Rounding the Learning Curve

dvances in technology, the rise of the global economy, and unremitting pressure to become more efficient and more responsive to customers have profoundly transformed workplace learning. Federal agencies have been forced to adopt new processes and ways of organizing work. The rate at which new information is created has increased dramatically. Employees must have a broader range of knowledge and must somehow keep up with new developments in their field.

The increasing complexity of work changes the nature of learning because ready-made solutions to problems are fewer. This places a premium on employees' ability to work themselves out of problems.

As a result of these changes, individuals and organizations are finding that the line between work and learning is becoming blurred. Learning is part of getting work done.

The capability to learn continuously is quickly becoming a source of competitive advantage for many organizations in the private sector. This means the most promising avenue for greater productivity lies in learning better and faster, thus improving employees' abilities to solve problems, innovate and change. Traditional classroom training has produced few tangible productivity gains. In their book Transfer of Training (Perseus Press, 1992), Mary Broad and John Newstrom found that an average of only 10 percent to 20 percent of training resulted in changing or enhancing an employee's performance on the job. Perhaps the major reason is that it artificially separates learning from real-world problems faced on the job. Adult learners are pragmatic-if the training isn't readily applicable to problems they deal with, they are likely to lose interest quickly. Another problem is that classroom training rarely is offered when employees need it in today's fast-paced workplace.

Learning is an output of work, not just an input. The learning potential in work situations can be tapped through activities such as on-the-job coaching, developmental assignments, sharing of lessons learned and assigning real work to learning-project teams. These informal, unstructured situations are precisely the way most adults learn best. Studies of workplace learning consistently show that as much as 70 percent of the skills and knowledge people need to do their jobs are learned outside the classroom. Research at the Center for Workforce Development has revealed that employees relied on informal learning opportunities for about 70 percent of what they needed to know in order to perform their jobs.

Continuous learning offers other important benefits. It is often less expensive than classroom training. An agency with a good program of continuous learning will attract Generation Xers, who view continuous learning as critical to remaining employable.

Learning Tools
Many agencies have begun to improve their employee development programs. Employees are being encouraged to take responsibility for their own development and careers. Decisions about how to spend training funds increasingly are made by line managers rather than central personnel offices. Last year, the Fish and Wildlife Service became the first agency to issue a formal policy endorsing continuous learning. The policy sets an annual goal of 40 hours of learning experiences for all permanent full-time employees. In addition to classroom training, the policy credits learning through self-studies, conferences and workshops, shadowing assignments, developmental details and on-the-job training. Nonetheless, most federal agencies are slow in responding to the transformation of workplace learning. Many managers traditionally view training largely as a tool to prepare employees for new positions. Training funds are still the first to go when it comes time to cut the budget.

The challenge for federal managers is to provide leadership in moving from training to continuous learning. The following steps can help them get there:

• Define learning needs. Many short-term learning needs are obvious, such as mastering a new software package or improving a team's conflict resolution skills. But longer-term learning needs require careful analysis, starting with identifying the core capabilities of the organization and then looking at the job roles and competencies needed to maintain and enhance them. These issues should be addressed as part of a strategic workforce planning process. The fundamental question always should be, "What skills, knowledge and competencies add value to our business and help build our core capabilities?"
• Provide learning opportunities and resources. The best way to acquire knowledge is to capture the learning potential that exists in everyday work. Much of this can be accomplished through familiar but underutilized techniques, such as cross training and sharing in teams, job rotations, developmental assignments, lessons-learned debriefings and action learning. Trained facilitators can help teams engage in the deep learning required for solving complex problems and overcoming organizational blind spots. New technology makes it possible to deliver "just-in-time" training to the desktop or, at the very least, to a central learning center located nearby.
• Make the consequences visible. At its core, learning involves a sequence of action and effect: "If I do this, that will happen." We have designed many jobs and work processes so that employees rarely, if ever, see the results of their work. When this occurs, valuable learning may be lost because the connection between action and effect is broken. Remedies include modifying work processes to involve employees in a whole product and using cross-functional teams, which often expose employees to work outcomes.
• Lead by example. Continuous learning requires managers to play a key role as coaches and teachers. A recent book by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton entitled The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge Into Action (Harvard Business School Press, 2000) revealed that the job of leaders is "not to know everything and decide everything, but rather to create an environment in which there are a lot of people who both know and do. Leaders create environments, reinforce norms and help set expectations through what they do, through their actions and not just their words."
• Develop a culture of continuous learning. The key factor that distinguishes continuous learning from on-the-job training or any of the tried-and-true techniques mentioned above, is the creation of a culture that supports learning. This means that dialogue is valued more than discussion and inquiry is valued more than advocacy. Innovation, risk taking and sharing information and knowledge also are valued and encouraged. Managers need to take the lead in breaking down barriers between departments or across geographical areas. Most agencies could reap significant benefits by simply sharing throughout the organization the best practices already in use.
  

Perhaps the greatest challenge to creating an environment that supports continuous learning in government is the fear of failure. This fear leads to the belief that it is always safest to plan, and then plan some more, before actually doing anything. While this response is quite rational in many situations, it is at odds with the need to learn by doing. If most of what we learn, we learn by doing, it is reasonable to expect failure to be a fairly common part of the learning process-call it trial and error.

Many studies have shown what most of us know from personal experience: The lessons we learn best are those taught by failure. The Organizational Learning Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, founded by Peter Senge, encourages the creation of "practice fields" to foster individual and organizational learning. These are places where it's OK to make mistakes and learn from them. The best management development programs accomplish this goal by giving managers rotational and "stretch" assignments, fully expecting that most will experience mistakes and failures as part of their learning journey. The Army has been a pioneer in the use of after-action reviews to capture lessons learned from things that have gone wrong.

Managers need to encourage and support prudent risks that result in learning-even from failure. As the chief executive officer of Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing said recently, "We don't find it useful to look at things in terms of success or failure. Even if an idea isn't successful initially, we can learn from it."