Learned vs. Learners

I have been deviating from the key themes of this blog, i.e., learning, performance, training and collaboration, for some time now. However, the deviations have been topics that moved me deeply, and I did not want to write about them in a separate blog. They are as much a part of me as all things learning. In the future too, I see this blog being intermittently peppered with posts unrelated to organizational learning but delineating experiences that are of personal import.

With today’s post, I am back on the theme of learning and its impact on performance—personal and organizational.

In times of change, learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists. -- Eric Hoffer

This classic quotation summarizes in a sentence what takes scholars and academicians reams of paper to theorize and prove. And this is the trigger for today’s post. The difference between the terms “learners” and “learned” is crucial in today’s environment of constant change, and this is my topic for today.

I have recently been reading Building Expertise: Cognitive Methods for Training and Performance Improvement at a colleague’s recommendation. This is one of those must read books for trainers/learning and development professionals/anyone interested in the phenomenon called learning.

Building Expertise deals with learning and training as it needs to be. However, before I ramble on, I want to clarify that this post is not a book review. I want to highlight a few concepts from the book that impact how we think of learning, training and performance.

It is now common knowledge that an organization’s ability to innovate is its competitive edge in today’s economy. Innovation itself is a term that requires some unpacking. For example, it could be used to mean blue ocean thinking or innovation by combining the already existing in an entirely novel, unforeseen manner. But I digress.

In this post, I want to examine a few aspects of expertise and what that means for the workers of the 21^st Century.

According to Wikipedia (2007) “…an expert, more generally, is a person with extensive knowledge or ability in a particular area of study.” ~ Building Expertise, Ruth Clark

Today, we need experts and in more diverse areas than we even know. However, building expertise is becoming a challenge—an almost insurmountable one on occasions. In the earlier days, expertise came from experience. Often, years of it; 10,000 hours of it. This experience was then codified into best practices and the next generation of workers was trained to follow the best practices and get the desired results. Predictable, measurable, trainable! This worked wonderfully (when the world was stable and work was routine) till it didn’t anymore. We all know that we have reached a point where codified best practices have almost ceased to exist. Almost, because there are some routine tasks that still need to be done, but do human agents need to do those? More importantly, are those the kind of work that will provide us with the indispensable competitive edge? Maybe not. With everything changing at a pace never experienced before, there is no time to undergo the same experience repeatedly for the building of expertise around it. I am talking about knowledge work here. Not about playing the guitar or becoming a champion chess player. Those kinds of expertise will still need 10,000 hours of practice.

Ruth Clark, in the book, describes 7 lessons learned about experts:

1.       Expertise requires extensive practice

2.       Expertise is domain specific

3.       Expertise requires deliberate practice

4.       Experts see with different eyes

5.       Experts CAN get stuck

6.       Expertise grows from TWO intelligences

7.       Challenging problems require diverse expertise (this ties in with what Scott Page says in The Difference but that is for another post)

What most interested me are the last two. My Aha! moment happened when I read about the concept of two intelligences. While I have read about adaptability, understand its impact and importance in a world that is in a constant state of beta, I was not sure I could explain it to someone else with conviction and theoretical support.

She talks about routine expertise vs. adaptive expertise and crystallized vs. fluid intelligences. 

Quoting from the book below:

Routine experts are very effective at solving problems that are representative of problems in their domains. They are adept at “seeing” and solving the problem based on their domain-specific mental models.

In contrast, adaptive experts evolve their core competencies by venturing into areas that require them to function as “intelligent” novices.

Fluid intelligence is the basis for reasoning on novel tasks or within unfamiliar contexts; in other words, it gives rise to adaptive expertise. In contrast, crystallized intelligence is predicated on learned skills…and is the basis for routine expertise. 

Routine experts are the learned ones who have deep domain-specific knowledge; however, often this deep knowledge becomes a hindrance in viewing the world through fresh eyes. They tend to see everything through the lenses of their domain. Adaptive experts, on the other hand, are able to take on the role of inquiring novices when required and are thus able to view a problem from different perspectives. They are the learners.

However, it is also important to note that adaptive expertise is based on routine expertise. One cannot adapt to new situations and events unless one has deep domain-specific knowledge.

Building learning organizations require a paradigm shift!

We are in the performance business, not the knowledge-gain business. The learning leaders who understand the difference are the ones who succeed.

1. Lead with a performance strategy, not a learning strategy. For far too long we have designed learning approaches to every problem. When a business unit approaches us with a new learning issue, be it technology- or business skill-based, we immediately begin thinking of ways that fall back on traditional approaches such as the classroom, be it virtual or bricks-and-mortar, and e-learning. What if we first considered strategies that enabled knowledge gain, sharing and maintenance in the workplace and then backfilled with the appropriate training to support the gaps that remained?

The above is an excerpt from the article Selling Up, Selling Down by Bob Mosher. He goes straight to the point by emphasizing a need for performance-focused training instead of a knowledge focused one. He also stresses the importance of:

1. Building learning tools that both support and teach.

2. Fostering understanding of performance strategy with front-line managers. 

 

This article reminded me of Harold Jarche's post, You need the right lever to move an organization. He summarizes Klaus Wittkuhn article on Performance Improvement and writes:

A key concept in the article is that you cannot engineer human performance. Human performance is an emergent property of an organization, and is affected by multiple variables. Therefore Witthuhn suggests to first address the “Steering Elements”. These “ensure that the right product is delivered at the right time to the right place”, and include – Management, Customer Feedback, Consequences, Expectations and Feedback. Once the steering elements have been addressed, then look at the “Enabling Elements” – Management (again), Design, Resources and Support.
Only after the steering and enabling elements (the non-human factors) have been aligned, should we look at work performance. The rationale here is that it is only within an optimized system that we can expect optimal human performance.

Both the ideas, I felt, are closely linked. Just as it is futile to training learners for the sake of learning, it is equally futile to train them if the conditions are not conducive to performance. To build a "learning organization", one that can hope to survive the flux of the future, much more is needed. It will require a mental overhaul on the part of the strategic decision makers and probably a re-hauling of the reward system in an organization.

The mismatch, I believe, happens at least at two levels.

1. ~The training does not map to the actual performance need and hence does not show result.
2. ~The context of the performance is not conducive.

The line managers/supervisors responsible for "getting the job done" are not rewarded for showing patience and sustaining learning. They are conditioned to respect the language of productivity, efficiency, resource management, output, and the like. Hence, any time spent away from the "actual" delivery work is effort wasted and not encouraged. OTOH, the employees required to show improvement in performance post a training session do need time to adapt to a new way of doing something. It is that initial extra time that all new approaches require before the sudden spike happens; once it happens, the effect is lasting. 

However, berated by their supervisors for wasting time, the employees soon slip back to the old ways of working with a "that training just didn't work"! attitude. Training gets a bad reputation. Supervisors continue to harass frustrated employees. Productivity remains the same or may dip. The management thinks of further cutting down training cost during the next budget (since it doesn't work anyways!). Training never gets a chance to speak. Frustration is rampant. In the meantime, employees turn to each other for support and to get their daily job done.

The training department and management needs to stretch training to the actual performance by "training" supervisors to support and sustain skill acquisition. Any learning will have a long-term impact only if applied, given the freedom to make errors, reflect, correct, and reapply...This can be expedited with support and mentoring; coaching and peer programming. The supervisors need to be introduced to tools they can use to sustain learning. They need to shift focus from "short term productivity" to long term skill acquisition. However, they also need support. 

Thus, supporting learning must be built into an organization's DNA, into its strategic plan, into its appraisal and feedback system, into the reward system. Leaders and supervisors also need to become mentors and teachers. And that can only happen when the organization undergoes a paradigm shift.

Quoting from Senge:

“Leader as teacher” is not about “teaching” people how to achieve their vision. It is about fostering learning, for everyone. Such leaders help people throughout the organization develop systemic understandings. Accepting this responsibility is the antidote to one of the most common downfalls of otherwise gifted teachers – losing their commitment to the truth. (Senge 1990: 356)

    

Related articles 

• peter senge and the learning organization  

• kurt lewin: groups, experiential learning and action research  

• 21st Century L&D Skills (charles-jennings.blogspot.com) 

• The NEW Workplace Learning Professional - new role, new skills? (janeknight.typepad.com) 

• Performance Consulting: finding the best solution from the training, informal learning, performance support mix (janeknight.typepad.com) 

• Getting Strategic (internettime.posterous.com) 

• Workplace Learning: Beyond Training (janeknight.typepad.com)