Asking for Directions: learning a new job.

Photo reproduced with permission and thanks to Pedro Cardigo

 

I’ve been a little quiet recently, due principally to the transition that I am making from working at the BBC to working at BP. I’ve always believed that learning – real learning – is driven by challenges, and changing jobs is one of those big challenges that most of us go through some time and subsequently highlight as a period of intense learning. So it’s been good to be reminded first-hand of how learning really works in vivo. I wanted to share a few of my own reflections about a month in:

-    it’s a process not an event: it’s going to take a while for me to adapt. Possibly forever. It seems to me that I am spending quite a bit of time trying to map the new environment to familiar landmarks and ways of navigating around. Alongside this, I am trying to adapt my own thinking to quite new challenges. It seems that the Piagetian concepts of assimilation and accommodation hold true.

-    It’s primarily an emotional thing: (though I admit there is room for confirmation bias here): what I mean is that all learning is oriented around meaningful, pressing goals which may not be easy to quantify – for example establishing credibility, building relationships, developing enthusiasm and trust. Also, you don’t want to look like an idiot.

-    Almost all the learning is from people, about people: it seems pretty clear to me that the relative percentage of learning which is about operational stuff will vary by role; for a management role the operational environment (technology, systems etc) represents a lower level of problem-solving activity (in a bucket along with how to get to work etc.) beneath a strata of richer interpersonal learning around relationships, ambitions, personal styles. Get these wrong and you are going nowhere fast.

-    Expectations are central to orientation: there is almost certainly a large amount of learning ‘beneath the water line’ in terms of tacitly absorbing norms and expectations for behaviour. But is can also help to areas where these surface and are made explicit: the emphasis placed on Safety in the BP Induction programme (reverse park, lids on hot drinks, hold handrails on stairs) can seem over-the-top, but what it really seems to communicate is a deeper, implicit norm: a zero-tolerance policy towards risk-taking. I have often felt that being able to set and identify expectations clearly plays a critical role in ‘time to competence’.

-    It’s like learning to dance: this is the best analogy I can think of. It’s much more about getting into the swing of things - knowing when to take the lead and when to follow. Relaxing. You can’t learn much from a book, and there’s always the temptation to look at your feet when really you should be maintaining good eye contact. Push the paperwork to one side and listen to the person in front of you.

-    It’s mainly an informal process: often, when one looks at learning events there are things that work and things that don’t – but no-one can separate them out: lectures. Are they a good thing? Donald Clark says no, but I found the lecture where he makes this point very good. But there is really no paradox here: an engaging person is good on stage, on TED, in writing. An uninspiring person poor whatever. The same is true of onboarding – for most organisations the process is largely organic, and should probably stay this way. What is generally much more difficult is identifying the bits that would be better formalised and those that wouldn’t.

-    Formal learning is largely business risk management: from an on-boarding perspective (at least) this is predominantly the most valuable role played by formal learning interventions. That is not to say that a formal event might not be a worthwhile opportunity for informal learning (e.g. networking) but that this is the most easily identifiable role.

-    Maybe 80 percent of learning is from the people within a 5 meter radius: I have been fortunate to have a great deal of support from the people immediately around me (you know who you are) who have politely answered the same question as if I wasn’t asking it for the 15^th time and helped me find my way around like some ageing, bewildered family member. Many of us learning professionals are acutely aware that this mechanism is the bedrock of the learning organisation: we ought to be able to do something to better quantify, support and enhance this process.

-    Learning styles, hierarchy of needs – mumbo jumbo: Usually you don’t get a choice about how you are going to learn something; instead you need to be flexible. And people generally are (imagine saying – ‘it’s ok, I don’t need to meet you – just accept my linkedIn invite and I’ll go through your cv’). Secondly, everything feels very insecure at first – this doesn’t stop a person from learning, instead it provides a basic motivation for learning. I never want to see that damn triangle again.

Apologies in advance for mixing my metaphors; but I do recall advice given to me by a driving instructor: “When you find yourself in an unfamiliar place, just slow up and pay close attention to the signs. You won’t go too far wrong.”

I had better shut up now – I need to go and check BP's policy on blogging!