Agility applied to "Learning & Development" is not just about more flexibility versus the traditional/planned HR approach.
Just because we do adaptive learning doesn't mean we're agile.
And it's not by personalizing training paths that we become agile.
To benefit from the full power of agility, you must first understand its core values.
The recurring arguments associated with learning :
1. We need lifelong training now
No doubt about it. Especially as the lifespan of a skill is only getting shorter (less than 18 months according to studies). The question is: how? With telecommuting, lack of time... If you have to wait until your next annual appraisal interview to confide your training needs, whatever formula you come up with is probably not the right one!
2. The end of mass training
Of course. But the individualization of training, facilitated by digitization, is no guarantee of the quality of content (still highly standardized), nor the end of a Top-Down, highly "supervised" approach.
Rather than mass vs. individualized, I prefer "directed" training to "autonomous" training.
What kind of organization gives teams real autonomy in organizing their learning?
3. The freedom to choose your training
The logic revolves around ever more extensive (and expensive?) "content libraries" on the "shelf". With the CPF, you can choose to train individually, but how do these approaches contribute to the creation of genuine intellectual capital for an organization?
Giving teams back the power to choose what they feel is most important for them to be more efficient in their jobs, and trusting them, is key to the new working methods.
Peer-to-peer learning is a much faster way of passing on skills. It costs less, is job-specific and gradually builds up real intellectual capital.
4. The importance of capitalizing on knowledge.
Digitizing content makes it easier to save and disseminate, but from there to speak of systematic "capitalization", I find the shortcut too quick. Firstly, because this capital may not be properly "activated" and shared. Any cold information stored in a tool - however modern - still has no value.
5. From planning to agility.
Yes, of course, we need to accelerate the "Time to Skill", but often to do so, we talk about speeding up the pace, shortening the duration of training courses by creating micro-learning (or capsules or cards or...), as if we had to simplify in order to do things faster.
Microlearning is like "fast-learning", which only makes infobesity worse.
Agility isn't just a question of cycle speed or flexibility!
Many other fundamental elements are essential to the transformation of training in organizations. If we take the 4 fundamental values of agility :
- VALUE 1: People and interactions rather than processes and tools.
By focusing too much on digital technology (without even mentioning the development of AI), let's not forget that what works best are live exchanges (face-to-face or otherwise) between several brains. It flows fast and well.
- VALUE 2: Operational products rather than exhaustive documentation.
Applied to training, the "product" is content that is shared quickly if deemed useful and relevant by the teams, rather than polished training, with interactivity, quizzes and so on, but not requested by the teams.
We focus on relevance - judged by peers - and iteration. We update continuously.
This also has an impact on our vision of knowledge management. We no longer need to over-invest in knowledge taxonomy. Technologies give us much more "organic" access.
- VALUE 3: Collaboration with customers rather than contractual negotiation
The customer here is your team and your colleagues. In-company training is above all about working better together, raising the general level, challenging yourself intellectually or in a highly technical field.
If it's not worked on collectively, if it's imposed, we go straight into contractual mode: good luck creating any kind of "culture of sharing"! Get out the oars.
Let's forget about contracts and put the pleasure of learning and sharing what we know back where it belongs.
- VALUE 4: Adapting to change plus following a plan
This is a sensitive subject. The planned vision of HR is still the norm, and on many HR subjects, it's better to be a black belt in planning (administration, recruitment...) BUT! as far as training is concerned, while mapping, forecasting and anticipation work is necessary, implementation can no longer be top-down and must be iterative. I'd even go so far as to call it a training sprint, or learning spirit.
The debate is open!
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