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When designing a change initiative, it’s tempting to go big.
Week-long seminars.
Months-long roadshows.
Festivals, galas and spectaculars to announce the subtleties of the program.
Maybe even a flashy new intranet, holding all the information your people could ever want.
Be suspicious of that instinct.
Very, very suspicious.
Because big doesn’t last.
Big burns hot and bright, then burns out.
Big doesn’t fit into the existing work environment.
Adding something to your people’s obligations is like adding rocks to a half-full bucket. If you add a pebble or a few grains of sand, it’ll nestle into the gaps. Try to cram a fist-sized boulder in and all you’ll get are sparks.
You’ve seen this before – grand training programs that don’t translate to real-world improvements.
The more removed the learning environment from the work environment is, the less easily your people can apply it.
And time away from their normal jobs always comes at a cost – and guess who has to pay it?
Let’s say your people come back from a three-day retreat feeling inspired (which, honestly, is the best case scenario). What’s the first thing they do?
Well, they have to catch up on the work that piled up while they were away.
By the time they get around to thinking about what they learned – probably a day or two later – they’re exhausted and back into their usual rhythms.
I’ve designed and delivered all sorts of learning and development programs. All face this challenge. It doesn’t matter how great the material, how passionate the presenter, how engaging the exercises are – it’s a huge challenge to apply what they learn to their jobs.
Taking all this together, we get this truth:
If you want your people to change, then you have to deliver learnings in small chunks in their work environment.
When you put it like that, it doesn’t seem so hard.
This is why microlearning is one of the hottest trends in learning and development right now. A few minutes of learning, delivered in the workplace when and where they need it, is a powerful way to learn.
It’s also a powerful way to create organisational change.
No counterproductive festivals.
No grandiose extravaganzas.
Just pure, simple change.
And what do you include in these messages? That’s up to you, but it will probably include the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of the change.
Basic tips on how to change.
And what everyone will get out of it.
When this is made easily accessible to everyone, it creates an effective and convenient resource – one that infuses the change initiative into every day of your people’s lives. All without overwhelming, boring or distracting anyone.
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Source by William T Batten
