Making learning work for learners is more than a tagline for me.

It’s my commitment to the world.

It’s the arena in which I dream, play, and work.

It’s what I was born to do.

Even with the upheavals of the past three years, what’s important in making learning work for learners has not changed.

Behind the scenes…

the Learning Evangelist is working on new products and services that will support subject-expert speakers and those who work with them.

A new website is being created (and way past due) to celebrate 20+ years of learner advocacy and support for learning leaders…and celebrate new opportunities.

The sandboxes I’m playing in…

• Awakening a widespread learners-first mindset
• Inspiring the subject experts we rely on for content
• Giving those experts what they need to create and lead learning opportunities
• Aligning learning operations systems with organizational goals and learners’ needs
• Cultivating continuous improvement in learning operations and opportunities

And when it comes to learning, we can definitely be curious, play, and explore wonder.

I look forward to sharing it all with you.

It’s not what you give them; it’s what they take away that counts. – Mel Silberman, 1942-2010

The effectiveness of conference learning continues to be on the minds of many in the association world.

Conferences are primarily learning events, and as such I think we can all agree participant learning needs to be the focus. A lot of the conversations I see on this topic revolve around conference organizers and session leaders, and rarely include those who attend these sessions. Instead of thinking only about getting session leaders to be more engaging, a shift in perception and focus to that of being a “learner advocate” would put both organizer and session leader into a learner-centered mindset. And that shift, while seemingly subtle, can have huge ramifications on what learners take away.

At the same time, attention needs to be paid to helping learners be more effective in their role – learn and apply.

Jeff Cobb devotes a section of his excellent book Leading the Learning Revolution to this topic, in which he comments about shifting power to the learners: “…there is ample reason to believe that most of us are not particularly well prepared to engage in and benefit from [interactive and participatory] learning.” I agree with what he says about providing options – a mix of content-centered and learner-centered opportunities so people can select what they need. At the same time, all session leaders need to know how to facilitate learning in ways that learners will take away what they need and be able to apply it. And learners need to know how to best take advantage of learning opportunities so they can apply what they’ve learned.

There are three “legs” to successful conference learning: organizers, session leaders, and participants. Each plays an important part in determining the outcomes, and each intertwines with the others so tightly that none of the three can be ignored. Not every conference organizer is also a learning professional; not every session leader is a facilitator of learning, and not every participant is an accomplished learner.

The quote that opened this post, from active-learning guru Mel Silberman, is at the heart of any learning opportunity. It’s not about how the room is set, and it’s not about the knowledge session leaders can convey. It’s all about the learners and what they take away and, I’ll add, what they are able to apply. If your participants can apply even some of what they’ve learned at your conference to do their jobs or live their lives better or more effectively, that’s when they’ll at least begin to consider your conference a must-attend event.

What would you say are one or two important things each of these three groups needs to consider when it comes to ensuring effective conference learning outcomes?

If you’ve had any doubts we’re in the middle of a learning revolution, consider this: Jane Hart, Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies and one of my favorite learning thought leaders, once wrote “An increasing number of knowledge workers are finding their own solutions to their individual and team learning and performance problems on the Social Web… bypassing both the IT and L&D [learning & development] department.”

It’s a new world of personal knowledge management (PKM), and this post is still valid; in it, Jane describes some of the changes corporate learning departments are making to adapt. With corporate L&D professionals shifting their roles from providing learning content to supporting employees in learning how to manage their own learning activities, how might this affect associations’ roles in learning?

Considering that associations seem for some reason to lag a year or two behind the corporate world, now is the time to be thinking about it!

Here are a few of my thoughts:

• Associations–especially trade associations with corporate members–could, over time, enjoy increased participation in relevant professional development offerings as members’ employees expand their skills in personal knowledge management (PKM) and reach outside their companies for learning opportunities.

• Associations could also, over time, see a decrease in participation as these employees strengthen their PKM skills and find new, more diverse sources for learning…spreading precious learning time across a larger number of sources.

• Association professional development practitioners will expand/shift their roles parallel to their corporate counterparts: they’ll spend more time supporting members in learning how to learn, providing guidance and resources for members to develop their own skills in PKM. I have no doubt this will occur eventually; the question is more how large and how wide the shift will be.

• Associations and their leaders will realize, if they haven’t already, that one of the most important roles and skills they can have and continuously develop are those related to content curation for members. Not just making content available…helping members, in a more powerful way than ever before, make meaning of that content for their professional/personal lives.

What do you think?

I spent a couple of days working with a client’s leadership team on creating a new vision and strategy for learning in their organization. It was a gathering of key team leaders; what others might call committee chairs. These are the volunteers in the trenches, doing the work that results in the association’s various activities.

In working with this client over about 18 months, we’d been building towards presenting to the board of directors an over-arching vision and strategy for member learning that supports the organization’s established strategic framework. This gathering was just the latest step in the process.

It was exciting to see this small, relatively young association embrace the future of learning in examining its own operating environment in context with today’s learning revolution. While these volunteer and staff leaders acknowledge the association’s limitations, they haven’t let those limitations inhibit their thinking. “Oh, we don’t have the resources to do that next year? Maybe we will in a few years.” They’re seeking to build a bold vision they can implement in small steps as resources become available.

What was exciting to me is that this association is developing a vision and strategy for learning that goes well beyond the traditional, somewhat narrow focus that learning in associations consists only of events like conferences and webinars. They aren’t trying to figure out how to shake up next year’s conference (although  maybe they will); they’re thinking about learning in their organization as a “global” activity. Their vision embraces formal, informal, and “situational” learning; the last being what I call their focus on the learning that occurs as a member volunteer (anyone who’s served on a committee knows you get back more than you give). They acknowledge that the association can’t do it all, that there are other organizations doing a better job at some things. Instead of reinventing the wheel, they are planning to purposefully tell members about these other learning sources in addition to the opportunities to be found within the association.

This is the evolution of association learning. It’s not just about “butts in seats,” whether those seats are physical or virtual. It’s about taking an approach to learning that acknowledges most learning takes place outside the “classroom” environment. It embraces the idea that learners are increasingly taking charge of their own learning. And it recognizes that to remain relevant, associations need to widen their perspective to include non-traditional learning opportunities and to open spaces where members can create their own customized learning journeys.

What do you think? Do associations need to expand their vision of what member learning opportunities are? What would your vision of learning in associations look like?

This post is cross-posted on the ATD Learning & Development Blog. It’s also the first in a series on coaching and working with subject-matter experts.

Sometimes, it seems like “SME” is a four-letter word.

Love ’em or hate ’em, though, you need your subject-matter experts. Whether they’re just content providers or also lead learning opportunities, working with SMEs can be challenging. Your priorities aren’t theirs. Missed deadlines, inadequate facilitation skills, and “interesting” ideas about what effective learning looks like are common. Even if some are dedicated and know what they’re doing, the result is inconsistency for learners. Sound familiar?

Learning opportunities are at their best when a solid, productive partnership exists between learning professionals and subject-matter experts. Learning expertise plus content expertise, focused on what is best for learners, is a powerful combination.

The key that opens everything up is having a quality relationship. A great relationship built on trust and mutual respect allows you and your SMEs to focus less time and effort battling each other and more on meeting learner needs. And it all starts with you.

Whether your SMEs are volunteers or “voluntold,” you can establish or enhance your relationships with them by taking a few initial steps. These four steps – using them together, not sequentially – get you started along the road to better relationships and, ultimately, stronger partnerships with your SMEs.

1. Assume good intentions. Chances are nobody ever set out to do a bad job for you. When something happens, it’s typically because SMEs often don’t know what they don’t know.

2. Beware of making any other assumptions. Because they know the content, do you assume your SMEs know how to lead learning opportunities? Or that because an SME is a great face-to-face facilitator she’ll do a great job online? Perhaps you assume SMEs will talk in terms learners will understand, or that they know how to engage learners. Making assumptions like these can be akin to “managing by hope,” and may be at the root of any challenges you’re experiencing.

3. Find out what concerns them. Have you ever made time to just talk with your SMEs, one-on-one, to learn what they’re concerned about in working with you? After learning about enhancing relationships in my webinar, Essentials of Coaching SMEs to Facilitate Learning, a participant once shared she did just that. It was like a wall came down, she reported, and was clearly the start of a stronger partnership that would benefit learners.

4. Discover what motivates them. You can’t give anyone motivation; it has to come from within. Every SME is motivated by something; perhaps giving back, or exposure to the audience. Maybe the motivation is a paycheck, or the expectations of others. Talk with your SMEs about what motivates them to work with you . Whatever those motivations are, you can use them to both inspire your SMEs and enhance their performance.

Like any worthwhile relationship, the relationship you have with your SMEs takes work to nurture and develop. Yet it’s the foundation of all the work you’ll do together. How? In a future post, learn four things to consider as you build your SME relationships that will impact the work you do together.

One of my favorite things about the work I do is the new experiences I get to enjoy – and especially the new things I learn from them!

I once spent 10 days in Asia working with a corporate client. The first half of the trip was my second delightful visit to Singapore; I was there the previous year for this same client. The second half was a little more adventurous: my first trip to Tokyo, Japan and to a country where English is not the predominant language.

My workshop in Tokyo

My client, based in Singapore, worked with a multi-country network of people who train her company’s sales consultants on how to sell and use its highly technical products. In both Singapore and Tokyo, I led a two-day workshop that focused on transforming those subject-matter experts (SMEs) into “facilitators of learning.” That is, participants would learn how to design and lead programs that actively engage learners and enhance their abilities to apply what they’ve learned.

Some things I learned (or confirmed) along the way….

• Leading learning in a country other than your own adds another, potentially significant, layer to preparation and planning.

Knowing your audience is a key tenet of adult learning; in another country, you also have to become familiar with that audience’s culture. Knowing what to do – and what not to do – can help avoid potential gaffes and demonstrate thoughtfulness and consideration to your hosts. And it helps you determine what changes you may have to make to the program to suit learning approaches to the audience.

Be careful about relying only on the Internet or “book learning.” Cultivate local relationships; at the very least, talk to others who have worked in the target country to get a better sense of what to expect. Don’t expect to just transplant your professional development opportunities to another culture “as is.” At the same time, don’t assume things will have to be significantly different, because…

• Adult learning principles apply regardless of culture.

I’ve been asked about this a number of times by U.S.-based learning professionals who plan learning events in other parts of the world. For at least the Asia Pacific region it’s true, in my admittedly limited experience. Adults want to be engaged in learning and want to know how the content is relevant to them. Active learner engagement is a new idea in some cultures, yet once its relevance to effective learning is explained and – more importantly – demonstrated, it is enthusiastically embraced.

In my workshops, I model the behaviors I’m asking participants to embrace; they get to experience first-hand how and why what they’re learning about works. It was no different in either Tokyo or Singapore (the latter with learners from about 8 or 9 Asia Pacific countries present). On the advice of a Tokyo participant, I made one minor adjustment in my approach there to full-group discussions. Instead of my usual practice of asking the entire group a question and encouraging people to volunteer their responses, I asked specific individuals to share their opinions…and they did. It was explained to me this is the only way Japanese participants, in a group setting, will offer what they are thinking. Beyond that, participants’ questions, ideas, and engagement levels were no different than in any of the workshops I’ve led elsewhere.

• Language barriers don’t preclude engagement – as long as you prepare ahead of time and have the right team in place.

In Tokyo I had two new experiences: having my words simultaneously interpreted into another language literally as I said them, and relying on an interpreter to understand what participants were saying. I was a bit nervous about being able to effectively engage participants in a workshop conducted in two languages. Added to the language issue, Japanese culture typically does not encourage interaction or collaboration in the learning environment. Yet my client’s goals involved getting participants to experience both and, furthermore, to teach them to apply those approaches as facilitators of their own learning opportunities.

If you use interpreters, consider them part of your learning team and a key element in your success. My client and I met in advance with our three-member interpreter team to discuss roles and expectations; I gave them my handout, slides, and speaking notes to use as references. Thanks to the interpreters’ skill and professionalism, the only thing I had to do differently was slow my pace a bit to ensure I didn’t get too far ahead of their interpretation. With their help, I facilitated the workshop the same way I always do. It was a very positive experience that I won’t hesitate to do again any time, anywhere.

• Relax…and enjoy the experience!

The opportunity to do something you enjoy while experiencing another culture is priceless. Take every advantage of it! I had great fun facilitating these two workshops and learning more about Japanese and other Asian cultures. Better still, it was fun talking with participants over lunch and dinner, especially as we tripped a little over language. I have to say this: several of my new Japanese friends spoke English far better than I did Japanese!

Our world is getting smaller every day; the more we can share ideas and learn together across cultures, the better our world will be. Traveling to another country? Have an open and curious mind. Be as prepared as you can be for whatever you’ll be doing. You’ll feel confident and enthusiastic…and enthusiasm is contagious in any language!

I’ve been reading a lot about the shake-up going on in learning, learning effectiveness (or lack of it), and how everyone wants to see learning events like conferences and webinars transformed. And for some time, I’ve been seeing variations of this somewhat-plaintive question: how do we get our conference speakers to stop lecturing and start engaging?

I’d really love to invent a magic wand that with a single touch would transform subject-matter experts (SMEs) into the ideal “facilitator of learning” role we all want them to have. I’d make a fortune selling it to associations and corporations that want their conference sessions and other learning opportunities transformed from, as I said in my TED-style talk a few years ago in the Learning Lounge at PCMA’s Convening Leaders event, “ho-hum” to “oh, wow.” Speakers would lead amazing sessions, participants would always get what they need, and conference organizers would be very happy indeed. Sadly, we don’t yet have that magic-wand-building technology.

Discovering SMEs. A big part of the work I do now and have done over the past couple of dozen years centers on helping SMEs move towards that coveted “facilitator of learning” role. In working with hundreds of SMEs across dozens of professions and industries in both not-for-profit and for-profit organizations, I’ve learned a few things about what makes them “tick,” what motivates them, what concerns them, and what it takes to transform them into facilitators of learning. It’s not magic, although the results can be magical.

SMEs all have one thing in common. Of course, it’s that they know their content (to sometimes varying degrees). At least, they know that content in relation to the work they do. They are typically very good at that work, which is why they are invited to speak to others about what they do and how they do it…about their successes and lessons learned. People want to hear success and failure stories in hopes of either emulating or avoiding what the speaker has experienced. Hearing the voices of others who have trod your road before you can be very powerful.

The thing is, just hearing about such experiences doesn’t mean you are learning.

Learning is a partnership. Effective learning is collaborative. It’s engagement. It’s the sharing of knowledge and seeking meaning and application that makes sense for the learners’ situations. It can and does happen organically, yet a “guide on the side” can offer value learners alone may not achieve. There will always be a role for subject-matter experts in effective learning…that role is clearly changing, though, as the world becomes more connected.

And in case you haven’t guessed, effective learning isn’t just about SMEs. It’s about learners, too. If you’re a subject-matter expert: get over that it’s all about you and what you know. If you’re a learner: start coming to learning opportunities ready to contribute, instead of as an empty bucket waiting to be filled.

Help me define a new series of posts.

I’m planning a series of posts about coaching and working with SMEs so that those who matter most – your learners – get what they need. They won’t involve a magic wand…just some from-the-trenches thoughts and experiences to spark some dialogue about how you can help your SME-led learning opportunities achieve that magic goal of engaged and happy learners.

Frankly, I’m not sure what the timeline will be; however, I’m passionate about the subject! It’s great to lament the need to change things; it’s something else entirely to identify what it takes to achieve, and then do it. Yet there are some fundamental things you can do to make a big difference in the effectiveness of sessions at your next learning opportunity.

Think about it from your own perspective. By the way, I’m a subject-matter expert. You are too, especially if you speak at conferences in your field. Some of what I share will be from my own experiences as an “SME.” You can do the same right now. Think about your experiences as a session leader. What would help you prepare ahead of time? What could a conference organizer provide you that you’re not getting (before, during, or after)? What if you offered those things to the SMEs who speak at your event?

And if you really want a potentially eye-opening experience, identify the best learning experience you ever had: school, work, wherever it was. Then ask yourself: What made it that for you? Write down some one- or two-word characteristics that capture the essence of the experience. What if you could deliver that kind of experience to your learners? What would it take to do it?

Share your insights, thoughts, questions. I invite you to share your insights here. And to help me focus these future posts on what you’d like to talk about, tell me your challenges and success stories and anything else you believe to be relevant. Let’s get a dialogue going, and instead of talking about how things need to change, let’s start changing them.

This year has really flown by, hasn’t it?

For me, a contributing factor is likely the travel I’ve enjoyed the past few months. In conjunction with client work, I’ve been to Minneapolis; Alexandria, VA; Seattle; Allentown, PA; Atlanta; Washington, DC; and Wilmington, DE…some of these cities more than once. Tucked in the middle was a trip to San Antonio for a family celebration of life and a too-short visit with some friends.

The highlight of the year (so far!) – and my first international client engagement – was a week-long trip to Singapore at the end of May. I had the pleasure of facilitating a three-day workshop for 24 of this new client’s in-house trainers, who came from eight different Asia Pacific countries. I always enjoy leading SME workshops; it is great fun to see the “light bulbs” come on as these folks discover how to increase the effectiveness of the training they lead. I always learn something from participants in workshops I facilitate, and Singapore was no exception! I discovered a lot about learning in other cultures even as I led the group – who spoke English far better than I spoke any of their languages – in exploring how they could make their training more effective.

I’ve been asked, on occasion, whether the adult learning principles and practices we utilize in the U.S. apply in other cultures. At least for this group, the answer was a resounding yes! Every one of these participants – whether from Singapore, Malaysia, India, China, Japan, Vietnam, New Zealand, or Australia – wanted to know how they could better engage participants in their own training sessions. In part of the workshop they were able to share the similarities and differences in their approaches to delivering content and work together to reach consensus in key areas. In short, the workshop was much like any I facilitate in the U.S., with the addition of a very rich multicultural environment.

If you’re responsible for learning in a global organization, do you reach out across borders to…

• provide development, mentoring, and/or coaching programs so individual SMEs can build their skills and knowledge?

• encourage your subject-matter experts to regularly share ideas and techniques to raise the quality and level of learning for everyone?

• provide formal opportunities for your SMEs to gather with their colleagues from other countries?

      An effective (and effectively used) learning and development program is the best competitive advantage in today’s global economy. Help your organization make the most of that advantage by ensuring those who lead learning have everything they need to be successful.

If we know that adult learners want active engagement in learning opportunities, why do so many webinar speakers still just “talk at” participants?

Lately I’ve been thinking about what makes webinars successful, for a couple of reasons. In some recent conversations about learning, I’ve heard use of webinars almost tossed aside as a viable learning tool because of their one-way, lecture format. That caused me to do a double-take; I know webinars can and should be very engaging.

As for anything worthwhile, it takes some focused planning and preparation to create a good webinar. It’s easiest to lead a webinar as a lecture…for the presenter. Not so great for the learners, though, when you consider that one of the most basic adult learning principles is that adults want to be active and engaged. As John Medina says in his book Brain Rules, “we don’t pay attention to boring things” (rule #4). Bored learners get busy doing other things, and your webinars suffer as a result.

A while back, I wrote a white paper for a learning technology provider about helping webinar speakers actively engage their participants. As a result of that paper, I led a webinar for the company’s clients and prospects, in which we looked at ways to increase the webinar engagement factor. And we didn’t just talk about the tools; we played with them a bit too! We also used Twitter for conversation before, during, and after the webinar using a specific hashtag.

Meanwhile, what do you think? Do you see a place for one-way webinars? Or do you think the way to go is planning for every webinar to be an engaging learning experience?

We hear a lot about “innovation” in business…about the need to innovate to hold a competitive edge, for example, or innovate to attract people to our association’s conference year after year. Whatever the reason, we’re always on the lookout for how we can be more innovative in our work.

I’d like to postulate that what we want isn’t innovation…it’s imagination.

Last Friday I wrote about the vision held by the Challenger 7 families and the organization they founded, the Challenger Center for Space Science Education. That got me thinking, in the funny way our brains work, about the role of vision in learning, which led me to recall a blog post I’d read in early January. That post from Jonathan Fields featured JK Rowling’s 2008 Harvard commencement address, in which she makes a pretty strong case for the power of imagination and failure. A little later in January, Fast Company featured in its daily e-newsletter 13 “radical ideas” for spending $100 million dollars to really save education, a response to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million contribution to the schools and city of Newark, NJ last September.

And then yesterday morning, another article in the Fast Company e-newsletter introduced me to No Right Brain Left Behind, an intriguing 5-day challenge to the creative industries to “concept ideas that can help the creativity crisis happening in U.S. schools today.” One reason for this emphasis, cited in a slide presentation about the project: a lack of creativity in schools and a recent IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs identifying creativity as the “#1 competitive edge for the future.” Yes, schools have become much more about standardized testing than about sparking the creativity and critical thinking that foster imagination. Without building those skills, will tomorrow’s employees even be able to tap the innate creativity that leads to true innovation?

Can we truly innovate without creativity…without first imagining what could be? Innovation can, I think, occur without imagination; ideas new to your organization don’t have to be original to your organization. Think about how often you ask how others have faced and overcome the same challenges you’re facing. Conferences are loaded with case-study sessions; books are filled with “real-life examples;” and we listen and read and figure out how we can adapt what’s been done elsewhere to our own situations. Do we really want to do nothing more than repackage what’s been done before?

Let me be clear: I don’t believe there’s anything inherently wrong with avoiding “reinventing the wheel.” I just wonder if it’s enough to help our organizations and our stakeholders succeed over the long haul. I’m curious about the possibilities that could arise if we imagine more, and adapt less.

It is the ability to allow our curiosity to take over and imagine that truly encourages new methods, new concepts, new ideas to surface. We don’t allow nearly enough time in our days to explore and imagine. It’s true that not every idea is a winner. Yet the value of imagining goes far beyond the ideas it generates. Dr. John Medina says, in his Brain Rule #12, that we are “powerful and natural explorers…despite the classrooms and cubicles we are stuffed into.”

Our lives are busy, packed with things to do and schedules to meet. I wonder, though…what could happen if we allow a little more curiosity and imagination into our days?