How liquid is your learning?

"What we’re now starting to appreciate more is that a strong learning orientation is critical. The ability to easily pick up new skills, adapt to new technologies is now business critical for everyone. You can’t stand still with your current skill set. If you do, both the business you’re in, and future opportunities, will pass you by".

Pat Wadors, senior talent specialist at LinkedIn, recently wrote this in her excellent post where she draws inspiration from the idea of the liquid workforce as proposed by Ellyn Shook at Accenture. 

The liquid workforce is built on three drivers - embracing technology, developing skills and adapting to change - that are at the heart of the new world of the Fourth Industrial Revolution where survival will mean being agile. And of course liquid, with its unique properties, is a precise metaphor for agility. 

At the centre of this liquidity is learning, as the new normal, finally becoming appreciated as a fundamental workplace skill in itself. Agile workers can't stand still; they need to be liquid learners. 

"Learning as the new normal"

But what does it mean to be a liquid learner? And how do we measure the learning liquidity of an organisation?

Well as the metaphor suggests, liquid learning is a complete departure from the static, solid place you need to go to. Thanks to technology learning is now a place that comes to us, that flows all around us. 

But liquid learning has been enabled by more than technology; models of adult learning such as 70:20:10 have helped us understand how much more effective informal learning is. Water is the perfect metaphor for modern learning because it has structure (2 parts hydrogen to 1 part oxygen) but it is also highly flexible, pervasive and almost impossible to stop. 

So I'm going to propose a structure for liquid learning; a five part formula, and without any one of these parts it will cease to be liquid.

"A formula for liquid learning"

Liquid learning needs to be Measured and in today's world that means application. Whatever tools we use to measure learning outcomes, we must be able to show that the learning has filtered down into either a performance improvement or business outcome. 

In order to be applied in a meaningful way, learning must be On-demand. Bite sized learning, micro learning, learning moments; all different ways of explaining how liquid learning is delivered at the point of need, whether it's Google or YouTube, signing up for classes on Udemy or taking MOOCs, listening to a podcast, taking an e-Learning module... Learning is liquid when it is plug and play.

Liquid learning is also Collaborative learning. But that doesn't mean just sitting in a class with other learners. Today's learners use their networks both inside and outside their organisation to access and contribute to community learning; they are comfortable with working out loud because they understand that creating an ocean of learning is in everyone's interest and is also everyone's responsibility. 

Owned learning is self-directed, initiated by the learner and is much more likely to flow than learning which is directed from somewhere or someone else. In fact today's liquid learners vote with their feet, or rather their fingers, by deserting meaningless top-down company training and opting for their internet-enabled devices to get the learning they really want and need. 

Today's learning is more Accessible than ever and more successful for it. Accessibility, thanks in main to the internet, has opened more doors for learners than could have been imagined even in my lifetime. My formal education was with the UK's Open University, which broke with tradition in 1969 to provide open access courses and qualifications for people with non-traditional education backgrounds, people like me. Today we take the principle of accessibility for granted and the result is more learning liquidity. 

So I've presented five criteria for liquid learning. But if we want to turn the taps on and let this liquid learning flow through our organisations, there are also three channels it needs to flow through.

"Let liquid learning flow through your organisation!"

At the Corporate level, organisations can support liquid learning by building platforms that integrate learning with performance management and business outcomes, but most importantly by nurturing a learning culture in every part of the organisation. But we know that formal, structured organisational learning only accounts for about 10% of successful learning. So organisations that are going to be agile need to learn to listen and observe more so that they can move from command-and-control to nurturing learning. 

We know that learning together with others accounts for as much as a fifth of successful learning, which means that Social is a vital channel. Social learning straddles the formal/informal line; it can be manager coaching or peer collaboration, both within and outside organisational walls.  

Once you have set up effective corporate and social learning channels, you are ready to open the flood gates to the Personal learning channel; on the job, at the point of need, on-demand, accessible, applied and digitally-enabled, which accounts for as much as 70% of successful learning.

"The trifecta for our age"

Learning has always been a way to future proof ourselves in an exciting but also unpredictable world. Liquid learning is now an essential workplace skill in its own right, along side the ability to embrace change and work with technology; the perfect trifecta for our age. 

This post is in preparation for a key presentation I'll be delivering at the Cegos 2020 Learning Future summit here in Singapore in March. Help me work out loud by letting me know your reactions.