How deeply is technology impacting on our ability to learn as adults in organisations?  

“Everything real must be experiencable somewhere, and every kind of thing experienced must be somewhere real.”

William James

How is Adult and Corporate Learning being transformed by technology?

Having spent the best part of 25 years designing, developing and delivering customised corporate curriculum for the Top 100 companies in Australia and Israel, I am constantly challenged as to how to best ‘blend’ an experiential approach within  the broad and ever expanding range of technological delivery options.

We all know that adults learn best by ‘doing’ and that focussed experiential learning creates the space and visceral reaction for real mindset and behaviour shifts to occur. Recent studies in neuroscience have also revealed that the brain is ‘plastic’ and reinforced the principle of the ‘beginners mind’. That is, to create the space, in this case, the neural pathways, for the new, we must discard some of the old!

Translating ‘theory’ into real and genuine practices is the most significant challenge for both the corporate curriculum, learning program designer and the adult learner.

Imagine how easy life could be if we If we could effectively ‘do’ everything we encounter online, without having to ever make a mistake and encounter an uncomfortable ‘learning experience’?

So how can we blend the best, most time effective, and valuable learning solutions?

David Kolb, the acknowledged master of Experiential Learning, in his latest work suggests that we create a ‘deliberate experiential learning’ 4 step process:

1.      Understand the Learners Identity

2.      Build Collaborative Learning Relationships

3.      Create Mindful Presence

4.      Install Deliberate Practice

To do this effectively, and to meet the needs of our ‘time poor’ learner, we can customise and blend a cocktail of face to face, experiential and internet delivery mechanisms.

1. Understanding the Learners Identity

The diehard ‘Needs Analysis’ process can now be done via a blend of face to face or focus group interviews and focussed and customised and gamified online surveys. The observant and skilled curriculum designer can then pace out the existing range of ‘fixed’ or ‘growth’ mindsets that will either support or inhibit the learning process and solve the business issue or problem.

2. Building Collaborative Learning Relationships

The overall approach includes a mix of partnering, mentoring or coaching, can be web based via teleconferences, learning pods, gamifications, online communities and web based journaling processes.

3. Creating Mindful Presence

The ‘must have’ experiential process to support and ‘bring to life’ the chosen theoretical framework! Whilst pre-reading and action learning assignments will enable further tailoring to the organisations specific business needs, they will not create the experience required for learning to occur. Learners benefit from experiencing ‘the power of now’, retreat and reflection, silence and deep attention. Residential retreats, with focussed emergence and customised, memorable and challenging activities are the prerequisites for successful and enduring ‘learning experiences’.

4. Installing Deliberate Practice

The most often overlooked and most critical success factor in the adult learning process and also easily the most easily delivered via technology. Focussed attention, repetition, feedback, practice, goal setting, correction, self observation and reflection processes can all be established and tracked via online mechanisms. Gamifying the experiential activity into a series of targeted practice building webinar based business application sessions extends its usage, maximises the investment and establishes increased relevance.

Online communities, teleconferences, web based journals, group learning pods further embed and integrate the learning process.

So when designing and developing your next Corporate Learning Program you might want to consider how you can best meet your clients needs and deliver real and enduring value by stepping back into the learning zone yourself!

“…there is only one primal stuff or material in the world, a stuff of which everything is composed… we call that stuff ‘pure experience.”

William James

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Calibrating Adult Learners Reactions to Learning and Change

Our 25 years of experience designing and delivering corporate learning programs, have enabled us to observe that most adults experience deep, visceral, fear based reactions when confronted with learning and change.

It might be as simple as asking the learner to experiment with a more useful mindset, practice a different behaviour, or learn a new skill.

Each of these seemingly simple changes exposes a unique set of reactions, which, if not anticipated, and appropriately handled by the trainer, facilitator or coach will ‘freeze’ the learner in ways that inhibit and restrain the entire learning process.

So much investment in corporate learning programs is wasted, in both time and money,  because many providers do not create the 'safe space' required to allow these fears to emerge, be acknowledged and paced into the overall learning process.

Professor Edgar Schein, in his legendary book ‘Organisational Culture and Leadership’, succinctly explains this phenomenon in detail.

He explains that a learner’s initial fear manifests as 'survival' anxiety. This is accompanied by a set of emotional, neurological, physiological and cognitive based reactions. This is because what the learner currently knows is being challenged, and it may actually be difficult to learn something new. We know that we need to make a change, but we are not sure if we can. The learner feels uncomfortable and even, ‘out of balance' in ways that ‘awakens’ them to what is going on.

As trainers, facilitators and coaches the next most critical challenge is dealing with the second round of fears: the learners ‘learning’ anxiety. If not acknowledged & managed, further 'move away' defensive behaviours and resistance to change occurs. It may be through denial (“I don’t need to do this”), passing the buck (“They need to learn this, not me”), dodging (“You can’t make me do this) and other aggressive or avoidant behaviour. (“Who are you to tell me what to do”)

Learning Anxiety is usually a combination of several specific fears:

-    Fear if loss of power or position

-    Fear of temporary incompetence

-    Fear of punishment for incompetence

-    Fear of loss of personal identity

-    Fear of loss of group membership.

So how do we, as trainers, facilitators and coaches’ best handle this?

We focus on reducing their learning anxiety through creating ‘psychological safety’ by:

1.   Intentionally facilitating safe ‘awakening’ processes.

2.   Supporting people to acknowledge and resolve their personal discomfort

3.   Enabling people to shift out of passive and aggressive defensiveness without making them ‘wrong’

4.   Enrolling them in their own cause ‘to be the best they can be’ through co-creation of concrete and specific change goals.

If you can make the time to notice and focus your efforts on the range of fear based reactions occurring, not only will deep and sustainable learning occur, it could also become a pleasurable and memorable experience for everyone. 

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There are always fresh and dynamic approaches to technological innovation that continually delivers the unexpected!

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The most exciting book ever about why Israel is a source of cutting edge global innovation, it is full of fascinating stories and examples thatreally sets Israel apart from its neighbours.

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About Black Swan Events and Innovation

“No technologies came from design and planning - they were just Black Swans. The strategies for discovers and entrepreneurs is to rely less on top down planning and to focus on maximum tinkering and recognising opportunities when they present themselves.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb “The Black Swan”

It is really interesting how often our thinking is both clouded and constrained by our individual and collective thought processes and our perceptions about what is ‘real’ or not.  

To be innovative, we need to ‘break through’ these clouds and restraints through being open to what we don’t yet know. To come from a position of ‘anti-knowledge’. Until we can break through from our ‘blindness’ to ‘randomness’ and especially to large deviations from the norm, we can never be open to the ‘unexpected’ and the ‘inconceivable’.

An innovator is someone who has an idea that is not easily perceived by the current players. An innovator will operate differently from expectations, and the less their competitors who operate this way, the more likely the Innovator will succeed. Innovators maximise playing at the edges, letting go of the illusion that they understand what is really going on, challenging what they and others perceive and challenging current models and facts.

Whilst this may sound relatively simple, it is actually quite difficult to learn,  apply and assimilate.

We are currently researching, analysing and creating an innovative new Israeli Start Up organisation, one which 'brings to life', in a totally unexpected way, the Innovate Like an Israeli Model, to create organisational innovative eco-systems where innovation flourishes!

Watch this space!

http://www.jpost.com/Business/Commentary/Article.aspx?id=214192

Did you know that Israeli cows are the world’s champs in milk production? Amazing but true: Israeli cows, on average, yield about 12,000 liters of milk a year, compared to an average of 6,000 in the US and the UK, and between 3,000 and 4,000 in India and China.

http://www.jpost.com/Business/Commentary/Article.aspx?id=214192

They tried to kill us, we won, now we’re changing the world

Saul Singer, co-author of the Israel-redefining ‘Start-Up Nation,’ urges Israel and its supporters to internalize just how profoundly our phenomenal capacity for innovation can better this planet.


They tried to kill us, we won, now we’re changing the world