Are you a leader? You really need to write things down
One of the greatest superpowers that a leader can unlock at any moment is to write stuff down.
Here are a few reasons to do so.
Make more decisions
People confuse talking with decision-making. While it is true that talking is part of the decision-making process, if your decision is not written down, it will be forgotten and you will have to revisit the same conversation in the future. Once a decision is written down, it is concrete and everyone can move onto the next thing. The more decisions you write down, the more progress you make.
Write more, think better
Writing is thinking. Amazon has 1-pager and a 6-pager writing practice which encourages employees to think in-depth about their thoughts and vision for their work. As you write down your thoughts, you are forced to organise them and create a coherent narrative. If you're not writing down your thoughts, you are relying too much on your ability to articulate them. And let's be honest - that doesn't work very well. It doesn't look good when a leader stumbles over their words as they try to get your thoughts in order. You need to at least look like you have an idea what you're doing. So write down your thoughts.
Get agreement
If you don't write things down, you rely on people to spread information via word of mouth. Maybe that used to work when oral, in-person communication was the main form of communication. But in the digital age where most our work in online, relying on word of mouth isn't good enough. It takes just one person to zone out or miss a meeting for everything to be re-explained. Write things down - you will avoid repeating yourself and relying on Chinese whispers.
Write to increase your team's speed
If you don't write things down, your speed as a team, organisation or company slows down. If a decision is not written down, it's not a decision. And at the end of a meeting, if nothing gets written down, nobody knows what happens. They don't know what actions need to be taken. They don't know what happens next. "Oh - I guess we'll need another meeting". Meeting after meeting occurs with nothing written down, no sense of progress or alignment and everything slows to a snail's pace. Write all thoughts down and make sure everyone sees the decision process. At least that way the next meeting will have something to build off instead of saying "What were we talking about again?".
Here's what ineffective meetings looks like.
Compare the above to a series of meetings where everything is written down.
Write and take your work seriously
Strong writers are always viewed as professional and good at their work. A leader who writes their thoughts down come across as articulate and clear. Who know where you stand with someone who has written their thoughts down. You know what their decision process was. You know what their presumptions were.
Write more and improve your work and the work of the people around you.
Floppy Funnel Syndrome - A Marketing Antipattern
Effective Marketing
Here is a sales funnel:
On the left, we see all the opportunities for potential new business.
As our target market become aware of what I offer them, I work with them to get their interest and hopefully a decision for them to do business with me.
Good sales strategies will aim to be specific. If we make generic statements about what I sell, it's going to fall flat in the sea of advertising noise. I need to make my value heard, and to do that it needs to be specific.
For example, instead of "David's Incredible Deserts" I could focus on "David's Incredible Chocolate Chip Ice-cream". Instead of a generic statement where I try to catch as many people as possible, I just focus on the people who want some great chocolate chip ice-cream.
Here is an example of how a generic message can fall flat.
And here is how a specific message can have a better impact.
Floppy Funnel
Notice that by advertising chocolate chip ice-cream, I'm potentially excluding people who only like strawberry ice-cream. What should I do? I could call it "David's Incredible Chocolate Chip and Strawberry Ice-cream", but we can see straight away how it loses its impact.
This is what happens when we make our sales funnel 'floppy' and change the story of what I provide to suit more and more people.
In the end, everyone feels like there is no difference between me and the ice-cream they can buy in the shop, so why pay more?
My funnel needs to be aimed at a specific group of people or businesses which I know I can bring value to. My offerings need to be tailored to those groups such that I am happy to exclude the majority of people in favour of a few key people who value my services.
If I have a floppy funnel, when someone asks "What ice-cream can you give me", my response will be "Well what ice-cream would you like? I can give you any ice-cream you want!".
I might not even give them any options: "You just tell me what you want.". When this happens, the customer quickly sees I either don't know what I'm doing or I cannot provide anything of quality.
Contrast the floppy funnel response to a more direct response: "I provide homemade chocolate chip ice-cream with Irish chocolate and dairy from the local farmer's market". The person might not like the price I'm charging, or they might not like chocolate chip ice-cream, but that's ok as long as enough people do like it. And because I'm charging premium prices, I can get away with fewer customers.
Business is the same. A business which has Floppy Funnel Syndrome will respond to the question "What do you do?" with the answer "We can do whatever you want us to do". Everyone knows that response is rubbish - no business can do everything. And if they can, they're not going to be very good at anything. If a business responds like this, they lose all trust before starting any real conversation.
Floppy Funnel Syndrome in other areas
Business is not the only area where Floppy Funnel Syndrome can happen.
- Career: You can switch career directions too many times so that you never build a deep expertise in anything. Later in life, you will find it difficult to stay employable.
- Practice: When practising a subject, it can be tempting to switch direction when something gets difficult. Pick a category of work to point your funnel and learn about the things that interest you. As the subject's information gets filtered through your funnel, it will get more difficult. Eventually though, you should have a set of skills that are well-honed.
- Relationships: Don't try to make everyone happy. Pick the people you care about and who care about you and develop those relationships. You don't need to change yourself so that you can get more friends. Your funnel should be focused on the people who care about you for your own sake.
Make It Unstick: 8 Learning Antipatterns
Intro
Reading through Make It Stick, I keep coming across misconceptions I have about effective learning. Here are a couple of antipatterns I've fallen prey to.
Learning Antipattern: The Path of Least Resistance
...where I choose to learn things that are easy to avoid anything difficult, tedious or tiring.
The Path of Least Resistance: Problems
- Easy learning gets lost. Reading a book cover to cover might retain 1% of the information in the book. But if I slow down, pace my reading and make it more difficult on myself to progress, I will understand and more information.
- If something's easy to achieve, it probably means lots of people have achieved it. When lots of people have the same thing, it loses its value. Everyone has a bachelor's degree today, which is why it has lost so much of its unique value. Easy things are less valuable.
- Easy learning indicates unimportant learning. As a corollary, difficult learning indicates important learning. How much does the average person know about the Kardashian's versus Dostoevsky?
The Path of Least Resistance: Solutions
- Remove any low-value information intake like LinkedIn, Instagram, news + blog sites. If you struggle with this (as I do) start with acknowledging the moments that are wasteful. Look out for endless scrolling.
- Pick an area of interest and deep dive into that area. Read, write, watch, listen. Make it slow. Make it difficult.
- Don't fall into the trap of doing easy things all the time. Interleave your easy learnings with deeper, more difficult learnings. For example, after you finish your current book, write 3-5 paragraphs on what you remember and what you found interesting.
Learning Antipattern: Beating a Dead Book
...where I read, read and re-read to remember the information.
Beating a Dead Book: Problems
- Reading alone does not result in retention or understanding.
- Familiarity with words & sentences gives the illusion of mastery. If I showed you a €1 coin, I'm sure you would recognise it. But if I asked you to draw a €1 coin, could you do it?
- We default to reading easy things such as blog posts and articles, cycling through lots of low-quality information. We cannot gain deep understanding with shallow information.
Beating a Dead Book: Solutions
- High-quality learning is a constant cycle of input and output. If reading is the input, pair it with an output such as writing.
- Remove as much low-quality reading as possible. Cap how many blog posts you read before diving deeper into the topic. Otherwise, you may be trapped into thinking you have mastered the subject matter whereas you only recognise the subject matter.
- Increase the difficulty of your reading. Difficult material forces you to slow down and unpack the complexity with notes, drawings and scribbles. This helps with deep understanding and prevents shallow thinking.
Learning Antipattern: The False Gospel of Learning Styles
...where I avoid books and tests because I am a kinesthetic learner.
The False Gospel of Learning Styles: Problems
- Apart from anything else, learning styles are scientifically bogus.
- Belief that you learn best through one mode means you are less likely to look at other modes of learning. "I can't learn with tests because I'm a visual learner".
- It furthers the myth that because you don't enjoy something means you learn less from the experience. "I don't enjoy reading, so I'm going to watch videos instead because that's my learning style." See Path of Least Resistance above.
The False Gospel of Learning Styles: Solutions
- Don't be afraid of different modes of learning. The more experiences you have about a topic, the better it will stick!
- If engaging with other people who talk about learning styles, do so politely. "I'd be interested to hear what you think of my understanding of learning styles..."
- If you've fallen into this trap already, now is the time to build up your toolkit of learning strategies. So you're not a good writer? (My hand goes up here) Start to write!
Learning Antipattern: The Miserable Crammer
...where I treat learning as something to be rushed for an exam.
The Miserable Crammer: Problems
- Cramming information and retaining information require very different practices. Your brain is designed to forget about short term memory.
- Cramming for the purpose of an exam and then passing the exam gives the illusion of mastery of the content. Regurgitating information is not the same as being able to apply the information to solve problems.
- We often cram for high-stress exams and sacrifice sleep. Poor sleep patterns reduce our ability to consolidate memories and develop neural pathways.
- Many of us have foregone the joy of life-long study because of our terrible experiences in school. Curiosity is a muscle that requires time to nurture, and sadly it atrophied in many of us due to this antipattern.
The Miserable Crammer: Solutions
- Where deadlines are not an issue, slow down your intake of information. Write about what you understand of the chapter in your book before moving onto the next.
- Whenever possible, avoid "1 and done" learning. Repeated practice of the material helps to master it.
- Diversify your information intake. Read multiple authors about the same topic. Draw diagrams. Write. Look underneath the what to the why and how.
Learning Antipattern: Back of the Book
...where I go straight to the solution before attempting to solve the problem.
Back of the Book: Problems
- Seeking the solution too early gives the impression of success but results in no learning at all.
- Learners avoid the struggle of figuring out the problem. When there is no option but to figure it out yourself or with others, we make significantly more breakthroughs. This is partly due to the mental phenomenon called (insert link that explains the thing where you continuously think back over the problem)
Back of the Book: Solutions
- If figuring out a problem for the sake of your own learning, don't ever look up the answer. Your struggle with the problem will solidify it in your long-term memory. Only look up the answer to confirm your own.
- If you are completely stuck on a problem that has the answer available, seek someone's help to help you understand the method or process behind finding the answer.
Learning antipattern: Act first, learn later
...where I avoid study because I learn best by doing.
Act first, learn later: Problems
- Contrary to popular belief "learning by doing" is not the best form of learning. Popularised by Edgar Dale, his Cone of Experience has been consistently misused to give the impression that learning can be nicely split into categories of varying "effectiveness", where learning by doing is the most effective method of learning. Here is his original cone.
- Ignoring sources of information in favour of "doing" handicaps the person who is trying to learn.
- Learning by doing can be downright dangerous. I once met a person who's favourite way to learn was to log into the production system and fiddle around. I don't want him on my team.
Act first, learn later: Solutions
- Doing is a key part of learning, but don't ignore other sources of information such as books, videos or a teacher's wisdom. A combination of input (eg. books) and output (eg. doing) is best.
- Be critical of theories like the "Cone of Experience" which has taken grains of truth and created false teachings. Just because things appear in a pretty picture does not make them true!
Learning Antipattern: Testing is the devil
...where I avoid tests of any kind because they make me uncomfortable.
Testing is the devil: Problems
- Testing is a powerful tool for retrieval practice. Apart from using it to score someone's performance (most common form), tests enhance individuals retrieval of information to improve long-term retention.
- Avoiding stressful testing practices such as flashcards or multiple choice quizzes because they are difficult results in the giving the learner a false sense of mastery. Without the ability to recall information, the learner has not mastered the content.
- Cynicism of testing is often accompanied by a cynicism of recalling the little things. "Why does it matter if I remember the little things as long as I can do the big things?" people ask. They can just google it, right? However, the brain surgeon who cannot recall how to stitch a bleeding artery is a dangerous brain surgeon.
Testing is the devil: Solutions
- Flashcards are one of the best ways of testing yourself and improving your long-term retention. Here's a tutorial.
- Combine flashcards with other efforts such as concept mapping, videos, lectures, podcasts and other multi-media to engage your understanding as well as retention.
- Another way of testing yourself is by writing what you understand about the concept. Close the book or the video and write in a notepad (full sentences) what you understand.
Learning Antipattern: Topic Tunnel Vision
...where I study one thing at a time before moving onto the next one.
Topic Tunnel Vision: Problems
- We have been taught that knowledge is divided into neat categories. Maths is over here. Biology is over there. Philosophy is somewhere else. But great breakthroughs and understandings occur when a theory from one category is applied to another category.
- Your unique perspective gets lost if you treat knowledge as straight forward and silo'd. You have a unique perspective from your background in social studies or software or teaching that can give you a unique new insight into your study. Any unique opinions about a topic helps you understand the knowledge better.
- Putting learning into neat categories can stem unique learning opportunities. What happens if I take this mathematical theory and use it to write a piece of music?
Topic Tunnel Vision: Solutions
- Add colour to your study mediums. If you're reading a book about Plato, supplement it with some videos and podcasts. Each person will explain the concept in their own words and overlap with another person's understanding. This overlap is called "interleaving" and help improve your understanding.
- Read multiple books in conjunction about the same topic. Your learning will be slower, but you will pick out many more insights.
- Opinions are good things, despite what we've been taught in school to learn only the "facts". As you write about a concept, think about the why as well as the what. What are people's motivations? Why does the machine work like this? What is your opinion on the matter? Opinions create a 3D model out of a set of 2D facts.
Learning+dev Mastery: 5. Design the initiatives
This is a post from a larger series entitled A Path to Learning+dev Mastery.
The path to mastery looks something like:
- Understand the business objectives and strategy
- Develop a learning+dev strategy that supports the business strategy.
- Consult and receive feedback from stakeholders
- Define the backlog of initiatives to meet your strategy
- Design the initiatives - we will explore this here
- Execute the programs and track success.
- Retrospect on progress and change based on feedback.
Recap
In the last post, I discovered that design is a lot more than a short blog post. We explored how to design the backlog, so now we will explore how to design each initiative in the backlog.
Principles of good design
When it comes to good learning+dev design, we don't need to reinvent the wheel. The best learning+dev design principles should be based off product design principles. Our product is the learning+dev initiative and our customers are our employees. Inspired is a book I repeatedly return to for wisdom on good product.
Obsess over value to your clients
You must obsess over the value your programs bring to the company. Anyone can do your job as a learning practitioner and create courses that are of no value to anyone. If we don't obsess over value, we will water down our value with unecessary elements. For every extra detail you add, ask yourself "What value will this bring to my customer?". If it's unclear whether it provides value, it probably doesn't, so remove it. Your customers have enough to do without trying to bat away more waste.
Everything is an experiment in the beginning
This is key to progressing quickly through wasteful initiatives. No amount of planning or upfront research can tell you what the perfect initiative looks like. You must experiment with everything. So get your idea on paper and test it by trying it on a small group or talk to someone about it.
Everything is a minimal viable product (MVP)
When designing something, the first draft must be small. There should be no such thing as a 12 month program in the first draft - it's too long. There are a couple of reasons for this.
Firstly, you're too busy to build large-scale projects all the time. The needs of your colleagues change daily. What they needed last month they no longer need this month. So building things that get launched quickly is extremely important.
Secondly, people don't have the interest for long-term optional programs. If I want to learn more about leadership skills, I can probably keep that interest for a month at most. A 6 month program? I won't finish it. However, I might be interested in learning more about stakeholder management this month, public speaking next month and crafting presentations the month after. Even thought they're all leadership skills, by chunking it into manageable sections I'm able to retain interest and look forward to the next section.
Focus your initiative on one persona at a time
You can't please everyone with everything. So the key to good learning+dev design is to please a group of people now and another group of people in the future. For example, if you are rolling out a leadership program, you could roll out a program that tries to address the needs of all leaders. But this would make the program generic and watered down.
Instead, your leadership program should focus on a small cohort of people first (eg. new leaders), then expand it into another group such as team leads, then another group such as project managers. This allows you to create small initiatives consistently and ensure your participants keep receiving value.
State the goal and expectations
A tool to manage goals and expectations is the Object and Key Results (OKR) technique.
- Objectives: What business results are you aiming for in the organisation?
- Key results: What are the metrics you expect to change which would show your initiative is working?
Take each initiative in your backlog. Write out what the objective is for that initiative and the results you are looking for. As you write out each intiative, you may find you have many objectives - this is a sign you are too scattered. Each intiative should have 1-3 objectives. Any more than that and you need to reduce your priorities.
Kill it
The Sunk Cost Fallacy applies to Learning+development as much as any other discipline. Most projects don't work out. Most initiatives don't work out. Maybe they lack engagement. Maybe they didn't address the learning objectives appropriately. Maybe it was a great initiative but the wrong time. Maybe it was the right time but the wrong initiative.
Many things can cause a learning+development initiative to be deemed "unsuccessful". If the initiative is not outputting more value than the time that goes into it, you need to kill it. If the initiative has little to no engagement, you probably need to kill it. If it has simply run its course and does not provide any value anymore, you need to kill it.
Learning+development needs to constantly evolve and meet the business needs again and again. We cannot do that if we are bogged down by managing a long list of low-value initiatives. To quote Steve Jobs, focus is about saying no. To focus in the areas that provide most value, you must say no to the low-value items. Doing so will hurt feelings and egos (most of all your own). But focus is key to success, and learning+development is no different. So get used to killing your projects and ideas.
Cluster initiatives together
Similar to Learning Clusters, Program Clusters ensure I don't provide a single solution to a complex problem. The problem of "My team won't communicate properly to each other" will not be fixed with a single workshop. Complex problems require multi-faceted solutions.
For example, improving team communication could be improved with:
- A team workshop exploring the problems they face + exercises to bring awareness to their actions.
- A root cause analysis of the moments where communication is most critical but most lacking.
- A list of templates containing best practices for the team to base their emails, reports and meetings on to ensure necessary info is captured.
For any complex problem, increase the likelihood of your program's success by adding multiple prongs to it.
The ingredients of effective learning+dev initiatives
After you have your goals and expectations written down, it's time to fill in the colour. A library could be written on this. Best pracitces in workshops, courses, performance enhancement and so forth. Each learning+dev tool has a body of research behind it all with best practices attached to it. So there's little point in me exploring anything too in-depth. Having said that, there are some axioms I consistently obey when designing any program or initiative. These axioms are there to focus on ensuring I deliver value and fail fast with whatever initiative I'm developing.
Curate with Learning Clusters
Learning Clusters are a selection of curated resources based on a topic or need. They solve the problem of providing the correct resource for each individual at the correct moment. By curating a list of resources in different mediums and different depths, I remove the need of having a conversation with the person who has requested the resource or topic. Whether they want to look at a quick cheatsheet or watch an in-depth course, I can provide everything to them in the one place and leave it up to them what they want to use.
Whenever I receive a request for training, workshops or problems in general, I always sprinkly my response with at least 1 learning cluster. The Learning Cluster adds extra strength to whatever initiative I'm designing. Even if only 1 person gets benefit from it, it was still worth the effort to create.
Track participants progress with timelines
I've written before how everything should have a timeline. This goes for both project delivery as well as individual participation for Learning+dev initiatives.
Here is what my excel tracker looks like.
Collaborate as much as possible
Depending on the type of initiative, collaborative exercises can work extremely well. Each program should have at least some level of collaboration with other individuals in the program. Particularly where the initiative is related to "soft Skills" such as leadership. Getting together with other people who are interested in learning from each other can be extremely beneficial to the participants.
Allow people to join who will make the initiative better
Not everyone wants to participate in your initiative. Maybe it doesn't speak to their needs. Maybe they are too busy to even consider what you're trying to teach them. Maybe they just don't care.
Each person in your initiative who does not participate will suck the energy from every other partipant. I have have many programs and courses of 10 or more people and 1 person has destroyed the whole feeling of the group. Try to avoid these people in the future, and if you can detect them before starting the initiative, leave them out. They will shut down conversation and sit in the background like a silent judge, making everyone else uncomfortable.
Homework is a good thing
The great thing about homework is that it's ascynchronous. Many learning programs focus on what the learner achieves in the workshop or class. However, most learning takes place outside the classroom in the flow of day-to-day work. Therefore, having homework which applies to the learner's day-to-day tasks bridges the gap between the theoretical, lab scenario and the real-world scenario.
Homework has the secondary effect of identfying who is taking the program seriously. An optional, low-value program will have increased dropout rate with homework. As a learning+dev practitioner, this is exactly what you want - to reduce the amount of other people's time you are wasting. If they don't find the program important, they shouldn't be doing it. And if nobody does the homework, it is a good sign that your program is misguided and needs to be cut.
For those who do the homework or exercises outside of the regular program meetups, it indicates they are both taking it seriously, find it useful and want to continue. A program where everyone is doing the homework regularly is a great display of its quality and importance to its participants.
For example, let's say you launch a leadership program to develop the internal leadership skills of the company. You get great initial participation. But week-on-week, fewer people show up. Of those who do show up, they have not completed the exercises and seem to just want to waste 30 minutes on a call. At this point, we need to identify if the leadership program is serving its purpose. Maybe it's the case that it's a poor program. Or maybe it's a great program and the participants aren't linking it to their development. Or maybe they're not bought in enough so that when things get challenging, they drop out in favour of easier things. While this result may look "bad", it's better than the alternative of having 20 people show up to a call where they don't bring anything to the table and just waste 30 minutes of their own time. One way or the other, the homework does its job of helping people develop in their own time or highlighting they are not interested enough to complete it and drop out.
An example of designing a learning program
I'll describe a recent initiative I developed to take the top performers in the organisation and increase the value they bring to the table. The program involved a group of 12 senior engineers who had spent their careers in the telecoms domain. The goal was to increase the number of senior engineers who could consult with customers about their complex telecoms problems.
The first step was to identify the main KPI.
- Increase number of people who can speak with customers.
Next was to write down what I thought would make the program a success. I used some of the ingredients listed above for this.
- Collaboration is key. Most engineers do not have the depth and breadth required to develop these solutions. As a team, we can do a lot more.
- Everyone needed to see everyone else progressing so that they put onus on themselves to do the work. An excel progress tracker was used to visualise this.
- Domain knowledge, not just technical knowledge, was key here. We employed the Harvard Case Method to deliver and facilitate specific cases around the domain problems we wanted to learn about.
The program we developed was excellent.
- Highest attendance rate out of all programs in the company: >90% for 4 months.
- Consistent participation with only 1 workshop delayed.
- We analysed more than 7 cases around the domain.
- 5 people were brought into customer-facing conversations within the 4 month period.
Next steps
After looking at these design principles and techniques, next we will move onto executing and managing the programs.
Kill It
The Sunk Cost Fallacy applies to almost every discipline you can think of.
Even in the Silicon Valley world of startups, success is only about 10%.
Most companies don't succeed.
Most projects don't work out.
Most initiatives don't last.
Maybe your project lacks engagement, stakeholders or customers. Maybe it didn't address its objectives. Maybe it was a great initiative but the wrong time. Maybe it was effective in the beginning but lost steam.
Many things can cause a project or initiative to be deemed "unsuccessful". And we need to be ruthless with unsuccessful initiatives.
If your initiative doesn't output more value than the effort that goes into it, you need to kill it. If it has little to no engagement, you probably need to kill it. If it once provided value but doesn't anymore, you need to kill it.
In my discipline, Learning+development, we need to constantly shift to meet the business needs again and again. We cannot do that if we are bogged down by managing a long list of low-value initiatives. To quote Steve Jobs, focus is about saying no.
To focus in the areas that provide most value, you must say no to the low-value items. Doing so will hurt feelings and egos (most of all your own). But focus is key to success in all disciplines - we need to be comfortable killing our projects.
Learning+dev Mastery: 4. Design the backlog
This is a post from a larger series entitled A Path to Learning+dev Mastery.
The path to mastery looks something like:
- Understand the business objectives and strategy
- Develop a learning+dev strategy that supports the business strategy.
- Consult and receive feedback from stakeholders
- Define the programs to meet your strategy - we will explore this here.
- Execute the programs and track success.
- Retrospect on progress and change based on feedback.
Keep it small, keep it quick
Learning+dev no longer has the privilege of designing and rolling out large-scale projects. The risk that those projects won't meet expectations after delivery is too great. 6 months to design and rollout an initiative is too long. Learning+dev must make speed and agility a priority. We must be able to take new requirements every day, prioritise and execute them swiftly.
As we discussed in the previous post, identifying your stakeholder's priorities are key to identifying your own. Once you have an idea where your contributions will be valuable, you can think about the initiatives that would assist your stakeholders. Remember not to design things in a vacuum. Your ideas must receive constant feedback from your stakeholders.
What is a learning+dev backlog?
At its simplest, a backlog is a list of tasks. The term is extensively used in product management, as it allows fast conversations around details and priority. Since it is a single list which everyone can look at, it provides a single source of truth for projects in progress and future projects. It facilitates team discussion when executing and it makes it easier to assign work.
There are many backlog tools available, from the simple stickies on the whiteboard (my personal favourite) to extensive product management software such as Jira. If you work by yourself, your backlog may even be inside your head, though I doubt such a backlog is of much use for discussions. It's important to write it down somewhere.
How do I create my backlog?
First pick your method. Personally, I like the stickies on a whiteboard - it's good to see what you want in front of you. Stickies also means you can move things around as needed. If you want software, Trello is free and provides all the functionality you need.
Take the priorities you spoke to your stakeholders about. Start throwing out ideas - anything and everything. What initiatives can you launch to support the strategy goals?
Brainstorming techniques
Your ideas are best written down. Ideas stuck in your head are of no use to anyone. You can't see them, you can't interact with them, you can't visualise them. Brainstorming is the act of putting your ideas in front of you so you can connect ideas together, see patterns and create better ideas.
There are plenty of brainstorming techniques and tools online. Here are the ones I come back to all the time:
Here is a braindump of Learning+dev ideas to help:
- Workshops
- Online micro-courses
- Study groups
- Communities of practice
- Mentoring programs
- Coaching programs
- Certification programs
- "Soft" skills programs (eg. Public speaking study group)
As you scribble down ideas and swap things in and out, you will build up a list of initiatives. Well done - you've built your first backlog!
Can I add anything I want?
In the beginning, you should add anything that comes to mind. If you hit a block and can't think of anything suitable, do your research. All the problems you face have been solved before by someone else. And don't worry about a perfect solution - there are none. In my experience, about 20% of initiatives provide tangible value to the company. This is why it's important to make your initiatives small. 80% failure rate of small initiatives is great. 80% failure rate of large initiatives is terrible.
After listing down things you want to do, go through each one and figure out whether they are feasible to rollout in your organisation. Fortunately, the product managers have been doing this for a long time, so there are plenty of resources to help.
Here are some questions to help you adjust each initiative in your backlog.
- Does this initiative align with the company goals?
- Do you have the resources (budget, people, time, tools) to launch and manage this successfully?
- Are your employees & stakeholders ready and able to engage with this initiative?
- What does success for this initiative look like? How will you measure it?
How do I pick which initiatives to start with?
Again, there is no 100% correct answer. I usually start by going through the list and asking myself the following questions:
- What would happen if this wasn't rolled out for 6 months?
- Does this impact my most important stakeholder?
- How many people have asked me about something related to this initiative over the last few weeks?
Prioritising your initiatives is as much about understanding what's not needed right now as well as understanding what is needed right now.
What's next?
We didn't touch on a lot of other "design" elements of learning+dev initiatives. So I'll expand on this in the next post.
Learning+dev Mastery: 3. Stakeholder Engagement
This is a post from a larger series entitled A Path to Learning+dev Mastery.
The path to mastery looks something like:
- Understand the business objectives and strategy
- Develop a learning+dev strategy that supports the business strategy.
- Consult and receive feedback from stakeholders - we will explore this here.
- Define the programs to meet the strategy including success criteria.
- Execute the programs and track success.
- Retrospect on progress and change based on feedback.
Why should we care about other stakeholders in the organisation?
For most of what we do in our jobs, nobody cares as much as us. I think that's a good thing - it's great to be in a job we enjoy that nobody else is interested in. It makes us valuable.
Every so often, I land in the fantastic position where what I'm doing is so valuable to someone else that they care more about it than I do. And this is the position we all want - to bring as much value to our colleagues and organisation as possible. Going back to Learning+dev's purpose, we want to help others maximise their value to the organisation.
This is the power of frequent experimenting. Short, small ideas executed over time increase the likelihood you will land on an important problem. 1 person starts caring about 1 thing you're doing, then another, then 2 more. Eventually, you have lots of people benefitting from your work - a fantastic place to be as any practitioner.
Now, I could create and rollout 10 new initiatives to my organisation in the morning. But if they don't meet with the organisation's strategy, then nobody will care about it and it will become noise. Even if I land on something valuable, it will be drowned out.
This is where stakeholder engagement is so important. Engaging with your colleagues and creating initiatives without your primary stakeholders buy in is a sure way for failure. Without communicating with them, you increase the likelihood that your initiatives are not aligned with theirs.
However, once you get full alignment across the people who your initiatives will impact, then you end up producing valuable initiatives that push everyone in the direction they need to go in. What's more, you will get support from your stakeholders who will work with you to make your work successful. They won't push back against you because you failed to communicate properly.
Who are my main stakeholders?
There are many stakeholder engagement frameworks to help identify and prioritise your stakeholders.
Or my favourite stakeholder framework is the simple question: Who do I need to keep happy? If you know who to keep happy, your can focus your communication in their direction.
How do I engage with stakeholders for my strategy?
In my experience, the best way to engage your stakeholders is to present your initial strategy in slides. If you want, you can brainstorm with them, but only if the problem is crystal clear.
You can't ask your stakeholders "What do you think I should be doing?". It's not their job to think of what your job should be. So you must always come forward with suggestions, not a blank canvas.
Once you've presented some ideas (called a strategy), you can engage your stakeholders with questions:
-
How will this strategy help you?
This will help you identify if your strategy is of any benefit at all. If everyone says "I don't think this applies to me", then that's valuable feedback.
-
Will these ideas support your own goals?
You will get a response like "I don't think this will affect my own goals directly. But we can look at my own goals if you want?". This gives an insight on what your stakeholder cares about. You can throw ideas out as you talk about their goals.
-
I was thinking about doing X. What's your opinion on it?
Open questions are good for giving people space to think and bring their own creative suggestions. They might say something like "That's not my understanding of the problem. I think we need to improve our programming skills in general - maybe create a workshop for it?". We know they don't need a workshop, but they have given us insight into the kind of problem we need to solve for.
The consulting process is an art. You need to build trust, get their buy-in, understand the other person's needs without them even knowing their needs themselves, lead people who are not interested in being led and much more. With this in mind, it's not a good idea to talk to someone and say "What do you want me to do?". I've fallen into this trap many times. Asking someone "What do you want me to do" is not helpful. You've just placed another problem on their shoulders. So when engaging with stakeholders, we must go in with a proposal. Even if you're not sure what they want, a proposal gives them something to push back against.
Overall, my strategy to engage with stakeholders looks like this:
- Develop the strategy.
- Show the strategy to all my stakeholders at the same time.
- Talk to each stakeholder individually.
- Note down thoughts, ideas, push backs, problems.
- Repeat.
The last point is crucial - repeat. There is no such thing as a strategy that is done. What matters is that you get the critical items down on paper and agreed so that you can start to work. Too many people focus on "big bang" approaches to strategy. They fail to realise that tomorrow's environment is different from today's environment. Agility is key, and that means we develop mostly small projects. This way of working helps our stakeholders get on board. We can propose ideas that can get rolled out in a matter of days or weeks instead of a matter of months. Furthermore, a small project that gets rolled out and fails is much better than a large project that gets rolled out and fails.
Doing things now vs. later
As you engage in more and more conversations, you will develop a backlog. You will uncover the ideas and solutions that are important and put a timeline on them. Your timeline is subject to change as new priorities will arise.
I present a 12 month plan in January with the full knowledge new requirements will come in that will change the plan. This is why it's important to have a strategy attached to the business goals. New requests and requirements will always come in, so you need a way of priorisiting. Or in other words, you need a way of saying "No" to anything that does not align with your strategy.
The exercise of prioritisationg is key to a Learning+dev manager's success. There are an endless number of good ideas. Your job is to figure out what is most valuable to your business' strategy. You can use various different types of prioritisation methods:
- Prioritisation matrix
- Pareto Principle (This one is a favourite of mine)
Conclusion
The best way to engage with stakeholders is to just start talking to them. Whether it's a formal meeting in the calendar or a casual chat at the coffee machine, conversation is key to a happy stakeholder.
Learning+dev Mastery: 2. Strategise
This is a post from a larger series entitled A Path to Learning+dev Mastery.
As mentioned before, the path to mastery looks something like:
- Understand the business objectives and strategy
- Develop a learning+dev strategy that supports the business strategy - we will explore this here.
- Consult and receive feedback from stakeholders.
- Define the programs to meet the strategy including success criteria.
- Execute the programs and track success.
- Retrospect on progress and change based on feedback.
Figure out the business strategy first
We mentioned in the previous post how difficult it can be to figure out the business strategy. It's not always clear who has the best information or who is making the decisions, so it takes some time to find the right people to talk to. We will proceed based on the assumption you have at least an initial understanding of your business strategy. If you don't, it's best to start figuring it out as any learning+dev strategy you produce may be contrary to the org's strategy.
Initially, focus on the long-term
In the beginning, your focus should be on long-term objectives for your learning+dev strategy.
- Where does the company need to be in 3-5 years?
- What do they need to do to get there?
- Who needs to be part of the journey?
- What does the destination look like?
Forget about the cool workshop you're excited to run with the teams. Forget about the AI course you want to rollout. These are short-term goals, commonly known as tactics.
"Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat." - The Art of War
For example, let's say you work for a software company who wants to enter the automotive industry. Here's what the long term goals might look like:
- Secure a tier-1 automotive customer within the next 3 years.
- Generate revenue of €2m per month in the automotive domain within 3 years.
Now let's overlay this with some learning+dev goals.
-
Secure a tier-1 automotive customer within the next 3 years.
- Establish a process to find new business opportunities in the automotive space such as communities of practice, Hackathons, competitions, industry site-visits.
- Create a program that prepares the leadership team to engage with this industry.
-
Generate revenue of €2m per month in the automotive domain within 3 years.
- Identify key talent to enable this growth (eg. Account Managers, Pre-sales engineers).
- Bring key talent together to workshop long-term strategy.
Notice we're not quite diving into low-level tactics just yet. These goals provide enough direction without describing the finer details.
As you analyse your own company, build two pictures: The company's 3-year strategy and Learning+dev's 3-year strategy. Make sure your learning+dev strategy is linked to the company's goals.
Brainstorm tactics
Take your two sets of information and pick out the opportunities for you to get involved along that journey. Ignore what you know today as a Learning+dev practitioner - that's beside the point. You need to do whatever is required to push the car towards its destination, no matter what skills you need to learn. But remember your role in all of this. This is not where you shine as the lone hero. Going back to our first article: Learning+development should help people maximise value to their organisation.
As you outline what you need to bring to the table, make sure you have this statement in mind. If you find yourself as the sole player in this strategy, you need to revisit your strategy.
Now for some tactics. Read through both the company strategy and the Learning+dev strategy. Write down any idea that comes to mind to support these strategies. The purpose of these ideas is not to define initiatives or tactics, but rather to give your stakeholders a starting point to have a conversation. If all goes well, most of your ideas will get thrown out. But in throwing out your ideas, you build a better picture for your strategy. Here's an example.
Goal: Establish a process for identifying new opportunities and building proof of concepts in the automotive space. Learning+dev tactics:
- Create an automotive community of practice lead by our automotive SMEs.
- Define 5 small projects we could research and build in the automotive area to explore new business.
- Host a Hackathon under the automotive theme and fund any promising projects.
Each goal should have 2-3 ideas under it, ranging from very small to large. Remember, the purpose here is to get conversation going. This is an early stage - we don't want to execute on anything yet.
This is how I visualise the strategy.
Notice how each Learning+dev point is an idea to support a point in the main company strategy.
There should never be an initiative that has no ties to the company strategy.
Next we need to talk to our stakeholders and get some conversations going.
Learning+dev Mastery: 1. Understand the Business Objectives
This is a post from a larger series entitled A Path to Learning+dev Mastery.
As mentioned before, the path to mastery looks something like:
- Understand the business objectives and strategy - we will explore this here.
- Develop a learning+dev strategy that supports the business strategy.
- Consult and receive feedback from stakeholders.
- Define the programs to meet the strategy including success criteria.
- Execute the programs and track success.
- Retrospect on progress and change based on feedback.
Understand the business objectives + strategy
The world of business is breakneck. 6 months is a lifetime in business, sometimes quite literally. Companies have collapsed in the short timespan of a few months because they were unable to adapt to changes. Some famous examples are Blockbuster, Kodak, Toys R Us. But to adapt and change the business direction quickly, we first need to know which direction we are currently facing. Without a clearly articulated business vision accompanied by objectives, nobody knows where they're going. They don't see the north star. And if they don't see the north star, they can't juggle their tasks and prioritise work to move towards it.
Let's say a SaaS business CEO wants to expand to a new region - Eastern Europe for example. He has thought about this in his own head and sees lots of potential to grow. But he has failed to communicate this idea to his heads of departments. So now, instead of paying closer attention to Eastern European trends and clients, the SaaS employees simply focus on whatever problem is in front of them. Nobody talks to the Eastern European clients, nobody keeps an eye out for new opportunities. So the business doesn't grow. The CEO has become his own worst enemy because he has failed to communicate his idea to his business.
Why does learning+dev need to understand the business strategy?
Now imagine you're the Learning + Development manager. Without understanding the need to expand in Eastern Europe, how can any of your initiatives meet the needs of that expansion? Maybe the Eastern European market requires specific new skills. Maybe the market is focused on a particular niche for us to learn about. Maybe you need to include Eastern European languages in your learning+dev initiatives!
If we don't know the business objectives and the strategy created to meet the objectives, there is never going to be a moment where we are maximising our value to the company. Our initiatives could even contradict the direction of the business. By understanding the business objectives and its strategy, learning+development can support and attach itself to that strategy. By attaching ourselves to tangible business outcomes, we can track progress, metrics and successes that matter to the people around us. The value of this is incomparable to traditional learning+dev which focused on class attendance and training programs.
I don't know the strategy!
You might ask yourself, "Where can I find the business strategy?".
It's not publicly available on the website - external people don't need to see the internal strategy.
If you are not already participating in monthly or quarterly strateegy meetings, it will be difficult to get the insights you need.
Or maybe your company doesn't have any strategy meetings (this often happens in smaller company).
If you don't have the information and you don't know where to find the information, how can you learn how to support with learning+dev?
The first thing is to find out if there is a regular strategy meeting and get added to it. Being at the table when the strategy is being discussed is the most valuable place for learning+dev. If you are not invited or there is no meeting, the next step is to talk to the people who engage with the strategy. These could be C-suites, directors or other managers. Second-hand information is not 100% reliable (because people absorb only the things they need to absorb), but it is a lot better than no information at all. At least the people you are talking to hopefully have actions and responsibilities to update at their next strategy call. Ask to see and discuss their actions and figure out how you can help with specific actions.
Over time, by talking to multiple people across multiple conversations, you build up a picture of what the short-term and long-term goals look like. As you build the picture, you can progress from helping with individual tasks to proposing grander solutions.
Nobody else knows the strategy either!
Worst case scenario, there is no clearly communicated strategy.
Actually, that's not worst case.
Worst case is if there is absolutely no strategy at all.
But this is rarely the case - your company was not built by accident.
The strategy might simply be in your leaders' heads.
There are many problems that stem from not having a clearly communicated strategy, but the bright side is there is plenty of room for suggestions! So break out powerpoint start building grand initiatives. Use the strategy gap as an opportunity to excel and promote your own ideas - don't complain there is no strategy! (Unless of course the company is going under...then it might be time to look elsewhere.) Figure out what the leaders of the company want and translate it into proposals that can be rolled out across the company.
For example, let's say you have spoken to the leaders and a few people mention the need for more expertise in AWS migration. Scratching beneath the surface, you ask "Why is this expertise important to you?". You find out that many managers across the company are leading AWS migration projects and all have similar problems.
Bingo!
Now you can propose initiatives such as a cross-project community of practice, curate resources, hire consulants and so forth. And now, you have created a small strategy - do this enough times and people start to notice.
So don't resent the fact there is no strategy. The biggest opportunities lie in the gaps.
Strategy - Figure it out or build it
In conclusion, figure out the business strategy by getting to the table where it's discussed, talking to the people who are at the table, or building your own. As long as learning+dev's part involves solving people's biggest problems, you will provide a huge amount of value.
A Path to Learning+dev Mastery
What is learning+development?
Learning+development is a strange concept.
Learning+development (L&D) has its beginnings in corporate training programs in the industrial revolution where initiatives were created to ensure workforces could keep up with the pace of change.
Henry Ford has the historical quote: "The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training your employees and having them stay".
World War 2 had a profound impact on training the workforce in America.
The rate of change in the corporate culture was so fast that companies had to invest large sums of money to ensure their workforce were able to meet demands.
These shifts in attitude towards large-scale training produced new theories and academic research over the 20th century.
The 21st century brought technological revolution, leading to new initiatives in not only individual training, but organisation development. Things move too fast in the 21st century for a command-and-control style of management. So the focus shifted away from industry to the needs of the employee to enable autonomy and fast, large-scale change. Learning+development transformed to become a facilitator of strategic change in the organisation, something that many people today still don't realise.
The shift to focus on the employee has a lot of overlap with Human Resource (HR) practices. As a result, many Learning+development departments fall in as a branch of HR. This has led to the rise of organisations such as CIPD directing Learning+development towards HR needs, rather than focusing on Learning+development as a separate practice altogether. As far as I can see, this has tainted the Learning+development profession to the extent that many professionals are drawn into HR-related initiatives instead of focusing on the development of the individual and organisation. Dare I mention "Diversity, equity and inclusion"?
In summary, the Learning+development profession has transformed according to the needs of the organisation. Organisations are no longer command-and-control. They require people to own their work and transform their environment for the better. With the infinite amount of knowledge available online and much of it for free, the need for bespoke training is rarely required from Learning+development. Now, with the dawn of ChatGPT, knowledge is quick to access and easily consumed. So what now? What do we do? Training isn't needed. Knowledge creation isn't needed. Can we scrap Learning+development?
Not quite. Yes everyone has all the knowledge at their fingertips. No, that does not mean all their problems have disappeared. Now, employees must be supported and challenged. Their performance is on the line. And how do we judge performance? We judge performance based on the contributions of the individual towards their company.
So this answers the "what". What should Learning+development professionals do? We should do whatever it takes to support the performance of individuals. Or in other words: Learning+development should help people maximise value to their organisation. This is the vision for great Learning+development. We must strategise with the organisation to increase its employees' value.
That's the "what". Next is the "how".
Learning+dev Fundamentals
Like any discipline, Learning+development has an infinite amount of knowledge we can spend many lifetimes studying.
But like any discipline, we need a structured approach to understanding how to master it.
So what will the best Learning+development practitioner do to help people maximise their value?
The flow looks something like this:
- Understand the business objectives + strategy
- Develop a learning+dev strategy that supports the business strategy.
- Consult and receive feedback from stakeholders.
- Define the programs to meet the strategy including success criteria. (Note: "Programs" here does not mean training programs, but initiatives to help the employee and organisation succeed.)
- Execute the programs and track success.
- Retrospect on progress and change based on feedback.
Over the next couple of posts, I will explore an outline of each of these areas. I hope to provide a journey of important topics to get started as a learning+dev professional.
