Your problems might be big, but they're not special.
Your problems might be big, but they're not special.
Why we shouldn't treat every L&D project as a unique little snowflake.
Recently, I’ve been working with a client on an ESG project.
The client has made a public commitment to achieve net zero within the next seven years, and they’ve already taken meaningful steps towards that goal.
While strategic decisions like adopting a remote-first policy and investing in renewable energy initiatives will have the most significant impact on the organization’s carbon footprint, employees also have a role to play in this effort.
As Ross G has written, ESG projects are a little unusual for our team, in so far as they generally begin with a clear outcome, rather than a vague request for ‘training’ on a particular topic.
In this case, the client’s goal was to help colleagues reduce their individual carbon footprints, as part of the company’s ambition to reach net zero.
Articulating this goal was the easy bit. The tricky part was figuring out how to design our intervention, and where to focus our efforts.
Typically, L&D seeks to overcome these issues by conducting a needs assessment, working with a subject-matter expert to define outcomes and structure a learning experience.
While I like this approach, it assumes we’re starting from scratch — that the problem we’re trying to solve is unique, requiring a unique solution.
Rather than jumping to a traditional needs assessment to scope our ESG intervention, we started by asking Anna Barnett from our Insights team to conduct a literature review. The goal of this exercise was to identify approaches that had proved effective through research, narrowing our focus to the initiatives that were most likely to move the needle.
One of the many insights we gained through the review was the fact that people are more motivated to take pro-environmental action when informed of ‘co-benefits’ in other areas. For instance, consumers are more likely to shop sustainably when they know that shorter food supply chains correlate with positive health outcomes, including lower BMIs and weight loss.
This and other findings from the literature review have informed our approach to content design. While we might have defined a learning outcome related to sustainable shopping through a process like action mapping, understanding the academic literature has helped us frame this topic in a way that’s more likely to lead to behavior change.
Obviously, we’re incredibly fortunate to have nerds (I mean this as the most sincere compliment) like Anna at Mind Tools.
But even if you don’t have access to an in-house research team, that doesn’t mean you can’t look to academia for guidance. As Dr Philippa Hardman wrote in a recent edition of her newsletter, information retrieval and synthesis (including literature reviews) is one of the key areas where AI tools can support learning designers.
Then again, you could always just ask Mind Tools to do it for you. 😉
Interested in working with our Custom or Insights team? Want to share your thoughts on this week’s Dispatch? Then get in touch by emailing custom@mindtools.com or reply to this newsletter from your inbox.
🎧 On the podcast
This week on the Mind Tools L&D Podcast, we’re revisiting an old adage: The employer who says, ‘What if we train our people and they leave?’ And the trainer who says, ‘What if we don't and they stay?’
As Talent Development Manager for Kew Green Hotels, Clare Sheppard knows all about this. She’s responsible for helping those who want to stay progress in their careers, while giving those who leave a great experience that they can carry with them into their next role.
Check out the episode below. 👇
You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify or the podcast page of our website. Want to share your thoughts? Get in touch @RossDickieMT, @RossGarnerMT or #MindToolsPodcast
📖 Deep dive
In an early edition of the L&D Dispatch, Ross G made the bold claim that no learning intervention should ever ‘fail’.
This claim was based on a conception of design as an iterative process:
‘…if we’re taking an iterative approach to learning design, where we keep adapting our approach based on feedback and measurement, then it’s not a question of “success” or “failure”.
It’s more a question of: How much time and resources are we willing to put into this, before we decide that the problem isn’t worth further investment?’
Interestingly, Ross G wrapped failure in quotation marks, acknowledging that the term may mean different things to different people.
This idea is explored in a recent paper, exploring the ways instructional designers define and experience ‘design failure’ in their practice.
And, indeed, what the paper reveals is that designers do not have a shared understanding of what ‘failure’ means, or how they should feel about it:
‘Throughout the interviews and the analysis of the practitioners’ stories of design failures, we found that ID practitioners define design failure in different ways that are mostly not captured in design literature, that is: design failure as “failure during use of design,” design failure as “failure during process of design,” design failure as “an opportunity for reflection on design actions,” design failure as “an outcome or an event that needs to be avoided/prevented during the process of design,” and design failure as “an outcome or an event that could not be avoided/prevented during the process of design.”’
One of the key takeaways from the paper is that failure can play a generative role in design practice, by creating opportunities for learning and reflection.
Lachheb, A., Boling, E. (2024) ‘How do they define design failure? An investigation of design failure in instructional design practice from the practitioners’ perspective.’ Educational Technology Research & Development
👹 Missing links
🚕 San Francisco’s Nocturnal Taxi Ballet
Anti-social behavior recently broke out in a San Francisco parking lot, repeatedly waking local residents in the wee hours of the morning. The perpetrators? A fleet of autonomous Waymo vehicles, honking at each other as they attempted to navigate the lot. This was captured on video by Sophia Tung, whose apartment overlooks the building. She has since created a 24-hour livestream of the ‘taxi ballet’, complete with relaxing lo-fi beats.
Long-time readers will know I’m a big fan of Nate Silver, founder of FiveThirtyEight. In his new book, On The Edge: The Art of Risking Everything, Silver explores risk-taking in various domains, from poker to crypto, from finance to AI. It’s a fascinating read, offering a behind-the-scenes peek into the worlds of professional poker players, tech founders, and effective altruists.
🦉 What 500 Days of Duolingo Taught Me About Learning
As a former language student who now works in learning design, I’ve long been fascinated by Duolingo. In this article, David Kelly describes his experience of using the app for 500 days, and shares his reflections on Duolingo’s approach to gamification, micro-learning, and personalization.
👋 And finally…
Alexis Gay on the benefits of hybrid working:
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👍 Thanks!
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