricted access, and any support I needed. Once I can define this ideal I can work towards a design that is as close as possible to the ideal by designing around the constraints and restrictions that circumstances present. So what components did I want in my learning environment that would support people in learning to structure and offer feedback across a broad range of interpersonal encounters?

In this situation I would say that learners need:

1.         to understand what feedback is, how it works, what makes it effective or ineffective, what reactions it might provoke.

2.         the reassurance of a system or method that will allow them to be confident in how they structure and present their own feedback.

3.         to build the security that will allow them, individually and collectively, to experiment with the learning content.

4.         an appropriate and suitable feedback system to allow them, and others, to monitor their skills development (feedback about feedback)

5.         to understand how to take their personal learning out of the learning environment and apply it safely and competently in their lives.

If these are the ‘must have’ components then I need to ask which ones need learners to be face to face to be truly effective? It’s the answer to this question that, for me, has been rapidly changing over the past few months.

The face to face requirement is about allowing individuals full access to not only the more obvious and deliberate facial gestures, but also the unconscious ‘micro-gestures’ that offer so much information about what another person is thinking and feeling. Combine this information stream with the verbal content and most of what we need to make sense of an interaction is available.

Until recently, attempts at facilitating group work and team development, using technology to link people in remote locations, were subject to the limitations of the hardware available. Systems originally developed for video-conferencing proved, even in their most sophisticated form, inadequate for the demands of developmental groupwork. It was just impossible to pick up the nuances of human interaction from a single, whole-group picture. The revelation that has come to me through our work with CCL is the extent to which working in a structured way, with individuals who each hold their own iPad, can take us very close to the immediacy of true face-to-face groupwork. What makes this insight all the more impressive is that it can be achieved when working with geographically remote groups.

I’m not getting carried away with the novelty of this new tool, it’s far from perfect (although the pace of technological development means that it’s moving in that direction very quickly). I’ve also come to realise that it requires two distinct skill sets to maximise it’s value in groupwork, and that these two skill sets need to be carefully integrated to create the learning environment. Firstly the introduction of mobile technology should in no way be at the expense of good learning design, we still need to be clear about what learning we want to achieve, our methodology for achieving it, and the measures that will tell us how successful we’re being. Secondly we need the understanding of the features and limitations of the technology we intend to use to support this learning, and here a huge advantage is the additional facility that allows us to change the way that the device(s) perform the role that we create for them.

As educators we are faced with the challenge of mobile learning. Our choice is to adapt our skills to rise to this challenge, or to dismiss it as an inferior way of working with people and currently not worth our consideration. The question that enters my mind at this point is what would our clients expect of us when we are faced with this choice?

interpersonal skills, learners, learning environment, mobile learning, people development Hide

We are looking for some help in having some consultants/trainers/facilitators trial some new products that we are close to launching. If anyone is interested in joining such a group, and would be willing to provide some feedback ( in exchange for getting access to some new materials, and a good deal on purchasing a commercial copy ) please email graham@rsvpdesign.co.uk

Experiential Learning, learning tools, Training Games, Training Tools Hide

RSVP Design was delighted to establish a new distribution relationship in 2011 with Experience Corner, based in Warsaw, Poland. Experience Corner is the first on-line store in Poland offering interactive training tools from globally known brands, and following an invitation from colleagues at Experience Corner, last month I made my first visits to and Krakow and Warsaw to introduce some of our products to their customers. It is always exciting to travel to a new city and although I had just returned from a visit to the USA, I was looking forward to seeing Krakow and watching the reactions of the Polish audience to our products. Alicja and Joanna from Experience Corner met me on the first evening I arrived, but by then I had already had the chance to wander around the main square in Krakow and begin to sample what was clearly a popular and vibrant city!

Experience Corner have translated all the facilitator manuals as well as the delegate briefs for several of our learning tools, so I although I would have an interpreter with me during the events, her main role would simply be to help me understand what was being said in Polish as the groups worked with their own language version materials. The Krakow event was held on a large converted Dutch barge on the river, and I was pleased to see that Experience Corner, like RSVP Design, believes that the learning environment is important in making events memorable for participants! It was a wonderful old vessel, and I could have happily sailed along the river on what was a beautiful sunny day! The delegates were a mixture of internal training specialists and other training consultants, and were extremely enthusiastic in their participation. I used our Images of Organisations™ metaphor cards to open the session and to get pairs and triads discussing what their training challenges were, and I was delighted to see that Polish people have no problems in working with metaphor in this way. We then had a group play Colourblind® with a number of observers and again, not only were they enthusiastic, but very disciplined in their problem solving approaches, which helped them reach a successful conclusion fairly quickly. To show how RSVP Design would sequence activities we then introduced Simbols™ (using the Team Version) to show how we might build on similar behaviours using a different activity, and finished with Challenging Assumptions™ – again it was comforting to see Polish people make exactly the same assumptions in this exercise as other Nationalities we have tried it with around the world!

The following day (well, very early in the morning!) we took the train to Warsaw where I presented to a larger group (some 45 people) in probably my most unusual training venue ever – the deep end of an old swimming pool (thankfully undergoing a conversion to an arts venue!). I was interested to see if our dinner discussion the night before about Polish stereotypical group behaviour suggested by my hosts as being  ‘a lot of heated discussion, but when agreement is reached there will be a uniform acceptance of the new direction – perhaps to the detriment of thinking about alternative strategies’. During this larger session I decided to use Webmaster® to see if these behavioural stereotypes would play out. Whether by coincidence or as a reflection of these stereotypes I did indeed witness a lot of heated discussion after the initial problem-solving portion of Webmaster® (creating the first construction). I observed lots of discussion with many overlapping conversations, and several people taking a lead as to how they though they could best achieve the team performance increase required (i.e. complete the whole construction in under 2 minutes, from an original build time of 25 minutes). None of the available exercise time was used for further practice or rehearsal purposes – it was all used for ‘discussion’. Eventually as the time limit began to expire (somehow!) the group agreed on a strategy and every one of the 30 strong group delivered on that strategy and managed to achieve the objective! There was a lot of discussion following this activity (most of which I was unable to understand!), and I get the sense that Webmaster® could become a popular activity in Poland!

Although this was a very short trip I saw enough to know that I want to go back and experience more Polish cooking, Polish beer, Polish socialising and Polish customers, and I look forward to a successful partnership between Experience Corner and RSVP Design.

Graham Cook

communication skills, energisers, Experiential Learning, facilitation, learner engagement, Learning Design, learning events, Learning Games, Learning Mindset, learning tools, simulations, Training Games, Training Tools, webmaster Hide

It is always rewarding to see great professionals working and to learn from them.

At this year’s IAF Conference in Istanbul, I was fortunate enough to take part in a great facilitated session that drew on techniques and methods that are consistent with those we use at RSVP Design.

The first session was called ‘Consensual Circle’ and involved using images to help a group to move towards consensus – a point at which everyone in the group contributed to a decision that every member agree with – or at least was prepared to live with!

The process involved everyone working in one group. At the beginning of the session, each person was asked to draw a picture representing their individual interpretation of ‘Facilitation’. Each picture was then presented and explained.

When everyone had presented their images, each person was ask to choose the one that they liked best. They could, if they wished, choose their own but most people did not.

A simple tally was then taken and the image that received the most votes was selected.

This image was then re-presented to the group and every member was asked to score the image on a scale of 1-5, depending upon how satisfied they were with it as a representation of the theme. A simple show of fingers was used, in which the numbers meant:

5 – I am extremely satisfied: this image represents everything I want it to represent

4 – Generally very satisfied – there may be some minor changes I would make

3 – I can live with this, although it is not what I would have chosen myself

2 – Dissatisfied – I have many concerns  about this

1 – Extremely dissatisfied – I would fight hard to resist this image being chosen

When the ‘scores’ had been given, the facilitator went to the person who had given the lowest score and asked that individual to explain his/her concerns. This was done with everyone listening and with no response.

The facilitator then asked, “So you have given this image a score of 2. What would have to change in the image to move you to a 3?”

This was explored and the participant described changes that would make the image more acceptable. These changes were then offered to the group with the question,

“Would anyone have a problem if we made these changes to the image?”

If the answer was, “yes, “ the attention moved to the person with the concern and the same question was asked again, “So, is there any way you could suggest a change that you could agree to and that would also be satisfying to everyone else?”

The change was made to the image and the scoring process was repeated.

The aim of this process is to reach a solution which everyone scores at 3 or above. In our group this happened within an hour: the facilitator explained that in his experience of working in organisations the consensus was usually achieved even faster than that.

Of course, working with a graphic facilitator or live artist would be the ideal solution but as I worked on the process I recognized the simplicity and power of the process and also how it might be a perfect application of  RSVP Design’s Images of Organisation or Dialoogle cards.

Using these images as the start point removes any concerns individuals may have about their ability to draw and offers a range of possibilities to stimulate thought. It is also a perfect chance to begin to explain the thinking….eg.

“This picture isn’t exactly right, but with these changes it would be perfect….”

For more information, ask Ann!

http://rsvpdesign.co.uk/shop/images-of-organisations%C2%99-p-70.html

http://rsvpdesign.co.uk/shop/dialoogle-2008-pocket-set-p-55.html

concensus, consensus, Experiential Learning, facilitation, Learning Experiences, Learning Games, learning groups, Training Games, Training Tools Hide

This month I accepted an invitation to speak at a PhD Research Seminar hosted by a London educational institution, my subject being “Action Research as a PhD Research Methodology”. It was an extremely interesting event attended by potential and already-engaged Doctoral students from across the globe. I received a warm welcome and an attentive audience listened to what I had to say, many of them staying behind to ask questions and pick up on points I’d made in the presentation. Later that afternoon, nursing a cup of coffee while waiting for my train, I contemplated the expectations that guide so many students to come to the UK to study.

It struck me that a great number of the students whom I’d met came from countries where the education systems had either been established during the days of the British Empire, or had used the English school system as a template for excellence. Their national systems hark back to a day when an English Public School education was the benchmark against which all other standards were measured. India is an example of a nation who have this as part of their history, benefitting, or suffering depending on your viewpoint, from the value patterns in education that were established during colonial rule. My mind immediately recalled a conversation at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) in North Carolina only two weeks earlier, one which offered a very contemporary insight into the Indian education system.

I was speaking to Lyndon Rego, Director of Leadership Across Boundaries at CCL. “The education system in India is broken,” he told me, “it serves a very narrow section of the population, and big business in India is telling us that the education system is not producing people with the skills that they need for the nation to grow.” We went on to discuss the work of the Leadership Across Boundaries team in creating cost-effective supplementary educational responses and the potential for RSVP / MLD to get involved in the design of materials to support these initiatives. Our discussion was about India, but I’m sure that there are many countries who work within the legacy of empire and a set of expectations about how an effective education looks and feels.

Putting my two experiences together I reflected on how many of the students who are produced by these systems gravitate towards the West, often the UK and USA, to seek higher qualifications, and whether they are being well served by what they receive? A century and more ago Britain’s educationalists were hailed as what we would now call thought-leaders, cutting edge innovators who were forging methods and systems to make education as effective and efficient as possible. Is this still the case, or have we somehow failed to keep pace in applying what is known about how people learn?

It won’t come as any surprise to anybody who follows my musings on learning design in this newsletter to hear that I would answer both of these questions in the negative. I don’t think we serve our students well, whether they are national or international in origin, and I vehemently contend that we have somehow lost our innovative edge in translating theory into practice in education. Our research into learning and education is second to none, but somehow there has arisen a disconnect between this theory and the practice that is evident in classrooms and lecture theatres in both the UK and USA.

To go into the reasons for this situation would take me into the realms of politics, and well away from the purpose of this newsletter. At RSVP, and more recently through MLD, I have been trying to challenge this inherent conservatism in education by providing the materials and processes that will allow educators access to materials that are better attuned to the complexity of how people learn. I’m not alone. I meet many people who recognise a need for change, people who have the bravery to work inside of our educational structures, and those, like me, who are outside looking in. Each of us is, in our small way, trying to make a difference because we believe that the consumers of education deserve better.

I think that the UK has the talent, the potential and the track record to once again become a thought leader in educational practice. Across the world, rightly or wrongly, a great many people still look to these shores to offer an example of best practice in education, and many make the commitment to come here to benefit from that expertise. Surely we need to take this role and responsibility seriously and move to a system where we are sure that what we offer is the best we can make it? I don’t know how this can happen, but I do know that if there is sufficient will to change the system we have the tools to make the change work. Change always involves learning and we’ve proved that we know how to learn – perhaps what’s lacking is leadership?

If that’s the case then being a thought leader in leadership education suddenly takes on a whole new importance.

education, experiences, learning, Research Hide

My colleague Graham Cook often takes the opportunity to make jokes about the length of time that I’ve been in the people-development profession, and some of the practices that, though seemingly humorous now, were cutting-edge at the time. Our MLD visit to the Center for Creative Leadership this month offered a whole new audience for those jokes, although it has to be said that many of the approaches that these days seem crazy to us in Europe have actually persisted much longer in the US. These insights led me to reflect on how we organise learning space, and how this has evolved.

Back in the heady days of the 70’s, when Transactional Analysis and sensitivity were our dominant grouproom influences, my working space had beanbags on the floor instead of seats, and a mattress in the corner in case anybody wanted to shed a few tears or act out their anger! There was no apparent front of the room, the flipchart was pushed to one side and was open to anybody to write on, the lack of focus reflecting the ideal of an equal sharing of power between the person facilitating the group and the group members themselves.

Then came the OHP, and with it the requirement for everybody to be able to see a screen. The beanbags became seats, the U-shaped table appeared, and the power shifted to the person at the front who controlled what was shown on the screen. Group dynamics and communication development couldn’t survive this change and we entered the era of development training and leadership courses. Soon the OHP gave way to the laptop and projector, and “death by Powerpoint” became an international plague, further increasing the extent to which the development of the working group depended on the skills of the presenter as entertainer. It’s interesting to reflect on the way that control over the technology has dictated how we approach people-development, and how both the experience of consumers, and the skills of trainers, have been detrimentally affected by this shift.

But just as we blame technology for this retrograde trend, developments in this very field may offer us an opportunity to re-balance the grouproom power balance. A large and exciting part of our design efforts have been focused on using iPads in the grouproom. What makes this different from much of the technology that has appeared in the preceding decades is the way that this individually controlled, but universally linked, technology can be used to facilitate a renegotiation of the power balance in the grouproom. Individual learners can take charge of what they see, share, contribute and record in a way that puts the emphasis back on them rather than the trainer.

I have to admit that this vision of the future, perhaps virtual, grouproom wasn’t one that I immediately related to – the spirit of the 70’s still runs deep in my professional psyche.

•The emphasis will surely be all about the interaction of people and tablets, rather than the true sharing that makes it worthwhile getting people into the same space?

•It’s obvious that the brilliance of the technology will distract people from the difficult issues that need to be addressed.

•How can we expect the facilitator to control the group when everybody has so much control over how and where they are working?

All perfectly legitimate concerns, but none of them create circumstances that can’t be addressed through good learning design that recognises the technology as a tool to support good pedagogical practice. And moving away from physically shared space might offer unprecedented opportunities for real and meaningful learning.

Let’s take as an example of a familiar pattern of learning interaction:

1.Information input

2. Individual reflection/Small groupwork

3. Share

4. Discuss

The Information Input stage can happen ‘anytime anywhere’, before or during the learning interaction. It can be centralised, high production value or pretty much home-made by the facilitator.It can be as content-inert or dynamic as required, and uniquely tailored to the needs of individual learners of groups.

The Individual reflection/Small groupwork stage can happen in the same physical space around a shared device, or remotely on different devices using shared screens. It can be synchronous or asynchronous, extended or time-bounded, elaborate or simple, structured or unstructured. The facilitator can observe the content and/or process, constantly or periodically, or allow it to happen independently.

The Sharing stage can allow individuals/small groups full creative control, or be tightly defined. It can be synchronous or asynchronous. Inputs can be amended in real-time to build on other inputs, they can be dedicated to one individual or sub-group or can be automatically incorporated to create a multi-group ‘collage’. They can also be attributed to an individual or group, or be anonymised by the devices.

Discussion can be a straightforward circulate and comment process, or an incremental building of content and understanding. It can be focused on the tablet or simply use the tablet to provide stimulus for traditional face-to-face interaction. The content can use rich media to generate stronger reactions across synchronous or asynchronous discussions.

In short, the mobile device has the potential to return the power in the grouproom to the more equal distribution that we experienced in the 70’s. It remains to be seen whether there still exists in the profession of trainer/facilitators the skills, or appetite, to capture and utilise this potential.

discussion, groups, leadership, learning, learning spaces, people development, reflection Hide

Next week RSVP Design (or at least the bespoke learning-design part of the company) moves into Pilot Programme mode. We’ll be phones off, mail off and 100% focused on delivering a new programme and simultaneously examining the potential effectiveness of that programme against the agreed learning outcomes. It’s always a fraught and exhausting time, not least when you consider that we’re our own worst critics and any perceived design flaws will always be spotted and noted for later attention.

And there will be flaws….

There are always flaws…..

That’s why we try very hard to manage client expectations around piloting processes, in particular explaining how we think of piloting and what its place in a design process is: and very often this comes as quite a challenge to client preconceptions.

We like to pilot early, and pilot dirty.

That is to say we try out the programme content and approach long before the learning materials are polished and ready for general release to groups of consumers. That way we can spot any problems with the major determinants of success e.g. programme structure, cultural compatibility with the client organisation, intellectual/practical pitch and mix, distribution of content against allotted time etc. This allows us to be absolutely safe in the knowledge that the learning design is right, so that the subsequent layers of instructional design and materials production are applied to a firm foundation.

OK we know that this doesn’t always make us look too good.

And we recognise that it places some strain on the trust that our clients have in us.

But our approach is based on one very clear, but often contentious principle:

The most important learning that comes out of a piloting process is the learning that is derived by the design/delivery team.

Of course we’re experienced enough to recognise the fundamental issue that this creates for clients and we try our utmost to work with them to manage this issue: but the fact remains that we have to negotiate what can be a sensitive area for many learning and development professionals:

How do we assemble a representative group of learners to experience new materials, and to offer us their constructive feedback, when what they will experience is unashamedly a ‘work-in-progress’?

And obviously this dilemma will be that much the greater as we climb higher up the corporate ladder – the more senior the population the less tolerant they will be of the draft materials they are asked to experience.

Well no…. that isn’t my experience.

I’ve found that if a piece of learning is strategically and tactically important to a company it should be relatively easy to identify an executive sponsor, (and if it’s not why are they doing it?). Once you have that sponsor onboard, and they invite the attendees to pilot that learning, there’s a much greater sense that the investment of time and energy in the pilot is for the good of the company, and therefore much easier to gain buy-in. Any difficulties I can recall from my many years in this business are situations where I’ve tried to pilot materials with groups of status-conscious middle managers who see the process as a great opportunity to further their political ambitions in front of their peers. But if they have been invited by a senior executive, who recognises the pilot as sufficiently important to warrant their personal participation, then it usually produces a much more constructive climate around the piloting process.

So next time you’re involved, in any capacity, in the process of piloting a new piece of learning, ask the questions that will allow you, and others, to understand exactly what the purpose of this pilot is, and what you are expected to contribute. After all, pilots come in a range of uniforms!

design, design client, learning, Learning Design, pilot Hide

I have a colleague, Ann Alder, who has developed a very practical, and stunningly effective, approach to ensuring that meetings work for the people who attend. I think that Ann’s guidelines must have saved thousands of wasted hours in organisations around the world: they are not easy to implement but if everybody concerned is prepared to buy-in, then meetings need never be the same again.

Central to these guidelines are those that work during the pre-meeting phase, i.e. everybody concerned should be very clear about the purpose of the meeting, and only those who need to be at the meeting should be at the meeting. This is the area that repeatedly gives me problems in my learning-design role. I’ve already spoken in an earlier newsletter about the importance of the first meeting I have with a design client, and central to this importance is ensuring that both parties have a deep and shared understanding of what the meeting is for. We’re taking the whole of the MLD organisation out to the US later this month for a series of meetings, and I’ve been trying hard to ensure that everybody concerned is very clear about the purpose of each one of those meetings. Now I’m reflecting on why this apparently simple piece of communication has proved to be quite so difficult.

Take for example the meeting we’re privileged to have with one of the major East Coast Business Schools. This was originally conceived as a way of defining and progressing a number of development projects relating to different learning materials. Each project has its ‘owner‘ in the Business School and they are all going to be there, together with individuals who have commercial or accountability interest across some or all of the projects. Even at this level of detail I’m sure that you can see that we’re in danger of contravening Ann’s guidelines in that our agenda creates the situation where for much of the meeting there will be people in the room who have no direct interest in what is being discussed.

The obvious action at this point in time is to move from one all-encompassing meeting, to a series of project-specific meetings. However, this would mean a great deal of repetition as there are agenda items that have relevance to all projects (the extensive, though not always obvious, functionality of an iPad is one such area). OK so why not cover the shared  agenda in one ‘all-invited’ meeting, then move to a series of project specific meetings? It’s a possibility, but this approach makes each project into an island, isolating the available learning and reducing the extent to which there can be a cross-fertilization of ideas. Ultimately it seems difficult to find a good way to arrange these meetings to fit with the “clearly defined purpose” and “only people who need to be involved, are involved” criteria.

Our solution is to try a different way of defining the differences in these meeting(s), one that is based not on content, but on how we want people to be when they attend. Our first meeting is a highly creative, free-format exchange of aspirations and ideas about what is possible across a suite of learning materials, driven by questions about beliefs about how people learn and what support we can create that will help them in those learning processes. The second meeting takes these principles and applies them across the suite of projects in a way that creates a design brief for each product. This increases the involvement of all attendees by asking them to monitor the meeting for any deviation from the principles, and also to listen for dimensions of other projects being discussed that could add value to their projects.

So next time you’re struggling with a dilemma about organising a series of meetings in a way that responds to multiple interest groups and agendas, try thinking less about what gets covered at what meeting and instead focusing on what you want the climate of each meeting to be. (Remember to publish this clearly so that all attendees know what to expect!) Then sequence the meetings so that the big-picture, blue sky thinking, creative (What?) meeting happens first, and make sure that everybody concerned is there.

Once people have been part of that first high-energy meeting you’ll find it a whole lot easier to keep their enthusiasm and involvement through the potentially more difficult (How?) phase of agreeing how to proceed.

business schools, creative, design client, ideas, managing meetings Hide

Corporate Universities are, almost exclusively, found as appendages of big corporations. In the USA the HR-driven corporate university has represented to a very high degree the choice of large organisations that need to process a large number of employees through diverse learning experiences. Over the past 20 years I’ve worked with many of these institutions, developing new learning content, introducing experiential methods and working alongside faculty to better target specific learning outcomes. I’m currently mid-way through an extended project with the CU of a major food and beverage multinational, creating experiential practice-fields for the leadership models they are introducing.

A brief down-time in this project recently led me to consider what characterises the way that CU’s approach the business of learning, the “What’s good and what’s not?” of Corporate Universities.

Top of the “what’s good?” list is the way that CU’s live and breathe their corporate culture. Learning happens in an environment which always feels like the concentrated essence of their corporate culture, an immersive learning environment that lives and breathes company ways of working. As an outsider it’s always a little daunting to first step into these unique environments, a state that I can describe in this way:

I’ve been invited here because of what I know i.e. I’m an expert, but this whole experience places an emphasis on what I don’t know i.e. I’m an alien in this place.

At this point I know I’m going to have to bring my ‘A-game’ to this job.

The result of this situation is that the learning that happens in a CU needs little translation or adaptation to be applicable in the operational part of the business. It was conceived, developed, delivered and evaluated in an environment that is totally geared towards the business of the parent company. People leave knowing what they have to do to deliver what their company wants them to deliver.

What this means for my work is that I will be given very clear design direction – I’ll be told very clearly what learning outcomes are needed, and given very strong feedback around whether my designs are a good fit with ‘how we do business’. As a designer I enjoy the challenge of very quickly assimilating the corporate culture and language, and producing seamlessly compatible designs – “going chameleon” I call it.

The flip side of this is that the walls (physical and metaphorical) around many Corporate Universities are pretty high and not easily breached by new thinking and new ideas. Let me say up-front that this is a generalisation, I work with some institutions that are extremely innovative and open to best-practice thinking. Indeed I can cite instances where particular CU’s actually lead the field in innovative learning practice: but for many their approach to corporate education demonstrates all the negative effects of “limited gene-pool learning”.

At RSVP Design we specialise in learning innovation, and that is, in most cases, why clients buy our services. We bring new ideas, new approaches, new thinking. And that makes it pretty disappointing when we can see where our approaches would breathe fresh life into some dated and tired situation, only to be told “that won’t work here” or “that’s not how we do things”. These situations, (and work with CU’s often produce them), are typified by a strange paradox:

“We’ve asked you to use your unique expertise to design something that we can’t, but we can’t accept your design because it’s different to what we do.”

I’m happy to say that my current work hasn’t encountered this paradox, it’s going well and the pilot programmes suggest we’re ready to deliver something special. The culture in the CU is strong, but open to well-informed, well-presented influence, just about the ideal situation.

Now if all Corporate Universities could hit that happy medium………

brain based learning, business development, change management, communication skills, effective lifelong learning, Experiential Learning, facilitation, Learning Design, learning tools, simulations, Training Tools Hide

An interesting feature of the learning design that I’ve been working on this month has been the fact that, in two separate instances, the clients have been unable to define the size of the groups to whom the learning will be delivered. I’m not talking here about a range of e.g. between 20 and 40 people (a common enough situation, particularly in corporate learning settings) but mind-bendingly large ranges – in one case this month we’re talking about “lower limit 12, upper limit 1500”!

So how do you set about designing a learning environment, with defined learning outcomes, when there is no way of knowing whether this is intimate, high-ratio group work or large-scale conference activity? In some ways the learning design is relatively easy – (the difficulty lies in getting the people who will deliver the learning prepared for the very different demands of the two environments) The secret is to design the learning materials in a modular format, so that each table of 10 or 12 in the conference setting becomes its own little learning environment.

I think of it as a fractal structure where every table-sized micro environment exactly reproduces the overall structure and content of the hall-sized macro environment.

One obvious difference in working at this larger scale is that there just isn’t going to be a skilled facilitator at every table – the cost in recruiting and/or training them would be prohibitive unless you’re going to run the conference event multiple times. But if we take this as one of the design parameters we’re working with, and our response is high-quality, self-directed learning, controlled and managed by a well equipped facilitator working from a stage, then we shouldn’t have to accept any diminution of what we expect people to learn, nor indeed any compromises in their experience of the learning event.

If the learning direction from the stage is well designed and scripted, and the learning activity is relevant and engaging, then what’s missing is the feedback that allows the central co-ordinator to monitor whether the table groups are understanding and assimilating the learning content. Traditionally this function has been the role of both the central co-ordinator who needs to ‘get mobile’ around the tables, and a support team who observe, monitor and possibly intervene to ensure that the desired learning is happening. It’s a system that is widely used because of it’s efficiency, but has a number of obvious flaws, not least of which is that the delivery team can’t be everywhere at once. The more challenging the learning the more demands are placed on this team, with the result that the learning objectives are diluted in advance to ensure that everybody keeps pace. The ultimate result of this has been that well intentioned learning events become a series of bland presentations from the ‘face(s) on the stage’.

However, consider this: technology now enables us to ensure that every person at every table in the conference hall is learning effectively. We can individually monitor learning progress and get virtually instant feedback about how the learning content is being received and assimilated. It’s easily possible for each table to vote, input data, comment on issues, and decide outcomes or flag up progress in a way that makes them active participants in a collective act of learning. The conference design is oriented around feedback loops where tables share their thoughts and observations across the whole event using iPad’s or other tablet devices. These loops are defined in both time and content as conference wide exchanges that move the focus away from the stage and towards the learning that is being generated by the participants themselves.

And where do we find the budget to invest in a mobile device for each table? It may be worth asking whether the thousands you paid to have the last guru / speaker promote their latest book to your employees gave you a great return? Or whether you could have (for the same investment) pre-loaded a video of their presentation onto a hundred iPads and got your people really interacting with the content in a way that generated real, local learning and tangible results?

From there it’s a small step to asking whether your people actually need to be in the same physical space to engage in this learning…………?

conference, facilitator, Learning Design, Learning environments, learning events Hide