Four Steps to Accelerate Learning & Development

By Clark Quinn

The establishment of the Learning & Development Accelerator, with a focus on evidence-based practices, opens the door to thinking about applying science to learning and development (L&D). What, then, does this mean?

I want to make a case for a more humane workplace. What I mean by that is, instead of trying to reduce people, we look to support them. We look for what we as workers do well and then align our practices to workforce strengths and support the weaknesses. 

I maintain that we’re not well aligned with how we think, work, and learn. Here, I propose four steps that I think are necessities to improve our practices. These steps would impact the success of our organizations and the folks we serve. 

Step 1: Learning Scientifically

Learning design should be grounded in learning science. While learning science is an integration of the disparate fields that study learning, the basics have been around from Ebbinghaus’s initial experiments on memory to the emergence of instructional design based upon behavioral psychology. Since then, the results coming from cognitive and post-cognitive research have provided further insights that inform practice. 

Thus, you’d expect that the first step is to apply learning science to the core activity of designing training. This should be a given, but there’s converging evidence that L&D isn’t operating on evidence-informed bases. Whether it’s the sustained presence of bullet-point slides or the continuing existence of disproved myths in learning, we need to do better.

The Serious eLearning Manifesto emerged as a response to the lack of quality in eLearning. It listed eight ways a science-based approach to eLearning differs from traditional eLearning, and seven of them would apply to traditional classroom instruction as well. More guidance is increasingly emerging, both on the learning science and the associated myths. We just need to pay attention to it, and apply it. 

If we want the best outcomes, we have to apply what’s known from science. If we do, we increase the effectiveness of our instructional investments. Which, after all, is what we should be attempting to achieve. That’s true for what we typically focus on… learning outcomes… but there’s more.

Step 2: Getting Engaged

Too often, we’ve been told that we have to treat our learning material seriously. That we can’t have fun. Yet humor, applied correctly, increases learning. So too does emotional involvement. In theory, this could be considered part of the last step, but it’s worth separating out. There are overlaps, so the need for challenge to achieve engagement matches well with the requirement for ‘desirable difficulty’ in practice. 

In addition to the cognitive side, we’ve also learned that emotions matter. We learn better when we care, and when we’re not too anxious. We also can consider emotion, fantasy, story, and more. Positive affect has a different impact than negative, and we need to know when to use each.

We have to be careful, however. A trivial approach to ‘engagement’ can undermine the desired outcomes. Whether it’s gamification, tarted-up drill-and-kill, or just ‘click to see more’, there’s a fine line to be trod. These simplistic approaches undermine our goals. 

True motivation differs from superficial engagement. As the research around Self-Determination Theory suggests, when people truly recognize they need the learning on tap, they’re more likely to commit the necessary effort. We need to distinguish between just ‘fun’ and a concept of ‘hard fun’, where we’re experiencing deep engagement. Hard fun is a term coined by Seymour Papert, and refers to fun that’s derived from challenging pursuits, not trivial embellishments.

Game designer Raph Koster, in his Theory of Fun, postulated that what makes games fun is learning. We may not need to create an experience people will pay for, but we can, and should, do better than gratuitous window-dressing on the same old thing.

Step 3: Beyond the Course

Those alone would be good steps forward, but there’s another problem with what is frequently done. Too often, the only answer is a course. Yet we know that, many times, it makes more sense to use another approach.

First, many times performance problems aren’t tied to knowledge or skills. The wrong incentives, a lack of resources, or even a lack of awareness can provide gaps in performance that training isn’t needed to address. Thus, identifying the root problem, and ensuring the right solution to the problem, is the first step. And there’s another element. 

Even when knowledge is an issue, it’s hard to get information into our heads. That’s particularly true when the information is in large quantities, is arbitrary or abstract, or is changing rapidly. Yet these frequently characterize useful information! There are things we do need to know ‘cold’, but that should be minimized, or it will take significant amounts of practice (think: airline pilot emergency procedures). 

We have an alternative. We can put information into the world.  Whether it’s a calculator, a decision tree, a lookup table, or the power of a checklist as Atul Gawande’s book The Checklist Manifesto makes clear, we can externalize much information. We’ve used paper in many ways to do this, and technology makes it possible to store more than you might want to carry and make it accessible, dynamic, and interactive as well. 

In fact, most of these other solutions are preferable to designing a course. Courses are arguably the most expensive solution! Thus, ensuring the right solution to the problem, and using courses only as a last resort, marks the third step to L&D maturity.

Step 4: Beyond Optimal Execution

The elements we’ve been talking about are oriented towards optimal execution. That is, doing what organizations know they need to execute. But there’s another opportunity, and one that I believe, is the most important step L&D can take. I’m talking about stepping beyond doing what is known, and generating the new. 

I maintain that, in these increasingly dynamic times, optimal execution is only the cost of entry for organizations seeking to compete. Continual innovation will be the only sustainable differentiator, and the question is, who owns it? To be clear, innovation manifests in two ways: specific work, and background emergence. And L&D has a role in each.

When you’re doing assigned tasks like problem-solving, trouble-shooting, doing research, or doing design, you don’t know the answer when you begin. So, inherently, these activities are learning! Thus, I claim that L&D should lead the way. We are supposed to be the ones who know most about learning (though we have to make sure that this is true).

For those assigned situations, there are practices that are more, and less, effective. However, that’s not always known and there are opportunities to improve. Facilitating that team work, including practices, tools, and more, is one big opportunity for L&D to move to a critical role in organizational success.

The second type of innovation is the background percolation of ideas. This comes from creating a conducive environment, as Stephen Johnson pointed out in Where Good Ideas Come From. Facilitating the organization in creating the proper conditions is the second opportunity for L&D. 

Elements that have been identified as valuable for a culture of continual learning include making it safe to share, establishing trust, not just tolerating but valuing diversity, and more. A second important role is to develop the knowledge of the optimal practices. This includes experimenting to improve the knowledge and the practices! 

Putting it together

Combining knowledge of best principles with strategic implementation to move the organization in the appropriate directions are the characteristics of an accelerated L&D function. And that’s the desired goal. L&D should be a critical contributor to overall outcomes, as execution and innovation are the hallmarks of successful organizations.

The traditional view of L&D as an order-taker for courses isn’t a path to success. Developing demonstrable performance impact and creating the crucible of new ideas are a noble goal for L&D. This can only come from ensuring that the underlying science is incorporated, tracked on an ongoing basis, and applied. 

What you get with an evidence-based approach is twofold. First, you get happier folks; when your processes and tools recognize and respect how people work, you get engagement. Second, you get better outcomes. The same alignment yields more effective operations and more inspirations as well. With a recognition of what’s possible, and ownership of the means to deliver, L&D has a bright future. So, what are you waiting for?