Putting ‘musts’ before ‘wants’ when it comes to learning

Peter Honey | 15 Jul 2008 | 17:26

The other day I joined in a think-tank, organised by the Cabinet Office, to generate ideas on what the government could do to motivate more people to embrace lifelong learning. It seems that far too many people treat L&D as an optional extra - despite all the messages about learning being the core capability, the only skill that can never become obsolete, the gateway to employability and fulfilment, the only way to sustain a competitive edge and all the rest of it.

The meeting started off making the usual assumption that wanting has to come before doing. Whilst I agree that in a perfect world people would do what we want them to do because they wanted to (if you see what I mean), I have serious reservations about the wisdom of assuming that wanting is a prerequisite. At the meeting I therefore put in a plea to think of the problem the other way round, where musts would precede wants.

I remain keen to win hearts and minds and do all I can to cajole people to becoming willing lifelong learners, but I am concerned that this will only ever bring patchy results. The trick, I’m sure, with lifelong learning is to think of ways to make it a must and to lean over backwards to make it a good experience so that what started out as a must becomes a want. The trouble is, for reasons I quite understand, in our society we are tend to go in the other direction; we provide people with lots of choices and opportunities and let market forces do the rest. This works fine for inherently popular things like pop music, fashionable clothes and holidays, but less well for less popular things like making a will, eating healthily, taking exercise and fixing yourself up with a pension scheme. All the evidence suggests that, for too many people, lifelong learning is altogether too “sensible” to be popular.

The answer is for all of us in our respective organisations, and in government, to take a gamble and work out how to make learning a must in such a way that it will become a want.

Where have all the eccentrics gone?

Peter Honey | 1 Jul 2008 | 16:29

Am I the only one who thinks that managers are less colourful than they used to be? Over the years I have worked with hundreds of managers (invariably men!) who, in various ways, were a touch zany. The list includes:

A CEO who kept a pair of fluffy carpet slippers in his office and wore them throughout his working day – even when receiving important visitors.

An HR director who was a keen bird watcher and had a pair of binoculars, on a tripod, permanently set up in his office. In the middle of a discussion, without warning or apology, he’d leap up and train the binoculars on an unsuspecting bird.

A captain of industry who had two disarming habits; he’d sit through meetings with his eyes shut and, secondly, without warning he’d lapse into long silences. It was, however, a mistake to assume that he had fallen asleep. He was listening – it just didn’t look as if he was!

An MD who insisted that all meetings should be held standing up to make them shorter and more business-like.

A senior manager who used to wander around asking staff, “how are you?” and, regardless of the answer, would always say, “jolly good, jolly good” before moving on to the next person. One day a mischievous member of staff said, “Well, I ran over the cat this morning and my wife is in intensive care”. The reply was, “jolly good, jolly good”.

The senior manager who used to walk into a large open-plan office and attract attention by blowing a whistle that he carried with him on a lanyard. After saying whatever he had to say, he’d signal that people could resume their work with another blast on the whistle.

An entrepreneur who was surrounded by sycophants and got fed up with everyone agreeing with him all the time. He hired an expensive outside consultant whose brief was to keep disagreeing with him.

So, am I right in thinking that there are there fewer eccentric managers nowadays? Cheer me up by telling me I’m wrong!

A diatribe against diatribes

Peter Honey | 27 Jun 2008 | 08:39

I’ve been to a spate of conferences recently and frankly, come away reeling. I’ve sat at the feet of a bewildering array of inspirational speakers who have amazed me with their energy, their enthusiasm, their fluent patter, their jokes and, of course, their grasp of their subject. All these inspirational speakers shared two characteristics; they talked at us and they assumed we would learn from a didactic tirade.

Now, I fully understand the temptation, when given slot of an hour or so, to sock it to ‘em. I’ve succumbed many times myself and taken the easy option of delivering a lecture. The gratifying thing about this, (assuming you do it well enough) is that most people seem to like it. It is low risk for the audience – they just have to sit there relatively passively while the speaker does all the work. Throw in a few anecdotes and the ratings go sky high. Sheer entertainment – and, quite understandably people like to be entertained. But (you knew there had to be a ‘but’ didn’t you?) if the objective is to help people to learn, is a one-way tirade good enough?

My answer is an emphatic no. Of course, we do learn from the one-way process of listening to someone but we’d learn much more if, in addition to listening, we had the opportunity to indulge in some two-way behaviours – things like questioning, challenging, debating, using someone (anyone will do) as a sounding board to clarify our learning.

Failing to build opportunities to indulge in these behaviours during a conference blithely assumes people can cope and/or will conduct learning reviews in their own time. Both assumptions are suspect.

I have developed my own conference survival routine which goes like this.

1. I set myself the specific aim of identifying three potentially useful ideas from each session. This puts me in purposeful mode.

2. At the session, I listen like hell making lots of notes. I do this non-judgementally – not worrying about whether I am learning or not.

3. After the session – preferably within two days – I read through my notes underlining key words/passages and highlighting potential ‘lessons learned’.

4. Finally, I select just three useful things and work out what I will do better/differently as a consequence.

In a perfect world conferences would build in structured learning reviews rather than expecting mere mortals to organise it all for themselves. People need time to ponder things and crystallise their learning, time to articulate what they have learned and time to work out how to transfer it. Without this, too much learning stays vague and is unlikely to be translated into effective action.

Unfortunately all this means that the learner has to work far harder than the speaker. The saying, ‘To teach is to learn twice’ reminds us that the speaker’s learning is guaranteed. But, why should they have all the fun?

Organisations are bad for you

Peter Honey | 26 Jun 2008 | 11:04

I generally have a low regard for most organisational “cultures”. My favourite definition is that the culture is what’s left after you’ve explained everything else. I’m convinced that organisations are, consciously or not, designed to waste talent, discourage creativity and foster unquestioning obedience among the workforce.

There are exceptions, of course, but most senior managers are terrified of losing control. Anything that smacks of anarchy is a threat. Their pervading belief is that people and processes must be controlled if they are to operate effectively. Their maxim is “people do what’s checked, not what you expect”.

This yearning for control is, of course, largely illusionary. It is impossible for managers, particularly senior ones, to really know what’s going on. The information they are fed is both selective and laundered. Despite this, they like to feel that they’re in touch and that, when they tell someone what to do, it will be done. But people further down the hierarchy always decide what work is actually done.

I approve of things that, by and large, organisations dread – eg, empowerment, assertiveness, experimentation, self-managed learning and self-development. The key is to urge individuals to take more responsibility – to get the downtrodden, harassed people in organisations to see that they have more room for manoeuvre and more opportunity to take the initiative than they might imagine.

You should encourage them to do the following things:
• Seek clarification instead of bemoaning the fact that you’re left in the dark.
• Solicit feedback instead of grumbling that you lack it.
• Go ahead and do something that needs doing until someone tells you to stop.
• Speak up assertively instead of acquiescing.
• Make and take opportunities instead of expecting them to be handed to you.
• Suggest ways in which processes could be improved instead of settling for the status quo.
• Take responsibility for your own learning and development instead of expecting someone else to do it for you.

I believe that such acts invariably make a difference for the better. The gamble is that senior managers will discover that responsible people aren’t as threatening as they feared. You never know: they might even learn to welcome such behaviour.

The tricky business of keeping things simple

Peter Honey | 27 May 2008 | 12:28

Here is a quote from a respectable training and development journal (I promise you that this is verbatim – I haven’t changed a word):

“The core premise of this paradigm is that management excellence is fundamentally tied to creating/enabling organisational contexts that build human strengths and unlock the positive and generative dynamics of vibrant human communities”

Now consider the following:

“5 ways to improve relationships:
• Listen
• Acknowledge his or her feelings
• Don’t criticise
• Be interested in his or her point of view
• Don’t react normally”

Do you agree that the first quote is needlessly complicated? I think that it means that managers are supposed to create conditions at work where people are able to use their strengths and generally flourish.

Do you agree that the second quote is needlessly simplistic? Each of the five recommendations is tough - and the last one well nigh impossible. Can you imagine what it would be like, say, on the brink of a humdinger of an argument with a colleague or your partner, to think to yourself, “What could I do differently?”

Surely this would be a remarkable feat of self-control? Just consider the possibilities. Instead of looking serious, you’d look cheerful; instead of raising your voice, you’d whisper; instead of interrupting them, you’d hear them out; instead of shaking your head, you’d nod…and so on.

Avoiding your ‘normal’ reactions would, first, call for superhuman self-control and, second, run the risk of exacerbating the situation.

I keep thinking that there must be a happy medium where complicated things can be expressed in a simple way but not become so simple that it is banal. I have a friend who maintains that if it is simple then it is likely to be practical, if it is practical then it is likely to get used, if it is used then it is likely to make a difference.

Still, perhaps we all need a health warning: “This may sound simple, but it is not easy”.

Can you imagine a world without learning?

Peter Honey | 15 May 2008 | 15:50

Has anyone ever asked you to prove that breathing contributes to the bottom line? Or small talk or smiling or thinking - or countless other things we all do each day just by virtue of being alive? I don’t expect so.

Then why, I wonder, are we so often asked to make the business case for learning? To prove beyond reasonable doubt that work-based learning has a beneficial impact on the financial performance of a business? Why do I feel mildly exasperated whenever the “bottom-line question” is asked?

First, people who ask for evidence that learning contributes to the bottom line are usually muddling up training and learning. Bundling the two together and assuming they are one and the same clouds the issue. I have no problem accepting the need to find ways to quantify the return on investment of training interventions - I know evaluating training isn’t necessarily easy, and I accept that often it isn’t practical, but it is clearly a sensible thing to attempt. Learning, however, is a different matter. Training is an “event” with a beginning, middle and end, whereas learning is a continuous process - both conscious and unconscious. Events are easier (I didn’t say easy!) to measure than ongoing processes.

Second, I feel affronted that something as self-evidently laudable as learning should be subjected to a bottom-line challenge at all. For me, the business case is so obvious that it is a no-brainer. You only need to imagine an organisation where learning is banned to demonstrate its pivotal role. Recruits would be forbidden to learn how to do the job: they would have to be completely competent from the word go. If there were changes to, say, technology, no one could be shown how to use it. Experienced people would not be allowed to coach the less experienced. Conversations between people over coffee or lunch would have to steer well clear of anything that might be construed as knowledge-sharing. In fact, breaks would probably have to be taken in complete silence for fear of stumbling onto something that might actually be useful.

It is clear that all organisations, whether they recognise it or not, invest in learning on the assumption that it makes a vital contribution. Not to do so is so patently absurd that it renders further proof superfluous.

Third, I feel irritated by the double standards present. There are so many things that happen in every organisation that are never subjected to bottom-line scrutiny - management meetings, for example. In fact, activities with measured benefits are few and far between. All activities cost money and most are acts of faith.

So why dare to question the value of dear old work-based learning? I’d far rather accept that learning contributes directly to the bottom line than, say, a change of company logo. Not only is it more effective, it’s cheaper too.

Choice overload

Peter Honey | 25 Apr 2008 | 15:37

I went to the HRD exhibition and succumbed, not for the first time, to a nasty condition apparently called choice overload. I know that choice is supposed to be “a good thing” but it tends to throw me into an unpleasant state of dissonance. I have two ways to achieve consonance; to stay focused by sticking doggedly to a pre-prepared list of what I want or to walk away empty handed.

There are numerous situations where I become paralysed by choice-overload. Bookshops, for example, do it to me. The invitation to browse sounds innocent enough but whenever I cross the threshold of a bookshop without a list of titles to search for, I rapidly become overwhelmed. There are simply too many books that I know I should read. Supermarkets do it to me too. Take the ostensibly straightforward business of choosing a breakfast cereal; I can only survive by staying blinkered and buying exactly what I have always bought.

It all reminds me of those (unethical) experiments with poor cats who were rewarded with food whenever they responded to a triangle and punished with an electric shock whenever they did the same to a circle. The experimenters gradually smoothed the corners off the triangle until it became more like an ellipse and then, slowly, a circle. Cats, faced with too many fine discriminations, and under pressure to make the right decision and avoid an electric shock, had what we’d describe as a nervous breakdown. I’m so glad I can walk out of those bookshops!

It seems that I am not alone. When people were presented with six pots of different jams, 30 per cent bought one. However, when people were presented with 24 different jams, only 3 per cent bought one. The difference is explained by choice overload. Faced with too many fine discriminations, most people opted not to make a decision and left empty handed.

So, apologies to all you exhibitors, but perhaps you can understand why I was such a hopeless visitor to the HRD exhibition. I know I should have done better - but without a list of specific needs well, I succumbed to choice overload. Not only that, but I rapidly became disorientated, no longer clear which direction I was facing or from whence I had come. A ball of string might be the answer!

Barriers or obstacles?

Peter Honey | 4 Apr 2008 | 17:12

I keep reading about barriers; barriers to economic growth, language barriers, barriers to promotion, barriers to learning, class barriers, cultural barriers, barriers to progress…barriers stretching into the distance as far as the eye can see.

Mostly I find barriers depressing. Barriers don’t happen by accident: they are designed to prevent movement or access. Of course, some barriers are welcome – like the ones down the centre of motorways or the ones on Clifton Suspension Bridge that have cut suicidal jumps by half. But most of the barriers we read about aren’t physical things. They are negative ways of thinking that we could all do without. They stop people in their tracks, get used as excuses to do nothing and are generally unhelpful.

You could argue that I’m being unduly defeatist. Surely, barriers are supposed to spur us into action, to function as challenges to be overcome, rather than insurmountable problems? But that’s my point: barriers have an uncanny knack of bringing out the half-empty in me. Frankly, they make me want to give up.

So, what’s the alternative? Why, obstacles of course! These are delightfully tantalising things. They don’t prevent progress; they merely hinder it in an intriguing way. Think of an obstacle course with fences, pits, tunnels and nets all clamouring to be successfully negotiated. Obstacles actually want to be overcome and, far from depressing me, they motivate me to have a go. Faced with obstacles, I’m back to being my half-full self, determined to find a way.

So, let’s banish talk of barriers and stick to obstacles. I have just read an article about a clever robot that depends on obstacles for propulsion – apparently it pushes off them in order to move forwards. That’s exactly what obstacles are for – they are splendid aids to moving forwards.

No more barriers – please!

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