Question:
As a learning professional, I am frustrated by what seems to be an obsessive focus on training’s shortcomings. I can’t attend a conference or listen to a webcast without hearing about what’s broken in learning and development. Sure, we have lots of opportunities to improve—every function does—but, surely, there is a lot going on in training and development that is positive. So, my question is this: What do we do right? What are strengths on which we can build to produce great results for our organizations and trainees?
Answer:
Great question! Take learning transfer as an example. Learning transfer is the process of putting learning to work in a way that improves performance. There is no question that in many programs, it is the weak link. But, you could also say that the learning transfer glass is partially full. There are many programs after which learning gets put to work in ways that really do improve results. So, rather than focusing on what is broken in learning transfer, we could explore what is working and start to build on those strengths.
That’s the fundamental rationale for appreciative inquiry. Appreciative inquiry is very different than traditional business problem-solving. Instead of always starting with “what’s wrong,” appreciative inquiry assumes that the potential—or capacity—for exceptional performance is already present in every organization; that there are many things already being done well, resulting in outstanding performance. The goal is to learn from and build on these strengths, rather than always looking to “fix problems.” Appreciative inquiry rejects the deficit approach and instead asks the question, how can we do more of what we are really good at to drive performance.
By way of illustration, compare how typical corporate problem-solving and appreciative inquiry would approach the same issue. In their excellent book, “Appreciative Inquiry,” Barrett and Fry frame the example this way: Suppose that you were in a company that was experiencing an employee turnover rate substantially higher than the industry average. The knee-jerk reaction is: “let’s figure out why 15% of our employees are leaving.” Appreciative inquiry would reframe the question as: “let’s find out why 85% of our employees choose to stay, so we can further strengthen those areas with the result that 90% or 95% choose to stay.” (Barrett & Fry, Appreciative Inquiry, Chagrin Falls, OH, Taos Institute, 2005) The first approach leads to a disheartening laundry list of what is broken; appreciative inquiry leads to creative and positive ideas to make those things that are working even better.
In October, I had the privilege of putting these ideas into practice on the topic of learning transfer with a large group of talented learning professionals from many different organizations at Fort Hill’s annual Learning Transfer Summit. We began the session by exploring what we currently are doing well, by having participants tell about a time or program in which learning transfer was outstanding. Using that as a positive platform, we then shifted to creating a future vision three years from now.
Building on the things we are already doing well, we were able to describe an exciting and positive future for our profession. We included the already taken actions and the impact they produce when we are at our best. The following is the future we envisioned through appreciative inquiry; I hope you will agree it is much more energizing than a list of problems to fix. Our thanks to all the LTS attendees who helped create it. Now let’s make it happen!
Vision Generated by Appreciative Inquiry
October 2014 – Much has happened in the three years since we met at the LTS in San Francisco to envision a positive future for learning and development.
Nowadays, learning is co-designed with our internal clients, so that business outcomes are clear and participant’s job relevance obvious. The learners’ perceptions of relevance and utility are tracked routinely, and programs are adjusted whenever a disconnect is detected.
Learning design emphasizes work as the practice field; the learning intervention is conceived as the catalyst that launches our participants onto the “Achievement Highway™.” Specific plans to support learning transfer are now built into all instructional designs. As a result, high levels of learning transfer are consistently achieved, producing competitive advantage; transformational business results are now the norm. Soft skills programs achieve the same levels of transfer and application as technical and compliance training.
The CEO (formerly the CLO of the organization) ensures that all leaders appreciate the strategic importance learning can have, provide support for their employees’ learning, and are active participants in the process. Performance improvement through learning is embraced as a shared responsibility between management and the training department. Demonstrated learning agility is a key criterion for selection as a high-potential employee. Leaders throughout the organization are exemplars of continuous learning and cite the ability to learn and adapt as an important factor in their success. Learning and development professionals have a seat at the table and a voice in the discussion of any new strategy; the CEO requires that every business plan includes a discussion of the new skills and knowledge needed for its execution. Senior business and learning leaders work together to develop an annual learning plan that is closely linked to the business strategy and focused on the highest priority needs and opportunities. Learning and development earned its seat at the table by delivering—and documenting—improved performance in business-relevant measures.
Across the entire enterprise, every participant is expected to deliver visible and valuable improvement as part of the learning process. Credit for completing programs is granted only when competent on-the-job application is apparent. Achievements are documented in a way that can be verified and shared broadly across the organization. Active measurement and evaluation ensure that learning is delivering on its promise, as well as continuously improves. The commitment to delivering and continuously improving business results has transformed the learning function from a cost center to an acknowledged contributor to top- and bottom-line performance.
This future was achieved by learning leaders who were courageous in their execution, who viewed themselves as true strategic partners, and who, as a result, took calculated risks to try new approaches to integrate learning into the business.
The Road Ahead
As we look forward to the New Year, let’s envision the future we want for ourselves and our learning colleagues. Let’s be mindful of what we already do well, and ask—through an appreciative inquiry—how we can use the elements of excellence that already exist in ourselves and our organizations to create the future we want.
To continue your learning, be sure to attend our upcoming complimentary webinar, “Using an Achievement Roadmap™ to Create Valuable Business Results,” on Tuesday, December 13, 2011 at 11:00am EST.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Question:
In the July Learning Alert, you talked about getting participants to tell an Achievement Story about putting their learning to work. Can you explain why and give an example?
Answer:
There are three reasons it is valuable to ask participants to tell their Achievement Stories.
- It gives participants a concrete finish line to shoot for. If they know that by a specific date, they will be expected to tell an Achievement Story, then they will need to have achieved something to talk about. If they know their manager will be included, that provides additional incentive.
- It also gives participants a way to communicate and get credit for their efforts and results.
- Lastly, achievement stories are powerful ways for the learning organization to communicate the value of training programs, both to management and to future attendees.
What Goes Into an Achievement Story?
The following questions will help participants frame their Achievement Story:
- What learning did you apply?
- What achievements/results are you most proud of?
- What has been the impact/benefit for you and the business?
- What advice do you have for others about how to use their learning to achieve results?
An Example
The following example is an achievement story told by a sales team leader following a program on holding more productive and authentic conversations:
- We recently lost a key $20 million/year client. After attending the course, we decided to put what we learned to work by scheduling a site visit to our recently departed customer to thank them for their past business and to have an authentic conversation about where we and our company had gone wrong.
- We called our client to ask if a team of us could come to talk with them about where we had failed them as a company. We applied our listening skills and avoided defending the past. As a result, we discovered what was wrong in the relationship between our two companies. We would never have reached this level of understanding had we not learned and used new and more effective communication skills.
- The impact was tremendous. Shortly after we met with them, they called us to say that they were going to give the business back and even expected it to increase.
- Our advice is “Don’t Wait!” Be bold in trying out what you’ve learned. You can’t keep doing the same thing and expect a different result. In this case, we tried a new (and admittedly less comfortable) approach, and we got a different—and much better—result.
Next Steps
Choose a strategically important course where it is vital for participants to apply what they learn.
Inform them that they will be expected to tell their Achievement Story and when. Include their managers and other key stakeholders. Consider using ResultsEngine® to help keep them on track and to automate the capture and dissemination of stories.
Select the most compelling stories, verify them, and tell them frequently to communicate the value of the program to the business sponsors and the value of learning transfer to participants.
To learn more, attend my upcoming complimentary webinar, “Using an Achievement Roadmap™ to Create Valuable Business Results,” on Tuesday, December 13, 2011 at 11:00am EST, where details on using the Achievement Roadmap™ will be given to help participants get great Achievement Stories as well as using ResultsEngine as a GPS to create even greater learning value.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Question:
I have been reading Rita Smith’s new book, Strategic Learning Alignment. She makes the point that learning organizations need to make a business case for learning. What about learning transfer? Is it possible to make a business case for investing time and resources in learning transfer?
Answer:
It is, and you should.
We agree whole-heartedly with Smith when she writes: “The only reason that learning functions exist is to drive business outcomes” (p. 10). Training and development drives business outcomes by equipping people with new skills and knowledge, that when applied to their work improve performance, resulting in better service, higher revenues, improved quality and so forth, which collectively produce a competitive advantage for the organization (Figure 1 below shows the path by which learning creates value).
It is clear from the sequence of events that realizing the business benefits depends on BOTH high-quality training to impart vital skills and knowledge AND on the transfer of those skills to the work of the individual and firm. When there is no transfer, there are no benefits.
Unfortunately, transfer is the weak link in most corporate training initiatives. For example, ESI recently polled 3,200 learning professionals about the effectiveness of learning transfer. The majority felt it was less than 50%, many much lower. In other words, in their organizations, more than half the training effort is wasted for lack of transfer to the job.
This, improving learning transfer, represents a huge opportunity for training and development to increase the value it delivers. That is why a recent research report by Bersin & Associates stated: “Based on our research, we expect learning transfer support to be a major differentiator for high-impact learning organizations in the next 10 years.”
The Payoff
Improving learning transfer makes sound economic sense. Here is an example based on not atypical numbers: XYZ company runs a program for 100 participants that costs $1,000 each. When they evaluate the results three months later, they find that only 20% of the participants applied what they learned; but those that did generated, on average, an additional $6,000 each for the company in new revenue and cost savings. So, the ROI is good: 20% on this investment of $100,000 (Table 1).
Table 1: ROI Analysis for Program A
| Cost per participant |
$1,000
|
| Number of participants |
100
|
| Total cost |
$100,000
|
| % successful transfer |
20%
|
| Return per participant who used what they learned |
$6,000
|
| Total return (100 X 20% X $6,000) |
$120,000
|
| ROI = (return – cost)/cost |
20%
|
The learning team, however, is convinced they can do better. So, they invest some of their time and resources in a learning transfer support system and materials. The effort increases the cost per participant by $200 each or 20%. On analysis three months later, they find they have only increased the transfer rate from 20% to 30%. So, the question from a business leader’s point of view is: Was spending the extra money worth it?
Now let’s look at the analysis for Program A+ (the same program + support for learning transfer) in Table 2.
Table 2: ROI Analysis for Program A+
| Cost per participant |
$1,200
|
| Number of participants |
100
|
| Total cost |
$120,000
|
| % successful transfer |
30%
|
| Return per participant who used what they learned |
$6,000
|
| Total return (100 X 30% X $6,000) |
$180,000
|
| ROI = (return – cost)/cost |
50%
|
The results are quite startling. Increasing the cost of the program 20% by investing in learning transfer increases the ROI two-and-a-half times! Note that the value per participant who used their learning did not change; it shouldn’t since the course was exactly the same. All that changed was the percent of people who diligently applied what they learned.
We often hear learning professionals say that they have no additional budget for supporting learning transfer. If that is true, then an alternative that should be evaluated is: What would happen if you trained fewer employees and used the cost savings to support learning transfer? Would that produce better results than continuing to train so many with such a low yield?
Let’s do the math. If we use the preceding example of Program A+ (with support) but instead of adding budget for learning transfer, we reduce the number of participants trained so that we stay within the $100,000 allocated, then the results would look like this:
Table 3: ROI Analysis for Program A+ with Fewer Participants
| Cost per participant |
$1,200
|
| Number of participants |
83
|
| Total cost |
$99,600
|
| % successful transfer |
30%
|
| Return per participant who used what they learned |
$6,000
|
| Total return (83 X 30% X $6,000) |
$149,400
|
| ROI = (return – cost)/cost |
50%
|
Surprisingly, this approach produces both a higher total dollar return as well as a higher percent ROI than the base case (the program with no transfer support). In other words, you can often create greater value by training fewer people and investing the savings to make sure that those you do train put their learning to work.
What accounts then for the huge increase in value realized? It is because the current level of transfer is so low. In most programs, 75% or more of the potential value goes unrealized (Figure 2 below). We only need to capture a small portion of the unrealized value to dramatically improve the overall outcome.
Don’t take our word for it. Prove it to yourself by plugging numbers for your own training program into our free online Impact Calculator.
The bottom line is this: There is a strong business case for investing some of next year’s budget and time in support for learning transfer. The investment will be repaid many times over in superior results. Indeed, if business managers appreciated how much value was being “left on the table,” they would want to know why you aren’t investing in learning transfer.
Want to learn more?
Attend ASTD’s Learning Transfer Conference in November, where you will have the opportunity to do a deep dive into creating a healthy transfer climate and exchange best practices with learning professionals around the country. To learn more about using the learning transfer management system ResultsEngine®, click here.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.Bersin & Associates, a leading talent development research and consulting firm, has just released a new Research Bulletin on learning transfer.
The report, authored by Bersin senior analyst, Janet Clarey, emphasizes that learning transfer—the process of applying new skills and knowledge from training to the job—is essential for learning to produce business value. The report also notes that “having a process in place to support transfer of learning is often missing in the design of corporate L&D.” “Based on our research,” Bersin concludes,¹
This finding is consistent with the research by Fort Hill that led to the publication of The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning: “The Fourth Discipline that characterizes high-impact learning organizations is that they drive the transfer of learning back to the work of the enterprise. They do not leave it to chance or individual initiative. Instead, they put in place systems and processes to actively encourage and manage the transfer process.” ²
Until recently, however, providing support for learning transfer was a time-consuming, mostly manual process. That is certainly a contributing factor to Bersin’s finding that “more than one-quarter of learning leaders say improving transfer of learning support is a significant challenge.”
Fortunately, there are now alternatives that make support for learning transfer efficient, scalable, and economical. The Bersin report goes on to profile the leading learning support tool from Fort Hill, ResultsEngine®, and three examples of organizations that have used ResultsEngine and the 6Ds® process to boost the impact of their learning programs.
ResultsEngine is an easy-to-implement, software-as-a-service tool that automates the learning transfer support process. A dashboard of key metrics, such as the progress learners are making toward their goals (see Figure 1 below), provides learning leaders with key insights into the critical post-program application period, so that they can focus on business outcomes.
At Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, according to the Bersin report, “The focus on business outcomes has meant L&D is now able to get behavioral changes and show ROI. A recent coaching skills program resulted in more employee engagement and optimism, as well as a 50 percent improvement in skills over those employees not using ResultsEngine®.”
A major pharmaceutical company highlighted in the report implemented ResultsEngine—(formerly Friday5s®) after a leadership development program. “This follow-on, the company found, was much easier with the Fort Hill software than when it had tried to do post-program support manually.” Even more important, “The ROI reported by participants using ResultsEngine was almost 50 percent greater than for the same program without it.”
The full Bersin report is available for free download on our website under Articles. To learn more about how you can boost the results of your learning programs with ResultsEngine and the 6Ds® process, email us at: info@forthillcompany.com.
At this time, I’d like to invite you and your colleagues to join me for our upcoming complimentary webinar, “Turn on the Results; Plug the all new ResultsEngine into your Training Programs,” to be held this Wednesday, August 10, 2011 at 12:00pm EDT.
References
¹ Bersin & Associates (2011). How to Support and Improve Learning Transfer Using Fort Hill Company’s ResultsEngine®. Research Bulletin 6(29) June, 2011.
² Wick, C, Pollock, R and Jefferson, A (2010). The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning: How to Turn Training and Development into Business Results. San Francisco: Pfeifer.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.Question: I am launching a program in September with 500 participants. How can I engage them to apply what they’ve learned in a way that leads to valuable improvement?
Answer: I may have an answer to your question in what I have been working on for the last six months. The answer goes right to the heart of motivating, empowering, and enabling participants to put what they learn to work…
I call it the Achievement Roadmap™.
This approach motivates participants to use what they’ve learned and supports them in doing so. Here are the three steps.
Achievement Roadmap Process
Step 1: Define an Achievement Story™ as the finish line of your program.
Imagine if your participants arrived at your learning program knowing that they are expected to tell an Achievement Story of visible and valuable improvement 10 weeks after your program. An Achievement Story is an example of something they accomplished by using what they learned that both they and the organization can be proud of. The objective is now for participants to apply their learning, so that they will have a strong story to tell, rather than merely attend a program.
Step 2: Give participants an Achievement Roadmap™ and GPS.
If the destination of your program is Achievement, then it is like going on a trip to a place you have not been before. When I am going someplace new, I first consult a roadmap and plan a route from where I am to where I want to go. Then I use the turn-by-turn navigation of a GPS to keep me on track.
The Achievement Roadmap shown above begins with the Course in the lower left. The highway across the bottom of the page is called The Same Old Way. It leads straight to the Opportunity Junkyard, because if your participants continue to do things the same old way, rather than apply their new skills and knowledge, then all the effort that went into your program becomes learning scrap and the opportunity is wasted. The Opportunity Junkyard shows your participants that there is a cost if they do not apply what they’ve learned.
The road that leads to Achievement turns off the Same Old Way onto the Achievement Highway at a town called Startup. This route leads to a more attractive destination, one where participants will be able to tell their Achievement Story about the value they created. Along the way, your participants will pass through Early Win, Visible Application, and Valuable Improvement.
Now that we have a clear picture of the destination and route, we need a GPS system to help stay on course and get back on track in the event of detours or other obstacles. ResultsEngine® is the ideal GPS for navigating the learning transfer journey to arrive at Achievement. In this case, GPS stands for Guidance, Process and Support.
ResultsEngine® is an online learning transfer support system that has waypoints at which participants and their managers check their progress to make sure they are progressing along the Achievement Highway. Because we know the ultimate goal of the program, as well as the towns and turns along the route, ResultsEngine can be customized just like a GPS to supply the specific content, coaching, and collaboration that will keep your participants moving toward their destination.
Step 3: Implement a scalable process.
As a learning leader, you need to provide guidance, process and support (GPS) for your participants’ journey from classroom to results. The problem is that you have so many participants to support. You will need a scalable solution that automates all of the routine tasks and requires minimal administration. An Achievement Roadmap provides a standardized process. ResultsEngine provides a GPS that works for one to one thousand or more sojourners.
All you need to get started is to describe the kind of Achievement Story you want your participants to tell and a roster of the participants.
ResultsEngine also captures your participants’ Achievement Stories in a way that makes it easy for you to show line leaders the program’s value to the company—what your participants achieved and how they achieved it.
An added benefit is that your participants will have an electronic record of their journey and achievements to share with those who helped them and with their manager during performance reviews.
I will share examples in a future Learning Alert of some of the Achievement Stories told by participants including what enabled them to make such visible and valuable improvements in such a short time.
At this time, I’d like to invite you and your colleagues to join me for a complimentary webinar, “Using an Achievement Roadmap™ to Create Valuable Business Results,” to be held on October 7, 2011 at 11:00am EDT, during which I will provide more details and examples of using the Achievement Roadmap™, Achievement Stories, and ResultsEngine as the GPS to create greater value from learning.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.At Fort Hill, we have been working to improve learning transfer for the past 10 years. Over that time, we have accumulated deep insight into the factors that influence learning transfer—the process of putting learning to work in ways that improve results.
We recently had the opportunity to review the statistics for more than 66,000 participants in learning programs that have used our ResultsEngine® transfer support tool. We also surveyed recent users at one company to gain additional insights. Here is what we learned:
1. Managers have a big impact on transfer efforts.
Our research reinforces prior studies of learning transfer. A learner’s direct supervisor has a profound influence on whether he or she will make the effort to utilize new skills and knowledge at work.
In ResultsEngine, participants are prompted to reflect and record progress on their goals for learning transfer every two weeks for two months. As part of that process, they can request feedback from their manager (and/or coaches).
Analysis of the data for 66,000 participants showed a strong correlation between the managerial response rate and the number of updates completed. In other words, the more interest managers showed (by providing feedback through ResultsEngine), the more effort participants made to transfer their learning (as measured by how many additional updates they did). Figure 1 below shows the impact of managers and feedback on post-course effort:
© 2011 Fort Hill Company. All rights reserved.
Learning transfer is maximized when participants have a manager who actively encourages application of new learning. In our database, participants whose manager provided written feedback completed 50% more updates than those who had no manager in the system or whose manager failed to provide feedback.
Practical Implications for training and development:
To deliver business results, learning needs to be transferred from the class to the job. Managers have a huge impact on whether or not that happens. Training departments that invest time, technology, and creativity in engaging managers realize a greater return on their training efforts. Facilitate the process by providing on-line tools like ResultsEngine and easy-to-follow coaching guides like those in Getting Your Money’s Worth from Training and Development.
2. Participants value on-going collaboration.
In a classroom or virtual setting, a significant portion of the learning occurs when peers exchange experiences, ideas, and best practices. ResultsEngine is designed to help foster on-going collaboration and peer-to-peer learning during the post-class learning transfer stage. Figure 2 below shows the collaboration page in ResultsEngine:
© 2011 Fort Hill Company. All rights reserved.
When we surveyed participants who had used ResultsEngine, 80% reported that they had reviewed other participants’ updates and 68% agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “I found it valuable to review what others in my class were doing.”
Practical Implications for training and development:
This finding indicates that program designers can extend and amplify the value of training by facilitating social networking and informal learning following training programs. Web-based technologies, like ResultsEngine or similar systems, are the most practical and scalable way to encourage ongoing knowledge- and experience-sharing.
3. Periodic reflection boosts progress.
Forum Corporation’s Principles of Workplace Learning concluded that the best form of practice associated with learning was alternating periods of action and reflection because “reflection is the motor that propels the cycle—without it, learning slows or stops completely” (Atkinson & Davis, 2003, p. 25).
ResultsEngine is designed to periodically prompt learners to stop, reflect, and plan for further action during the immediate post-course period. Analysis of 66,000 participants’ records indicated that 79% of those who do one update, do more, suggesting that they find value in the process. To test this hypothesis directly, we polled a subset of participants who had used the system recently. Of the 161 respondents, 72% agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “The process of periodically updating my progress helped me improve my performance.”
Practical Implications for training and development:
Because improved performance is the ultimate objective of learning and development, program designers can help improve performance by instituting post-course processes that causes participants to pause, revisit the course material, and report on their progress periodically.
Why Learning Transfer Is More Important Than Ever
Training and development is vital for companies and employees to stay competitive. But whether training delivers on its promise depends not only on the quality of the learning but also on the effectiveness of learning transfer. The greatest training in the world will fail if it never gets applied on the job.
That’s why these insights are so important. It also explains why Cal Wick’s and Andy Jefferson’s presentations on learning transfer at the ASTD Conference in Orlando last month were “standing room only” and why the April Learning Transfer Conference sold out completely.
We are convinced that improving learning transfer is the single greatest opportunity learning professionals have to increase the value delivered by training and development. If we really want to make a difference for our organizations and learners, improving transfer is the missing ingredient.
For more information about Fort Hill’s learning transfer support tools and the 6Ds® process, please visit: www.forthillcompany.com.
References
Atkinson, T., & Davis, J. (2003). Principles of workplace learning: Insights and tools for performance improvement. Boston: Forum Corp.
Jefferson, A., Pollock, R., & Wick, C. (2009). Getting Your Money’s Worth From Training and Development. San Francisco: Pfeiffer.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.Learning and development delivers competitive advantage provided participants transfer their learning to address real business needs. Fort Hill Company was established 12 years ago to help organizations accelerate learning transfer and boost business results. Today, we are even more passionate about the importance of learning transfer support because we have seen its impact in organizations large and small.
Over a hundred organizations have enhanced the business impact in thousands of different kinds of learning and development programs by utilizing ResultsEngine (previously called Friday5s®). For example:
At HP, ResultsEngine helped drive a large-scale change initiative that created a 15x return on investment. “The post-workshop support system created a reinforcing cycle of follow-up action, coaching, feedback, and measurement to assure that participants were learning and manifesting the desired new behaviors, and that the new behaviors were producing the desired business value.” (The Journal of Organizational Excellence)
Pfizer used Jack Phillips’ ROI methodology to assess the impact of their leadership development program. When ResultsEngine was added to the program, they reported that the ROI increased by almost 50%. (Increasing the Value of Leadership Training at Pfizer)
As good as the results have been to date, we set out to make ResultsEngine even better. We are pleased to announce the release of a completely redesigned ResultsEngine that incorporates our years of experience along with suggestions from our clients. The result is an even more effective, powerful, and easy-to-use system.
Here are just a few of the exciting new capabilities:
A LeaderView Dashboard that lets learning professionals analyze all the post-course transfer efforts and results from any number of iterations of a program, involving hundreds or thousands of participants in the program:
© 2011 Fort Hill Company. All rights reserved.
The redesigned MemberView encourages collaboration and on-going dialogue among the group as well as facilitating coaching:
© 2011 Fort Hill Company. All rights reserved.
Other new and enhanced features include:
- Email wizards to make it even faster and easier for managers to support their direct reports.
- True multi-language capability throughout. ResultsEngine is already available in 10 languages and can accommodate programs in virtually any language.
- The ability to identify users by level, title, business unit, function and so forth to support later analysis by any or all of these characteristics.
We have also recently introduced a streamlined ResultsEngine Express™ for organizations that want to start enjoying the benefits of learning transfer support quickly and efficiently.
To see a five-minute video highlighting these and other capabilities of the new ResultsEngine, click here. For additional information about boosting the business impact of your programs, please email us at: info@forthillcompany.com. Additionally, we’d love to hear from you about your thoughts and ideas for future enhancements to ResultsEngine.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Question:
In our jobs as learning and development professionals we spend the vast majority of our time and resources on content creation or acquisition, administration of learning, and delivery with very little time spent on learning transfer and post-program support. Are these really the highest value places to expend our energy and resources?
Answer:
Great question! We have been focusing on this issue for some time. If you examine all of the possible places we focus our time and resources in the learning profession and those which have the potential to produce the greatest impact and alignment with management expectations, there is a disconnect. The Forum Corporation research shown below exemplifies the disconnect between what management wants and where we spend our time and resources. It showcases the opportunity we have to reallocate our effort and resources so as to increase our chance of producing great business results.
© 1995 Forum Corp. Customer Driven Training Organization.
If you examine the available research, it is clear that the vast majority of our learning and development resources go to content, delivery, and administration. If we think about the question from the standpoint of how to reallocate to increase business impact, two options are at the top of the list: driving learning transfer, and reorienting our focus away from activity and onto results using enhanced evaluation and measurement strategies.
Learning Transfer: It is no secret that improving learning transfer strategies can significantly impact the value created by learning. Unfortunately, all too frequently learning transfer is either an afterthought or not considered at all. Truly effective techniques to drive learning transfer begin long before the formal instructional period and continue long after. A primary reason we are so enamored of the new finish line for learning concept is because it implies the need to begin focusing our time and resources on treating learning as a process rather than an event.
© 2011 Fort Hill Company. All rights reserved.
As with any other business process, when resources are committed to maximizing return from learning, the likelihood of producing significant value goes up appreciably. One of the original factors that drove our decision to write The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning was our opportunity to work with companies that were focused on learning transfer as the missing ingredient to producing great business results from learning. The 6Ds® are a methodology for learning process improvement that facilitates reaching “The New Finish Line for Learning.”
If you want to achieve rapid impact from redeploying resources to a new learning transfer strategy, there are two places to begin the quest. The first is to put in place a learning transfer management system like ResultsEngine® to keep learning top of mind and encourage participants to engage in deliberate practice post-program. Tightly coupled with and made scalable by the use of a system like ResultsEngine, is to ensure that managers of participants are engaged with their direct report both before and after the program. Pre-program, have managers inquire about the value their direct report will create as a result of going to the program. Post-program, managers need to act in a support capacity that goes beyond simply offering platitudes about performance.
Evaluation and Measurement: The other place where there is a clear disconnect is in the measurement and evaluation arena. The historical evaluation focus in learning and development has been on activity, i.e., dollars spent, hours of training, butts in seats, the facilitator. While we agree that these are important internal operational measures for learning and development to track, they do not ultimately get to the critical question: Did the program deliver the promised results needed by the business to drive competitive advantage? To get the answer to that question, you need an evaluation strategy that is designed as part of the overall design of the program itself and that focuses on ascertaining whether or not the training contributed in a meaningful way to the performance objectives the program was designed to serve.
A great starting point for developing an evaluation and measurement strategy is to begin with the end in mind and get answers to two simple questions:
- Who should define what success looks like? (A tip – it’s not the learning department; it should always be the business sponsor(s) who will benefit if the program is a success);
- Once you know who will define success, then ask them what business need will be met if the program is a success.
Once you have answered these two questions, then you can begin designing an evaluation approach that will enable you to showcase whether or not the program delivered the value defined by the business sponsor.
There are many ways to reorient our effort and resources to increase our chances of producing great business results after learning. A small reallocation of our time and budget to ensure we drive learning transfer and create sound evaluation strategies will yield significant dividends. Thank you for the question, I look forward to hearing your thoughts. I would also like to invite you and your colleagues to attend our upcoming complimentary webinar, “Turn on the Results; Plug the all new ResultsEngine® into your Training Programs,” on Tuesday, May 3 at 11:00am EDT.
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You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Question:
How do I make Learning Transfer a reality for our participants? Many of them come with the idea of “learn and leave” vs. “learn and achieve.” What can I do to help make my priority a priority for them?
Answer:
I like the way you posed the question of getting your participants to move from an attitude of “learn and leave” to “learn and achieve.” This is in line with our definition of Learning Transfer, which is “the process of putting learning to work in a way that improves performance.” Your employees need to understand that “the real work begins when the training ends.” That is, their training is not finished until they have used what they have learned to improve their work.
To help make Learning Transfer a reality for your participants, let me give you a checklist and then some ideas on how to execute what’s listed.
Participant Learning Transfer Checklist
- ___ I can immediately apply what I learned in my work.
- ___ What I learned provides a clearly better approach.
- ___ What I learned will solve a problem or create an opportunity.
- ___ I will get visible credit for achievement.
Immediate Applicability
Imagine that you are a participant in your program and that you have just returned to your work. From such a participant’s perspective, can you clearly articulate how and where you would apply what you have just learned?
Immediate applicability is a key lever to make Learning Transfer a priority. We see this every time in our 6Ds® Workshops when we ask, “What makes it the easiest for you to apply what you learned?“ The most common answer is, “I have an immediate opportunity to use it in my work.”
Here’s a quick test you can do to see if you have applicability nailed. Can you identify several examples to share with your participants about where this learning can be applied in the kind of work they do day to day? Then share it with them to get their feedback on whether your examples ring true and will be valuable enough that what they just learned will translate into priority actions they can immediately apply.
Clearly Better Approach
This next test is a step higher. Is the solution your participants will learn significantly better than their current best practice? To do something in a different way requires time and energy, so the only way to make Learning Transfer a priority is for participants to be able to see that the new learning will help them create visibly improved results. Otherwise, your participants will not make the effort.
To see if you passed this test from the participants’ point of view, ask them if what they learn will merit priority action compared to everything else they have on their plate.
Bring a Problem to Solve
This serves as both a final test and first step for Learning Transfer to become a reality. Given the work your participants are doing, what is a problem or opportunity you could ask them to bring? I learned this approach from Pete Cage of Agilent Technologies, because Agilent always has participants in their Manager Programs bring a real world challenge that what they learn during the program can solve. The easy way to think about this is how can you help your participants bring “work to learning” and then “learning to work.”
For example, when I teach the 6Ds Virtual Workshop, I ask each participant to bring a course they are responsible for to apply the 6Ds to. This helps me set-up the question of applicability and value because by the end of our workshops, each person has to give a presentation about where they have created the greatest value using the 6Ds.
Visible Credit for Achievement
If your participants know that others will give them credit for their efforts and improvements, they are much more likely to make Learning Transfer a priority. Here are three ways you can ensure that your participants get the credit they deserve:
- Cue your participants about how to cue their colleagues to look for the improvements they are making. This does several things. By going public with others, your participants are much more likely to continue to take action and make progress.
- Another way to do this is to automate the communication process. For example in ResultsEngine®, the managers of participants typically get a copy of their final update. Because participants know this will happen, they most often take advantage of it so that their managers will know what they have accomplished.
- Finally, suggest to your participants that they take their workplace learning achievement stories to their annual performance review. If your participants discuss how they are doing their work better or differently because of what you taught them, they will give themselves a competitive advantage. Imagine the power of going into a performance review with a brief description of how you have applied what you learned and the improved results this new approach is having.
I invite you to share with me your best practices to make learning transfer a priority for your participants. My email is wick@forthillcompany.com. I would also like to invite you and your colleagues to join me for a complimentary webinar, “How to Make Learning Transfer a Priority for Training Participants,” on Tuesday, April 5 at 11:00am EST.
Join the conversation: The 6Ds LinkedIn Group and the FHC Blog
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.In the Chinese calendar, the Year of the Rabbit begins February 3, 2011. The Year of the Rabbit is a good time to stop, reassess, and begin anew.
In learning and development, 2011 should be the Year of Learning Transfer. This is a favorable year for talent development professionals worldwide to stop, reassess, and start with a renewed conviction about the importance of learning transfer and their responsibility to influence it.
Economic Growth Provides New Opportunities
The good news is that an economic recovery is underway. It isn’t happening as quickly as we all would like, and some industries are still lagging; but, nevertheless, training budgets are finally trending upward again.
The strategic question for learning leaders is how they will invest the additional resources they garner. One way, of course, is to rebuild the structures and approaches they had before the crash. That would fulfill Einstein’s definition of “insanity”—to continue doing the same thing and expect a different result. The alternative is to step back and take a different perspective on training’s mission and how best to achieve this within the new demands of today’s economy.
Competitive Pressure Demands Greater Productivity
While it is true that the money supply is improving, it is equally true that competitive pressures are as great as or greater than ever. Companies everywhere must constantly seek greater productivity in every function. Training is not exempt.
In recent years, training departments have focused primarily on the cost side of the equation—reducing cost by switching to e-learning, virtual classrooms, mobile learning, and so forth. But that strategy can only be extended so far. Ultimately, “you cannot save your way to success.” You have to improve effectiveness as well as efficiency.
And, from the business’s perspective, effectiveness means improved on-the-job performance. That’s the new finish line for learning, and achieving it requires effective learning transfer in addition to great learning (Figure 1).
Learning Transfer Is Training’s Achilles’ Heel
The fact is that while there is a lot of great training happening these days, learning transfer remains the weak link between training and results. When we recently asked 500 learning leaders what percent of participants actually improved their performance after training, the average response was 16%. When we asked the C-suite officers of a multi-billion dollar company, they said 10%.
Only one-quarter of respondents to a recent McKinsey & Company study said that their training programs measurably improved business performance. The problem is a lack of learning transfer between the training and the job. This is a problem that learning professionals need to address if we want to avoid yet another cycle of boom and bust. That’s in part why ASTD is sponsoring a series of live and virtual workshops this year to help members improve learning transfer.
Technical Advances Create New Capabilities
2011 should be the year of learning transfer because training needs to deliver greater value to justify greater investment, and because we finally have the tools, systems, and processes, like ResultsEngine®, to make support for learning transfer practical, scalable, and affordable.
Moreover, it makes economic sense. Comparative studies have demonstrated that adding learning transfer support boosts training’s value—including financial ROI (Wick, et al., 2010). In other words, you can get greater value from the same training program just by adding transfer support. Are you up to the challenge of producing—and proving—REAL results from your programs? Take the 6Ds Challenge, to see how you stack up against best practices, then Contact us to find out how we can help you extract greater value from the training you already provide.
Are You Results Ready?
Are you ready for the Year of Learning Transfer? To learn how you can build a stronger business case for Learning Transfer in your organization, please sign up for our FREE upcoming webinar, The Business Case For Learning Transfer, to be held on March 10, 2011.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.-
Question:
Do you have any insights on how I can utilize the limited amount of L&D resources we will have available in 2011 to get the greatest impact?
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Answer:
Yes, we do, as a result of our research for the second edition of The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning and two studies we recently completed. Both have strengthened our conviction that the single best opportunity for learning and development organizations to increase their value is to take greater ownership and invest more in learning transfer.
It’s important that we do so. The McKinsey & Company study that Andy Jefferson discussed in the November LearningAlert! raises serious concerns about the effectiveness of training. Only one-quarter of the respondents said their training programs measurably improved business performance. McKinsey concluded, “The most important failures occur outside the classroom. By focusing on creating a receptive mind-set for training before it happens—and ensuring a supportive environment afterward—companies can dramatically improve the business impact of their training programs.”
We concur because we continue to see organizations get additional value from the same training when they add post-course learning transfer support with online tools like ResultsEngine®.
Additional insights come from a study we conducted as part of our continuous improvement efforts. We surveyed all the participants from a company that had used ResultsEngine in the past 12 months. Of the 161 responses, 72% agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “The process of periodically updating my progress helped me improve my performance.” Respondents also confirmed the value of social networking through these tools: 80% looked at their classmates responses, and 68% agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “I found it valuable to review what others in my class were doing.”
In a second study, we analyzed 66,000 users from the ResultsEngine and Friday5s® web-based transfer support tools to gain insight into what drives learning transfer.
The findings were unequivocal: managerial engagement is vital. In ResultsEngine, participants can ask for feedback on their progress from their manager. The more interest managers showed (by providing feedback through the system), the more effort participants made to transfer their learning (as measured by how many updates they completed). Participants whose managers made the effort to provide feedback completed 50% more updates than those without any manager involvement. More effort to apply learning translates into greater performance improvement.
Amazingly, the influence of managers is so strong that just including managers in the participants’ online profile increased their post-course efforts! Participants whose ResultsEngine profile included their manager’s name completed, on average, 1/3 more updates than participants who did not have a manager as part of their profile—even when the manager provided no written feedback.
Having a coach or “learning transfer” buddy also positively affected post-course transfer efforts, but to a much smaller degree than having managers involved. This confirms an American Express study that concluded, “An immediate leader has the potential to either make or break any training effort.”
The bottom line is that if you want to boost learning’s impact with limited resources, invest in learning transfer tools and take steps to be sure managers are informed and engaged. Focusing on learning transfer will create a lot more value for you and your organization than other more expensive initiatives such as adding new courses or hiring inspirational speakers. Contact us to learn how.
Join the conversation: The 6Ds LinkedIn Group and the FHC Blog
Happy New Year from all of us at Fort Hill!
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Question:
I recently received a copy of the October 2010 McKinsey Quarterly article titled Getting More From Your Training Programs. I was very interested in the degree of alignment between the recommendations contained in the article and your 6Ds™ model that seems designed to make those suggested improvements a reality. The article makes some specific recommendations about how to get more from training. Could you please share your views on how to use the 6Ds to bring the McKinsey recommendations to life i.e. to get great business results?
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Answer:
We were delighted to see the article published by McKinsey regarding increasing the business impact from training. We agree that it aligns well with our broader message that learning should always be designed, delivered and supported in a way that will produce the maximum benefit to the business. The article’s authors (Aaron DeSmet, Monica McGurk, and Elizabeth Schwartz), highlighted five principal areas of focus: three which occur before training and two that are applicable after the formal instructional period. Let’s look at each recommendation and how Fort Hill’s 6Ds can be used to create a strategy for improvement.
Before Training:
The McKinsey authors correctly point out that we need to pay close attention to principles of adult learning. It is fundamental to adult learning that there be a clear line of sight to why a learning participant is going to expend the effort and energy to develop a new skill. In D2, Design the Complete Experience, a core area of focus is to ensure that participants come to the session with a clear and positive sense about why they are going to training and how the training aligns with their priority work as well as enables them to perform that work more successfully. This will make the process of “choosing to learn” much easier for participants and help drive higher learning transfer rates.
The McKinsey article also calls notice to the importance of learner mindset. We have long recognized that expectations strongly influence an employee’s decision to fully participate in and utilize new learning. In The Six Disciplines book, we make the case that expectations will significantly influence outcomes. The expectations range from preconceived ideas about the work that training addresses to the actual training program itself. One very positive way to influence this is to ensure that participants are invited to the training in a way that serves to make relevance and WIIFM explicit. Try looking at invitations or descriptions of your learning programs. Would they motivate you to want to attend and then apply the learning? Is it clear from the description how the learning will impact their work? If not, try crafting a new invitation that will “sell” people on the program’s value to them and your organization.
Getting the support of leaders is also a key point made by the McKinsey authors. We agree completely. Permeating all of the 6Ds is the idea that we need to have leader support in all elements of the process. This begins in D1, Defining Business Outcomes, by engaging leaders to ensure that the needs of the business are well understood and the learning is meeting those needs. It then extends throughout the learning process in the form of pre-program meetings between participants and their managers to set objectives that are tied to the work of the business and define practice opportunities post-program.
Back in the Workplace:
Another point of agreement between the McKinsey authors and Fort Hill is the critical need to reinforce new skills. Much research has been done regarding how people develop new skills. The general agreement is that learners must engage in deliberate practice after a learning intervention to begin assimilating the new skill and overcoming old habits. D4, Drive Learning Transfer, and D5, Deploy Performance Support, specifically deal with the concept of driving post-program learning transfer in an environment (transfer climate) that includes direct engagement from a learning participant’s manager and the opportunity to practice new skills with support and coaching. Our ResultsEngine® learning transfer technology is designed to support and facilitate this post-program period by enabling practice, coaching, content delivery and collaboration.
The final and critical area focused on by the authors was the need to measure impact. McKinsey research found that less than 30% of companies surveyed used any kind of metric that measured the effectiveness of training. As we often point out in D6, Document Results, there is no way to know if you have hit a target if you are blindfolded. That is why we feel it is so important in D1, Define Business Outcomes, that the business need and ultimate measure of success are agreed to with the business leaders before the design of the program commences. By doing D1 well, you will then be well equipped to move onto D6 and document the value the learning has delivered in terms of improved business performance. We then encourage learning professionals to use that information to ensure that continuous improvement is a core part of all learning and change initiatives.
The authors sum up by pointing out that learning can fail for many reasons, but the most important of those reasons occur outside the classroom. On this point we are in complete agreement. Our research has shown that in most instances it is not the instructional portion that breaks down, it is what happens before and after. That is why we encourage all learning professionals to design a complete learning experience that accounts for all four phases of learning:
The goal of L&D should be to design a Complete Learning Experience. When all four phases of learning are comprehensively addressed, the systemic breakdowns which derail learning transfer can be mitigated, and great business results can be achieved.
We are very excited to see a company of McKinsey’s stature examining the learning transfer issue and feel that their conclusions are completely in line with our original thinking when we first put pen to paper to create the Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning back in 2004. The level of awareness raised by the article and the increasing body of work supporting innovative ways to drive learning transfer has the potential to make 2011 the year learning transfer takes center stage in our industry and we collectively start delivering on the explicit promise of learning and development: improved business results! Thank you for the great question.
Join the conversation: The 6Ds LinkedIn Group and the FHC Blog
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Question:
I was unable to attend your recent Learning Transfer Summit. Could you please share a few highlights? Also, when will next year’s Summit be held? I want to be sure to save the dates.
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Answer:
We are sorry you couldn’t join us this year— feedback from those in attendance indicates that this was our best Summit yet! We have outlined below some of the key learning points from the Summit along with some of the fun anecdotes. By the time you have read this email, I hope you have a clear understanding of:
- What was covered
- The benefits participants took away from the Summit
- And, at least one thing you might try differently tomorrow
Fort Hill’s annual Learning Transfer Summit brings together some of the industry’s top thought leaders, progressive learning professionals, and FHC’s clients and friends to share ideas, insights, challenges, and what’s working to advance the value of learning and development. This year’s Summit was held in Philadelphia and was organized around four themes:
- Partnering for Performance
- Learning as a Process
- Driving Learning Transfer
- Delivering on the Promise
The first theme, Partnering for Performance, focused on how learning organizations can strengthen their partnerships with the business. This session’s keynote speaker was Keith Dugdale from Brisbane, Australia, who shared thought-provoking insights from his best-selling book, Smarter Selling. Keith explained how learning and development leaders need to give their internal clients value in every meeting. He also explained how L&D leaders can use the first minute of any meeting to demonstrate the value they will bring to the meeting, inviting the client to want to be in the meeting:
I – I am meeting with you today to discuss Learning and Development’s agenda for 2011.
We – We will need to talk first about your organizational priorities so that I understand them. Then, we can discuss how L&D can support those priorities.
You – By the end of our meeting, you will have a clearer picture of how we can support the business in achieving its top priorities and what you can do to help make this a reality.
Does that sound like a good use of our time today?Keith’s keynote was followed with breakout presentations by Maryann Billington, a partner from Korn/Ferry and Diane Hinton, head of Plastipak Academy, who shared what they have done to become trusted business partners.
The second theme, Learning as a Process, featured a keynote from Al Switzler, co-founder of Vital Smarts and co-author of the best-selling books, Influencer and Crucial Conversations. Drawing on the groundbreaking research in Influencer, Al explained that there are six sources of influence that impact ability and motivation at the personal, social, and structural level.
© VitalSmarts, All Rights Reserved
Successful change agents employ multiple sources of influence. Fort Hill’s 6Ds methodology applies the following concept to training and development: to truly change behavior and improve performance requires managing the transfer climate—aligning multiple sources of influence to help people change in a positive direction. Robert Sachs, Vice President of Learning and Development at Kaiser Permanente and Gary Walljasper, Head of Organizational Development for Principal Financial, explained how they are leveraging the 6Ds in their learning organizations to establish a common language and manage learning as a results-focused process.
Fort Hill’s Chief Learning Officer, Roy Pollock, led off the third module—Driving Learning Transfer—with an exploration of why it is vital for learning organizations to invest time and resources to improve learning transfer. The performance improvement the business is looking for is the product of learning and learning transfer—both must be present to achieve training’s goal.
Karen Rice, Sales Training Director at Unum, discussed the strategy and tools that Unum uses to maximize learning transfer and shorten the time to productivity for new hires. Geoff Rip, Strategy Director of the Institute for Learning Practitioners illustrated what happens when learning transfer is left to chance:
The final module, Delivering on the Promise, began with a panel discussion featuring Andrew Wojecki from ExxonMobil, Maryann Billington from Korn/Ferry, and Glenn Hughes from KLA-Tencor. Glenn stressed that to deliver maximum value, learning and development must first get crystal clear on its mission. Once he and his colleagues had agreed their role was to accelerate learning at KLA-Tencor, then it was easier to prioritize their work and even refuse projects that didn’t contribute to the overall mission. Maryann gave a thoughtful discussion about what delivering on the promise means in the context of a company like Korn/Ferry, which has one of the premier brands in business. Andrew discussed what it meant to stand in the role of a business partner and deliver value through learning that ultimately drives business results.
Robert Terry, Managing Director of ASK Europe, reviewed the research on learning transfer and explained what his firm has been doing over the past five years to make transfer an integral part of their process. Jerry Frasso, Corporate Employee Relations Manager of UPS, showed how soft skills training in building relationships produced hard business results and how adding learning transfer support further boosted the impact.
Summit participants agreed that they came away with new thinking and tools to increase the value of their learning functions. They also placed high value on the networking opportunities and candid roundtable discussion sessions throughout the Summit.
And, finally, in regard to your second question: We are excited to announce the 2011 Learning Transfer Summit will be held in San Francisco, CA on October 12-13, 2011. In order to continue the tradition of small group sharing of best practices, the Summit will be limited to the first 50 attendees, so please let us know if you expect to attend.
Join the conversation: The 6Ds LinkedIn Group and the FHC Blog
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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Question:
Over the next three months, 150 of my employees will be attending a training program. How can I ensure that the time and money invested will pay off? What advice can you give me for making sure they apply what they’ve learned when they return to their jobs?
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Answer:
Learning transfer has always been the greatest challenge in training and development. Action on two fronts is needed to meet this challenge. In the 6Ds™ Methodology these two areas are D4: Drive Learning Transfer and D5: Deploy Performance Support. Implementing D4 and D5 will ensure your employees apply their new skills and that you get your money’s worth from the training.
ACTION 1: Drive Learning Transfer
Learning Transfer is the process of putting learning to work in a way that improves performance. Your employees need to understand that “the real work begins when the training ends.” That is, their training is not finished until they have used what they have learned to improve their work.
Three specific things you can do to Drive Learning Transfer (D4) when participants get back to work are:
- Define Specific Actions and Outcomes: Provide your employees with a schedule of events for the post-course period, including an agenda, assignments and deadlines. Give them assignments that require them to use their new skills and knowledge to accomplish existing objectives. Teresa Roche, the CLO of Agilent Technologies, has used this tactic, stating, “If they have to do the work anyway, then the application of learning goes from being an added burden to a gifted blessing.”
- Reminders: Just as we use an alarm clock to wake up and an electronic calendar to remind us of meetings, reminders are important to wake up your participant to the need for putting learning into action. Reminders also help keep learning top of mind and improve transfer rates. Send them periodic reminders of the need to use their training.
- Accountability: Give your employees a clear and tangible finish line for demonstrating improved performance as a result of the training. Set a date and a mechanism by which each employee will be able to demonstrate or explain—and be recognized for—the progress they have made.
ACTION 2: Provide Performance Support
The fifth discipline of the 6Ds is to Deploy Performance Support. That is, to be sure that employees can get the help they need as they begin to practice their new skills. Essential support includes:
- Manager Involvement: Research proves that if a manager is engaged, then employees will be engaged. Four things you can do to get managers involved are:
- Prior to the course, tell managers what the content will be, what the expected business outcomes are, and the What’s In It For Me (WIIFM) when their direct reports apply their learning.
- Ask the manager to have a brief conversation prior to the training to underscore its importance and define key areas of focus.
- Encourage the manager to have a conversation after the training program to define an outcome goal of what their direct report will accomplish within two months of the training.
- Hold a payoff meeting that includes trainees and their managers in which direct reports share what they have achieved.
- Coaching and Feedback: Build coaching and feedback into the post-course learning transfer period. Good examples of coaches include managers, a respected peer, a subject matter expert, or someone who has taken the same course and successfully applied it.
- Electronic Performance Support: Our research shows that learning transfer is maximized by five factors: Reminders, Action Reflection, Content, Coaching, and Collaboration.
The problem is how to provide these efficiently for a large number of learners. Ask your training department to look into using ResultsEngine® to make this possible. It is a powerful tool. This past month, for example, I have been using ResultsEngine to work with participants who are all in one program but are located around the globe. The system automatically reminds participants to make time to reflect on actions taken, lessons learned, and next steps. It makes it easy for participants to collaborate and for me to track their progress and provide coaching and encouragement.
I am interested in hearing about the best practices others have developed.
Join the conversation: The 6Ds LinkedIn Group and the FHC Blog
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Question:
I saw on Amazon that the second edition of The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning is now available. What’s different from the first edition? Is it worth buying the second edition?
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Answer:
Ask any author whether you should buy a second edition and the answer is pretty predictable—OF COURSE! In fact, buy two!
Let me be explicit about why I think that the second edition of The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning will provide significant added value, even for those who own a dog-eared copy of the original.
Authors Roy Pollock, Cal Wick, and Andrew Jefferson 
Since the publication of the first edition, we have been delighted by the number of organizations that have adopted the 6Ds as a common language and process across their learning departments. They tell us that they have derived real value by doing so. But they have also challenged us to sharpen and extend our thinking.
The result is that we have continued to learn by working with great organizations committed to increasing the business impact of their training and development efforts. We have also benefited greatly from the sharing of best practices and discussions of ongoing challenges at our annual Learning Transfer Summit.
We felt it was time to incorporate all that we have learned into a second edition illustrated by success stories of organizations on the cutting edge of learning transfer. We have followed the same general outline of the first edition—a chapter on each of the 6Ds—but we took the whole book apart and tried to improve every aspect.
Among the changes: Recognizing that a picture is worth a thousand words, we doubled the number of figures to better illustrate principles and concepts (including some very funny and apropos cartoons). We added checklists to the end of each chapter to help learning organizations self-assess their applications. We have also included guides for implementation.
After much thought, we renamed D4 “Drive Learning Transfer” to focus greater attention on this critical aspect of the learning process. We expanded the discussion of the importance of the transfer climate and added a more in-depth discussion of performance support to D5. We completely revised D6 to provide clearer guidance for conducting and reporting program evaluations.
Al Switzler (author of Influencer and Crucial Conversations) wrote a great new foreword for the book. Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner (authors of The Leadership Challenge) provided thought-provoking closing remarks on “learning as the master skill.”
If we sound excited about the second edition, we are. Nevertheless, it is always a little worrisome to bring out a second edition after the first has been a success. Will people like it as well? Will they see any added value?
Needless to say, we were delighted when Will Thalheimer, President of Work-Learning Research, Inc. wrote: “No other book in the last decade has been more important for the workplace learning field. The second edition is even better, incorporating new wisdom learned in the crucible of real-world practice.”
We hope you will agree. To learn more about 6Ds 2.0, join us for one of our upcoming 6Ds 2.0 Webinars on September 8 or September 23. Webinar attendees will get special discounts on the book and other Fort Hill services.
Join the conversation: The 6Ds LinkedIn Group and the FHC Blog
Recent LearningAlerts:#56 Learning Alert #56: Appreciative Inquiry – The Future of Learning Transfer #55 Learning Alert #55: Learning Transfer Achievement Stories #54 Learning Alert #54: Business Case for Learning Transfer
Older editions of the LearningAlert may be found in the LearningAlert Archives.
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