Enable Intentional Learning

The pandemic, in uprooting or short-changing many careers, has made reskilling or upskilling an imperative. McKinsey offers some recent guidance to both reskill and upskill through intentional learning. It is an approach we have used to support rainmaking cohorts in law firms.

Start by Understanding Intentional Learning

For those looking to enhance either their career or workforce, McKinsey offers us an important article. In their August 7, 2020, article, The Most Fundamental Skill: Intentional Learning and the Career Advantage by Lisa Christenson, Jake Gittleson, and Matt Smith from McKinsey, help us understand how to learn. In addition, it helps us see how employers can enable intentional learning.

According to the authors, the skill of learning is a critical driver of long-term career success. Being an effective intentional learner requires several actions:

1. Utilize a growth mindset, acknowledging that skills can be learned at any point;
2. Harbor a curiosity mindset that encourages the exploration of new ideas;
3. Reserve and protect time to learn, which requires planning;
4. Set small, clear, practical goals to achieve in attainable increments;
5. Practice deliberately in context, to enable retention;
6. Seek actionable feedback from experts and colleagues;
7. Reflect on goals, topics, and knowledge gained.

The McKinsey article provides detail on characteristics of each element. It is an excellent read for that detail. As individuals, we can strive to be more effective learners. As an organization, though, we can create opportunities for individuals to be intentional learners.

How to Enable Intentional Learning

A growth mindset and curiosity mindset may be traits that an organization can only influence. The remaining actions, however, an organization can enable with the proper training structure. Specifically, three training elements come to mind. Consider using these elements to facilitate intentional learning:

1. Microlearning;
2. Practice; and
3. Feedback.

Each element follows from the McKinsey article. Microlearning is a design that delivers lessons in small segments and aligns with attainable learning goals. Using a minimalist approach, microlearning makes practice easier. Learners are more likely to practice small discrete elements than to practice an entire approach. In fact, a good lesson identifies how to practice each specific action. Finally, with a large cohort participating, peers are available for immediate feedback. Asynchronous lessons support all three elements, offering participants an opportunity to learn together, yet on their own, to gain a common perspective from which to advise each other.

Microlearning

Microlearning is a recognized approach that effectively engages millennials, who have grown up learning in a connected and mobile world. Ryan Jenkins, a generations expert, notes, in his article, How to Effectively Train Millennials in the Workplace, “the media Millennials consume is bite-sized thus the training they are likely to consume has to be brief and succinct.” He adds, “Microlearning matches human brain processing capabilities (especially Millennials) which makes it a fit for today's fast-paced and hyperconnected workplace.” It is a format that enables people to focus their learning and have time, even small amounts, for opportunities to learn.

Practice

Practice is a recognized key not just by the McKinsey authors, who extoll the virtues of deliberate practice focused on skills just beyond our abilities. Steve Glaveski, CEO of Collective Campus, also notes the nature of “use it or lose it” in his October 2, 2019, HBR article, Where Companies Go Wrong with Learning and Development. Explaining the “Forgetting Curve,” Glaveski notes that, “if learning isn’t applied, we’ll forget about 75% of it after just six days.” In fact, statistics are that over 50% of knowledge is lost if not practiced within even an hour of learning.

Feedback

Finally, there is feedback. While we often fear formal feedback from performance reviews, intentional learners seek tailored actionable feedback. They prime colleagues by first telling them what they are practicing. That approach enables colleagues to pay attention when it matters.

Organizations can enable actionable feedback through social learning and online collaboration. Different organizations have found the combination rather powerful. Kerri Moore, of Docebo, in 6 Benefits of Social & Collaborative Learning Technologies noted that “social learning approaches a 75:1 ROI ratio compared to formal web-based training.” Harvard Business School started HBX, an online education initiative in 2014. For starters, with HBX social learning they saw a rise of 85% in course completion. Interestingly, collaboration increased when peers answered questions rather than experts in the online course discussions. For additional details on Harvard’s experiment with social learning, read What Harvard Business School Has Learned About Online Collaboration from HBX.

Our Experience

In exploring needs of training and development in law firms, we have repeatedly heard several concerns:

1. Synchronous training, whether in-person or virtual, suffers from high attrition;
2. Knowledge retention does not meet expectations;
3. Concentrated programs limit opportunity for deliberate practice;
4. An important side-effect of training are the connections and relationships developed;
5. Virtual training is difficult because it does not facilitate relationship development.

What we learned from our experience with law firm training and development, writings from Harvard, and research into other resources helped us create our virtual on-demand business development workshops. What we hear now from McKinsey is that we are on the right track. Our approach addresses the challenges law firms have experienced with training programs, especially training large groups of millennials. Our short video lessons with text for back up focus on very specific elements. Each lesson includes instructions on how to practice each specific skill. In addition, we host group discussion forums that allow for social connections and feedback from peers. All this can be done, cross-practice collaboration included, virtually.

This is the very format Mr. Glaveski promotes in his HBR article: offer micro courses, applied to real-world situations, and activate intentional learning. Marketing guru Seth Godin has successfully utilized this model in his Akimbo community workshops. It is a model that generates enthusiasm, community, connection, and results. We are following a proven intentional learning approach to develop rainmaking cohorts in law firms.