Saturday, October 8, 2016

Is this a load of bollards?

I'm getting into my reading on Learning Organisations and I come across different models, theories, factors, principles etc etc. The short, sharp punchy '5 principles' approach or '3 criterion' explanations appeal to me - then I get to a '10 principles for explaining' such and such and my mind throws a cynical - really?
I can almost go with broad brush strokes to categorise behaviours but when you get to 10, why not go the whole hog and aim for 20? What is it about 3 or 5 or some smaller number that appeals but bigger numbers like 10 just seem ridiculous? Does a long list of 'factors' or 'principles' get in the way of understanding?
We're all familiar with trendy articles that try to entice us to read them with headlines like '3 ways to (lose belly fat) (gain confidence) (insert other title here)'. It works - for me anyway. I think I can handle that small amount of information whereas '100 ways to declutter' might just take too much time to read and leave me with decision-paralysis.
So, I'm trying not to dismiss the '10 principles' that I'm reading about and with my mindset, it's hard not to be cynical! However, I've decided to be positive about it and will try to look at a specific client's learning approach using '5 factors' and '10 principles' and see if the extra dissection helped me in my thinking at all.

Friday, October 7, 2016

A little learning could go a long way...

Reading Carol Levitt's 2011 paper on organisational learning and finding that it is triggering a whole new way of thinking about how one of my clients is approaching 'training'. I suggested to the client that we should write a strategy to guide our approach in the next 2-5 years; without a learning strategy, we are simply going by the 'topics' that need to be delivered. Having a strategy and considering organisational learning models may actually help us to have a more holistic approach. It will stimulate ways to design the training programme that we might not have otherwise considered. Looking forward to the difference this term's #msctel assignment will make to this global organisation.