L.H. Lemar asks:
>If anyone has any thoughts or references on present and future internal
>training and development strategies that have been used, I would love to
>here about them. If there is a job description of a LO Training
>Professional available, I would love to see it.
Well, I do not have a job description but I have been researching this
issue and working with clients on the changing role of the training
department.
Emerging themes are the shift from training to learning, the intermingling
of learning with work, and the provision of learning at any place and any
time. All this leading to the need for new learning processes and
infrastructures. Rosabeth Moss Kanter feels that the new emphasis on
learning represents a tremendous opportunity for the training profession
-- but only if it reinvents itself. She sees the need for learning
infrastructures within future organizations going far beyond what most
traditional training departments do today. Peter Senge forecasts that
organization-wide learning will require new infrastructures that support
learning. (These comments from The Future of Workplace Learning and
Performance, Training & Development, May 1994)
I belive that it is key to recognize that training is just one enabling
mechanism for learning. Also that the focus of many T&D strategies --
role-based competencies -- are just one dimension of the required learning
content within organizations. Several companies have adopted the notion
of a "total learning system." A system that embraces a wider set of
elements than current training (or development, or corporate education)
systems. This, in turn, allows them to develop and support a total
learning strategy.
Total learning, as this system supports all the learning requirements of
the organization. This is to learn from the quality movement, which
evolved from a narrow, product-based focus to one that embraced the
broader aspects of total quality management. System recognizes the inputs
and outputs aspect of learning processes and the need to accommodate the
larger systemic influences on learning within organizations. One
particular aspect of that system is the need for an appropriate learning
culture -- the necessary pattern of shared beliefs and values that will
promote continuous learning within the organization.
In my view, total learning include information, as well as knowledge and
skills. The role and use of information, and even data, in learning is an
important part of the development of a total learning strategy. Accepting
that organizational learning involves the creation, acquisition, and
transfer of information and knowledge and skills, contributes to the
understanding that learning involves a lot more than training. Tom Peters'
recent writings on organizational knowledge, supporting the knowledge
worker, and learning cultures, emphasize the role of information and
knowledge. (See the relevant chapters in Liberation Management and The Tom
Peters Seminar.)
A lot of recent writing in the information technology area also echoes
this theme. There is emphasis on the central role that information and
knowledge plays in the strategy of any organization that hopes to hold
competitive advantage. Some writers hold the view that a strategy for
learning cannot just be left to training departments.
For learning to be truly available at any place and any time, including
the intermingling of learning with work, the development and selection of
the right enabling mechanisms is a key part of the total learning
strategy. The developers of total learning systems need to be aware of a
wide range of such mechanisms. They are interested in the optimization of
all tools that facilitate learning, and avoid concentrating on a
particular set of delivery vehicles. Just as many librarians are
developing into cybrarians -- knowing how to optimize the Internet and
other mechanisms to obtain information -- the new workplace learning world
needs total learning practitioners.
Total learning practitioners need to be able to use and access a broad
range of expertise. Examples and experiences todate show that the required
range of expertise comes from several functions, as we know them today.
Whether this will eventually lead to a specific learning function, or a
learning services department, it is too early to say.
The development of a total learning system in organizations, that I am
aware of, is not always coming from the training department. Such
departments may be the catalysts for this development, but this also
varies. In one company the catalyst is the corporate quality department.
In another, the vice president of marketing is asked to become vice
president of learning and lead the development of a new learning system.
I belive that Rosabeth Moss Kanter is right -- the new emphasis on
learning represents a tremendous opportunity for the training/learning
profession -- but only if it reinvents itself.
-- Peter Smith Orbis Learning Corporation 74363,3637@compuserve.com