Mind the Gap: Are your Learning & Development Programs Bridging the Knowing-Doing-Being Gap? By Rachel Clements Research & Insights February 2015 Mind the Gap Australian organisations invest millions of dollars a year in learning and development for their staff. Despite this significant financial and time commitment for these programs the fact of the matter is, when the training or program event is over, the learning stops. Given their significant costs, is there a way we can maximise learning and development opportunities for staff to get a better return on investment? At the Centre for Corporate Health, based on over 16 years industry consulting experience, we believe we can, by following a few simple methodologies that are infused in our training products to create lasting behaviour change. The Knowing-Doing-Begin Gap Most learning and development programs aim to equip participants with increased knowledge in relation to the subject matter they are learning about. Whether it be leadership, emotional resilience, communication skills or building better team relationships, most participants enjoy coming together for learning and being exposed to information that is new, informative and interesting. The truth is however for most training programs, this is where the learning often stops. Participants go back to their desks, face 50 emails, respond to numerous inquiries and within a few days, their tendency to fall back into old habits outweighs their ability to imbed any new approaches into their work or personal lives. Even more unfortunate, the people involved in the training forget most of what they learn over the next 60 to 90 days if there is no reinforcement mechanism in place to ensure that the key concepts are worked into their daily routine. You see here in lies the gap. One needs to move the learning beyond the knowing level and into a deeper learning phase, the doing level. Once we have been doing the new behaviour for sometime, we reach the less conscious level of ‘being’ where, like cleaning our teeth, we just do it automatically and it has been imbedded and integrated into our repertoire of behaviours. Sounds simple right? WRONG! Most people experience significant difficulty breaking an old habit that is perhaps unhelpful and forming a new, more beneficial habit that can help us have a more productive and healthier life. In order to shift from knowing to doing to being we ultimately need to understand the psychology of habits. Deep inside the brain close to the brain stem are structures that control our automatic behaviours or habits, such as breathing and swallowing. Toward the centre of the skull is a golf ball-sized oval of cells that, for years, scientists didn’t understand very well, called the basal ganglia. In the early 1990’s a team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology began wondering if the basal ganglia might be integral to forming habits. During their research they noticed that animals with injured basal ganglia suddenly developed problems with tasks such as learning, how to run through
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Mind the Gap: Are your Learning & Development Programs Bridging the Knowing-Doing-Being Gap?By Rachel Clements
Research & Insights February 2015 Mind the Gap
Australian organisations invest millions of dollars a year in learning and development for their staff. Despite this significant financial and time commitment for these programs the fact of the matter is, when the training or program event is over, the learning stops.
Given their significant costs, is there a way we can maximise learning and development opportunities for staff to get a better return on investment?
At the Centre for Corporate Health, based on over 16 years industry consulting experience, we believe we can, by following a few simple methodologies that are infused in our training products to create lasting behaviour change.
The Knowing-Doing-Begin Gap
Most learning and development programs aim to equip participants with increased knowledge in relation to the subject matter they are learning about. Whether it be leadership, emotional resilience, communication skills or building better team relationships, most participants enjoy coming together for learning and being exposed to information that is new, informative and interesting.
The truth is however for most training programs, this is where the learning often stops. Participants go back to their desks, face 50 emails, respond to numerous inquiries and within a few days, their tendency to fall back into old habits outweighs their ability to imbed any new approaches into their work or personal lives. Even more unfortunate, the people involved in the training forget most of what they learn over the next 60 to 90 days if there is no reinforcement mechanism in place to ensure that the key concepts are worked into their daily routine.
You see here in lies the gap.
One needs to move the learning beyond the knowing level and into a deeper learning phase, the doing level. Once we have been doing the new behaviour for sometime, we reach the less conscious level of ‘being’ where, like cleaning our teeth, we just do it automatically and it has been imbedded and integrated into our repertoire of behaviours.
Sounds simple right? WRONG!
Most people experience significant difficulty breaking an old habit that is perhaps unhelpful and forming a new, more beneficial habit that can help us have a more productive and healthier life. In order to shift from knowing to doing to being we ultimately need to understand the psychology of habits.
Deep inside the brain close to the brain stem are structures that control our automatic behaviours or habits, such as breathing and swallowing. Toward the centre of the skull is a golf ball-sized oval of cells that, for years, scientists didn’t understand very well, called the basal ganglia. In the early 1990’s a team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology began wondering if the basal ganglia might be integral to forming habits. During their research they noticed that animals with injured basal ganglia suddenly developed problems with tasks such as learning, how to run through
Research & Insights February 2015 Mind the Gap
mazes or remembering how to open food containers. Their research confirmed that in fact the basal ganglia stored habits even while the rest of the brain went to sleep.
The brain, by utilising the basal ganglia is able to convert a sequence of actions into an automatic routine, this process is known as ‘chunking’. It uses a three-step loop. First there is a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use. Then there is the routine, which can be physical or mental or emotional. Finally there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future. Once the habit starts unfolding, our grey matter is free to quiet itself, go on auto or chase other thoughts.1
Based on the research from neuroscience, the point to remember is that most of the things we do on a daily basis such a getting up in the morning, eating, cleaning our teeth, responding emotionally to situations during the day or processing events that come to us, are based on our automatic habits that occur whilst the rest of our brain virtually goes to sleep. The good news is that we can override an automatic habit and form a new, perhaps more helpful one but it needs to be undertaken consciously and repeatedly. In other words we need to be conscious to remember to practice the new habit over and over,
1 The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg, 2012
until a new pathway in our brain is formed. We know that reinforcement or rewards are also important. Take as an example one of the most popular new habits that people like to form every new year! That of doing more exercise. Choose a cue, such as leaving your running shoes by the front door, and a reward, such as a smoothie after each workout. Then think about that smoothie, or about the endorphin rush you’ll feel afterwards. Allow yourself to anticipate the reward. Eventually, that craving will overtake those feelings of effort and ‘I çan’t be bothered’ thoughts you used to feel just thinking of the gym and eventually, with much repetition, you find yourself with a new habit imbedded in your daily routine. You have trained your brain to adopt a more positive habit in relation to exercise.
How do I embed this into our learning and development programs?
A good learning and development program should:
1. Be tailored to the level of staff attending the program and to the objectives set out by the organisation. Avoid enlisting providers who are unwilling to customise programs to your specific needs.
IDENTITY
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Research & Insights February 2015
2. Be a mixture of face-to-face facilitated sessions with practical case studies, videos and various other formats to practice new skills, and not just a lecture on a specific topic.
3. Be a sustained and supported journey. There is a shift from expensive two or three day programs to programs that are facilitated in manageable chunks over an extended period of time. Even if an organisation’s budget only allows for a one-off training program, providers should be able to offer post program support and online materials for further learning to ensure habits and positive behaviour changes are possible.
4. Build in coaching or follow up recall sessions to keep the learning ‘top of mind’.
So next time you are planning a learning and development program, take stock and make sure it is ticking the boxes for creating lasting behaviour change and embodies the potential for continuous learning opportunities.
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