Innovation, Learning and...Soccer?

I spent a good portion of this past Saturday coaching my kids’ soccer teams. I try not to be that dad, reliving my better days through my kids. I coach like crazy in practice and then in games I sit in my chair and watch. I was proud to see my teams do some great stuff on the field and it reminded me of how we learn to play games like soccer. Sure, as a coach I provide skill practice and drills to hone soccer ability. But true soccer knowledge is gained from playing the game, through trial and error. Kids learn what works (what helps them score goals, or stop the other team from doing the same) when they try the things I’ve been telling them and it pays off. The thrill of scoring or stopping that attack brings its own sense of fulfillment that I can’t create on the practice field.

As I watched my kids play, it reminded me of a webinar I viewed recently featuring Scott Anthony of Innosight. In his presentation, he emphasized the need for organizations to practice the art of innovation. He provided some great guidelines and some memorable facts and figures. His position is that for companies to be successful in these tough times they must be innovative all the time. He gave many examples of companies that rose out of tough times by doing exactly that. In every case, companies that rigorously practice and encourage innovation, ultimately succeed.

Innovation, like learning, demands that we try new ideas and often fail. Okay, I said it. It means we fail. Scott shared a great quote by Ted Williams, one of the greatest baseball players of all time.

"Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three times out of ten and be considered a good performer."

Scott does a great job showing how companies invest wisely in innovation because they know that many ideas won’t pan out. They plan for it. They invest a little, to learn a lot.

In a learning culture, failure has to be an option. We often learn the most when we fail. Failure, and the introspection that follows, guides us to new directions that we may not have tried before. I love the quote from Batman Begins (2005), in which Alfred Pennyworth, the faithful butler to the Dark Knight, asks a young Bruce Wayne, “Why do we fall, sir?” The answer, though it seems trite, is packed with meaning. “So that we might learn to pick ourselves up.” I admit to being a comic book fan, which makes the quote more memorable. Regardless this is still a great lesson. For learning to actually work, participants need the chance to get all the information and practice it in a safe setting in which failure is an option.
Back on the job, our clients will have the opportunity to try the new skills. If our design was solid and the course a success, our learners should have some success at the new skills. When they do fail, and they will, the learning organization should be there to quickly assess the conditions that caused failure, provide the introspection required, and be ready to meet the need in a timely and cost-efficient manner. I’m not condoning failure as a standard. My belief is that in failing, we learn what not to do and sometimes that’s a good piece of information to have.

Soccer coaching may not be the best model for how to run a learning organization but there are some good parallels:

1. Give learners a safe environment to practice the skills and use the relevant information.
2. Provide lots of feedback and generate dialogue about what’s working and what isn’t.
3. Motivate participants with praise and positive reinforcement.
4. Unfreeze counterproductive behaviors and refreeze productive ones.
5. Prepare learners as best we can for “game time”.
6. Document the successes and failures and build new training experiences to address the shortcomings.
7. Repeat and have fun.

I'm constantly telling my assistant coaches, a group of helpful dads, to relax. If we teach our kids the basic soccer skills and make it fun, the kids will start to experiment and have success. That's how we can support innovation on the soccer field.
How is your learning department supporting innovation in your business?

Early education and the modern learner

In the last seven years as a learning professional, I've encountered many obstacles to training implementation. Early on, lack of technology hampered the distribution of the cooler stuff we wanted to produce. More recently, time challenges the learning organization. Who has time? Nearly every strategic communication contains the message "do more with less". Oh sure, very few are jumping up and down on the podium saying, "Work harder, faster and longer for the same pay and benefits!" Or are they? Yet when trainers and learning managers try to address the skill or knowledge gap with a training solution, the organization gives a collective groan and replies, "There isn't enough time."

I blame this on our formative years of schooling. We spend 12 years slogging through classes, day in and day out. That experience created a deep-seated stereotype of all education experiences. We immediately form a mental image of being whipped by bad slides, being lectured at, and playing silly trainer games. As adult learners, sitting in a class being subjected to content without context creates a sense of dread.

In this economic recession, much of the talent management literature focuses on developing the people you have. We read about the importance of:

• Preparing your people to take advantage of the market when things improve
• Developing your people to outperform the competition
• Retaining and developing your top performers to ensure they can deliver on your long term strategies

Blended learning solutions, when properly created and marketed to the organization, answer these needs. What does properly created and marketed look like?

Generate buzz by setting context and creating WIIFMs. In a blended learning design, take the opportunity to show participants the road map of where the instruction will go. More importantly, show them how the content builds and how each piece will have an impact on their own performance. Illustrate the connections between what will be learned and the organizational objectives. Early touchpoints in a design also provide opportunities to create shared buy-in between participants and their managers.

Make learning chunks small enough to be consumed in short periods of time. Most of us learn like this already. We scan news online, or read an article, and then continue with our daily work. Make learning fit into the work process the same way. Avoid linear paths when possible so learners can pick up the pieces of interest as needed. Some learners may want to sit and learn from "start to finish." Small chunks of learning don't eliminate this learning style, in fact, it gives them even more control over how much to consume in a single sitting.

Provide consistent reinforcement of the learning. Skill and knowledge application only occur if we give participants the chance to try out the learning and receive feedback. Let the learners come together to share success and, dare we say it, failures. This kind of sharing continues to shape the application of skills and make them concrete. Groups can be formed in many ways: classrooms, virtual meetings, blogs, forums, etc. Learning managers facilitate sharing, gather success stories, document best practices and share the results with the organization via newsletters, email, company meetings and many other vehicles.

Celebrate learning. I viewed a webinar recently called Best Practice Blended Learning Designs, presented by Dr. Vicki Halsey of the Ken Blanchard Company (available here). The presentation was full of great ideas. The idea that resonated with me the most was that of celebrating learning. On the surface, it sounds simplistic and maybe too "warm and fuzzy." In this case, and this is the part I love, celebration equals assessment. By assessing what participants have learned we are celebrating the knowledge and skills gained! I have to say, as a true-believer in the importance of managing the learner's experience, positioning assessments as celebrations deeply alters the perception of what assessing learning is all about.

Okay, so maybe high school wasn't all bad. We certainly had some great teachers, many of whom inspired us to become educators and gave us a passion for learning. High school prepared us (hopefully) to problem solve and analyze information. Our early schooling gave us a shared experience and the ability to apply past learning to new problems. Our courses were spread out over time and we learned progressively, applying old information to new problems which created new learning. Our best teachers helped us understand how the content was relevant to our lives.

The bottom line? To create powerful, blended, learning interventions we need to build shared experiences, show relevance to performance, make the content available as needed, reinforce it regularly and celebrate how much the learner has gained from the experience.