Using momentum to put learning to work

Learning is a very personal activity. To begin with, learners need be motivated to learn, and afterwards, they need to be interested in wanting to do something with what they have learned. The role of L&D is therefore not solely to provide the training content and the opportunity for individuals to learn. It is also to create an environment where learners feel sufficiently educated in how to implement their learning, and one in which they feel motivated to do so.

If learning is personal, how does a third party such as an L&D team, which will largely be addressing generic needs through training programmes, have the level of impact required to make the learning 'stick' and be implemented successfully in the individual's day-to-day work activities?

The answer to this must lie in understanding the needs and motivations of the learner and helping them to generate sufficient momentum to carry their learning from classroom to workplace.

Successful L&D programmes typically address the naturally resulting mixture of learners' needs during the design phase of putting a programme together. In order to then generate interest in these programmes, and to help individuals to see there may be benefit to them in engaging with the programme, L&D teams use testimony and word of mouth to promote the benefits of the programmes concerned. However, not all programmes are completely successful for all individuals. Why is this the case? What else is going on?

Capturing the successful implementation of something that has been learned, especially though formal programmes or activities, is relatively straightforward if the task or project is quite large or organisationally important because people are looking for signs of success.

The smaller projects and everyday tasks, where learning has been implemented and has made a difference, are often less easily identified as examples of learning being implemented from the learners.

Perhaps this is because those success stories are less obvious in the wider firm? This difference between noticing when learning has been implemented in larger projects compared with smaller activities is possibly because individuals do not always attribute the changes they have made to the learning they have undertaken.

What can L&D do to help capture these success stories and help to maintain the momentum needed to sustain higher levels of performance? Learning, when implemented successfully, generates momentum. The strength or force of this momentum brings about the improvement sought before the learning took place. Sometimes it is the force behind finding the solution to the problem.

Once that change of performance level is underway, extra energy has to be expended in order to sustain the new level of performance achieved. Think back to the time when you qualified or started a new position, or perhaps received a promotion. Many aspects of your new role will have been different to you. In order to get up to speed to the required level of performance, you needed to generate momentum and you did this through learning what was required, implementing your learning, and maybe even by making minor mistakes as you refined your approach or technique, or simply became more familiar with what you were doing.

Now that you are established in your role, you will have lost much of that initial momentum. That early force or energy has been lost. It has been replaced with a different level of activity requiring different levels of energy. As a result, whenever you learn something now, it tends to be isolated. It is not part of a much larger-scale learning activity that you will unconsciously have linked to your need to survive and thrive in your new role.

Your motivators will be different today and so, therefore, will your interest in learning in the first place and implementing that learning.

The old saying, 'you can take a horse to water but you can't make it drink' could also be applied to a room full of people assembled for a training session; you can bring people to training but you can't make them learn. Nor can you make those who do learn something ensure they implement their learning.

L&D therefore needs to help learners to generate that momentum. They need to provide interesting, fit-for-purpose, engaging learning activities that demonstrate the benefits of the lessons being shared, the skills being developed, and the resulting opportunities that mastery of this new knowledge or skillsets can offer. If energy can be created in the learning environment then that energy will be carried forward as momentum. If sufficient momentum is generated, the learning will be driven forward and the enhanced performance levels will result in the learning being sustained through the change enacted.

The 'how' therefore lies in L&D offering something a little bit unexpected from the norm. Creativity, flexibility, dynamism, and leadership in helping individuals understand the full extent of their learning and development needs, and in the resulting design and delivery of the solution, will, I am convinced, produce the winning formula for making learning stick: energy and momentum.

Sue Beavil is UK learning and organisational development manager at international law firm Slater & Gordon (www.slatergordon.co.uk)