Performance and potential

Performance management doesn’t get the press it used to. It seems not so long ago that every other article you read about learning and development was addressing a performance agenda. Even some learning and development job roles were being redefined, and renamed, as being about performance improvement.

And rightly so. Too often, in the past, learning was seen as being about serving time on apprenticeships, or completing courses and qualifications, as though acquiring knowledge, skills and credentials was the main objective. The emphasis correctly shifted to applying that knowledge and skills, and the changes in performance that could be achieved for individual job roles, for teams, and for organisations as a whole. Linking learning and development to performance management meant it was more business results oriented.

So what’s changed? The answer is that talent management and development has come onto the agenda. It’s still important that learning helps develop performance, but there’s now another focus as well. Potential. Instead of just focusing on performance improvement, learning and development is now also about developing employees’ potential, such as to foster critical skills needed in an organisation (key talent development) or to prepare people to take on new roles in an organisation (succession planning). Leadership development (for future leaders) is perhaps the most glaring, and common, example, of investing in the development of potential rather than performance.

Talent management is about maintaining not one focus, but two – the distinct but complementary imperatives of performance and potential.

Do learning objects really exist?

Twenty years ago, learning and development professionals were preoccupied with concerns about not reinventing the wheel. This was the time of the creation of National Standards (NVQs and all that), and the idea was that a lot of work was going into defining generic job roles, and training and assessment routes – work that could be picked up and re-used almost anywhere, with a little tweaking. This made some sense, especially if there were opportunities for learning through sharing ideas.

Ten years ago, e-learning pursued the same obsession when it introduced the concept of learning objects.

illustrated by this diagram (click to enlarge):

A college lecturer of my acquaintance, well-versed in teaching National Certificate modules, was puzzled as to how much further courses could be broken down beyond the modular level, and suggested to me that these objects were no more than “facts”. Of course, learning objects come in many other forms, but whatever they are, they haven’t caught on in the same way.

The truth is there’s a lot to be said for reinventing the wheel, in terms of the learning process you go through when you try it. And in reality, many learning designers have preferred to start from scratch, especially when the technology represents no barrier to doing so. So the vision that never materialised was that all courses could be disaggregated (clumsy term, but is ‘chunked’ any better?) into components that could then be re-assembled into other courses.

I suspect the most workable solution lies somewhere between the vision and the everyday reality (the latter is often at least partly driven by "Not Invented Here" syndrome). Certain objects may indeed be stored in a databank for frequent re-use, such as diagrams, pictures, video clips, audio clips and reference documents. But the elements of learning that bring these resources together are probably best reinvented for each use.

My Visual CV

I have recently discovered, and been very impressed by, a great resource called Visual CV. I think a better name would be Online CV or Web-based CV, but the idea is that rich and dynamic content may be added to your CV by placing it on the Web instead of on paper. You can make your CV visible to everyone at its own URL, as I have done at http://www.visualcv.com/kenfee. Or you can restrict access to whoever you want - the private version (not visible at my URL) includes all your personal contact info.

Creating my visual CV reminded me that I keep meaning to add video clips to this blog. The snag is I have to create them first, as I don't already have some. However, as a test, a starter, and to encourage me to create new video clips, here is the short clip I've included in my visual CV - it's almost six years old, and shows me introducing the Inaugural Scottish E-learning Lecture, which was themed around a food analogy, to explain my otherwise bizarre comments!

Book review

I am indebted to Richard Wright, Head of Learning for a medium sized global business based in Devon, England, for contributing the following review of my latest book, Delivering E-Learning, on Amazon:

“This book has been all of the following: a great read, a toolkit, a handbook and an inspiration. I am extremely happy that I chose this one out of all the other e-learning books. For anyone who needs to understand e-learning at work from a strategic perspective, I cannot recommend this book too highly. The references for further reading and research are excellent”.

The original review may be found here.

Thanks, Richard!

Digital learning tools

There's an excellent resource at the online Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies, which lists and explains digital tools to support learning, many of them free.

The list is compiled annually by Jane Hart (left) who runs the centre, and is a compilation of tools recommended by users from all over the world. Each user (134, so far) submits their top ten tools, and these are compiled into a list of the top 100, and the top 25 categories.

The top 25 are listed below:

1. Web browser
2. Social bookmarking tool
3. Blogging tool
4. RSS/Feed reader
5. Micro-blogging tool
6. Email
7. Instant messaging
8. Personal productivity tool
9. Mind mapping tool
10. Presentation tool
11. Presentation sharing tool
12. Online office suite
13. Web conferencing tool
14. Course authoring tool
15. Screen capture tool
16. Demo/screencasting tool
17. Web authoring tool
18. Wiki tools
19. Image/photo tools
20. Audio/podcasting tools
21. Video tools
22. Personal dashboard
23. Course management system
24. Social networking tool
25. Integrated social media platform

Visit the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies to view the contributors, the top 100, an explanation of the top 25, including clarification of which tools are free and which have costs, a presentation and an explanatory article.

Terminated!

It’s not often that online learning gets discussed in the mainstream, and I must admit I missed the Governor of California’s most recent pronouncement. I caught up with it on primetime TV last night on the BBC, when it was discussed on Have I Got News For You. Well, not so much discussed as ridiculed, albeit for the wrong reasons

Arnold Schwarzenegger has advocated greater use of online learning in schools. His actual statements make perfect sense. For example,

"California is home to software giants, bioscience research pioneers and first-class university systems known around the world. But our students still learn from instructional materials in formats made possible by Gutenberg's printing press"
(from USA Today)

However, he made the mistake of emphasising the cost savings of replacing textbooks, allowing critics to focus on claims that he is only proposing this to save money, and to caricature his position as “getting rid of textbooks”.

This underscores a point I have made many times before, about advocates of digital technology in learning needing to focus on the real benefits. Sadly, it also highlights the uphill battle we face in getting traditionalists to accept that there are now new ways of learning, which are often better than the old ways. As far as the Have I Got News For You panel were concerned, the arguments for online learning were terminated.

Mapping the scope of learning and development

CIPD has a new initiative to re-define and re-explain the HR profession, comprising a map of the profession, which is intended to replace the profession’s competence framework. I am convinced this ostensibly administrative activity will lead to many positive new developments, by prompting people to think about HR issues in new ways. One thing it’s caused me to think about already is the creation of some sort of map of the scope of learning and development.

For example, how should we define the relationships between learning strategy, knowledge management, talent management and development, and corporate universities? These are all areas I’ve worked in, and yet I’m not confident that the new HR map will help clarify their relationships.

According to the information released so far, the map will include ten professional areas, eight behaviours and four “bands” or levels of competence, ranging from “entry level” to “HR Director”.

The 10 professional areas are:
1 Strategy, insights and solutions
2 Leading and managing the function
3 Organisation design
4 Resourcing and talent planning
5 Organisation development
6 Learning and talent development
7 Performance and reward
8 Employee relations
9 Employee engagement
10 Information and service delivery

For a learning and development strategist, I can see relevance in 1, 2, 5, 6, and to some extent 4 and 9. But it looks like the map will identify learning and development only as a sub-set of HR: it is that, of course, but it is also something more, with overlaps into the sphere of educationalists and others. I think I’d like to see a more expansive and inclusive map of the learning and development profession, but I certainly await further information with interest.

The map/diagram shown above is from here.