Part 3 of a short series on motivation.

Basic needs

People respond to learning and courses because they or someone else are driven by a script that is guiding their behaviour and shaping their accomplishments. This fits with what we know of basic human needs.

1. Physical needs keep us alive and well.
2. Social needs enable us to live in a group with our fellow men and women.
3. Self-fulfilment needs feed our self-esteem.

Most readers will be familiar with the work of Abraham Maslow, who showed these as a pyramid. Survival comes before everything: we must eat, drink, sleep and reproduce. Only then do we attempt to secure our existence. Where our ancestors made homes in caves and treetops, we now seek refuge in money, taking out a mortgage, saving for a rainy day, buying life assurance, pensions and investments. Then we fulfil our social needs, making friends, joining clubs or political parties. We reaffirm our belonging to society and we form or join groups. Most people, when they reach this point on the pyramid, are content to earn enough to afford the standard of living they feel they deserve. People who were deprived of love as children may compensate by dwelling on step four, the needs of the outer self. Perceived status and recognition takes on huge importance. Drive a flashy car, buy a bigger house, send your children to private school, occupy a large office with a personal secretary. Very few of us rise to the higher regions of Maslow’s pyramid to reach self-actualisation, the fulfilment of our inner self. It may appear hackneyed in the modern age, but Maslow’s conclusions are of particular importance to training professionals. If we are hungry, we may wander from the text of the novel we are reading and first deal with what’s in the fridge! Of course we can read, eat and socialise all at once, but the point is that a basic need cannot be denied, and will become more and more insistent until it blocks out all higher considerations. If we are declared bankrupt or imprisoned for theft, we fall back a step or two. We abandon self-fulfilment or even social need, and we must ascend steps 1 and 2 again before we can approach the ‘higher’ needs. There are exceptions, of course. The poet in a garret may go hungry and dirty as long as he has the strength to go on creating. He does not care what people may say, but resides exclusively on Maslow’s fifth level. If you see your role as a motivator and you hope to influence others to change their current behaviour, you cannot succeed without some knowledge of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Personality, learning preferences and motivation “I want to work with animals so I’ll need a good grade in biology.” “I want to learn as much as I can about the stresses in metals so I can service my own motorbike”.

A great number of words have been written about Learning Styles and preferences (Kolb; Honey and Mumford), personality profiles (MBTI and Keirsey) and perceptual modality. We could debate loud and long the vailidity and authority of these theories, but for the purpose of this blog, they may provide so common language through which to describe various motivational “drivers”.

O’Houle gives us three characteristics:

1. Goal-oriented learners who use education to meet clear objectives
2. Activity-oriented learners who take part mainly because they can use a learning context to make social contact with others.
3. Learning-oriented learners who seek knowledge for its own sake.  They are often habitual readers and they typically select professions on the basis of how much potential for growth they offer.

Allen Tough takes up the themes and concludes that adults learn because:

• learning makes them you good about yourself
• learning satisfies some other person whose opinions you respect (or dread!)
• learning provides some other form of gratification

Tough’s research found by far the biggest proportion of learning undertaken by adults to be informal and not necessarily planned.

Distilling the affective entry characteristics classified by Tough and O’Houle, I visualise three broad stereotypes:

Type 1

I want to do some learning so I can be more successful in my business

Type 2

I want to do some learning so I can make contact with other human beings

Type 3

I want to do some learning so I can stop my brain from rusting up

This then suggests three distinct preoccupations for the learners, each in turn:

Type 1

I want to do some learning so I can be more successful in my business Preoccupied with Learning how to…

Type 2

I want to do some learning so I can make contact with other human beings Preoccupied with Learning by…

Type 3

I want to do some learning so I can stop my brain from rusting up Preoccupied with Learning about…

Understanding what turns learners on can only help us to match (learning) product to need.  If by nature you are an activist, you might not jump for joy at the prospect of self-study unless the material required high levels of interaction.  You might crave contact with other learners or tutors. So design is hugely influential, from the level of planning learning strategies to the level of interface, choice of fonts and colour schemes.

Since learning is also affected by prior knowledge and attitudes toward ourselves and to learning, it is crucial to gather some basic information during initial analysis:

1. What does the learner bring to learning – what educational history; what “cognitive entry behaviours” have already been developed?
2. What makes them desire to learn – “affective entry characteristics”?
3. How good a match for is our proposed method and medium for the perceptual style and preferences of the target audience?

And that is where we’ll resume next time.

Part 2 of a short series on motivation.

In part 1, I described my pressure cooker problem. Although it led to my behaving as a just-in-case learner, I was, at the same time fascinated and motivated to browse into the cultural connections of chicken soup, and after a whole host of interesting associative links, I ended up at the Ellis Island passenger arrivals website in the remote hope that I might locate some long lost relatives who emigrated to the USA many years ago.

So what is the point?

Learning comes in many shapes and sizes and is provoked by a vast diversity of internal and external stimuli. Desire, nostalgia, danger, pragmatism, hunger, frustration, romance, criticism – you can find all of these motives and more behind my project to make chicken soup. You can also detect strong links between the match and fitness of the content and how it is presented i.e. the materials, and the motivation of the user to engage with the learning.

Intrinsic Motivation

Recently the UK Government enquired into the happiness of the nation. The last time it did so, a public opinion poll asserted, “Learning brings more happiness than having sex, playing or watching sport or doing the National Lottery.” (Finding Happiness, Gallup/North Yorkshire TEC, 1997.)  I still find this surprising. I redid a simple test  - entering each of the 6 words into a “Google” search: Shopping, Music, Holiday, Sex, Learning and Education. Music comes top, with 9 billion pages in which it is referenced. Shopping yields 4.6 billion pages, sex 3.5 billion and holiday 1.6 billion, . By contrast Learning appears on 1.3 bn”. By the way you may be interested to know that an impressive 15 million pages mention chicken soup. So on the basis of supply and demand, learning seems to be a topic that interests people. And yet there is the paradox that managers tell us they furnish their organisations with masses of excellent learning material that is barely or poorly used. In fact the problem is so acute that a sarcastic joke abounds. It goes like this. Suppose you have a very precious gemstone and you need to keep it secure. Where might you put it? Under the mattress at the foot of your bed? Too obvious – the very first place a burglar would look. What about in the vault of a bank? Well even banks can be robbed. So here is the solution – take it to the Open Access Learning Centre at work and place it carefully inside the slip case of any self-study manual. You can be quite confident it will stay there unmolested until the next time you decide to visit. Flippant, I know, but the underlying issue is serious. Organisations spend vast amounts on flexible learning packages that sit largely unused on library shelves or servers. Why should this be? It is tempting to take an over-simplistic view and blame the design of the package – “This eLearning is just not funny/interactive/serious/short/detailed/didactic/experiential enough. At the heart of the matter is the truth that motivation to learn lies not only within the material, but also within a whole range of factors that will build or depress an individual’s drive. Some of those factors arise within the learner (intrinsic) and some around them (extrinsic). In this and subsequent postings I’ll ask you to consider these factors and I’ll propose strategies for dealing with them.

You cannot motivate other people.

The principle to keep in mind is that you cannot motivate other people. The most you can do is create conditions and consequences that cause others to motivate themselves. Any parent, who has ever attempted to persuade a teenager to tidy a room, knows that this is true. Any parent who has ever attempted to limit a teenager’s time playing with a computer game knows this too. In some cases, the compulsion is with what you might term a “replacement” or “avoidance” activity. It is an excuse for not doing something that is more meaningful but less attractive. In other cases it is the pull of conformity and affiliation to the group that keeps the individual engaged in the task. Sometimes perversity works in your favour. A well used ruse is to give conspicuous approval to the behaviour or object of your distaste. “That tattoo looks so colourful on Sam. Have you thought of having your navel pierced, Amanda, Darling?” It is conventional for children to pull a face at the mere mention of the word school. And yet they attend, they pass examinations, they join extra-curricular clubs and societies, they wear the uniform. Some of the motivation to do so is extrinsic. When you are small you are physically delivered to the building and handed over to be registered and supervised throughout the day. However we know that the proverbial horse, taken to water, will not be forced to drink. At school there are sanctions for non-conformance. There is (or so one would hope) a strong culture of positive reinforcement – rewards and recognition for achievement and effort.

People respond to learning and courses because they or someone else are driven by a script that is guiding their behaviour and shaping their accomplishments. This fits with what we know of basic human needs, and that’s where we’ll pick up in part 3.

Part 1 of a short series on motivation.

I have been prompted by a discussion on Clive’s Blog to revisit some articles I wrote on motivation a little over 5 years ago. I was not surprised to find that much of the content is still valid, and so I’m refreshing it and will publish it in parts here.

Here’s part 1.

Not long ago, I bought a chicken. Now before your imagination runs away with you, let me explain that this was not a quest for companionship. The chicken was trussed and dressed (why do they refer to it as dressed when patently it is as naked as ever a chicken could be, minus feathers and all?). Anyhow this chicken was on sale in my local supermarket and, irresistibly, it had been reduced to half price for a quick sale. “Soup”, I thought. Now you may be wondering where this tale is leading. After all, the title is about motivation and learning. What’s that got to do with these musings about chicken and soup? Have faith, there is a point; all will be revealed. Both chicken soup and motivation are inextricably bound in the legacy of my upbringing. By way of explanation let me tell you I was born to a Jewish mother. I might mention, at the risk of self-stereotyping, that a propensity for bargain-buying is in my roots, too. Someone once said, “nostalgia ain’t what it used to be”. It was more than nostalgia that created in me a sense of comfort and nurturing; I can taste it and smell it even as I write – the recollection of Mother’s chicken soup invokes sensations as tangible as if the soup were before me steaming in the old chipped earthenware bowl. But – how to make it? My mother’s recipe was based upon her own mother’s recipe, and that was expressed in terms of a little bit of this and a little bit of that and bung it all in the pot. (This has lost a little in the translation from its original Yiddish, but you probably get the idea.) I assembled my ingredients – onions, carrots, celery, chicken, stock and seasoning. A little scalding, rinsing, wiping and slicing and in to the big pressure pan. I did everything in the normal way, but the pressure cooker did not do its usual job.  Steam was escaping from the top of the lid and I could not fathom the reason why. I went to the bookshelf where we keep the cookery books – no help there.  Then I ransacked the drawer where we store user manuals – for blender, food processor, pasta, yoghurt, ice cream and bread making machines – but, alas, nothing for the Pressure Cooker.  Meanwhile, various members of the family were popping in and out of the kitchen – my daughters with, “Oh good, soup, when can we eat?”, and my wife with, “Oh God, steam; why don’t you DO SOMETHING?” Frustrated in the extreme, I logged on to my computer and browsed to the manufacturer’s website.  At first I was hindered by my own lack of knowledge – Prestige is now part of the Meyer Group and at the time I was searching for Ps instead of Ms.

What was especially confusing was the presence of other sites with the Prestige name who had information on pressure cookers, but they were not the brand I owned.  Eventually I found the correct site and some information about pressure cookers – what are they made of; are they safe; what is the basic principle of pressure cooking.  But I did not discover the basic instructions for use I needed.  A diagnostic tool would have been very helpful; one which asked, “Can you see steam escaping from the valve?”  “If so check this.” So I felt disappointed and I began to examine the reasons for my disappointment.  There was a mismatch between what I had expected, no demanded, to find and what was actually there. The P site gave me the option to send an email to obtain an answer to my question, but my kitchen was like a Turkish Bath NOW.  And that is how things are.  We have come to require instant and accessible information at the time and place we need it.  It is inconceivable to imagine me, or anyone for that matter, going on a Basics of Pressure Cooking course before we use our pans.

It does not fit my personal style to study the manual cover to cover before I begin to make soup. In this instance I am a just-in-time, not a just in case learner. In the event, I was fortunate to find the leaflet for my pressure cooker. A diagram on page two clearly showed that some kitchen gremlin had inserted the valve upside down, and once corrected, the cooker behaved impeccably and my soup and sanity were secured.

In part 2, I’ll discuss learning on demand.

In the first post in this series, we expressed a vision for learning and development that is aligned, economical, scalable, flexible, engaging and, above all, powerful in terms of the results it achieves. In this post, we look at the argument for l&d to be powerful.

Clearly, learning interventions are of little or no value to an organisation if they don’t have a positive impact on key performance indicators. There is a clear link here with alignment. For learning interventions to be powerful, they have first to be aligned to the organisation’s current and future needs.

Organisations are not, of course, the only stakeholders in workplace learning, even if they pay the bill. Learning is first and foremost an investment in the learner, the employee. It can also be regarded as an investment by the learner, who must be engaged if learning is to take place at all. A learning activity is powerful for a learner if it helps them to achieve mastery in their particular area of work and to build their confidence so that they find work more fulfilling and enjoyable.

So, what causes one learning intervention to be more powerful than another? Well, we have already established that the process has to start with alignment to the organisation’s and the learners’ requirements, something that will not happen by magic or guesswork. The only way to assess requirements is to consult with all the relevant stakeholders and that’s a time-consuming process.

An intervention also needs to teach the right things. This might seem obvious, but it is perfectly possible for an intervention to do a very effective job of developing the wrong knowledge and skills. For example, let’s say an organisation wants to increase turnover by adopting a new sales process. They could run a wonderful course which transfers efficiently back to the job. But if the process itself is flawed, then the net result may be lower sales not higher.

Thirdly, the intervention needs to be designed and delivered effectively. The research tells us that effective learning is largely down to choosing the right strategies and methods, and then implementing them well. Media choices, such as whether a particular activity or resource is delivered face-to-face or online, are certainly going to have an impact on flexibility, cost and time-efficiency, but will not usually determine whether or not the learning outcomes are achieved (see The No Significant Difference Phenomenon).

Lastly, the power of an intervention will very often depend on the commitment of learners’ managers. Newstrom and Broad found that the positive involvement of managers before and after an intervention was more likely to influence the end result than any actions by trainers and by learners themselves.

Coming next: What we can do to make this vision a reality

Over the past year we have been publishing extracts from The New Learning Architect. We continue with the ninth and final part of chapter 11 and the book as a whole:

Real life is messy: less like a mechanical device in which every part has its place and behaves predictably most of the time; more like a weather system, the elements of which interact in complex and unpredictable ways, always catching us off our guard. Even the best models can only ever approximate reality and can certainly never be relied upon to replace human judgement. If a model could be created which captured all the vagaries of real-life experience, it would be unusably complex to understand and apply. The model described in this book is no exception: with any luck it will explain many of the situations in which we find ourselves in l&d and help us to predict what will happen if we attempt certain types of interventions with certain types of audiences; but these are only approximations and every situation will be unlike any other.

Perhaps the best rule is to break the rules when you have to, but to do this knowingly. Ignorant people break rules because they don’t know that they exist. Stupid people break them when to apply them really would make a positive difference. Astute people break rules because they know that, however well they may apply in other situations, this isn’t one of them. They realise that, however well-conceived, no model mirrors reality so well that it is universally applicable.

So, be astute. If you have found the model described in this book helpful then please make use of it as a starting point for your deliberations. Never rely on it as a substitute for intelligent decision-making based on a sound understanding of your unique circumstances.

Return to Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10

Obtain your copy of The New Learning Architect

In the first post in this series, we expressed a vision for learning and development that is aligned, economical, scalable, flexible, engaging and, above all, powerful in terms of the results it achieves. In this post, we look at the argument for l&d to be engaging.

Learning interventions need to be engaging, because without learner engagement there’s very little chance that any meaningful learning will take place. Engaging interventions attract and maintain interest, they arouse the emotions, they are full of energy. Just like learning should be.

In Switch – How to Change Things When Change is Hard, by Chip and Dan Heath, the authors make a key distinction between what we think consciously and what our more primitive, emotional system will have us do. They liken the emotional system to an elephant and the intellect to the rider of the elephant. As you can imagine, when you’re trying hard to resist that bar of chocolate or force yourself up out of bed on a cold morning, the rider has a heck of a job keeping the elephant under control and can easily become exhausted in the process.

Engaging the learner is about getting the elephant on board. While the rider may be engaged by the long-term benefits of a learning activity or an intellectual curiosity, the elephant is much more interested in what’s in it for him right now. The prospect of a solution to a real, current problem will definitely do the job, because relevance will always drive out resistance. The elephant may also be motivated by a challenge – perhaps a game which involves some form of competition. Humour may also do the trick, or just plain novelty.

Being engaged can be likened to a state of flow, as described by the psychologist Mihaly Csiksczentmihalyi. He describes this state as follows:

Confronting tasks that we have a chance of completing Concentration Clear goals Immediate feedback A deep, effortless involvement A sense of control over one’s actions A reduced concern for self Hours pass by in minutes

You may find it a daunting challenge to design and deliver learning interventions that are capable of inducing such a state of mind, but in the right circumstances the motivation to learn can be very strong. As Daniel Pink describes in Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, three factors stand out: the desire to direct our own lives; the urge to get better and better at something that matters; and the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves. Provide learning opportunities with a clear purpose, a direct relevance to real-world issues and a highly-flexible and learner-centred methodology and you’ll be more than half the way there.

Coming next: The vision: 6. Learning and development that is powerful

So how do we avoid this?

The trick is to find the gap early on, in fact the earlier the better, because it’s much easier to deal with the gap before choosing a solution. To identify the gap you need to do two things:

1. Really, really clearly define your requirements.
2. Rigorously test potential solutions against those requirements.

Simple? Well, it should be but rarely is.

Defining requirements does not mean writing a list of functionality that a system should have. It means listing exactly what that system will enable you to do within the organisation. That may sound obvious, but I’ve seen plenty of requirements documents that are a shopping list of features when they should be a shopping list of benefits.

The worst cases is when the project ends up being led by the functionality. If a vendors offers features outside of the requirements, ask yourself how they will help you achieve any the business goals you have identified. If they don’t, they are superfluous to your needs and should be disregarded.

Once you are clear about your requirements, the only way to be sure that any solution will address them is to test the one against the other. Again, a list of functionality or vendor assurances is not enough. Testing means using the system in a simulated environment that is as close as possible to how it will really be used.

Proper testing takes time. You should be arranging at least a 30 day evaluation, and then making as much use of that time as possible. A couple of hours is not enough. Remember that you are the worst person to do any testing, because you know what you expect it to do. Instead you should test with people who are typical of real end users.

So what do you do once the gap has been identified? I generally follow a simple set of rules:

• Find a solution that meets at least 80% of your requirements out of the box
• Look to solve 10% of your requirements through configuration2 changes
• For the last 10% ask yourself if you can change your business processes to fit the chosen system; if not, you may have to commit to customisation.

1. We tend to bend to fad and trend in how we learn and train,

Some theories are discredited, but others still remain.

Like flavours of the month each one appears, then fades away;

But some things should be constant, and that’s why I’m here today.

2. My class at school had 60 kids, yet standards still were high,

Curriculum was rich and full and made you want to try.

They taught us how to cross‐stitch and they taught us how to sing,

And how to model animals from paper, card and string.

3. And it wasn’t even boring if you had a clause to parse,

Back in the 1950s – when they taught you “The 3 Rs”!

We worked out long division sums without a calculator,

And so built many useful skills for life that we’d use later.

4. The mantra of the day was “Learner‐Centred Education”,

And though we sat in formal rows, we learned through exploration.

Our days were filled with fun and joy, activity and laughter,

Experiment, hypothesis, reflection followed after.

5. Bandura was a young man, yet to publish his great tract

On social learning theory, but in this I nothing lacked.

First chick I kissed was Gillian aged 8, and none was cuter;

We both developed social skills without phone or computer.

6. Though poor, we saw our cup as not half empty, but half full,

Imagination filled the day, ambition was the pull.

On team game sport our every thought was focused at Assembly;

We’d dream and thrill, imagine skill at Wimbledon or Wembley.

7. Science, Language, Music, Maths and Poetry ‐ all that in

Each busy day, yet still a way was found to fit in Latin.

Each minute planned, inaction banned, no time for idle yearning;

The best way to describe it is sit‐up, not sit‐back learning.

8. We didn’t need a garage, for we had no phone or car in

Those distant days of black and white and wireless and Gagarin

We didn’t have our own TV – a neighbour’s set was handy

Watched Champion the Wonder Horse, Lone Ranger, Andy Pandy.

9. We studied in the corridor, the playground and the field,

And thus the miracles of life and nature were revealed.

And when I say we “walked the walk“, I simply mean we found

The whole world was our classroom, and a world of light and sound.

10. How does this piece of history inform the present age?

What lesson can we take from it, with e‐things all the rage?

I think the answer’s very plain and clear for all to see,

It’s possible to feel the joy of learning without “e”.

11. It may be true, nostalgia now ain’t what it used to be;

Technology did not begin in 1963.

But, if you do “go digital” and take the online road,

Inform, inspire, set minds on fire, but just don’t overload.

12. When a client asks for training, try not always to say “yes”

Before you’ve given pause to think, “What’s got them in this mess?

Is the problem real, or is it just somebody’s whim?”

Beware – this means you sometimes have to go out on a limb.

13. Be wary of E‐vangelists, they are the breed to fear

Though they may not see the problem, their solution’s always clear

A training course is called upon, as if it were a saviour

And not a means of getting to observable behaviour.

14. It’s always best to ask yourself, “What am I trying to do?”

Start at the end performance then track back works well, it’s true.

And if you cannot see the wood and only see the tree ‐ it

Is helpful if you ask “How will I know it when I see it?”

15. Help them see that Training’s not a universal cure,

Or very soon your customers will show you to the door.

No never hit on Training as a given, or I fear

You will lose credibility with each new panacea.

16. Cost‐effective means much more than just, “do training faster”,

You would not ever try to cure a tumour with a plaster*

A training course is costly both in terms of time and money

And if you squander either it will not be seen as funny.

17. A simple fix might do far more than training can, you know,

Review results and challenge with, “What does the data show?”

Right at the start determine what you will evaluate

Leave it to the end, and you will find it’s far to late.

18. For companies must measure most what matters most of all,

So take the message far and wide when cynics come to call

That it isn’t witty wording or smart graphics that succeed,

But the focus on performance, and the outcomes that you need.

19. And so I’ll rest, I’ve done my best, to make the message snappy.

I hope my pearls of wisdom made you smile and left you happy.

I started with one acid test but now they number two

Memorise them both, and they will tell you what to do.

20. The red list on the left hand side is all about the game

“Performance‐Engineering” ‐ order‐taking’s not the aim

The blue list on the right hand side will use a different measure

So learning never is a chore, but always is a pleasure.

Over the past year we have been publishing extracts from The New Learning Architect. We continue with the eighth part of chapter 11:

The final step in the process is an obvious one but no less important for that. However well you define your audience and your needs, and however carefully you design your solution, the chances of you getting it right first time are slim. With the design of buildings you have some flexibility to adapt as you move into construction, in response to unforeseen problems and new ideas; with a learning architecture, the process of adaptation is on-going and continuous – you will constantly be finding ways in which your overall strategy can be improved. The creation of a learning architecture is not a project, with a clear end date after which the team can be disbanded; it is an on-going responsibility for the l&d team.

The processes of implementation and evaluation will be enhanced if all major stakeholders are involved throughout. In most cases, that will mean the team that manages your target population and representatives of the population itself. Their input will be invaluable in making sure your strategy is well-targeted, realistic and achievable. They will also be the best placed to measure whether the strategy is bringing the desired results.

Coming next: Rules are there to be broken

Return to Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10

Obtain your copy of The New Learning Architect

In the first post in this series, we expressed a vision for learning and development that is aligned, economical, scalable, flexible, engaging and, above all, powerful in terms of the results it achieves. In this post, we look at the argument for l&d to be flexible.

Flexibility is an important element in the vision for a transformed l&d. What it implies is more control for l&d’s customers – the employees of an organisation. Adults expect to have control over what they learn, when and where and will increasingly demand it. They expect it because they have grown accustomed to finding whatever information they need at the click of a mouse from Google, YouTube and Wikipedia. Synchronous learning (that takes place with others, at a specific time, perhaps in a virtual classroom) can be powerful, but it is certainly not flexible. It means you have have to compromise on when you learn in order to suit others. Similarly, face-to-face learning can add a great deal of value when used for the right purposes, but is highly inflexible. Being face-to-face means you have to compromise on where you learn in order to suit others.

Flexibility can take many forms. For the learner it can mean:

• Controlling what you learn and to what level: So much traditional training is one-size fits all. Everybody starts and ends at the same place, regardless of need. But every learner is different in terms of their prior knowledge and goals, and it is not rocket science to organise training in a modular fashion. Providing this sort of flexibility is not always practical, but it should at least be an aim.
• Controlling how you learn: This is a tricky one, because there has been a lot of nonsense talked about learning styles and how different we are in how we like to learn, yet we are actually much more alike than we are different and it is usually uneconomical to offer training in alternative forms. However, there are sometimes obstacles that get in the way of learners taking advantage of a particular form of learning (disabilities, access to technology, inability to travel, etc.) and providing alternatives can be beneficial, if not compulsory.
• Controlling when you learn and at what pace: By and large, learners would prefer not to have to wait to learn something which is important to their work. They’d also like to control when they learn, for how long, how fast and how slow. Having to conform to someone else’s timetable is always going to be a compromise solution.
• Controlling where you learn: Having to travel to a central location for training is sometimes necessary, but is typically an expensive and time-consuming activity. If you can avoid it you should. It also makes sense to provide learners with the opportunity to continue their learning when they are on the move, so they can take advantage of the inevitable dead times on trains, in airports and hotel rooms.

Of course it can be extremely difficult to provide all this flexibility without impacting heavily on our other objectives of scalability and economy – we have to strike the right balance. But flexibility is a worthwhile target to have in mind and you can make big strides in this direction by creating more modular interventions, with a greater use of self-paced components, and by delivering online when possible.

Coming next: The vision: 5. Learning and development that is engaging