The Power of X – Experiential Learning in Today’s World
Posted by Verity Gough in Strategy on Sat, 10/10/2009 - 15:08
- Most learning comes through four channels: Experience, practice, conversation and reflection
- Good managers expose their employees to new experiences through various approaches such as job shadowing, informal coaching and mentoring
- Providing experiences that help team members develop and improve their capability is a poweful lever for managers
With experiential learning gaining a strong-hold in the L&D arena, managers that aren't exploiting its potential are missing a trick, says Charles Jennings.
It’s generally accepted that most of the learning that occurs within our organisations takes place outside formal training and learning events. The majority of our learning comes from the new and different experiences we have in our daily work. Learning also comes from practice and from conversations and from taking the opportunity to reflect on our experiences and on those of others.
Smart organisations are now looking to exploit the fact that most learning comes through these four channels (experience, practice, conversation and reflection) by ensuring that managers create the right environments and provide learning opportunities for their team members on an ongoing basis in the workplace. Good managers do this in a number of ways. It may be by opening up new challenges, exposing their employees to new experiences and stretch assignments from which their employees can learn, by rotating members through various roles within their team, or through various other approaches such as job shadowing, informal coaching and mentoring, establishing professional and role-related networks for knowledge and experience sharing and so on.
Some telling research
Some time ago the Learning and Development Roundtable, one of the HR research and support practices within the Corporate Executive Board based in Washington DC, researched the 15 most important actions a manager can take to improve the performance of their team members and their teams overall. Of the three actions that have most impact, two involve experiential learning. The third is brought about by managers simply telling their employees what they expect of them and how they will be measured against those expectations.
The table below shows the top three actions this research uncovered and the average resulting performance improvement.
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Manager Action
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Average Performance Improvement
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1.
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Explain performance standards: clearly explain to employees what is expected of them and how they will be measured against those expectations
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19.8%
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2.
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Ensure Projects Provide Learning: Ensure each currently assigned project or assignment is a learning experience for employees. Discuss and reflect on objectives, progress and output
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19.8%
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3.
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Provide Experiences that Develop: Help employees obtain the experience at work that will help them develop over time
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19.1%
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Learning & Development Roundtable, 2005
Interestingly, two manager actions that came out near the bottom of the Learning & Development Roundtable’s impact list were:
- Teach a new skill or procedure – which elicits an average performance improvement of 7.7%
- Ensure necessary skills/knowledge – which elicits an average performance improvement of 6.7%
By providing experiences that help their team members develop and improve their capability, and then working with them to ensure they learn from those experiences, managers are using two of the most powerful development levers available. It’s not rocket science. It is simply just good leadership and management practice to focus on experiential learning.
What can L&D professionals do?
If there are simple actions that leaders and managers can take, what then can learning and development professionals do as part of their role to leverage experiential learning? The answer to that question, first and foremost, must be for them to stem the flow of content-heavy courses and re-focus on what they can do to replace content with experiences or, at least, replace a large amount of the content with more opportunities for experience.
The vast majority of courses and other formal learning is content-heavy and interaction-poor. If we count the number of interactions in a formal classroom session (including both teacher-learner and learner-learner interactions), or in a piece of eLearning, then we are likely to find a number in the tens rather than the hundreds. Research has shown that this is the case. The average number of interactions, per group, is often as low as 20. That’s per group, not per individual learner!
On the other hand if we consider the level of interaction in, for example, the computer game HALO (the world’s best-selling entertainment property which sold over $200 million on its first day of release) you will find more than one million interactions. That’s correct, one million interactions! Now, computer ‘shooter’ games may not be your idea of a useful way to spend your time or learn, but L&D professionals need to think about the ways they can transform the learning content they develop into real learning experiences with the emphasis on ‘experiences’ and not on transmitting content.
It is even better if L&D professionals can step outside the model of courses, curricula and formal learning and start to think about what they can do to facilitate and encourage individual contributors and management in their organisations to develop opportunities for learning through experiences. Provide some new challenges, ensure support is in place, build tools to facilitate network-building and the opportunity to discuss with others and to reflect. Think experience, practice and sharing rather than content, content, content.
The Importance of X
This experience component is vital. Experiential learning is a very powerful tool especially when it is coupled with the smart use of technology. There are now some excellent experiential learning models and tools available for training and development professionals to apply as part of their role in supporting managers to build employee and organisational capability.
But to use experiential learning approaches effectively learning leaders need to step away from exclusive focus on knowledge and skills. Knowledge and skills are ingredients in the output that is excellent performance, but their importance is overrated. Building knowledge in heads and skills in heads and hands is no guarantee for improved performance. Building employee capability is more complex than that.
The main difference between experiential learning and more traditional classroom-based and eLearning approaches is that experiential learning is focused exclusively on action rather than on information. The underlying principle of experiential learning is that we learn through ‘doing’ and that our contribution in our job role is based on our ability to do rather than to know.
The 21st Century experiential learning view is that the place to store vast amounts of information and knowledge is in libraries, not in heads, and that now and in the future these libraries will be increasingly virtual, easy to access, and usually available at the click of a mouse or the touch of a screen.
Focusing on knowledge and ‘knowledge transfer’ (whatever that is supposed to mean) as the way to build employee capability will almost inevitably lead to less-than-effective performance. Workforce readiness depends on more than filling heads with knowledge. It depends on developing agile thinking and the ability to ‘find’ and ‘do’ rather than the ability to know. And the development of these capabilities requires experience, practice, conversations and reflection.
Experiential learning and technology
Outside of opportunities for workplace learning experiences, there are some state-of-the-art experiential virtual world learning solutions emerging that offer an “apprenticeship” for employees seeking real-world experience without the risk of severe implications or errors. As learners gain practical skills in an authentic and safe learning environment, organisations can focus on helping them develop their core competencies and avoid the distractions of having to spend so much time focusing on complex experiential learning development and delivery.
One such solution that rolled out at Reuters, where I was the chief learning officer, was the Toolwire live labs environment. We used the Toolwire environment for technical employees and software developers, many of whom were both young (without extensive experience) and geographically distributed (some being located in the USA and Europe, others – an increasing number – being in Asia).
Live labs environments such as this offer access to suites of (real) servers and routers for technical training. Along with scenario-based assignments, the remote hardware can be configured and tested by learners through their laptops or PCs. If errors are made, it can be automatically reconfigured to initial state for further attempts.
This experiential learning environment replicates the type of environment found in many technical classrooms and on training servers but by using the Internet cloud and some smart reconfiguration technology it overcomes some of the problems inherent in standard classroom experiential learning environments. It also breaks the richness/reach challenge by making the experiential learning environment available to employees irrespective of their location or time zone. They can access this type of experiential learning from wherever they happen to be, whenever they decide to allocate time to do so.
Other experiential learning environments are also emerging. I was recently given a tour of a Language Lab in Second Life where there is a lot of learning activity. The British Council is very active in teaching English in Second Life to children aged between 13 and 17. They have a dedicated safe area for teenagers, called British Council Isle.
Apart from first generation virtual technologies such as Second Life, other environments such as those being developed by Forterra Systems are starting to be implemented in organisations outside the military (where they have traditionally been in use for some time) for experiential learning use.
In summary, I believe that learning and development, training and performance professionals ignore the power of experiential learning at their peril. It is imperative that experiences are at the forefront of our minds when we analyse and make decisions regarding any learning intervention. Without constant focus on identifying new ways to utilise and exploit experiences, practice, conversations and reflection, any learning solutions produced will be very much poorer.
Charles Jennings was chief learning officer at Reuters and Thomson Reuters. He now works as an independent consultant on learning and performance. Along with Jay Cross, Jane Hart, Jon Husband, Clark Quinn and Harold Jarche, Charles is a member of the Internet Time Alliance. Details of Charles consultancy work and his blog can be found on his website: www.duntroon.com
Read Charles' other features: Who needs learning objectives?, How not to train and Charles Jennings Three-Step Strategy.
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Most learning comes through four channels: Experience, practice, conversation and reflection
I Like your opening statement: 'Most learning comes through four channels: Experience, practice, conversation and reflection' and I would love to know where this comes from. As your article is built around a research finding, I hope to find that there is also research to back up your opening statement. (I don't disbelieve it - quite the opposite - I want to shout the message loudly and with as much authority as I can find!)
I'd like permission to link to this article. Do I ask Charles or TrainingZone?
Linking to articles
Hi Roger,
Thanks for your interest in TZ - if you would like to link to this article, that is fine. I will have to unlock the content for non-members, however, we would encourage you to recommend others to sign-up to TZ so they can access all the other features, groups and blogs we have on site.
Kind regards,
Verity Gough (Editor)
Most learning comes through four channels
Thanks for your comments, Roger.
There is a lot of research that supports the fact that around 80% of organisational learning is obtained informally in the workplace. I'd recommend you read Jay Cross' book 'Informal Learning: Rediscovering the Natural Pathways That Inspire Innovation and Performance' on this. Jay has listed the background to the 80% figure.
Along with other people, I have implemented an overall learning approach based on the 80:20 informal:formal research and refined it into the 70:20:10 model - 70% of learning from experiences and practice: 20% of learning from others: 10% of learning through formal structured learning courses and curricula. Quite a number of organisations use 70:20:10 as their model for supporting learning - Nokia, Dell, Sony Ericsson, Goldman Sachs, Thomson Reuters, Maersk, Nathoinal Australia Bank, amongst others.
Of course it's impossible to pin an exact figure on the 'informal' part, but the research indicates that it's somewhere in the 80% area.
Leading from that Jay and others (including myself) have split out the informal part and identified the key components of the 80%. My view is that they fall into the 4 'buckets' of experiences, practice, conversation and reflection. Certainly my own experience leads me to this conclusion.
Thanks!
Brilliant article! Thanks Charles. Is it possible to quote a portion of the article and attributing the source to yourself and Trainingzone? I'd love to use a portion of the article in some follow-up work I'm doing on the 70-20-10 principal at work. (not sure our non L&D staff will want to register on Trainingzone just to read an article I recommend)
A step we've taken to promote on-the-job learning is to produce a 'development guide'. We outlined what effective performance looks like for our Tax professionals (we are an accountancy/ investment management firm), and then listed what action people can take on-the-job to develop towards that effective performance. The actions were written to include elements of doing research, doing it, talking to others within the department and beyond it and reflecting. We also listed books people can read, websites and the traditional face-to-face courses. But emphasised that 70% of learning at work comes from on-the-job activity and the development guide is meant to emphasise that. It went down very well with staff and now the rest of the business want a development guide.
Barbara Babcock
Linking
Hi Barbara,
I have 'unlocked' this content as there have been a number of requests from members wanting to share it with others which means they can read it without having to sign-up as members. As per my comment above, we are happy for you to reproduce the article but ask that you add a link to the orginal on the TZ site and of course a by-line for Charles.
Thanks and please do spread the word about TrainingZone.co.uk,
Kind regards,
Verity
70:20:10 - using the 10 to leverage the 70?
Thank you Charles for going the extra mile and adding a research reference (to what is a highly recommended book on Amazon).
I wondered where 70:20:10 came from and I traced it back to some research in the 1980s by the Centre for Creative Leadership. Related to this, they have an excellent annotated bibliography on the subject of Management Development through Job Experiences at: http://www.ccl.org/leadership/pdf/research/MgmtDevelopmentBib.pdf
I still like your four channels (or buckets) of 'Experience, practice, conversation and reflection'. But how do you help to ensure that the quality of these four channels is good enough to produce valuable or productive learning? If these opportunities are mostly 'informal' then do not learners need to be highly tuned in to such opportunities for learning as and when they happen? (For example, being able to turn dead-end conversations into developmental ones.)
What if the 10 (from 70:20:10) was mostly reserved for training participants to become better at learning from 'Experience, practice, conversation and reflection'? I wonder how many training departments provide training in how to learn from 'Experience, practice, conversation and reflection'?
Thank you Verity for making Charles' article more accessible/linkable.
Learning and Development Roundtable 2005
I was very interested in the information in this article about the 15 ways managers can improve the performance of the members of their team. Does anyone know where I can see this report please?
Manager Role in improving Performance
In response to the question above about the Learning & Development Roundtable research, you'll find more information in a blog post of mine titled 'Making Your L&D Department More Relevant' here:
http://charles-jennings.blogspot.com/2009/06/making-your-l-department-me...
Charles
Experiential learning
An interesting article Charles and one that I entirely agree with. The research you refer to is interesting - I have seen similar research but haven't seen research that measures performance improvment in relation to methods of development.
I think that a great barrier to experiential learning is that it is not as easy as more traditional forms of development. To do it well L and D professionals have to work with managers and business leaders to design and develop activities that are truly integrated with the business and provide opportunities that are linked to the fabric of the organisation. They also have to be skilled and experienced to be able to design and facilitate interventions that provide real experiences that people can learn from. This type of intervention is less predictable and requires the facilitator to work with what happens on the day making it much more demanding but much more real for the learners.
These are exciting times - resources and budgets for development are fewer and lower. L and D professionals have a real opportunity to get in amongst the business and develop new ways of providing development using work as the vehicle! I hope this is what happens and we don't end up cutting out all development or reverting to a menu based training approach.
www.interaction-ld.com
Experiential learning
Thanks Charles another excellent article which sets out the need for those us interested in improving performance to think much more imaginatively about the performance gaps in the organisation and how best to address them.
We are just about to commission some research in November on how managers actually learn and what they do around informal learning. I'm really interested in exploring the 70:20:10 rule to see what managers are actually doing. I'm now going to have a look and see if we should also explore the experience, practice, conversation and reflection angle as well. It may be too much for this survey, but will let you know. Survey results should be available from January.
Cheers
Peter
www.goodpractice.com
Commonly Quoted
-- US Lynne
We often hear the phrase "Learning by doing." I think it's important--especially when we're offering experiences for learning--that we stop using that phrase and change it to "You learn by doing when you learn from doing." That is, we have learning experiences every moment but many of those are not learning experiences unless there is time for processing and reflection--following the Kolb learning cycle model to its fullest. When employees or teams don't step back to assess what went right and why or what went wrong and why, they lose those learning opportunities and are likely to repeat them with either a successful or unsuccessful conclusion. That's why the trainer has to facilitate learners through the learning cycle fully or some learners get left behind. My learning style is not kinesthetic and I learn nothing by doing until I have a chance to process it through reflection or discussion. I don't disagree with your article. I think we need to be sure that people process the learning and trainers can help others do that.
Experiential learning
Peter, I would be very interested to hear the results of your survey. Please do let me know when you're in a position to share them.
Charles
The Power of X – Experiential Learning in Today’s World
A really interesting article and encouraging as well! Over the past 2 years, with much greater focus on cost, my sense is that there seems to be a reduction in using experiential approaches both as part of everyday work and for more organised development. I guess people are wary of using less defined methods at the moment when budgets are really tight and line managers are so focused on delivering business results and meeting targets that they have little time for thinking about development and performance. But for those organisations who use more experiential approaches, the outcomes are noticeably striking in relation to people's performance and behaviour. You're absolutely right - when people are given practical activities that they can learn from and practice with they can easily develop and adapt their behaviour which immediately impacts on their performance. So, I am pleased to hear someone saying that experiential learning and development is on the up!!