INTEGRATED LEARNING

 by

Stephen Briault MA

Director, Rubicon Associates

 

WHAT IS INTEGRATED LEARNING?

 Is your organisation getting the best possible value from its investment of time, attention and resources in training and development?  Do the courses you run really lead to new behaviour and improved performance in the workplace?   There is an increasing challenge to HRD professionals to demonstrate the contribution of educational activities to the achievement of organisational goals; in facing this, you may have wondered whether a re-thinking of strategy and methods for management and staff development might be needed.  This paper takes a diagnostic approach to the limitations of much conventional training, and suggests that new approaches are needed and available, to integrate learning as a key strategic asset within an organisation.

The Problem

Most organisations today believe that training is a Good Thing; many devote substantial resources to training programmes of various kinds; but in our experience, few succeed in gaining the maximum potential benefit - for the people or the organisation -from these efforts.  Why is this?

The essence of the problem seems to lie in three "learning gaps" which we have observed in much conventional training activity. These are:

1. the gap between organisational development and individual development;

2. the gap between the learning system and the work system; and

3. the gap between what is learned and what is applied.

Each of these compounds the other; in particular, the first two almost invariably lead to the third.  It is also important to note that these gaps can exist independently of the quality of individual course content or delivery.  They will not be overcome by investing in better facilities or finding better tutors, important though these factors are.  They can only be addressed by a thorough re-thinking and re-design of the role and process of learning throughout the organisation.  The Training Department may be able to spearhead such a change, but cannot carry it through by itself.

Symptom: learning is not applied

The third of the "gaps" mentioned above is perhaps the most evident.  Time and again, trainers find to their dismay that their best efforts, particularly in trying to promote behavioural, attitudinal and cultural change in the organisation, appear to fade away sooner or later.  Even after well-planned, well-run and well-received courses, attendance at follow-up sessions is often poor, and those who do turn up come somewhat shamefaced or defensive, because few of their good intentions, action plans and personal resolutions formulated at the end of the course have been put into practice.

Usually, this is not mainly their fault.  It is hard enough to change something in one's own approach to work and working relationships: but most such changes are unsustainable without understanding, support and reciprocation from bosses, subordinates and peers.  A new set of methods for better problem-solving, say, or some constructive guidelines for negotiating, quickly become confused, diluted and finally shelved as "nice ideas" that would probably work in a nice world, but not in the so-called "real world" of daily experience.

What a waste!  All worlds are real - though not all are typical, which is what is actually meant.  What works in the classroom could work elsewhere, if conditions are created for an effective transfer of learning.  These conditions depend on overcoming the first two gaps - the separation of individuals, while learning, from their work context, and the separation of learning activities from "real" work.

Cause: training is disconnected from structural or strategic changes in the organisation

This gap hinges on the status of training & development work within the organisation; if this is not seen as a central, strategic function but as a fringe, "nice to have" activity - a stepping stone for professionals on their way up the Personnel Department ladder, or a backwater into which those whose careers have plateaued can be placed - then training will not be expected to play a key role in achieving - let alone formulating - the core organisational objectives.  It can become remote from, and seen as irrelevant to, the "hard" business issues which preoccupy line management.  A vicious circle of low status, under-resourcing and marginal contribution then ensues.  Instead of becoming a dynamic source of innovative ideas and custodian of best practice within the organisation, training departments try to please their internal customers by providing a "supermarket" of course offerings.  At best, perhaps, corporate educators may get the opportunity to react to re-organisations - possibly even before rather than after the event - by organising briefings, re-orientation courses and so on: but they are often the last rather than the first to be consulted.

Conversely, both trainers and learners are typically powerless to make the changes to the organisational environment which would allow the full application of learning.  If learners return to unchanged and - for them - unchangeable systems, structures, procedures and policies, they quickly become demotivated.  What they have learned, in so far as it differs from their previous behaviour, does not fit in the old environment. 

There is a good reason for this.  Most people adapt fairly accurately to the demands and expectations of their situation; before training, they were, in limited terms, well-adjusted.  If we are then actually successful, through training, in encouraging and helping them to develop new habits, they become literally mal-adjusted: their perceptions, attitudes and behaviour no longer "fit".  One group of foremen we know of were branded as "Moonies" on their return from a residential course.

Sometimes one can feel one has almost done people a disservice by offering them new insights, raising awareness of self and others and providing a tantalising glimpse of possible new ways of working - and then sending them back to a workplace where nothing else has changed, or where the changes are in the opposite direction. If ruthless individualism is rewarded with promotion, even the best courses on team working will be met with hollow laughs.  Teaching junior managers mentoring and counselling skills will have little or negative effect if they receive no such help from their own bosses.  Whereas they had previously been perhaps merely apathetic, people then become actively cynical and hostile towards their "hypocritical" organisation.

In recent discussions with training managers in Ford, the message from all of these phenomena came through very clearly: you can't change the organisational culture by sending people on courses.

Cause: learning activities are disconnected from work activities

Alongside the issue of context, the other major question mark over many training courses is often the issue of relevance - more accurately, the transferability of what has been learned, from the learning situation to the learner's daily work.  All too often, the "Monday morning syndrome" - the evaporation of learning in the cold light of workplace reality - blocks this transfer.

In principle, the social dynamics involved in getting a group of less-than-Olympian course members across a Welsh river using only three oil drums and a rubber band do bear some relation to running a sales office: in principle, a role play or fictional case study is a useful framework within which to explore new strategies or patterns of behaviour.  The problem is that the gulf between what made sense there and then, and what will actually work here and now, often seems more unbridgeable than the Welsh river.

There and then, I and my peers were in learning mode; tutors were on hand with encouragement and supportive feedback; and we were in a low-risk situation where the only real dangers were of a wetting and/or looking mildly foolish.  Here and now, everyone wants quick answers, the boss is breathing down my neck and my job may be at stake if I get it wrong.  The tutors with whom I was so impressed are nowhere to be seen.  Somehow I'm not so interested in setting new precedents as I was on the last day of the course.

Learning has been separated from Doing, and not adequately re-united with it. At the crucial moment when the potential for real change and development is greatest, all the supports disappear at a stroke - the course is over, you're on your own (with your Action Plan) now.

Why do we do this to people?  It is as if, after a few sessions of classroom instruction and a turn at the simulator, we would then send learner drivers out, unaccompanied, into the traffic. We lead people through a process of Learning, and perhaps to some extent Planning, but rarely follow this through into Doing, the application of Learning in the implementation of Planning:

 

 

 If learning is not applied, it is not respected.  If line managers do not perceive staff training and development as making a significant contribution to their ability to meet key objectives, they will not give it the time and attention it needs.  Deprived of this time and attention, training becomes largely tokenism.  The "fishbone" diagram overleaf sets out a range of factors which can distort and block the fulfilment of good developmental intentions.  Fortunately, these are rarely all found together - but most trainers and trainees will recognise at least some of these characteristics.


Treatment: integrated learning systems

A "Quality" approach to developing people will concern itself not primarily with training courses but with learning processes, and the systems within which these processes take place.  Any process can be improved continuously, but the system within which the process takes place creates constraints to this improvement. Therefore, the issue of the design of learning systems becomes the new challenge for Training and Development professionals.

A well-designed learning system will:

integrate learning with ongoing work activities;

integrate individual learning objectives with departmental objectives and organisational values;

integrate management support with subordinates' development;

integrate the fruits of learning with performance improvement initiatives;

integrate learning achievements with career development opportunities

 Closing the loop: the Learning Cycle

Adult humans learn in a variety of ways - from theory, from experience, from observation, and from each other.  An effective learning process will draw on a variety of complementary methods; and we have found that the most effective organising structure for these is the basic Learning Cycle shown below:

 

 

If learning is not to remain abstract, its application to practical work must be planned, and the plan must then be implemented.  To confirm the success of the action, review is necessary; and to gain the maximum benefit, review processes must lead to new insights and learning which inform future plans.  Learning is only properly integrated with Doing when this full cycle, in successive iterations, is consciously carried out and supported.

On a small scale, the cycle is of course used in many seminar situations; case-studies, role-plays and other exercises allow trainees to plan and practice new skills, then review their performance in a "safe" environment to enhance their learning. The crucial next step, however, is to extend this principle to "live" work situations, in which learners plan and implement real changes to the processes, resources and relationships for which they are responsible.  If this application of learning is not to be too risky - both for the individual and the organisation - it must be placed in a proper context.

 Key elements of a framework for learning

 In recent years, Rubicon Associates have designed a range of development programmes which use the principles of integrated learning.  Some central aspects of these programmes are:

1.   Most learning activities are work-based; they involve observation, analysis and improvement of aspects of the learners' own work-system.

2.   The learners' managers are involved from the outset - in agreeing objectives, mentoring and supporting the learners, reviewing progress and authorising initiatives.  They are specifically briefed and prepared for this role, and have access to consultancy support.  A Learning Contract specifies the commitment which learner and manager make to each other in relation to the Programme.

3.   Programmes are customised to support the strategic objectives and core values of the organisation.  These are articulated and endorsed by senior management who have a central sponsoring and monitoring role.

4.   Self-responsibility for one's own development is continually reinforced - no spoon-feeding; but a specially trained Adviser meets regularly with participants to counsel and facilitate the learning process.

5.   Open Learning materials are combined with seminars and projects to exploit a mix of social and self-managed learning methods.

6.   Mutual help between learners is emphasised: carefully-composed groups which meet regularly to exchange experiences create a lively "learning community".

The second "fishbone"  sets out these factors in contrast to the earlier picture.

 

 

Integrated Learning in Practice

Learning Programmes using these principles of integration have been developed by Rubicon Associates for an increasing range of client organisations.  For example:

the Canadian subsidiary of Unisys Corporation (a multinational computer manufacturer) implemented a comprehensive development programme for all its first line managers, designed and run as Integrated Learning.  These managers then requested that an equivalent programme be created for their staff, so that everyone could participate in a parallel learning process.  This led to the development of Quality at Work, a three-module, six-month programme which is now being implemented for all staff in Unisys Canada and subsequently in other organisations.

the European Quality Director of Air Products commissioned us to create a project-based learning programme for Quality Improvement teams, to ensure that managers and workers who participate in improvement projects enhance their knowledge and skills whilst making a very tangible contribution to problem-solving and innovation.

managers in a large engineering consultancy firm have recently completed a Rubicon programme in Learning-centred Leadership, during which they learned, practised and applied the key skills of teaching, coaching, mentoring and team building: during the process they worked with written materials and work-based assignments, and met regularly with the guidance of an external consultant to share their experiences and insights, and to give and receive mutual feedback and support.

Learning about learning

A final note: the learning system and process must itself be planned, implemented and evaluated.  Especially the last of these is often neglected, partly through pressure of time, partly through lack of a clear method for evaluating development initiatives. (Rubicon Associates has recently created a system to fill this gap!)  But development professionals, of all people, should understand the importance of review: it is this which enables us to learn continuously about how we learn, and how learning can best be supported.  There is much more to be discovered and developed.

 

© Rubicon Associates