Going Beyond Formal Learning
By Clark Quinn
Recently I’ve been in communication with a couple of organizations that are looking to take a step forward in their ability to innovate. That is, they want to build the skills and the mindset of their people to be more creative. Which is good, with a caveat. Going beyond the normal actually works at several different levels, with several different time scales. It’s worth thinking about what it takes. To me, it takes informal learning.
I’ve argued in the past that when you’re doing research, trouble-shooting, design, etc, you’re doing learning. Not formal learning, however! I think of formal learning when there’s a designed curriculum with a focus. That is, there’re answers to the questions. In the activities I’m suggesting, there isn’t an answer when you begin, or you’d bring in that person. Instead, you’re going to have to do learning activities – experimentation, data collection, analysis – without the benefit of the correct experiment. It’s science, basically.
As such, there are things that work to facilitate it. At the core level, it’s about skills. These include how to work together productively, how to experiment, how to brainstorm, etc. These are teachable and coachable. It’s about process, and we know what the highest likelihood of success versions are. (Learning is a probabilistic game.) We can address this in a reasonable time frame.
At the next level up, however, it’s about community. It’s about several things here. For one, it’s about a community of practice continually developing it’s understanding. Each member of a team doing the core activities should come from complementary (not the same) communities. The choice of capabilities needed to have a good chance of finding the answer also matters. There are principles here as well. Developing this ability and putting it into practice reliably across an organization is a less-reliable process. It takes time to ensure that folks have the skills, share the understanding, and are willing to contribute.
At the top level, it’s about the environment. Those people you’ve put together should be committed to achieving the solution, and feel like they’re supported in finding it. They should be expected to take some time, spend some resource, and make some mistakes. We also know that the right environment yields better outcomes. People should be showing their work, for instance.
Now, the above activities are frequently assigned. You put teams to come up with new products or services, decide how to adapt to a changing environment, and to determine what’s wrong in a particular situation. That’s what I call ‘fast’ innovation. There’s also ‘slow’ innovation, which is the ongoing fermentation (percolation, incubation; pick your metaphor) of ideas that ultimately germinate in the right conditions. That’s also part of the culture. You want not just the right environment for the teams, but for the organization.
Realize that there can be challenges in executing on these parameters. Jennifer Mueller, in her book Creative Change, talks about how organizations say they want innovation, but then they also won’t tolerate any risk. Which is fundamentally at odds. Thus, organizations can undertake stern steps in the right direction, and undermine themselves at the same time! The short-term steps might give you some benefits, but you’re not really going to succeed unless you align all the elements.
What I’m saying is that these organizations are looking for training to address what’s really a multi-pronged issue. Training can address part of it, but building culture is a longer-term initiative that takes change management. You need not only the team members, but coaches and supervisors, community leaders, and executives to walk the walk as well as talk the talk.
The focus of the LDA’s early summer mini-conference will be on Informal and Social Learning. Over four half-days spread out over 2 weeks, we’ll unpack the individual skills, the group dynamics, and the organizational culture issues. I’ve argued that L&D should own informal learning, and you’ll leave knowing why and how. Stay tuned for details; hope to see you there!