Learn. Show. Repeat.

Tag: L&D

  • Outcomes over outputs

    In learning and development, we’re eager to tell others what it is we do, the services we provide, how we’re unique and who we serve. We do a good job of describing and counting our activities and the number of people who use them. We speak in terms of outputs.

    Outputs are what we produce.

    But our organisations are less interested in these things. What’s more valuable to them is the impact of our activities. They want outcomes.

    Outcomes are the differences we make.

    How can we measure the outcomes of our activities? How do we know we’ve made a difference?

    Image source: Morguefile.com

  • At the coalface

    I’ve said before that the role of learning and development is to support the people in our organisations who do the actual work. This isn’t to dismiss our work as unimportant but:

    We’re not on the phones speaking to clients.

    We’re not working outside in all weather conditions.

    We’re not growing the number of new customers to our business.

    We’re not on the production line in a factory.

    However, we’re attempting to create learning experiences and support tools for them. Our goal is to improve their performance, but we often don’t understand what their job is like because we work at a distance from them. At the security of our desks. Behind our computers.

    Working in an L&D team within an organisation presents an opportunity for us to find out more about what our end users do. More importantly, how they do it in the context of their day-to-day.

    Let’s step away from our desks and spend some time with those at the coalface. If we invest our time with the people in our organisations, we might better understand how effective our ‘solutions’ really are.

    Image source: Morguefile.com

  • The Next OzLearn Tweet Chat is on 10/3/15

    OzLearn logo

    On Tuesday 10th March at 8:00pm AEDST (UTC +11hrs), @OzLearn is having its next monthly twitter chat. This month, the conversation will be based on David D’Souza’s (@dds180) blog post – The Death of L&D: A Post Mortem and we’ll be talking about the future of the L&D profession. You can read David’s interesting post by clicking here.

    To join the chat, go to Twitter at 8pm on 10/3, search for @OzLearn and join in the conversation (don’t forget to add #ozlearn to your tweets).

    There is also an OzLearn LinkedIn group where you can view the Storify of the chat afterwards.

    Hope you can join us for the chat!