Lessons from ATD 2015
When Elliott Masie and I had time to connect briefly last week at the ATD ICE 2015 in Orlando, Florida, I of course wanted to pick his brains on my passion – learning transfer.
Personalisation was top of my list – and I explored this in a recent blog post inspired by Elliott’s work. Learning must be personalised to the individual at the right time, solving their individual challenges and opportunities, with the right content leading to the right individual impact. What could be more effective on all accounts than a one-on-one personalised phone call!
The next thing we discussed was to ‘reduce’. Reducing has been a theme at the conference most notably within the work of mindsets, check out Be a Mindsetter by Michael Gobran, William Greenwald and Derek Roberts. The concept of reducing is linked to the neuroscience of how our brain needs messages to be simple, applicable and relevant. Cutting through the noise and interference of extraneous content not only makes the real message hard to hear but also makes behavioural change less likely.
To fail was Elliott’s final point. I love this point. It was echoed in Erik Wahl’s closing keynote at the conference where he encouraged the audience to consider the definition of failing and to fail forward, fail first and to fail often (see here for more on this).
In my experience, especially at manager and executive levels in organisations, the ability to fail isn’t often granted at an organisational level or an individual level. We are so focussed on success and the right business outcomes, yet failing is often the fastest way to learn and grow. With our Turning Learning into Action™ methodology we encourage reflection in every day experiences, which often creates observation about the ‘small’ failures that happen as we apply learning. This is how the lessons are learnt, as the executive or manager actions things day-to-day, encouraging trial and error with support can soften the feel of a failure. The idea we use of experimenting with learning application is also relevant – after all if it’s an experiment it is ok to fail!
Go Elliott! Thanks for sharing your wisdom.
Let me see what I can do to try and join your Learning 2015 event when you meet in Orlando in November!