The Need of the Hour - Innovation

Dear Reader,

A couple of days ago I helped one of my colleagues to "learn". So that you do not assume that it was a classroom training that I conducted, let me tell you that it was the most informal way of training someone on how to make a presentation. Right from what goes into a presentation (the content) to designing the slides!! I recounted my experience as a facilitator, a number of times, before I got on to penning down my thoughts for this post.

We've all been in a classroom to learn a new skill, a new behavior sometime or the other in our lives, however if you ask people when is it that they have had a "learning", 8 out of 10 will say it was outside the classroom.

Two things that I want to deduce from this response:

1. "Training" does not necessarily mean "Learning" - Here's how I look at it, training is something that is owned by the trainer while learning is controlled by the learner. In a class of 20, there is always that one student who learns better than the others, under the same circumstances that is offered to the remaining 19 students too.
   
2. We learn better outside of the classroom, call it by any name, On-the-Job, Experiential or informal learning.

However, with all these being facts, do we really see the transformation within the Training Function in our organisations? Is the function still investing money (may be, a lot of money) in organising class-room training programs that do not guarantee learning?

Here's the results of a survey that I came across a few hours ago. The key point to note is

"Although 64% of Learning Executives believe Informal Learning approaches have higher impact, more than 2/3rds of corporate training budgets are spent on traditional formal training."

Why should this be the case?

Well, here are some reasons off the top of my head:

1. When there is a training budget that is allotted to the function, the managers are expected to establish controls over how the money is spent. This could only be done if training is organized in traditional methodologies. Level I (Reaction) of Kirkpatrick model, to evaluate training effectiveness, forms a part of this control.
   
2. Trainers / training managers have been confined to their worlds and adopting (or even ideating) alternate methods of training is making them step out of their comfort zone.

Bottom line: It is time for us to conceptualize alternate methods of facilitation to aid learning. Innovation is the need of the hour.