At Motivated And Competent we are fed up with reading about why so often learning and change is not being effectively embedded and organisations are left underwhelmed by a learning programme roll out. There’s no need for this to be the case.
We are in the business of learning, facilitating organisational change and improvement.
We want to shed some light on what can go awry to help you avoid some common pitfalls. Even more importantly we will share some insights to ensure you succeed in your ambitions to develop your people and lead change.
There are various reasons why so many learning programmes aren’t as effective as they could be.
They include:
- inadequate identification of the desired outcomes through poor Needs Analysis
- the natural, substantial and rapid information loss via the exponential ‘curve of forgetting’ (the Ebbinghaus effect) which can cause massive learning loss in just days
- learners are not followed up immediately after the training, and so learning is not consolidated
- managers don’t reinforce the desired new behaviours, or even contradict the learning messages
- money and resources are often principally deployed elsewhere on expensive systems or IT projects while improving people’s knowledge, understanding, skills and refreshing attitudes and behaviours is treated as a bolt on
- rewards and remuneration is often incongruent with the changes sought
If these are some common mistakes, what are some of the solutions to ensure learning is lasting and effective? And that change results?
Well there are all sorts of strategies that Motivated And Competent can help you put in place to ensure that your investment in change pays off.
Such as to:
- complete a Needs Analysis and consult with you to identify an appropriate way forward which fits with your organisation’s culture and goals
- win learners’ hearts and minds
- ensure that before, during and after the learning takes place that participants understand and have bought into the reasons for change. This means they are ready to receive the key messages and focus on developing their knowledge, understanding, skills and attitudes
- identify all the things that need to happen to ensure learning sticks, rather than evaporates, and implement this plan rigorously with all stakeholders
- explain what people will learn, how it will be done and, always, why it’s so important and how the stakeholders will benefit
- think about the denial and rejection of change which can occur and manage this sensitively
- ensure that line managers and leaders of learners are ‘on side’ and understand the reasons why the learning and change is important – perhaps they need to participate in the learning too?
- ensure the learning is as active as possible. People remember what they do better than what they see and in turn better than what they just hear. Confucius framed this in his important principle that “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
- make the learning relevant, practical, active, engaging and learner focused
- use the senses to make learning memorable and transformational (perhaps you can use this fun exercise!)
- work at higher cognitive levels than merely knowledge (Bloom)
- ensure that the actions of all line managers and leaders post event support and embed rather than undermine the learning
- ensure pre-course briefings and post-course debriefings of the learning take place emphasising learning points, the reasons why change is important and supporting people by offering further relevant development interventions
- support learners with professional, focussed coaching, 1-2-1s and SMART action plans following the learning to ensure permanent, positive change occurs
- practise and embed skills and competences (regular, frequent, relevant and fun skills drills for example). This helps move people from, say, conscious competence to unconscious competence and develop performance rather than result in slippage of the skills acquired
- recommunicate and reinforce attitudinal change
- explain to the rest of the organisation what learning is taking place. And why!
- share the key messages, including the ROI case for change and its implications, with people to create buy-in and ownership
- budget to embed the change. Why spend £millions on, say, an IT project or new processes but skimp on influencing people’s behaviours?
- align business processes, appraisals and remuneration systems to support the embedding of learning and change
- reward change and improvement when it’s observed
- benchmark behaviours, skills and competences before and post learning event (two needs analyses) as part of an ongoing quest for development rather than dropping some training into a business and walking away
- reinforce and refresh constantly. Help overcome the Ebbinghaus curve of forgetting. Learning, development and improvement need to become the culture
- analyse what has happened using Donald Kirkpatrick’s learning evaluation model to understand the learner’s experience and reaction, the knowledge gain, the changes in behaviours and the organisational outcomes
When you are ready to discuss lining up your ducks and successfully implementation your learning and change programme requirements please make contact. You can either:
-> Email us
-> Call us on 07767 302899 or 01227 763670
-> Follow us on Twitter: @motiv_competent – https://twitter.com/#!/motiv_competent
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