What I’ve Learned About Learning Design
I trained in philosophy, marketing, design, and education. While helpful, nothing jacked my practice of creating learning programs more than getting out there and doing it.
In no particular order, here are some of the ideas that captivate me:
Learning Arches
The concept of learning arches comes from Kaospilots and is a wonderful way to design learning spaces.
Set — heard of set and setting in the land of psychedelic journeys? This is the same kin fo intention setting addressing psychological safety, learning outcomes, and creating a powerful space for learning
Hold — this is often overlooked and is a time for pausing, reflecting, questions, and calibrating. A good program is building intimacy and trust as it goes and holding for a period is where the magic of integrating your learning happens.
Land — boom! Just like a joke you want the experience to land. You can instinctively know if it has but best to harness this from the participants. This inclusive way of wrapping often leads to insights, ways to improve in the future, and most of all — sealing the deal.
Like a good concert, the learning arch ensures that there is a systematic build and that a program (or programs within the program) resonate. The approach helps build adoption, share power, and continuously measure results.
You can run your learning cycles in whatever duration is fitting bearing in mind appetite, urgency, and outcome criteria.
The Organization as Organism
I’ve always been drawn to the idea that a company is like a living and breathing creature. After all, a business is made up of humans, right?
Our organizations were designed in the image of a machine, not people. And it’s no surprise this incarnation of how we organize is no longer fit for purpose.
The new organization as an organism is created in the image of humans. It can sense and respond to what it needs to be nourished. It mitigates toxicity and requires constant renewal. And it’s optimized for unpredictable non-routine work, human wellbeing, and conscientiousness growth.
Shared Vocabulary
It is crucial to have a shared language in order to reach common ground. It’s a sure-fire way to understand one another. Words, slang, jargon, corporate-speak can mean a bunch of different things to different folks. Common language also mutates based on the culture (what the company believes people experience at work) and the climate (how employees actually experience their work).
Ever sat in a meeting and so many acronyms are tossed about it almost makes you wanna puke? Well, this is to avoid that by speaking as if a person of the street was in the room. It points to saying what you mean and meaning what you say. We get on the same page by taking the time to actively listen, hear, and see our colleagues.
When we have shared vocabulary we’re much clearer on where our seat on the bus is and the direction we're heading. Clarity wins every time.
Catering to the Individual
“Employees are now more confident, more mobile, more demanding, more idealistic in some cases, and less willing to be company people. Employees, more than ever, are individualists. Leaders, in response, are learning to be less the visionary, less the sage, less the objective-setter, and more the shaper, the connector, the questioner. And yet at times, they also need to intervene, to insist, to control. It’s a fluid role, its shape not yet clear.” — Wolf Owins Report
Covid has revealed that some people not only want flexibility, but they also want complete virtuality. I know several people who fled the city to live in the boonies. There’s more space, more nature, and seemingly more time for family. And the Wi-Fi connection is just as strong.
Other’s simply want to be able to be more themselves at work. This means amplifying quirks instead of shunning them. It entails letting people be their idosyncratic selves so long as they sync with their teams and get the job done.
The new modes of leadership cater to this shift in the world of work — acknowledge and catering to the fact that people. well, are people.
Tea Breaks
When researchers monitored where and how information gets shared in hospitals what they did discover?
Nurses, doctors, and care providers swapped stories and shared knowledge in the canteen over a cuppa. Yes, again it’s the informal networks where learning and information are integrated.
Or take the Swedish tradition of the Fika. Swedes enjoy a hot cup of coffee and cake at work. It’s a ritual where colleagues mingle without regard for age, class, or social status in the office.
When designing a program you can embrace these social regulations of time and amplify them so they become practices inherent in the organization — regardless if you work in healthcare or happen to live in Stockholm.
Trojan mouses
Borrowed from the social innovation space — this is a way to make risk-taking more palatable. You run safe-to-try experiments that are small, light, and nimble. The results can lead to more buy-in from colleagues, radical new insights, and inform future projects.
A trojan mouse intervention maintains integrity by pivoting as necessary, amplifying any benefits, and continually building coherence. It lets you focus on actual needs before rolling out a pilot program. One of my default ways of running an experiment is through peer coaching and pods. Running this before (during and after too can be great) a program brings so much insight and informs the design of an adaptive learning experience.
While you can use this strategy in the design of a learning program it als applies to the creation of new products or services. It can be applied to innovate on company policies and processes too. Think a series of mini-workshops, impromptu walks and talks,
When courageous leaders see that the experiment worked (or at least rapidly learned something valuable) they can spring into action while still unpacking the problem to be solved.
Success Metrics
This one is typically a funny one for me. How do you let a client know what the outcomes will b before you know what you are designing for> (see trojan mouse above) Is it productivity? engagement? creativity? innovation? revenue? inclusivity? wellbeing? teamwork? trust? What about hope? You catch my drift.
Here are some caveats that I find helpful to address before promising the world to anyone (or everyone):
→ Acknowledge and agree that there is no miracle moment — positive benefits, adaptive learning, norms, behaviors, and measurable results will be compounded over time as the organization evolves.
→ Review and align with objectives and key results in a public way so as to measure against during and after the program finishes and select fewer results-oriented outcomes that will have a systemic impact.
→ Start with an objective that can move the client towards outcomes. Innovation firm More Space for Light sees itself as a conduit for outcomes (in effect enabling people to fish). And while outcomes themselves may be abstract they become the bedrock for concrete outputs that live inside the organization
→ The ‘transformation’ that leaders are so hungry for only will occur if they are willing to change themselves. More soul, less ego. More curiosity less judgment. More questions fewer directives. This kind of success results in better decision-making, mutual understanding, priority-setting, continuous learning, meaningful action, and better ways of working.
Of course, sometimes you just have to play the game. In the past, I have agreed to outcomes that are quite fuzzy but were necessary for buy-in. While this happens frequently across many industries and with companies of all sizes— there’s a danger of merely putting lipstick on the pig.
Emergent Leaders (over Shitty Bosses)
Just 1 out of 10 people has what have the talent to manage well. This is scary and is why the self-management movement continues to flourish. But it’s also why we are witnessing more and more leaders emerge through relational authority. While the incompetent boss may have the designation and corner office to match, it’s the dangerously smart introvert that may have the followers. She blends professional will and personal humility. She and flexing her creativity, sensitivity, and wisdom.
Her leader within can mutate as needed and become a:
Leader In Front → inspiring and holding a vision
Leader Behind → Growing and evolving competencies in others
Leard Beside → Co-designing new and better ways of getting shit done
Leader In Field → Embracing the unknown, making sense of the muddled, and doing the right thing over doing things right.
These styles can be refined through scenarios, improvisation, stacking triggers, workshops, and micro-learning so that the ‘right’ style becomes ubiquitous. In every instance the — acting with professional will and personal humility.
Building Cultures of Trust
How do you build a culture of trust? With time. With courage. With trustworthy leaders who model behavior. People should be able to:
→ Bring up tough issues
→ Feel safe taking mitigated risks
→ Ask colleagues for support
→ Give, receive, and integrate constructive feedback
→ Lean into their unique skills and talent
This is all a bit dreamy I know, it’s an aspiration that’s worth striving for. You can kick off with a team well-being workshop. When people can speak candidly, openly, and honestly it invites others to do the same.
The urgency for building high-trust environment is evident. The pandemic has made us work differently. In many instances (33% of American full and part-time worker’s to be precise) jobs are now harder to do. Do a quick google search and you’ll find that loads of people are considering leaving their job altogether. A culture that lacks trust could easily be the final straw and prompt someone to take their badass self elsewhere.
Speculative Futures
There is an infinite number of futures ahead and we could lump them into the plausible, probable, and preferable. This is the area of speculative design and can be applied to your future self, the direction your team will go, and the horizon to which your company is pointing.
Probable: the standard design space
Plausible: rooted in today’s world this is alternative futures
Possible: scientifically possible, extreme-as-they-may-be futures
Preferable: debating what a preferable future might be
When people can galvanize around a future they prefer, baby steps lead to massive change. The beauty of this framework is that we avoid getting stuck in a default future — one that easily sucks.
Whether we envision a carbon-free world or a learning program that leads to profound paradigm shifts in people — if we can see it, there’s a fighting chance of it becoming real.
Thanks to Kristian Kruse, Erik Rodin, Mo-Ling Chui, Alice Katter, Joshua Greene, Alison Coward, dan levy, and Perry Timms for the lessons and inspiration.
Want to nerd out some more? Take a gander at these resources:
Fancy going even deeper? Grab my bestselling book SHAPERS: Reinvent the way you work and change the future.
