Riding the change curve

Yesterday I was presenting at an organisation's internal HR conference. I gave the same presentation I've been doing all year, on the theme of 'change and opportunity'. I explain the enormous pressures for change currently facing learning and development, and the opportunities we have at our disposal to respond to these changes using new media. I also take the chance to debunk a whole load of the pop psychology which has held back l&d for decades.

While waiting for my slot, I attended another presentation on change - actually rather a good one - given by an internal specialist. Part of this presentation was a discussion of the 'change curve' which is often used to describe the change process. You've probably seen it, it goes something like this:

I say 'something like this' because I explored it on Google and there were so many variations, mostly unaccredited, that I gave up counting. It seems that the originator of the change curve is Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, back in 1975. Kübler-Ross used it to explain the reaction of individuals to major losses, such as bereavement, although it seems to have been adapted as a way to explain, even to manage, changes in organisations.

The model is attractive, because it's easy to relate to your own experience. I immediately began to wonder where l&d professionals were on the change curve when it comes to engaging with new media. I thought about the audience for my presentation: Did new media still have the capability to shock? How many would still be in denial? Would I attract an angry response? At what point in the future would my work become redundant as the whole profession emerges into a state of total and happy commitment?

Anyway, that was where I saw this post going. Until I started to look a little more into the model. I wanted to know whether it really held water. The answer came in The Change Curve Debunked in the Performance Psychology blog, which I’m going to quote liberally:

One of the concepts that is misunderstood and misapplied frequently, even by major players in change, is that of the Change Curve.

The Change Curve is an adaptation of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s five-stage theory that seeks to explain how people deal with catastrophic personal loss (e.g. loss of a job, freedom, finances, status, identity) or grief (loss of a loved one). The stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

It has also been observed that personal change can be somewhat like personal loss and, therefore, the model has been applied to change. Indeed, I have seen it stated, more or less as fact, that when people change they need to be helped along this curve. I’ve also seen it reduced to four (that way it fits nicely in a matrix) and three stages.

But wait a minute. Let’s not let the facts get in the way of a nice model. On the other hand, let’s debunk this baby right now.

(Let’s overlook the fact that the five-stage model has had little empirical testing in its own right, and particularly in relation to organisational change.)

First of all, Kübler-Ross herself stated that people do not necessarily go through all of the stages, and if they do, it can be in any order. Indeed, people can experience a whole range of emotions at different times during grief.

Second, and for me the real point, is that change is not always experienced as loss. Some people love it. It’s exciting. It’s new. It’s a break with the crappy old way of doing things. It’s liberating. Why have we given change which, let’s face it, people do all the time, such a bad press that it is considered synonymous with grief?

By all means, keep the five-stage model in our armoury, but let’s not get carried away with it. Let’s not present it as an unequivocal truth. And let’s not let it get in the way of attempting to truly understand how people really experience change.

Phew. See how easy it is to fall into that old pop psychology trap. Just escaped this time.

Big Question: What new skills and knowledge are required for learning professionals?

This month's Big Question on the Learning Circuits Blog asks 'What new skills and knowledge are required for learning professionals?' Well,contrary to many commentators, I am not so sure that l&d professionals need to tear up the rule book and start again. True, we do need to adjust the balance of our activities quite significantly, away from formal courses to more responsive, work-embedded approaches, at the same time taking much better advantage of new media. We still have the same primary goal, i.e. to enhance organisational performance through employee learning and development, and we're still working in the same four primary skill areas, i.e. strategic l&d management, the design of interventions, sourcing and developing learning materials, and facilitating learning and development on a person-to-person basis. The problem for me is that a great many l&d professionals have fallen behind in their continuing professional development - the world has changed much faster around them than they have managed to change themselves.

Let's take an example. Twenty-five years ago, every l&d professional (or training officer as they were called then) would have been familiar with every medium then available, i.e. overhead projectors, flip charts, black/whiteboards, 35mm slide projectors, VCRs, etc. At some point since then, as new learning media began to proliferate, they backed out and started leaving the job to specialists. Big mistake. Now they have a hell of a lot of catching up to do. The same is true of educational and training methods: the options may be essentially timeless, but the thinking has shifted substantially towards new models such as connectivism, and the brain science means we know so much more than we once did about how people learn. Taking into account the unprecedented financial, time and environmental pressures we are facing, and a new generation of learners that's less content to go with the status quo, and there's plenty of momentum to change.

I can't see a future for those l&d professionals currently in denial and just hoping all this will blow over. I can't imagine who will want to employ them. New thinking and new media are no longer the province of pioneers and geeks - it's time for the whole community to come on board. They will be welcomed warmly.

CommentCatcher

I’ve been having a play with this little tool from i3Logic. It acts as an Articulate plug-in, allowing customers, reviewers and subject-experts to make comments on Articulate projects that are in development or early stages of implementation. The comments are stored in a simple database on the server of your choice.

By allowing collaboration in testing, CommentCatcher does a good job of bridging the gap between desktop and online authoring tools. It doesn’t allow authors to share resources or work together on the actual development, but it’s a start.

It's not enough to be a professional, you also have to act like one

You wouldn't hire an interior designer only to inform them that you've already chosen all the colour schemes and furnishings; you wouldn't engage an accountant and then explain to them the way you wanted them to process your figures (unless of course you worked at Enron); you wouldn't employ a fitness trainer and then tell them what to include in your workout; you wouldn't buy a dog and then insist on doing all the barking.

So why, then, do we continue to encounter situations in which line managers tell the guys from l&d exactly what they want in terms of learning interventions, with the expectation that the they'll simply take those instructions and run. You'd like a 6-hour e-learning package to train customer service staff to sell over the telephone? A 2-day workshop to teach every detail of a new company system to all employees, regardless of whether or not they will be using it? A one-hour podcast to teach manual handling skills? No problem. That's what we're here for, to meet your requirements.

Hang on a minute, you’re probably thinking. This isn't an encounter between a professional and a client, it's simply order taking.

When asked to jump, a professional doesn't say "how high?” They say, "Let's talk about this a little, because jumping may not be the best solution in this situation." If this tactic doesn't work and the professional is told in no uncertain terms that jumping is the only acceptable option, he or she has two choices: either they resign and get another job where their role as a professional is valued; or, because resigning is not such a good option in the current job market, they agree to go ahead, but only after having expressed quite clearly in writing that jumping is against their best advice.

Learning and development isn't common sense; it isn't intuitive. If it was then experts wouldn't lecture at novices for hours on end; they wouldn't insist on passing on everything they know, however relevant, however comprehensible. That's why we have l&d professionals, so they can explain, in terms that the lay person can clearly understand, how people acquire knowledge and develop skills, and how best to support this process. If the customer doesn't hear this advice, they will assume that the people in l&d are just the builders, not the architects; and, if no-one seems to be offering architectural services, they'll do it themselves.

I've heard far too many feeble excuses from l&d people about the reasons why their courses are so dull and unengaging. "Don't blame me", they say, "it's what the management wanted." OK, but you've taken the courses in order to obtain the qualifications that enable you to put those magic letters after your name. You've obtained professional status, with the associated salary and status. But, I'm sorry but that's not enough. To be a professional, you also have to behave like one.

Malcolm Gladwell live

Last night I saw Malcolm Gladwell speaking at the Brighton Dome. I’ve read The Tipping Point, and currently have Outliers on my pile of books to read, so I was keen to see how Gladwell shaped up as a speaker. I wasn’t disappointed. He spoke for one hour without visual aids and with no more than a cursory glimpse at his notes. He was the very epitome of calm, confidence and charm.

Apart from a lesson in public speaking, Gladwell also delivered a fascinating treatise on the fallibility of experts. Attempting to explain how so many brilliant minds in the banking industry managed to make such a complete mess of things, he drew on a number of historical, mainly military, examples, including Chancellorsville, Gallipoli and the recent Iraq war. He showed how expertise in one domain can lead experts to over-confidence, to the ‘delusion of control’ - the belief that their dominance extends to all domains.

As Gladwell said: “Incompetence annoys me. Over-confidence scares me.” Rather than building up our experts so they have an exaggerated view of their own abilities, perhaps we should be encouraging them to show a little humility.

Brain rules – where does that leave us?

Followers of this blog will know that I have been reviewing John Medina's book Brain Rules chapter by chapter over the past three months. This has proved a rewarding experience for me, as it has forced me to explore the implications for each of John's main recommendations with much more thoroughness than would have been the case if I was skipping through the book for my own benefit - it's a bit like John set me twelve homework assignments! As a result, I have built up quite a collection of my own conclusions that I believe I can apply usefully to workplace learning and, in particular, the online variety. In this posting I have attempted to summarise these conclusions. Remember that your conclusions might be quite different, so blame me, not John, if you disagree in any major way.

Rule 1: Exercise boosts brain power

We have a problem if we expect learners to thrive sitting down for hours at a time in a classroom. If you're stuck with this format, do your best by using energisers, the more physical the better. Perhaps it would also help if the coffee machine and the toilets were some distance away, maybe 5 miles! Schedule lots of breaks and encourage participants to take a walk. On residential courses, don't schedule evening work, instead encourage people to use the gyms and other facilities.

Rule 2: The human brain evolved too

The bottom line of this chapter is that relationships matter when attempting to teach human beings. When it comes to the classroom, we typically get who we get and have to lump it, which puts a considerable onus on those who select and train teachers to make sure they do a good job. To some extent the same applies if we learn collaboratively online - without good facilitation/moderation, there is a risk of relationships breaking down, perhaps because one person tends to dominate or behave aggressively.

Alternatively, avoid teachers altogether and concentrate on self-study; but beware because research shows that people treat computers, TV and new media like real people and places - if what they see or hear seems impolite or unfriendly, they turn off.

Rule 3: Every brain is wired differently

Keep class sizes small, so teachers/trainers stand a better chance of understanding and reacting to the differences inherent in every student. Hire teachers/trainers with proven empathetic ability.

We need to place a renewed emphasis on the development of adaptive, intelligent learning materials. For best results, combine adaptive teaching with adaptive software.

Rule 4: We don't pay attention to boring things

You'll achieve nothing if you haven't captured the attention of your audience. The best way to capture attention is with an emotionally-arousing experience of some sort - perhaps an anecdote, a surprising fact, a scenario, an activity - that is relevant to the point you will be making.

Even if you do manage to capture the audience's attention, you'll have lost it within 10 minutes if you don't stimulate a fresh emotional arousal. Start with an overview and provide regular progress updates. In each 10 minute block, concentrate on a single, very general key point.

Rule 5: Repeat to remember

The key point here is that information is remembered best when it is elaborate, meaningful and contextual.

If you want people to remember something, make sure they understand it. Teachers/trainers should make liberal use of relevant, real-world examples.

Retrieval works best when the environmental conditions at retrieval mimic the environmental conditions at encoding. If this is true, then the most effective environment in which to learn would be on-the-job.

Rule 6: Remember to repeat

Don't place too much faith in assessments delivered immediately after learning. Just because details are remembered at this point, doesn't mean they will be later.

Where possible, build on the learner's prior knowledge, rather than presenting new information in isolation.

Provide opportunities for reflection and/or discussion immediately following new learning.

Limit the amount of new information that you provide in one session.

Present important information repeatedly over time, elaborating on it as you do so.

Rule 7: Sleep well, think well

So, getting the right amount of sleep is critical to the brain's functioning, including learning; we differ in how much sleep we need and this varies at different times in our lives; we could all do with a nap in the afternoon. The implications? Ideally we'd allow time for a nap in the afternoon, although of course this won't happen except in Spain.  Perhaps all we can do is encourage learners to make sure they get enough sleep.

Rule 8: Stressed brains don't learn the same way

There's no real harm in a a learning intervention causing a little stress in learners, so long as this is very moderate and short-lived. A small degree of peer pressure would be a good example.

What we don't want is to stress our learners out. I reckon that a great many classroom events, particularly those that are highly interactive, stress out learners too much because the degree of peer pressure is too high - the learner may be terrified of embarrassing themselves. Lots of people tell me that role-play is their least favourite learning activity for that very reason. Synchronous learning events may also be stressful because they attempt to cover too much information too quickly and the learner simply cannot keep up.

E-learning materials may be stressful in other ways, perhaps because the learner can't figure out how to use them, maybe they get lost in a maze of menus, or worst of all the system records their progress incorrectly or loses their scores.

Rule 9: Stimulate more of the senses

Medina draws heavily on the work conducted by Richard Mayer on the link between multimedia and learning. At the most simple level, Mayer concluded that "students learn better from words and pictures than from words alone." I can't argue with this.

Where I am not convinced is that it pays to stimulate as many of the senses as possible, even when those senses are not relevant to the context in which the skill will be applied. The obvious example is the use by Accelerated Learning enthusiasts of stress balls, pot-pourri, Mozart and the like. Perhaps I'm biased because these senses are not normally stimulated by e-learning.

Rule 10: Vision trumps all other senses

Visual aids are not an optional extra, in many cases they will function as the substance of a presentation, lecture, webinar, handout or e-learning module.

It matters what pictures you use - different types of information require different types of visuals to convey meaning most clearly.

While more abstract information is harder to convey pictorially, it is worth the effort. However, better no picture than one that just fills a space and conveys an inappropriate meaning.

Rule 11: Male and female brains are different

I tend to agree with John's conclusion that "we could have environments where gender differences are both noted and celebrated, as opposed to ignored and marginalised." However, in my experience, gender differences are of relatively minor importance in adult learning.

Rule 12: We are powerful and natural explorers

When it comes to more formal learning interventions, we sometimes seem to conspire to minimise the possibilities for exploration and reflection - the dominant strategy continues to be structured instruction, regardless of the suitability to the requirement. Guided discovery is more engaging and more rewarding, particularly when the participants have plenty of experience to draw upon and share. Probably learners would like a balance between the two. They appreciate the opportunities to reflect and explore, particularly collaboratively, but they also quite like to be able to draw upon expert experience from time to time.

My postings on Brain rules #1, Brain rules #2, Brain rules #3, Brain rules #4, Brain rules #5, Brain rules #6, Brain rules #7, Brain rules #8, Brain rules #9, Brain rules #10, Brain rules #11, Brain Rules #12

The Brain Rules book

The Brain Rules website

You can’t make an omelette

Thanks to Jim Potts of the Defence Academy, who drew this cartoon while I was ranting about pop psychology learning theories at the British Institute of Learning and Development conference last Thursday: