I recently met a kindred spirit from the learning and development world. We are discovering more and more people that believe that training should be about driving better business results, not about tracking butts-in-seats and happy face sheets. One of those leading thinkers is Gary Wise, Chief Learning Architect with MYCA and lead blogger at Living in Learning, http://gdogwise.wordpress.com/

Gary has a model for instructional design that recognizes the notion that 5% of employees’ time is spent in formal training classes in a given year vs. 95% on the job, and ALL business results happen on the job. So why wouldn’t training departments focus the majority of their attention to supporting better capability while you are doing your job? This brilliant flash of the obvious is far from common practice by the way.

What is common practice is that you spend a week in a class getting all revved up about new ideas that will help you work smarter. Then you get back to your desk at the end of class to play catch up on the 500 e-mails, 50 voicemails, and a line of traffic out your door. Three weeks later most people have retained only 15% of what they have learned if they are lucky according to a study by the Research Institute of America. In the end less than 10% of what is learned ever gets put into practice according to another study by the American Society of Training and Development. It looks like a great time to shift common practice. The funny thing is, when “training doesn’t take” the typical reaction is to bring in a different training class. Hmmm.

Learning and development departments do have a worthy goal that makes sense for you to embrace yourself: improve the human capacity and capability of the workforce. Have you noticed that you are expected to accomplish more with the same number of hours in a day? All in the name of improving productivity, workforce reduction to improve the bottom line, etc. And Albert Einstein reminded us that the definition of insanity is to continue to do the same things and expect a different result. So you have little choice than to improve your work capacity and skills capability if you want to remain gainfully employed. And most of what you learn sitting in a class goes right into the ethers. Now what do you do?

Performance support systems are one way that training is moving “to the moment of need.” This means while you are sitting at your desk biting your nails over how to wrestle with a business issue, you can call up a magic Genie of sorts that guides you through solving the problem. These systems have been in use for a while to help users of new I.T. systems navigate their way and customer service reps access the correct help information to address customer issues. iCanPilot offers a unique approach to providing a team performance support system for critical marketing and strategy activities such as designing your value proposition or innovating your business model. These systems support you during the 95% of your work life – while you are doing your job. And isn’t that when you learn the most anyway, when you are DOING something new?

The authors of a book I highly recommend, Influencer (learn more at http://www.vitalsmarts.com/influencer_book.aspx ), remind us that practice does not make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect. If you want to improve your work capacity and skills capability, here are a few tips to consider in the pursuit of remaining gainfully employed:

1. Use your 5% training time to seek out best practices or effective examples of a subject you are committed to improve. The best examples have been researched and compared to ineffective examples so the few critical winning behavior traits are now transparent.

2. Compare your current behavior to the winning behavior and highlight changes you will make.

3. Take action. The book Influencer provides six strategies to make change inevitable by addressing the motivational and ability factors that help you or get in the way.

iCanPilot and other effective performance support systems already provide the best practice in a format that is ready for you to implement, so you can jump to step 3 once you have found the right program. You need to add the motivation, however, and the ability to execute. You will be an un-common practitioner to consciously leverage the 95% of time you are working to learn and develop your capabilities. This sounds like the type of employee any company would want to keep around.

iCanPilot’s mission is to help you Work Smarter.
http://www.icanpilot.com

Author Bio: Mary Poul is President of iCanPilot, a software company that helps marketing teams perform like experts to drive better business results on the job without time in a class room. Mary formerly deployed marketing excellence initiatives globally for 3M. iCanPilot website

Category: Marketing
Keywords: marketing tools, marketing solutions, marketing strategies, work smarter