A SIMPLE PERSPECTIVE ON WHY CHANGE IS DIFFICULT

Wondered why it is difficult to change. Asking WHY is the key? Many times in organizations and even in our personal lives some behaviour, some style of working, or some way of making decisions comes across as so very sticky because it was a manifestation of success at some time in our experiences. 

We accumulate a lot of wisdom based on successes we derive in one space or context and then superimpose that in other spaces and maybe even literally in everything that we do. Edgar Schein the culture expert speaks of culture as a residue of success.

Let us go back to an old story of the monkeys in a cage with bananas hanging at the center. Each time a monkey climbed to pluck the banana's a strong jet of water was sprayed on the monkey and the monkey fell down from the ladder when trying to reach the bunch of bananas. Every attempt by any monkey was met with the same fate. Over a few such experiences, the monkeys collectively learned that it was not right to pick the bananas and a cause-effect relationship was etched in their mind. Go for Bananas and Get Knocked down. Soon, one of the monkeys is removed from the cage and replaced with a new monkey. The water jet is also removed. As soon as the new monkey sees the bananas and climbs to reach the bunch the other monkeys quickly pull him down. This happens as a pattern and after a few unsuccessful attempts that new monkey too gives up and does not try to get the bananas after learning the cause and effect. One by one all the original monkeys are replaced by new monkeys and the socialization process continues now it does not matter that all original monkeys are not in the cage the pattern of behaviour continues and no monkey can get the bananas.  None of the new monkeys actually experienced the cause and effect but they learned the shared ways of avoiding the bunch of bananas and it became an unquestionable action to be followed, and none would question such an action. 

This is how a practice gets established based on past experiences and cause and effect relationships helped us learn to do things a certain way and then slowly forget to question it. If we need to change we have to use a different frame or lens. What we viewed in the context of the early days when the monkeys and the jet of water were present was no longer relevant once the jet was removed. However, this did not happen and the behavior was sustained. So unless the behavior is analyzed and viewed in the context of the new situations the behavior won't change. This applies to our work as well as our personal lives. It is important to check the assumptions, clarify the current understanding, and then decide. What worked in one context may not be relevant at all in a different context. One of the ways to change something for good or better is to understand WHAT and follow up with WHY that is happening. When we understand the "WHY" then the root cause of the action or behavior can be understood and then necessary change may manifest.  Understanding the WHY addresses one of the aspects of driving change. Other ways of driving change will depend on specific reasons the change is difficult and will address a couple more in later posts. Cheers !!!    

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Learning Analytics & Metrics

I spoke to about a dozen Learning & Development Leaders  on what kind of metrics they track.... Most common among the responses I got included

Course completion %ages

Exit scores obtained

Completion rate on courses offered

Person Learning days

Competency Base Line

Learning Capacity 

Trainer Effectiveness Scores

Wonder if any of this can ever be used to give us an understanding of how well the learning and development efforts are helping the organizations.   All of these people who responded came from about ten or so different well known organizations and were participating at a 3 day National HR conference.

To understand whether training is making sense as an investment we need to understand what impact the training can create.   It can either help improve your service level,  it can improve efficiency or help you deliver better / higher productivity levels.   It can also help you get into a new service if it is something new that you are trying to acquire as a capability.  The need is not for totally new metrics but putting them in a way that makes sense to the business leaders who are ultimate customers of your learning and development offerings.

So our first challenge would be to understand what we measure and how much of it.  What will create a view of whether I am doing good, improving,  becoming better or simply regressing back as I spend more and more of my money on learning and development.  Remember the 70-20-10 rule,  70% of learning comes from experience,  20% from feedback and collaboration at work or in a given situation, and only 10% learning comes from formal training programs or learning. Instead of giving prescription of what metrics to use, I will illustrate some approaches that will give a direction of how you look for the metrics that will be most relevant to your context and then you can customize, stretch,  modify and use the one most relevant.

When you rattle metrics like PLD or Trainer Effectiveness scores per se it does not excite the business leader.   What would be more relevant would be if you are able to give a story through your metric.  For e.g.  Of the total 10 PLD's we have achieved this year,  6 were through Web Based Access and only 4 through Instructor led.   The effectiveness was not undermined by replacing the instructor led but gave more space and time and satisfaction scores were in line.  The trend over past 3 years shows we had 9 on 10 days through instructor led training three years back.

Or instead of telling the business leader that you created 40 hours of digital content for 3 courses you can give inputs say:  of 3 most popular courses put together we had 72 hours of learning and 40 hours of that has now been digitized and people come over the the class room well prepared and learning is more effective. 

The other aspect of learning is the shift to MOOC driven learning via platforms like Coursera.  These learning efforts also contribute in a big way to your development efforts and capability building. Integrating this into the learning metrics of the organization is something L&D and HR Managers should think of.  A simple way is how to capture the learning effort through your learning system by configuring the same in the LMS and then feeding the certifications manually to start with.  Technically advanced user organizations can think of linking through integration of the portals like Coursera with their LMS through some scripting and meta data.

Finally shift from incidental training to capability building is the way L&D evolved on a maturity scale over the past 2 decades.  Metrics to capture impact via results is something that organizations should focus more on alignment with business.  How is the availability of On demand learning keeping pace with the needs of a mobile work force, of new networked organizations.