The May Big Question in the Learning Circuits Blog is What will workplace learning technology look like in 2015? My first instinct was to pass on this one, because it seems only a few months since we made our predictions for 2010. But this asks us to look a little further out, to a time when economies will hopefully be back on the up and when new media really will be ubiquitous. So, in for a penny …
First the killjoy stuff. Five years may be a lot in Internet Time, as Jay Cross keeps reminding us, but in corporate training it’s no time at all. I’ve been involved in learning technologies for 30 years now and I’d have to admit that, despite our best efforts, progress, while steady, has been disappointingly slow. The l&d profession is doggedly conservative and has been allowed to get away with maintaining the status quo because both sponsors, from above, and consumers, from below, have not – up until recently - been too bothered about pushing for change. So, can the next five years break this pattern? Just maybe.
The recession has created an opportunity and – as they say – you should never waste a good crisis. Managers have started to question the money spent on traditional training, the time this absorbs, and to some extent the environmental impact. They are not bothered about social media, games and sims or iPads, but they are interested in the efficient use of resources. Another five years and practically the whole l&d community will have been forced to engage with technology. They will not like this and they will look to revert to the good old ways as soon as conditions allow. My guess is that they will not be allowed to.
Pressure for change is also increasing from below, from the consumers of l&d interventions. Much to the amazement of HR, it seems that the next generation is actively seeking out learning technologies, without any coercion from above, and often without even asking permission! They are not going to hang about waiting for the next classroom event when they can get what they want in a few clicks. Yes, they’ll go along with all the formal stuff when it’s absolutely necessary as a condition of employment or career progression, but they won’t rely on it to learn anything really important.
I think we can be optimistic about noticeable changes occurring over the next five years in the way that employers organise learning and development: shorter and less highly-structured interventions, a widespread use of enterprise networking tools, and a degree of content sharing in a wide variety of formats. Some organisations will continue to experiment with serious games, but I’m not optimistic that enough people know how to put this stuff together convincingly, let alone quickly and cheaply enough.
In terms of technology platforms, it is important to be realistic. Five years is not enough to see Microsoft’s hold on enterprise IT disappear, although it will surely decline. Most people will still be using Windows PCs and laptops; a great many will also have smart phones or tablets of some sort. That’s all we need to reach just about every sector of the working population. It doesn’t really matter if it’s Microsoft or Apple, HTML 5 or Flash, proprietary or open source, so long as it delivers content and allows humans to interact. Let’s be honest, all the hardware and software we could possibly want is already here. It’s hearts and minds that have to be won over, and that takes a lot longer.
I fully agree with this analysis, Clive. The disparity in speed between what goes on behind most organisational firewalls and what's going on out in the wider (and mostly wilder) world of the Internet will throw up some very interesting pressures, decisions, actions, and outcomes over the next 5 years - it's already starting to do so.
ReplyDeleteI think it can be summed up as 'the beginning of the conquest of PUSH by PULL'. L&D folks will need to get comfortable with the pull from above and below to do things differently. And, as you mention, technology is going to be a ubiquitous underpinning for a lot of L&D activity.
John Seeley Brown, former Chief Scientist at Xerox, now with Deloitte's Centre for the Edge, sums up the drive from 'push' to 'pull' really well in his recent book 'The Power of Pull'. Well worth a read.
Charles
Another fascinating post; I am always impressed by your restraint and emphasis on conservatism when making such predictions - I have just about reached the point in my career where I can fully appreciate this myself.
ReplyDeleteIn my view organisations will have begun moving from the top to the bottom of the triangle (http://bit.ly/bxEu6S) - more rapid development and some learning sharing networks will appear. I think that businesses will see a great deal of free-range learning happening via employee's own networks and devices, and I would like to think that more learning will become short, sharp task-oriented performance support or be based on simulation (though the latter is more of an ambition).
It's hard sometimes to separate one's wishes from one's predictions; but I would love to see an appreciation of the difference between awareness and resource emerge, and more sophistication brought to bear on the former.
I liked your 'push-pull' post, Charles; more on that here: http://bit.ly/cZgCbn
Agree with Nick on your restraint.
ReplyDeleteBut I have this piece from Scott Anthony on the Harvard Business Review fresh in my mind:
"The lesson for executives is that it's important to look beyond revenue or basic market share data to determine whether or not a would-be disruption is a legitimate threat. If the U.S. Postal Service had measured its market share of "pieces of communication" (which, it very well might have) it would have noticed sharp share declines even as its revenue was increasing. Similarly, while Digital Equipment Corp. might have felt great that its revenues went up from $3 billion to $11 billion during the 1980s, that growth paled in comparison to the explosive growth in the personal computer market."
My most conservative client phoned up out of the blue yesterday with an amber light on suggestions I made years ago to redesign some of their core induction training (classroom-based workshops, natch). They suggested a move to 'eLearning' (which they tried and 'didn't work' before). I countered with a suggestion of a collaborative space online and a focus on Community Management (I'll be honest, the call came out of the blue and I was, cough, extemporising. . .)
And they bought it without question. They seemed strangely passive, docile even. Apparently, managers have lost patience with attempting to 'discipline' staff who duck out of compulsory training.
My guess is that the amount of traditional training has stayed constant while the amount of 'learning' (ie through changes in regulation and other PESTLE stuff, churn, M & A) has shot up. It's the proverbial tipping point.
I know you, Charles and Nick work with more high-flying, forward-thinking orgs than my stuck-in-the-muds. And I'm aware than N=1. But still. As they say, we always overestimate the extent of change in the short term.
But massively underestimate it in the long.
I enjoyed your post Clive.
ReplyDeleteI agree that there will be a need for managers to get more efficiency from their learning resources and assets. It seems to me that there is a lack of creativity and innovation around how learning programmes and the supervison of employees to complete learning and development in a timely manner is managed.
Learning platforms are good at delivering learning but not necessarilly at orchestrating the whole learning and supervison requirement - and for some organisations, the latter in particular represents a worrying overhead that needs addressing.