The MOST Important Thing

A few days ago, someone asked me a most interesting question: What is the MOST important thing L&D practitioners can do to improve the instructional content they build?

There are MANY truly critical things (I describe truly critical strategies in Write and Organize for Deeper Learning and Practice and Feedback for Deeper Learning). But there's one thing that makes those other things possible:  Deeply understanding the jobs our content supports. If we don't understand the tasks and outcomes of these jobs, how can we...

• Deliver what people really need?
• Design for relevancy?
• Offer the right content and activities?
• Provide what's needed at the right time?
• Write at the correct level?
• Provide needed support?

Simple. We can't. Building for anyone is the same as building for no one, especially for workplace instruction.

People don't have time or motivation to slog through things that are not relevant to them, especially in today's chaotic and fast-paced workplace. And if it's "compulsory," they will learn only enough to pass whatever barrier we provide (assessments, etc.). This is shallow learning but deep learning (and here) is what's needed for people to be able to use what they learn.

Training research shows relevance is a critical factor for transfer of trained skills to the workplace and to motivation to learn and persevere. Without these, our efforts become busywork for people who already have too much on their plate.

Far too many L&D practitioners think their job is to take content from a content expert and put it into instructional authoring tools and output it to [whatever]. Nonsense. We may do that but that's not our chief responsibility. Our chief responsibility is to use knowledge of jobs and the organization to help people grow skills and performance so that organizations can remain viable. We simply cannot do this without a deep understanding of the work and organizations we support.

Guy Wallace (Twitter@guywwallace), website https://www.eppic.biz) has some great articles about how to understand the job and why a single content expert cannot give you all the information you need for valuable instruction.

For now, I'll leave you with a few ideas to help you better understand what people do and how what WE do connects with their job.

• Understand what your organization does and how it does it. In detail. Find out its major pain points and what gets in the way.
• Spend time in different departments to better understand what they do and how it impacts organizational success.
• Watch how key tasks are done and document the process. Ask good performers to evaluate your documentation for holes and flaws. Ask questions.
• Review tangible work products and see how they are used. 
• Watch workers work. Ask questions about their processes, their work, what doesn't work, and how what you want to teach connects to what they do.
• Ask tons of questions when someone asks for training: What specific results are needed? How do you know there's a problem?  What gets in the way of producing needed results? If they cannot answer, get the answers from people who can answer them.
• Figure out what foundational knowledge and skills are needed to perform the tasks. Do people have it? What happens if they don't?

Understanding your organization, the business they are in, and how jobs support organizational survival isn't nice-to-know. You simply cannot be effective without this understanding. Content development is not enough. Not even nearly.

L&D's fake news

L&D has its own version of fake news: fads, made-up theories (and how to implement) in conflict with what research or science says, and people selling ideas using devious means. I just had the latter happen. Just had an email sent to me that said the following (copied directly from the email):

Hi Patti

Just wanted to let you know we featured you in our recent post: 
Why Employers Should Consider Multiple Learning Styles in Their Training Processes
https://www.bobtheba.com/blog/20171128/why-employers-should-consider-multiple-learning-styles-in-their-training-processes.

Someone used me to push learning styles for training? Noooooooooo.  As you likely know, the research is clear that learning styles aren't "a thing." (See Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence by Harold Pashler, Mark McDaniel, Doug Rohrer, and Robert Bjork to learn more.) Like so many ideas in training, it's based on people trying to make money off of the less knowledgeable or made-up insights that have nothing to do with what the research says. In fact, research shows that quite often, what is best for people for learning is the opposite of what they prefer. And this makes sense as isn't what's best for you nutritionally the opposite of what you love to snack on?

I get why they used my name. People are likely to tweet or tell others about articles that include their name. See, I just did! I hope I don't see my name associated with an article about neuroscience and learning.

No, we AREN'T learning a lot from neuroscience that we can use in learning. It's cognitive science, not neuroscience that most of these people are talking about. But calling it Neuroscience or Brain Science gives it the woo-woo factor. Except it's a lie. John Medina, the author of Brain Rules tells us we simply don't know much yet from neuroscience we can use. The research that might help us understand how neurons impact learning (fMRI studies) have been recently have been called into question for having software that creates errors.

What sciences can we count on to tell us what works? Here's a short list to start (there are many others).
Attention science
Cognitive science
Reading comprehension
Education psychology
Behavioral psychology
Information design
Usability

I'm annoyed that L&D practitioners buy the crap that others (including our own practitioners) put out there to part you from your money and gain recognition for their efforts. You must learn to tell truth from lies in order to do what's needed for good training results. But that's a good thing. Thinking for yourself is always a good thing.

I asked the company that sent that email to take me out of the article. Will let you know if that happens.