When the recession turns a corner – as it surely will – L&D will face a brand new horizon. Nigel Paine discusses what the view will look like and how to prepare for the changes ahead.

 

I have just got back from two weeks in Brazil helping companies build an innovation culture.  Their economy is already beginning to pull out of recession and according to the Economist, will post a small growth this year before getting back to 4% plus next year.

At one point I was in Belo Horizonte, the capital city of the state of Minas Gerais, a few hundred miles north east of Sao Paulo.  The city’s name means ‘beautiful horizon’ which is a strange name for a place surrounded by mountains so you cannot see any horizon beautiful or otherwise!

Those two facts came together in my head on the plane home.  We need a horizon to create depth and space in a two dimensional object.  And sometimes a focus on the horizon is a great way to get some perspective in the present.  So with the upturn just out of sight, it may not be such a good idea to keep it out of mind as well!

So let’s not focus on cutbacks, and managing through a recession, but look to the near future where we are all on the move again.  Is there anything that a good learning leader should be doing now to prepare for that eventuality? You bet there is.

A new horizon

Nothing will return to the way it used to be.  So the first recommendation is to forget that great moment (whenever it was) when budgets flowed and learning life was good.  This is not a good point to dust down your 2007-2008 budget and get it ready for resubmission, or work out how many new staff you need and get their job descriptions in order and draft the half page ads for the Guardian. Preparing for the upturn is preparing for three, new phenomena: faster, better and cheaper.  While the economy has been gently sleeping, the world has changed; standards have risen, competition has increased. 

The more sensible organisations have been dusting down their processes, products and people to be ready to do things differently as well as do different things.  And the good news is that it will require a whole load of learning.  Not once, but continuously as we move forward. 

Now is the time to really think about just in time, and just for me delivery.  Of the five public and private sector case studies I worked on in Brazil everyone was about getting learning at the point of need where ever and whenever that happened to be. And a lot of it was about getting leaders up to speed in order to cope with a changing economic reality, and not just in order to help them absorb new information, but share what they knew. 

Learning technology

The new learning was as much about building two way delivery as it was about delivering resources, about getting groups to function as teams, not developing individuals. And helping key people in key roles know who to turn to to get help and how to manage that process.  I don’t care whether you call that Learning 2.0 web 2.0 or social learning, but it is here and it will be massively influential.  So when you are asked how you can deliver that, it is better to have thought about it in advance!

Three of the case studies concerned delivering resources on Blackberries.  Mobile learning is here to stay and when someone asks how you can leverage that considerable investment in Smart Phones, you had better have a good answer.  And when the truth emerges that a lot of very senior managers struggle to do more than email and phone calls on their expensive little beast, you had better have an answer to that too.

 And in all this frantic pace and pressure to deliver, where is the time for reflection, and sharing of insights?  How do you encourage people to spend time on their mobile device to learn, and then share, ask questions build insights and do things better.  Again, someone has to think through these things and come up with answers.  And you are the best person to do this now, whilst you have some time.

Performance

Finally, if you are spending hours polishing your new learning strategy, I would suggest you  press the delete button.  Your learning strategy, is how you can contribute to the overall organisation strategy, and the metrics you will use to know what impact you have made.  And if those metrics still reflect how much everyone enjoyed the process or how many hours of this or that  you delivered, then think again. In the new world, people will want to know what you contributed to the overall performance rather than the fact that 84% of participants rated your programme as good or very good!

I really think that we are going to wake up into a new world.  And we will look back and wonder in amazement how we got away with it for so long.  We are be on the move, from tactical to strategic; nice to have to core and essential, and maybe there will be a bit of money to spend as well.  Bring it on!

Nigel Paine is a former head of training and development at the BBC and now runs his own company, Nigel Paine.Com which focuses on people, learning and technology. For more information visit his website at www.nigelpaine.com