Summary of the book "Driving Performance through Learning" - By Andy Lancaster

Key Concepts in this book:

1. Employees learn more successfully in the course of their work than they do in a classroom.
2. Only when needs are accurately identified does effective learning take place.
3. Design nimble, flexible learning solutions instead of chasing perfection.
4. It's difficult, but necessary, to track the precise impact of learning on performance.
5. Digital learning solutions have the potential to change lives.
6. Enabling community involvement in the workplace is a fantastic method to enhance employee learning.
7. Coaching is a tried-and-true technique of learning, but it must be integrated into the workday.

Who can benefit the most from this book:

• Learning and development professionals expanding their horizons.
• Managers who want to understand L&D better.
• Workers who love learning new professional skills.

What am I getting out of it? Find out how workplace learning is changing.

Consider your professional abilities for a moment. How did you get them – through training?

Your abilities likely grew over time as you progressed in your job. Training classes may have aided in a few key areas, but when compared to the impact of colleagues, bosses, and even search engines, they pale in comparison.

Every day, people are learning something new. When it comes to learning in the job, though, people frequently have limited horizons. It's time to embrace a larger perspective on what learning at work entails, and you'll learn how to do so in the blinks ahead.

In this summary, 

• You'll learn how to assess a company's underlying learning requirements. 
• Why a quick repair is sometimes preferable to a perfect solution.
• And how to foster workplace community and self-directed learning.

1. Employees learn more successfully in the course of their work than they do in a classroom.

Workplaces are rapidly evolving. There's a lot of competition, there's a lot of disruption, and there's a lot of push for efficiency and budget cutbacks. People nowadays have more diverse jobs, and the workplace is changing as well, with home working becoming more prevalent.

However, one thing has remained constant: employees must continue to learn.

How can organizations, particularly their L&D teams (those in charge of learning and development), better meet this demand? If you're like most individuals, you probably immediately think of two words: training course. Is this, however, the best option?

Most individuals have a lot on their plates, and taking time out of their schedules is difficult for them. Isn't it possible that they could learn just as much while doing other things? Yes, they might be able to.

The takeaway here is that employees learn more successfully in the course of their work than they do in a classroom.

People think of training courses when they think of learning at work. You've probably heard coworkers say that they are unable to perform particular activities due to a lack of training. However, this is a mindset that has to shift.

Learning should often take place when it is truly required, such as while employees are performing their duties. This is known as learning-while-doing, and it's a concept that's revolutionizing the way people think about learning and development.

It's not a brand-new concept. The concept of 70:20:10 has been well-known among learning experts for some time. According to the theory, 70% of learning occurs in the job, 20% occurs through coaching and other contacts, and 10% occurs through courses.

The precise-sounding ratio isn't all that significant, but the theory behind it is. Learning should be viewed as a continuous process in the workplace.

What does this signify for learning and development professionals? They'll still have plenty to do, as their job includes identifying an organization's learning needs, tracking progress, and, of course, finding solutions. Sometimes it involves simply scheduling a training session, but it might also include acting as a facilitator, fostering community interaction, coaching, and individual development.

And how might learning and development experts help with that? Well, good news: you're about to embark on a journey of self-education.

2. Only when needs are accurately identified does effective learning take place.

Consider a company that sells electrical components. Let's call it Electrix-stop. It's a jumbled mess.

Staff turnover has increased recently, and it's beginning to influence customer service, resulting in a flood of complaints. Furthermore, all of the new employees are still unfamiliar with the IT system. The L&D department quickly receives a request for an IT system introductory course.

Not only that but there's more. It also receives a request for management training, as something is plainly wrong with management given all of the personnel departures. A request for a recruitment course has also been made because HR should be hiring employees who will stay longer.

So, would three courses be enough to solve all of the Electrix issues? stop's It's unlikely.

The main takeaway is that effective learning can only occur when needs are appropriately identified.

You need to do a lot more than just say yes to requests and sign employees up for courses to run a truly effective L&D team. That requires not only a thorough examination of the staff's genuine demands but also a forensic approach.

This should be accomplished by a multi-stage learning requirements analysis. First, determine what staff members must learn and why they must learn it. Second, determine the project's scope and set some realistic objectives. Then it's only a matter of finding and executing solutions.

That may seem self-evident, but for many L&D departments, it marks a paradigm shift because this approach is less about accepting orders and more about intervening, allowing the department to create value.

Let's return to Electrix-stop now. How can L&D truly assist in resolving the organization's numerous problems?

Well, it may turn out that providing extra help to managers when they hire new employees is the greatest method to deal with the recruitment problem. L&D should urge professionals from the customer service team to get more active in assisting and mentoring new hires to improve customer service. And, rather than a new course in IT systems induction, a new induction program with a larger emphasis on IT from the outset would be more effective.

These are, in a nutshell, customized learning solutions. Rather than merely responding to requests, the L&D team has demonstrated that it understands the organization's bigger concerns and has devised the most effective solutions.

Plus, there's no need for anyone to sit through a course.

3. Design nimble, flexible learning solutions instead of chasing perfection.

These days, life moves at a breakneck speed. The norm is next-day delivery, chatbots respond to our questions in seconds, and apps are updated frequently. Email once thought to be lightning-fast, now appears antiquated and slow in comparison to instant messaging.

Wouldn't it be lovely if we just took our time and focused on quality rather than chasing for quick fixes?

Sure, why not? However, if you work in learning and development, you probably don't have that luxury. You must work quickly and frequently, which means abandoning the pursuit of perfection in favour of implementing learning solutions that get the job done today.

The essential point here is to develop agile, responsive learning systems rather than chasing perfection.

Prioritizing speed over quality may not seem ideal, yet how quickly employees become competent is critical to a company's success. Because work systems are always changing, there's a risk that if you wait too long to develop a learning solution, it will be obsolete by the time it's applied.

As a result, it's best to use an agile or responsive approach. That involves approaching the challenge iteratively, incorporating trial and error and a laser-like focus on getting the work done.

With an agile approach, you're more likely to come up with a solution that doesn't work the first time. But it'll be tweaked for a second attempt, and this time it'll be a little more successful. You'll eventually arrive at a minimum viable proposition, a solution that isn't everything you want it to be but checks all the right boxes.

Because this approach relies on a constant stream of testing and feedback, all-important stakeholders must be actively involved. It can't only be L&D's responsibility; you also need to include the employees who are affected by the problem.

This transition to agile thinking necessitates a mental adjustment, but it's necessary and ultimately beneficial to business. After all, perfectionism serves no one, and the first version of a thing is rarely the greatest.

In practice, what does an agile learning approach look like? It depends, but it'll almost certainly involve in-the-moment solutions. Microlearning — small bursts of information that solve a specific problem – might potentially be used.

How do you improve your agile learning solutions once they're up and running? As the next blink explains, figuring that out entails keeping a close eye on their progress.

4. It's difficult, but necessary, to track the precise impact of learning on performance.

Why is it necessary for people to learn at work in the first place? So that they might improve their performance, to be precise. Is this, however, the case?

It's all too simple to come up with a great-sounding learning strategy, implement it, and then forget about it. But, in an era when business measurements are more important than ever, that isn't good enough. It's critical to keep track of how learning solutions affect employees.

One of the reasons this doesn't happen very often is that it's difficult. When it comes to learning, calculating ROI – or "return on investment" – can be challenging. But how can you ever know how successful your ideas were if you don't track impact?

The main point is this: It's difficult, but necessary, to track the precise impact of learning on performance.

Traditionally, L&D teams used the Kirkpatrick Model to assess impact. This entails a variety of techniques, the most well-known of which are "happy sheets," which ask people to rate their experience on a scale by checking boxes.

In reality, this paradigm is not only overused but also defective; among other issues, "happy sheets" and other self-reporting methods are fundamentally ambiguous.

Instead, what can L&D teams do? You need to get acquainted with data, even if it hasn't historically been the realm of L&D. Data is critical to how businesses run today, and understanding basic concepts like analytics and key performance indicators, or KPIs, is essential.

Thinking about this can help to improve the entire process, so before you authorize a new learning project, make sure you know what kind of KPI improvements you anticipate seeing.

Of course, feedback from the students is still important. However, even if the data aren't exact, quantifying impact is worthwhile.

Return on investment is, of course, one of the most important metrics to have. However, in the subject of learning and development, putting concrete metrics on how much value learning has created can be very difficult. However, even a rough ROI calculation can go a long way, so it's worth giving it a shot as best you can. Simply ask employees what ROI they think they're making as a result of their learning and use a crowdsourcing approach to do so. The results can be surprisingly accurate if there is enough data.

5. Digital learning solutions have the potential to change lives.

Okay, you've undoubtedly heard it before, but it bears repeating: technology is revolutionizing the world. The number of people with a mobile phone is approaching five billion, and there are three billion social media users, with the trend clearly continuing.

It's no surprise, then, that YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn - not to mention Google – have become some of the most valuable learning resources available.

How do you make these digital advancements work for you in the classroom? The sky's the limit as long as you do it correctly.

The takeaway here is that digital learning solutions can be transformative.

What makes digital solutions so beneficial? First and foremost, don't get too carried away. Just because something is digital doesn't mean it's superior. It must nevertheless serve a useful purpose and serve as a means to a goal.

Many digital solutions, on the other hand, can undoubtedly improve learning. Apps, for example, have enormous promise. BP, the oil and gas firm, created unique software to replace an online business leadership course, and it was a huge success, with 6,000 users every year.

AR and VR, or augmented and virtual reality, can be fantastic. Boeing employs augmented reality to teach its employees how to put aeroplane wings together. Virtual reality can be used to instruct personnel on how to install energy meters or even to replicate operations on a submarine or an oil rig.

There are also numerous digital learning materials already available online, such as podcasts, YouTube tutorials, and Twitter lists of famous thinkers.

By being serious about content curation, you can make the most of these pre-existing resources. While this may appear to be a simple answer, it is far from it. Working together with stakeholders to produce a detailed inventory of what's available, trim it down so it's not too overwhelming, and then make sure the content is easily accessible to employees is the way to go.

Curation has gotten a lot of press in L&D, but it's finally getting its due. It's an excellent example of an agile approach because pre-existing content can be deployed quickly. It also promotes a variety of thought rather than presuming that the best ideas always originate from within the company.

Even better, selected content encourages learners to take charge of their own learning by challenging them to think about it.

6. Enabling community involvement in the workplace is a fantastic method to enhance employee learning.

Technology is fantastic, but how did humans study before the invention of computers? How did they learn in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, after all? Even before the invention of language, how did humans learn?

One word comes to mind: community.

When people swapped hunting advice around the campfire, social learning was essential. From the guilds of the Middle Ages to the busy coffeehouses of Georgian England, learning via community has always been a part of life.

So it's a little strange that when L&D teams are brainstorming solutions, they don't consider community-based, social learning as much. They should because they probably should.

The main point here is that encouraging community involvement in the workplace is a terrific method to boost workplace learning.

Enabling community-based learning doesn't mean the L&D department can relax – it still has a critical role to play, just as it does with content curation. The role of L&D is to subtly alter the methods in which community learning can occur so that others feel able to support one another.

What makes communal learning so appealing? To begin with, it's yet another responsive solution: employees may seek assistance from one another while working, ensuring that problems are rapidly remedied. Second, it's targeted: the questions that employees are asked will be directly related to the issues they're experiencing. Finally, it benefits the entire team by boosting thought leadership and fostering peer trust.

So, how do you go about doing it? Technology is an excellent tool. Online social spaces, whether bespoke professional ones or private communities within a familiar platform like Facebook or LinkedIn, might be great for this. You'll need to do some legwork to keep these online spaces from becoming bleak. Encourage top leadership to participate because others will follow their lead.

Supporting self-direction is another way that L&D can be beneficial through encouragement rather than intervention. If you can make your employees excited about learning something new, they'll be more likely to put up the effort. Consider COGS as a starting point. This acronym serves as a reminder to cultivate curiosity, which leads to long-term commitment. This promotes a growth mentality and increases self-awareness by allowing students to reflect on their own progress and determine what they need to do next.

Individuals may not always be able to do everything individually. Coaching is a more common practice that can be useful at times.

7. Coaching is a tried-and-true technique of learning, but it must be integrated into the workday.

Coaching in the workplace has long been a staple of professional development. Is it, however, always effective? Probably not if it doesn't amount to more than a few required appointments on the calendar every now and then.

Coaching must become a more widespread component of corporate culture in order to have a genuine influence. Rather than taking time out of both the coach's and the learner's calendars for scheduled one-on-one appointments, coaching that occurs in the course of work has the potential to be significantly more productive.

The main point is this: Coaching is a tried-and-true technique of learning, but it must be integrated into the workday.

What's the big deal about mentoring in the middle of a project? Perhaps most visibly, it promotes talent development within the firm, assisting employees in making the most of their strengths and becoming more ambitious. It's also beneficial for performance support and can increase employee engagement, resulting in greater overall workplace performance.

Coaching, like mentorship, can be a very formal procedure. It can, however, be casual. If the right people are involved, encouraging informal peer mentoring can also provide excellent outcomes.

All of this, however, is contingent on coaching becoming ingrained in an organization's culture rather than being an afterthought. It also depends on the effectiveness of your organization's leaders as coaches. Some people accomplish this instinctively, but others will almost certainly want assistance, which you should be able to provide.

It's not as if making a mistake by them – or you – is a tragedy. In fact, that is the final piece of advice for reforming L&D: it is a fantastic learning opportunity in and of itself. Stop thinking of mistakes as negative experiences; they can actually be a great way to learn.

Penicillin, cornflakes, Velcro, and cellophane are all well-known goods that were accidentally invented. So, the next time anything goes wrong at work, consider the positive: what can you learn from it?

Learning opportunities abound in the modern workplace, and mistakes are just one example. The L&D team's responsibility is to take advantage of such changes and ensure that everyone in the organization is learning as much as they can all of the time, not just when they're in a class.

The fundamental message in this summary is that learning and development are critical for every modern firm, but L&D departments frequently fall back on tried-and-true methods like sending employees on courses. Learning can happen in the flow of work with a more dynamic and varied approach to L&D. From augmented reality to coaching, targeted, agile, and well-measured learning options are available. These approaches, when combined, have the potential to change the way learning in the workplace influences performance.

Here's some additional advice that you can put into practice:

Consider your current situation.

Take some time to reflect on where you are now on your path to more successful L&D at each stage along the route. You can only improve in the future if you grasp your current situation. So, let's start at the beginning: how is L&D organized in your organization right now? Do you prefer to learn while working, or do you prefer to attend classes or seminars? How can you incorporate some additional unique ideas that get closer to addressing your team's specific learning needs?