Informal Learning

Informal learning

connecting work, learning, and life

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The 70:20:10 reference model states that, in general, what we learn at work comes 70% from experience, 20% from exposure to new work, and 10% from formal education. At the 70:20:10 Institute [disclosure: I am a service partner], the basic approach is to start with the 70 (experience) because this is where learning and working are most connected. When we learn as we work, at the moment of need, then we learn in context and we remember what we have learnt.

“70:20:10 uses the performance paradigm to achieve working = learning in the context of the workplace and thus to contribute to the desired organisational results. In our practice we have seen many applications of the learning paradigm in 70:20:10, which is not the intention. The paradigm starts from the idea that skills need to be developed so it begins with the 10 and uses these to flesh out the 20 and 70.

This is a back-to-front approach. In 70:20:10, it’s not learning or the 10 that are central, but rather the principle of working = learning. Here again it is about achieving the desired performance improvement in the context of the individuals or teams who want to work better together.

70:20:10 is about performance enhancement: the performance paradigm starts with the desired organisational results and uses performance consulting to establish what interventions are needed in the 70, 20 and 10 to improve individual and organisational performance. This should not be confused with the learning paradigm approach in which learning is added to working. In the performance paradigms, working = learning is achieved using such models as performance support, microlearning and social learning. This makes it possible to learn at the speed of performance.” — 70:20:10 Institute

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the secret of freedom

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“Le secret de la liberté est d’éclairer les hommes, comme celui de la tyrannie et de les retenir dans l’ignorance.” —Maximilien Robespierre (1758 – 1794)
Translation: “The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.”

Is there more ‘fake news’ today than in previous decades, especially before the web? I think there is probably more only because there are more sources of information. It used to be that you bought a newspaper to get some depth of reporting, complete with advertisements, or watched television to get ‘up-to-the-minute’ news. Of course it was all edited and curated. As time goes on we find out many of the truths we were told in the past were ‘well-massaged’ by the power elites. But if we are in a post-truth moment then we need to understand the tools we have at hand to deal with falsehoods.

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open, transparent & diverse

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There is a lot of talk about being in a post-truth (lying) era and the amount of fake news displayed on social media. Because of this, many well-known people have left social media platforms, with public announcements of course. Paul Prinsloo shows the disconnect we face when engaging with these platform monopolies: “Yes, I know Facebook uses my clicks and ‘likes’ to profile me. Yes I know the space is increasingly becoming creepy … Yes, I am increasingly aware of those watching. But for now, Twitter and Facebook are my oxygen that allows me to breathe.”

If you are already famous you don’t need social media. If you have a well-paying secure job, you do not need social media: yet. If you (still) have tenure, you do not need social media. Most of the rest of us need it: to stay current, to learn, to find work, to escape our geographical limitations.

“In other words, while being a privileged white guy working in a reasonably-prestigious university might mean that he can avoid the 21st century for a while, for the rest of us social tools enable us to make important connections, do innovation work, and increase our serendipity surface.” —Doug Belshaw

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it’s not a skills gap

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The lack of skills is not the main problem facing most organizations today, in spite of what many managers and executives might say.

Researchers Dave Swenson and Liesl Eathington identified several factors contributing to hiring challenges, but a widespread lack of skilled workers was not one them … The Iowa researchers’ conclusion? “When employers say there’s a skills gap, what they’re often really saying is they can’t find workers willing to work for the pay they’re willing to pay,” —GE Reports

Neither is a lack of tools the core issue in organizational performance. Many organizations have more tools than they need. I worked with a company that had several hundred software platforms and programs at its disposal. It still had issues around sharing knowledge, managing institutional memory, and collaborating across departments.

Tools and skills are easy-to-fill buckets, but meta-competencies of learning to learn and working in digital networks take significant time, effort, and support to fill. A long-term strategy to support these meta-competencies is lacking in most organizations today. Everyone wants a quick fix. Projects are designed around clear short-term deliverables. Few measure competencies for the long term.

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story skepticism

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I have been thinking about storytelling lately as a lot of people are talking about it as essential for business, leadership, and whatever ails you. I have discussed it a few times over the years and have reviewed these thoughts. It appears that in the network era, storytelling is being retrieved, especially through podcasting and videos. Stories can be the glue, holding information together in some semblance of order, for our brains to process into knowledge.

We are storytelling creatures. Shawn Callahan noted that, “Our memories evolved to hunt, gather & avoid danger. Now we have great memories for places, faces & emotions. Why stories are memorable.” Stories are a key factor in how we learn, especially socially. Roger Schank observed that, “Comprehension is mapping your stories onto mine.” Stories are how we best remember and a story can be thought of as what happens in the gap between expectations and results.

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sense-making with social media

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“Tweeting during a conference helps me consolidate my thoughts and capture key insights. Facebook helps me share resources. LinkedIn is a useful professional tool. However, it is blogging, such as this post, that is by far my strongest form of learning, as it involves a number of things that are all supported by researched learning theory, and which improve memory and recall:

  1. Reflection
  2. Generation
  3. Elaboration
  4. Retrieval
  5. Interleaved and varied practice
  6. Spaced practice
  7. Imagery
  8. Archiving”

—Donald Clark

What do you do to make sense of your learning? As Donald notes, sharing and posting on social media are weaker forms of learning than longer form blogging can be. However, low utility activities like retrieval and archiving can provide the fodder for higher utility sense-making skills such as generation and elaboration. Mastery comes through varied and spaced practice, supported by reflection. Using social media for learning requires an understanding of how each tool or platform can support your own sense-making.

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strategic transformation of workplace learning

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Is your learning and development team able to transform so it can support complex work, help people be more creative, and adapt to the changing nature of the digital workplace? Strategic transformation is more than changing what you work on.

“Strategic Transformation. This means changing the very essence of what ‘learning’ means in the company, through both a new understanding of how it happens in the workplace (i.e. not just through conventional training but as people carry out their daily jobs) and how performance problems can be solved in different ways. It also means that learning and performance improvement is no longer the sole remit of the L&D department, but something that everyone in the organisation – managers and employees alike – has responsibility for.” – Jane Hart

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learn like a gamer

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Learning is the new literacy. Personal computers are just one example. We buy new ones every few years. Operating systems change. Programs change, get replaced, or become obsolete. But we often continue with the same habits until something goes wrong. Few of us do the equivalent of ‘looking under the hood’. We learn enough to get our work done, but often do not take time to understand the underlying systems and logic.

By not being active learners we lose the agility to react quickly to changing situations. We have to take the time to keep learning. It’s an effort that too many of us avoid. When was the last time you learned a new computer program? How many books do you read? When did you try to master a new skill? These are things we need to make a priority. If not, we risk becoming obsolete before our time. Aiming for retirement is not a bad thing, but what happens when it is forced on us and we are not ready?

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deliberate practice

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The key to developing expertise is deliberate practice. While some of this can happen during formal instruction, expertise has to be developed outside the classroom, as that is where most of us spend our time. Expertise takes time to develop, but how can organizations support novices as they go through their journeys to expertise? Tom Gram has three posts that cover the research and application of deliberate practice based on the work of Dr. Anders Ericsson.

Practice & Development of Expertise: Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3

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implementing a useful model – 70:20:10

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The 70:20:10 framework is a useful model based on observations that generally, people learn 70% of what they need to do their job from experience. About 20% is learned from exposure to new tasks or environments. Only 10% is learned through formal education. These numbers are not firm but they provide a rule of thumb, especially for planning and resource allocation to support learning at work.

PKM-connectsThe most important aspect of 70:20:10 is that it requires leadership to hold the space so that workplace learning is connected through experience, exposure, and education.  Leaders have to promote learning and themselves master fast, relevant, and autonomous learning. There is no other way to address the many wicked problems facing us today. If work is learning and learning is the work, then leadership should be all about enabling learning. Holding space means protecting the boundaries so that people can work and learn.

Personal knowledge mastery is the core competency for each person working in the networked era. But organizations have to provide the support and remove barriers to learning. Leaders need to provide the space for learning.

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