Six ways to design learning that sticks
Most training gets stuck in the training room
We’ve all been there, I’m sure. You go to a CPD or training event on a subject you find fascinating and you resolve to apply your learning when you get back to the day job. Yet something intervenes. The demands of your to-do list get in the way, a “business-as-usual” mindset kicks in and nothing changes.
Most training
Events like this give the illusion that learning is taking place. It probably meets a departmental KPI somewhere.
It’s hitting the target yet missing the point. Even when the training is inspirational and truly motivates us, the experience can get lost in the gap between the training room and the day-to-day work demands.
This isn’t surprising when you consider how most of us, for example, learn to drive a car:
Most people don’t really learn how to drive until after they’ve passed their driving test. Learning how to develop awareness, read the road and anticipate the actions of others usually comes through experience - long after the prized driving test pass.
The same can be said for anything we learn. It’s putting things into practice and interacting with other, often messy, unpredictable humans, that creates the real opportunity for growth - and sustained change in the way we do things.
Why is workforce development important?
Unless we want our organisations to stand still, delivering the same things in the same way, there will always be a need to equip staff to think and work differently. This goes beyond developing skills to giving staff a genuine opportunity to grow and develop - and apply those skills in their work.
In attracting new and retaining existing staff, we need to offer quality opportunities for personal development. None more so than with Millennials (those born 1980 - 2000) according to this PWC research. In our current competitive jobs market, offering opportunities for development might differentiate your organisation from another - even when the competitor can afford to pay a higher salary.
Source: PWC Millenials at Work Report
Growth in the flow of work
Learning or growth in the flow of work is what people are looking for in their learning now. According to Josh Bersin, a global leader in research, advisory services, and professional development for HR teams:
“There’s too much noise about “skills as the currency of success.” That statement is not entirely true. Yes, we each need granular skills to do our jobs. But we can’t really use these skills, hone them, or apply them unless we have context, experiences, mentoring, and wisdom. This “wisdom” comes through growth: taking a stretch assignment, working on a new project, or meeting someone who can help you fill in the gaps.
Here’s the way this works. There’s no point going to training if you don’t build the right skills; there’s no point building a skill if you can’t apply it on the job; and there’s no point creating a capability unless it can help you grow, expand, and do new things. That’s what’s going on – we’re stretching the role of L&D to focus on growth, not just learning.”
How do we create learning opportunities that result in real growth?
We’ve been designing, delivering, learning and improving our 6-month learning and development programme “Service Design in Practice” since 2019.
Here are our top six tips, together with questions you can be asking yourself when designing great learning experiences that create meaningful change in the way people work.
#1: Measure what matters.
“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”
William Bruce Cameron
Bums on seats isn’t the intent of the programme nor the measure that matters.
What matters is that people absorb the learning and make a shift in the way they work. We measure the things that help us to learn and improve the programme.
We “measure” this by keeping in touch with alumni. We arrange follow-up calls to understand what sticks (and what doesn’t) and what becomes embedded in their future practice. This means we have a deep understanding of our users so that we can design content and experiences that work for future cohorts. We also reflect and learn about the experience of the cohort as we’re going along.
We also pre-assess our applicants to make sure it’s the right learning opportunity for them, and that we understand where they’re starting on their learning journey.
What are your measures that matter?
How do you measure impact, not just output?
#2: Peer-to-peer learning matters as much, if not more than facilitator-participant learning.
Evidence suggests that people listen more to their peers than they do to people in positions of authority. Peers are able to empathise more readily with each other and work through challenges together.
This doesn’t happen by magic. People need to feel comfortable enough with each other - to have a level of trust that enables them to share challenges without risk of judgement.
We do this by meeting face-to-face for the first session. At this session, we deliberately spend most of our time directly or indirectly running activities that are designed to build mutual understanding and trust between peers.
We invite participants to meet with each other for 20 minutes or so on a one-to-one basis between every workshop. We call it “randomised coffee bingo”. Participants are randomly paired with each other until they’ve all met each other one to one.
Service design is a team sport. And no training course in service design would be complete without a team challenge or two. Throughout the entire programme, participants are working together in teams on given scenarios and real work-based challenges.
Owen Burgess at Sport Wales reflected on how this combination made a real difference to his growth:
“I really enjoyed it - the learning, the making connections with peers and the individual coaching expertly combined to make a huge difference to me and my work.”
How do you make the most of your peer network for your training offer?
#3: Make the learning relatable and relevant.
There is not much worse than yawning your way through irrelevant, boring training sessions!
There is very little chalk and talk in our workshops. A lot of what we do is experiential. This keeps people highly engaged in what they’re doing. Participants need to think for themselves. To solve challenges and figure out how to complete tasks. These stretch goals push people outside of their comfort zones. It sometimes feels uncomfortable, yet often this is where the deepest learning comes.
About halfway through Service Design in Practice, we invite participants to share a real live work-based challenge to which they can apply their learning. Participants then self-organise into small teams, even across organisational boundaries, to work on these real challenges. We were surprised at how well this works and how open people are to offering and receiving support across organisational boundaries. But the fact is, both the supported (extra hands) and the supporting (valuable learning and a peek inside another org) organisations benefit from the arrangement.
Often these challenges relate to work that participants already have on their plates. But they’re applying different tools and methods to the challenge, while they still have the guard rails on. I liken it to when you go ten-pin bowling as a kid with the inflatable tubes down either side of the lane. They’re practising the manoeuvres for real without the risk of going off track.
We keep them on track mainly by offering group, one-to-one and peer coaching and mentoring as they go. Participants also have a sponsor. Someone from their organisation that understands the programme and the work-based challenge and can offer organisational support for participants.
It also gives participants a reason to do a project in a different way when it runs counter to the prevailing culture in the organisation. An ‘excuse’ to embark on user research, run an idea generation session or prototype a solution for example, which gives them space to see the value in working this way without feeling silly for suggesting it.
How do you make the learning relatable and relevant?
#4: Reflection, reflection, reflection.
We start every workshop with a moment of reflection on what participants have learned so far. We vary our questions but usually cover things like:
what they’ve applied (or how they might apply it),
what resonates and
what they’ve found most challenging and
how they’ve overcome those challenges.
We also encourage participants to keep a reflection log and provide them with reflection questions to do this.
Example of our reflection questions
We’ve been less successful in getting full participation in self-reflection activities. Though the ones that do it, get great value from it. Any tips on this would be gratefully received!
How do you embed reflective practice into your learning design?
#5: Celebration and Accountability.
During the programme, we invite participants to work in small groups of 3 or 4 people. We’ve found this number to work well. We’ve heard people say things like “I don’t mind letting myself down, but I wouldn’t want to let my team down”. This small team dynamic seems to work well to keep people accountable to each other. It’s also too small to be able to effectively hide behind more active colleagues!
Participants share their learning with their sponsors (from within their organisation) and their peers at a single event at the end of the programme. This embeds a level of accountability for all participants in the programme and shares their learning more widely. It also serves to support people to actively reflect on their learning and becomes a bit of a celebration once the certificates are handed out and participants reflect on how far they’ve come in 6 months.
People seem to like a certificate - especially if they’re embarking on a lengthy programme with a significant amount of work involved.
Service Design in Practice - class of March 2022 celebrating successfully completing the programme
While this doesn’t directly help the learning embed, it’s possible that it keeps people focused on completing the programme. Participants only receive the certificate on completion if they’ve contributed consistently throughout the programme. The certificate of programme completion then forms part of the pathway towards SDN Service Design Practitioner Accreditation.
How do you encourage accountability and celebrate learning?
#6: Support people to achieve their potential.
Applying new ways of working for the first time can be tricky. We support participants to bridge the learn-do gap by offering one-to-one or group coaching and mentoring.
This helps participants to see the wood for the trees, break through perceived barriers, make bold plans (and stick to them!) and begin to put new skills into practice, with confidence.
We walk alongside participants on their journey and bring our extensive professional experience, contacts, kick-arse questions and a huge pile of useful resources along with us!
How do you support learners to keep going when the going (inevitably) gets tough?
How we design for growth in the flow of work
Alongside a well-designed learning and development programme, you need an organisational culture that embraces learning for growth to take place.
Where we’ve applied this for real
Service Design in Practice helps people working in public services and not-for-profit organisations learn service design tools and methods and put them into practice.
Our next programme starts in March 2023. Early birds are available for the first four tickets sold on or before 5th January.
We also offer a version of the programme in-house where we form a team to learn about service design and apply it immediately to your chosen real work-based challenge.
