lumaxart / flickr

Developing talent through innovative learning is cool. And a lot of companies are doing it. Transforming their recruitment, retention, development, and even business processes by emphasizing education and online approaches. Such a focus that empowers people with resources and tools tends to authentically marry – or, simply put, “combine” – learning with technology. Instructional Designers refer to this sort of evolution in the classroom as an ecosystem (“interconnected not linear” or “discussion-centric not broadcast-driven” learning), where the instructor behaves more like a master of facilitation-judo who builds awesome activities instead of a sagely projector of information to an audience.

This is a good fit for the business world because training and development typically unfolds as a peer-to-peer (or colleague-to-colleague) process, as nicely evidenced by Steve Trautman’s book Teach What You Know or this article from Fast Company or this article from HBR Blogs.

Here are some specific ways that non-educational institutions (banks, retail chains, non-profits) can adopt awesome educational models to get the best out of their employees:

Example the First. Say that you have a Vision – such as redefining the very meaning of wealth to include not only profit-making but also community well-being – that requires massive internal understanding in order to achieve its full potential with current and prospective stakeholders. An online platform (I like WordPress) for digital storytelling where employees can showcase their interpretation of what said Vision means to them and how its evidenced by their work – bonus points if said digital storytelling (videos, blog pots, slideshows, Excel spreadsheets) is incentivized with crowdsourced voting and a rewards system. After all, people should be recognized for genuine passion about where they work.

Example the Second. Say that you want to spread Heath Hall and Brett Thompson’s “Secret Sauce of Teamwork” all over your organization so employees can better work in cross-functional teams to achieve sustainability goals. A virtual classroom tool like Blackboard’s Collaborate can bring employees together in-person and online at the same time. Not only are such tools great for saving time, but, as a shared workspace, a virtual classroom leaves a digital footprint of consistent and accurate information for all (who have access) to see, so cool ideas about recycling, community and/or eating locally can be recorded and shared for others to see. Hall and Thompson’s tenets of teamwork are “coming together, staying together and working together” (they admittedly borrowed them from Henry Ford), and a virtual classroom – or “meeting” – space allows for all three. After all, a record of thousands of hours of trial and error will undoubtedly reveal some important moments for learning about how to make a workplace more sustainable.

Example the Third. Say that a big part of your talent-retention strategy involves supporting employees to learn, develop and grow within your organization. This kind of project has to be 3-Dimensional, which, in the instructional-design/online-learning world, simply means that every learner can have a personalized experience with the material and activities. I mean, a bank teller and director of information technology security are going to have very different career development goals … or maybe not (everybody wants to get over their fear of public speaking, right?). So, the elegant educational solution here is to build a uniquely navigable online space chock-full of resources (assessments, testimonials, presentations, articles, and experiential opportunities) that are connected by online and in-person activities where said resources and ideas the ideas from them can be unpacked and explored amongst peers and facilitators who want to get the best out of people. After all, everything – from phones to clothes to computers to food – is customizable, so shouldn’t education embrace this trend, too?

lumaxart / flickr

And such is how school at work can be an engaging process for getting the best out of people. Speaking of people, we’re pretty smart and we’re pretty intuitive when it comes to learning how to find information. Google is good at supporting this, too. My point is that any kind of great learning experience needs to have the potential for learners to explore resources with cool tools in a customizable way.

So, what are you going to do to flip the classroom – or meeting space – on its head and empower your employees to learn, grow and develop in ways that support your business goals?

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Thanks for the images, lumaxart