What Collaboration Means For Learning Transfer

Last month I attended a Google Deloitte presentation in Sydney on the Collaborative Economy. I love visiting the Google Headquarters – just stepping inside makes you feel more creative. It was great to be there to learn all about collaboration.

Google, with Deloitte have conducted a fascinating study which found that “52% of businesses who integrated collaboration as a core component of their corporate strategy have grown faster than their competitors, compared to 20% that didn’t have a collaboration strategy” (Deloitte Access Economics, Stancombe Research and Planning 2014).

Of course, with my one-track mind I found myself thinking, what does this mean for learning transfer?

Should we have a wholesale re-think of our Turning Learning into Action® methodology to make it more collaborative? Should we change our one-on-one personalised accountability to a more collaborative group follow up process?

The answer is no. Why, you ask?

In our experience, companies who hold internal group follow-ups to training have a 20-30% commitment rate of staff attending and actively participating.

When our one-on-one format is introduced it has been seen to dramatically increase participation rates to above 80%.

This doesn’t mean that people are not keen to collaborate. Overwhelmingly most of the actions that come out of transfer of learning conversations will inherently involve collaboration, be it communication with team members, projects with stakeholders, or discussions with Managers.

We believe that we must first line ourselves up as individuals with our actions and our plans and then the collaboration will follow. The more individuals are galvanised by one-on-one transfer of learning, the better collaboration will be throughout a company as a whole.

We here at Lever Learning embrace collaboration and with our strategic partner are working together on a Collaborative Leadership program. Want to know more? Contact us today!

Emma Weber is a recognized authority on the transfer of learning. As CEO of Lever–Transfer of Learning, she has helped companies such as Telstra, Oracle and BMW deliver and measure tangible business results from learning. She has also been a guest speaker at learning effectiveness conferences worldwide and authored the hugely successful book Turning Learning into Action. Much more detail around the issues and solutions examined in this article are available in the book – please feel free to download a free chapter. Emma and her team also developed Coach M, a coaching chatbot that delivers fully scaleable learning transfer. She is also a co-author of the books Making Change Work, and Designing Virtual Learning for Application and Impact. Her work and approach is also featured in Data and Analytics for Instructional Designers by Megan Torrance (Author), Foundations of People Metrics and Analytics – by Renjini Joseph and an ATD 10-minute case study series – Chatbot Coaching for Learning Transfer.