But generally it is a sign that something is wrong, needs fixing - it is a symptom of inefficiency.
And so it is with learning: 'learning' is organisational friction. 30 years ago my first computer was a BBC micro B. It came with a stack of manuals - you needed to learn DOS. When you loaded a program there were key presses to memorise - later, odd keyboard overlays as an 'aide memoire'.
For Christmas I bought my mum an iPad - there were no manuals. Within a few minutes she was using emails, Google Maps, the Web. Learning has been designed out.
Learning elimination is the product of good design.
Learning elimination is the product of good design.
And this is the perspective we must bring to the challenges we face: we are there to fix the problem, not make it easier to bear. We can do so much more to improve performance if we stop trying to force stuff into people's heads and instead start tackling the problem. Don't be the person who stands under a leak holding a bucket. Your entire life.
List the roles in your organisation. What would it take for any of those roles to be done by a 13-yr old with no training? That's the direction, that's the challenge. Impossible? My youngest daughter had a tablet for her 3rd birthday - could you have imagined a 3yr-old using a computer 30 yrs ago? Today, we pick her up from school - how long before 6yr olds can use a car?
Will people stop learning? No - instead they will learn more of what they want to learn and less of what they need to.
Design learning out of your systems. That is what design means. It's time to do design, not learning.
Friction is desirable when you are learning something you want to learn. Orgs tend to put friction into learning they feel employees 'need to' learn.
ReplyDeleteUltimately, good design and tech will automate processes and many job types too.
It's an interesting point: I think people tend to think of automation as something 'out there' - an incipient robotic army to be announced by Intel or Microsoft or Apple. But automation is one thread of a system of changes of which we are a part - and I would like to say that this is the part we can play. We are part of the ascent of learning.
DeleteDesigning out the need for learning in small functional areas in order to make space for learning in key strategic areas: e.g. not a course on how to 'work' Word, but on the power of communication in your organisation or even how to write!!
ReplyDeleteYes, but perhaps not just that. Many tasks deemed to be complex turn out to be greatly improved by following simple steps - leadership for example. In that respect they are more like good health, where the behaviours are relatively simple but the systematic application - the habits - hard to implement without guidance. I imagine there is a class of thing one might learn naturally (e.g. one might still learn a new language if one were living in the relevant country (as opposed to using an automatic translator)), and a class of things too arcane to describe (the 'chicken sexing' class). Writing might be like this, but here we are finding that the application of simple rules makes a big difference. Writing a good novel, perhaps ;o)
Delete