It's Time to Move Our Finish Line
True or false? Our learning is complete once the formal course is complete.
False! Most of us in learning and talent development know better. We know that a formal course is only one part of the learning process. The skills introduced or reinforced in the course require practice and application afterwards to truly embed them into our daily lives. This transfer of learning from classroom (or eLearning) to real life application can take days, weeks, or even months. The end of the formal course should be the starting line, not the finish line.
And yet, even if we believe this, it rarely translates into action. Sometimes it feels like an unrealistic dream.
Why Course Completion Looks Like a Finish Line
A few forces keep us here, reinforcing the “just go to the class or take the eLearning and everything will be great” mentality.
Force #1: Legacy Thinking and Past Experience
The expectation that needed learning happens inside of a formal course dates back to the industrial revolution, when we pulled farmers out of fields and into factories. At that time, due to the sheer number of new, unskilled industrial employees, organizations realized learning the job needed to scale from a one-one model. They looked to universities, at that time mainly reserved for the elite and thus considered superior by many, as the model. Classrooms full of new hires were born!
Along the same lines, but in our current day, everyone (stakeholders, SMEs, new hires, etc.) has some experience with learning by the time they get to the workplace. Most of that experience happened in formal classrooms inside educational institutions. From the time we first step into a school as young children, we learn from teachers at the front of the room doling out lectures, homework, and exams. When the course ends, we move on to the next thing. Most of us don’t keep revisiting a course once it’s complete. We barely remember them. In the eyes of the educational system, we proved that we “learned” what we needed to know through the exam and corresponding grade.
Based on this shared experience with education and learning, our stakeholders affiliate “learning” with formal courses and see L&D as the teachers. Just like the school experience, they assume the lesson ends when the course ends. Most stakeholders don’t question whether there’s a better way.
Force #2: Organizational Pressure
Most organizations are under constant pressure to move fast and work lean, while completing massive amounts of work in a day. Pulling someone away from their work to practice a new skill seems inefficient. Thus, they want to compress learning (just like all other work) into as little time as possible.
What’s the result of this legacy thinking, prior experience, and organizational pressure for L&D? We do our best while also bending to expectations.
This means we build the best learning experience we can within the confines of the classroom and the time we are given. We make it engaging, interactive, and grounded in all the best practices, but we relinquish control the moment the formal training ends and hope for the best. We know no one walks away from that course with their new skills wrapped and ready to go. We know more practice is needed, but we feel like it’s the best we can do.
This isn’t good enough.
A Case Study in Good Intentions
I once led training for a major ERP software implementation. This was a system that would fundamentally change how everyone in the company did their jobs. My team created moment-of-need resources and then designed interactive learning labs. In these labs, the facilitator stood at the back of the room (not the front) giving participants scenarios and letting them practice in a sandbox environment to figure them out and ask questions along the way. If someone needed to demonstrate the answers or guide the class, one of the participants was asked to step to the front of the room and drive the mouse. It was 100% hands-on learning. We also sent practice scenarios after the training and asked teams to set aside time to work through them in the sandbox environment before the new software went live.
The result? Well, as the saying goes about best-laid plans…
The learning labs took place in a classroom steps away from most of the participants’ workspaces. We needed to offer a hybrid option so a few remote employees could participate virtually. That was our downfall. With this option, those who were physically seated down the hall from the training lab chose to also participate virtually so they could multitask. Technically, this means they "completed" the training. Their names were present online in a black box. But when it came to the post-training practice scenarios? No one opened them.
Even with this learning lab design, the request to set aside time to practice, providing practice materials, and the job aids at their fingertips for use in the moment of need, the learning didn’t happen. When the new software launched and the old one went dark, panic ensued. The blame landed squarely on the training team. It sounded something like this, "Yes, we attended that training, but it wasn't good. We don't remember anything from it." Clearly, the finish line was defined in their minds as checking the box in showing up for the virtual course, no additional work needed.
We’re Not Innocent Either
Before we point fingers at the business for not understanding how learning happens or setting aside time to practice and apply, let’s take a hot second to turn the mirror around. Because those of us in L&D fall into the same traps.
For the past six months, I’ve conducted an experiment with my own workshops. These workshops are specifically for L&D teams to help them shift from order takers to strategic business partners.
Like the case study above, I’ve intentionally designed these workshops with a structure for ongoing practice after the formal session, explicitly moving the finish line from the end of the workshop to a month later. I asked participants to commit to practicing in advance, stressed that the workshop was just the beginning, and reminded them that learning doesn’t happen without application. I reached out with reminders via email at least once each week. I did everything I could to help them stay the course and keep learning once we all left the training room.
What did I find? Even from learning professionals who understood the need to practice afterwards, the majority still didn’t follow through.
Intention and Effort Aren't the Same
The intentions to practice were positive and solid. Most (80%) said at the end of the workshop that they would commit to practicing the new skill over the next month. In reality, only about 43% of those who said they'd practice actually did so even one time after the workshop. That means roughly 3 out of every 10 L&D professionals followed through to practice after our formal time together.
I held end-of-month conversations with these L&D pros to talk about what worked and didn’t. When I asked what got in the way of practicing and why they hadn’t followed through, they gave the same answers as everyone else in the organization:
“We’ve had an unusually busy month and never had the chance to use these skills.”
“We are so locked into our current patterns that inserting something new felt like too much. It would have taken time that I didn’t have.”
I get it. I’ve been there. Have you?
Last year I purchased a new organizing software, only to abandon it when the learning curve collided with my daily workload. I quickly (and easily) reverted back to older, less efficient patterns and processes.
I’ve attended fantastic conference sessions and keynotes, taking pages of notes, only to never look at them again once I returned to my daily grind.
Learning is hard work and it takes time. In addition, it's in constant competition with a life (in and out of work) chock full of activities, pressures, and challenges. There isn’t room for experimentation, stepping back, and trying something new that seems clunky and uncomfortable, even for a few minutes. We don’t have the time or the patience, even with the best of intentions.
The Real Solution
If we want learning to lead to genuine change in our lives and the lives of those we are working to develop, we need to define a different finish line. We need to swap the end of the course for the beginning of the learning journey. We need to include informal practice along with discomfort, awkwardness, inefficiency, and imperfect attempts for a period of time that eventually leads to a new way of working.
The implications of this switch could mean huge gains in the work lives of our our stakeholders and their teams. But it also may need to start with us.
We, in L&D, need to stop committing to courses, workshops, and conferences without building in the time afterwards to reflect and practice. We need to stop expecting that we'll somehow "fit the practice in" after the fact so that we can truly learn. We need to let go of perfectionism and make peace with the clunky, uncomfortable feeling of trying something new.
If those of us in L&D, those who understand learning better than anyone, can’t build this into our own lives, then we have no business expecting others to do it. We can't advocate for a different finish line for others while disregarding our own.
As I noted earlier, I get it. That's why I'm right here with you, doing the work to walk this talk. I've already blocked out time after the upcoming ATD conference to put ideas into practice. I've shifted my traditional workshops to a series of learning lab-style working sessions complete with final products and deliverables, while stressing that the end of a formal meeting is the beginning of the work, not the end. I'm learning more about additional techniques through a learning transfer certification (see below). I'm going to continue to do everything I can to create this shift (I'd love for you to join me!).
Your turn! How will you move your own finish line today so you can start working towards designing a different finish line for others as well?
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To learn more about how we might work together, including assessing your team’s current status with the L&D Strategic Business Partner Team Assessment and corresponding Team Development Roadmap, contact Jess today.
