Performance and Learning

Lately, I’ve engaged in several conversations about the nature of learning in organizations. These conversations included everything you’d think should be in a conversation about learning and development: What are the best ways to deliver content? Who is responsible for learning, L&D or the employee? What are the cool technologies in learning platforms, LMS’s, gaming, virtual reality, etc. that can help us deliver training more effectively?

While interesting, the problem with all of these conversations mirrors an issue that has been a limiter for learning and development professionals and teams for pretty much all of the 30 years I’ve been in the field: Learning and Development practitioners primarily see the world through a training/learning lens. I think we shoot ourselves in the foot when we assume training or learning is an end unto itself within an organization.

Sound a little heretical? Well, let me clarify. Sure, organizations that learn well typically are more nimble and most often perform well. And of course we want to seek and hire employees that demonstrate a high degree of “learnability” so that we can continue to grow and innovate. I’d even argue that for an individual, learning for its own sake is both rewarding and beneficial.

But here’s the truth of the matter: for organizations, learning is a means, not an end. This is not a new truth, but true all the same: for an organization, “performance” is the end-of-line measure, and L & D professionals would do well to accept that their role is in organizational performance improvement, not “training” or “learning.” Of course, learning is often a vehicle that drives performance, but perhaps more often it is a mis-prescribed intervention that results in very little performance gain. (Or in gain that is not sustainable, or in gain that we don’t know how to measure.) To be effective, we have to be better at putting performance at the head of the table. To do that, here are a few barriers we’ll need to hurdle:

• Take off the learning and development goggles. Early in my career, a colleague told me to “Drop the hammer.” I wasn’t sure what she meant, but soon learned it was a reference to a common phrase: “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” In other words, if all you’re thinking about is training or education or learning, everything looks like it can be solved with a training or education or learning solution. Performance improvement is much more complicated than that and involves a host of internal and external factors that act as influencers. For example, I once was asked to re-train a group of insurance processors because they always failed to meet their quota of 12 claims per hour. Come to find out, their printers had a maximum capacity of 10 claims per hour. How effective would that training have been?
• Quit doing things you can’t (or won’t) measure. We like to call money spent on learning “investments.” But to be considered valuable, an investment eventually needs to show a measurable return. What do you call an investment for which you can’t measure its return? Waste.  It’s easy to say “yes” to requests and exciting “learning initiatives,” but as a professional, and especially if you are a leader in your profession, you have to know when it’s time to have the courage to say “no.”
• Use the language of quality and process improvement. Process improvement models analyze current performance relative to ideal performance and seek to identify the gaps where errors or inefficiencies can occur. THEN, after the analysis, the models address interventions – along with control plans to measure and sustain results. Why not bring that same rigor to your work as a “performance professional”? You might still find areas where skill or knowledge gaps require a learning intervention, but you also will find meaningful contributions by analyzing all of the root causes of performance gaps and making recommendations accordingly.

As I mentioned earlier, these are not new ideas. Yet, even though we know what best practice is, in reality, we often revert back to more traditional courses of action in doing the daily work of the “learning and development” department. Maybe we should see ourselves more as a “performance and learning” department, and then pivot our actions to reflect that emphasis on “Performance.”

Changing the lens we use to view ourselves can change the impact and organizational outcomes of our work, which in turn can make all of us much more valuable to the organizations we serve.