HCI Conference: The Future for L&D

CoachingOurselves attended the HCI Learning and Leadership Development Conference in Boston this month: this was an eye-opening experience.  We had just participated in the CSTD conference the week before and were anticipating our first “American” conference experience. While we met dozens of interesting people at both conferences, we felt more at home with our peers at HCI; there were more full service vendors and vendors similar to us, specializing in innovative learning methods.

The overall tone at HCI was that the risk of not trying innovative approaches to learning and development far outweighed the risk of trying them.  It is no longer acceptable to keep sending people into the classroom and straightforward e-learning is now considered ineffective.  The number of times we heard that Harvard ManageMentor was purchased but then barely ever used by large organizations was incredible.  Were you one of these organizations?  One of the opening keynotes for HCI was by Sandra Edwards, Senior Vice President of the American Management Association.  This organization's bread and butter is selling classroom training to the mid-market.  She began by telling people that things were changing – and changing fast.  People say they like classroom training and want more of it, but we all know it has very little impact.  She likened it to the telephone and telegraph. In the era of the telegraph, no one asked to use a telephone; they all liked the telegraph and thought it worked very well.  They could not fathom a telephone. As vendors begin providing solutions that help people extract learning from work rather than adding learning to work, the current classroom and e-learning solutions will look as effective as the telegraph.  Sandra proclaimed that extracting learning from work would be the key to the leadership learning interventions of the future. “Extract learning from the workplace instead of imposing.  We know learning happens from doing…” -       Sandra Edwards, VP, AMA Enterprise Several presenters repeated this mantra: in the new world, we will be facilitating learning without instructional design.  Learning professionals will need to think differently and learn new skills. Google held a keynote titled “Think Big and Experimenting with Leadership and Learning at Google”.  Their mantra is everyone is responsible for their own development and the development of others.  They reiterated that the biggest risk you can take as an L&D professional is not trying and experimenting with new approaches. Mike Welsh at Facebook, Inc. spoke on the importance of in-team mentoring, teaching each other, and Coaching Circles. As an organization, they’re working to deepen on the job learning and build a culture of coaching. Marla Hetzel, Director of Innovation, at AARPquoted CoachingOurselves co-founder Henry Mintzberg in her presentation: "The way to start rebuilding community is to stop the practices that undermine it... the organization has to shed much of its individualistic behavior and many of its short term measures in favor of practices that promote trust, engagement, and spontaneous collaboration aimed at sustainability."  Peggy Schroeder, Director of HR Leadership and Professional Development, at The Hartford Financial Services group discussed transforming leadership learning from an event to a continuous journey, emphasizing innovative learning methods based on 70:20:10. Unfortunately, few vendors actually offered any products and services inline with this new direction.  CoachingOurselves received an amazing response; it was different from every other vendor’s product and exactly what people needed. We explained that we work with world-renowned business leaders, taking the content they use in their MBA and EMBA workshops and seminars to craft 90-minute discussion guides for small groups of managers. These guides capture the professors pedagogy, along with questions and exercises to guide discussion and reflection on participants’ own experiences, driving action and change. The 90-minute sessions can be pieced together to create personalized interventions and programs based on each organization’s individual needs and goals. This is a better learning and leadership intervention on so many levels.  It is flexible and cost effective – and most importantly, what managers want and what works.  Like our peers said above and throughout the HCI conference: people learn through experience and through facilitating conversation on these experiences. This is how to improve work performance. Give us a call to try CoachingOurselves! 1-866-699-0838 or 1-514-419-1849 or send an e-mail to warren@coachingourselves.com