Category: Professional Certification

Learning and Development (L&D) teams are often intensely self-critical.

As a result, L&D orientated conferences can feel like group therapy sessions with never ending quests such as “proving impact” and considering if all the industry talk is just “emperor’s new clothes” (just two example sessions taken from this year’s Autumn Forum sessions which, unfortunately, clashed with other things for me).

Meanwhile, headlines on recent LinkedIn posts in my timeline have included “Are the scope of AI discussions in L&D too limited?” and RedThread have discussed “The Existential Crisis of L&D”. All of this while old arguments continue, sometimes seemingly over mere semantics – such as skills vs competencies, training vs learning, etc.

One issue many L&D teams have struggled with is how to deal with technical or senior experts and how to keep/develop these people in routes other than moves into leadership/management. Back in my L&D for consultants days, this was a particular issue as it was recognized there needed to be a route for people to develop in the firm whilst remaining a technical expert in, for example, Cyber security. This differed from the traditional broad>specialism>broad career path (or “I shaped career”) of the firm – and L&D often focused on the broad (via new hire/graduate/introduction materials and management development at the ‘top’). The Mind Tools podcast picking up on this theme recently, with some discussion of the classic issue that whilst someone may be good at a job they might not be good at managing others. This is another thing L&D then get criticised for – trying to develop “leadership and management” training that is only likely to have an impact if the individuals involved actually want to change their behaviour(s).

So what can/do we (L&D teams) have as options to support those who are best kept away from management (either due to their own desire, financial reasons to keep them as specialists, past failures as a manager, etc)? Well, one option many might have already taken is interest in professional organizations and associations. These organizations are often a great way to keep your current awareness up and may give opportunities for your technical staff to influence future generations, for example how CILIP had a role of working with universities on librarianship programmes when I came through for chartership and early career.

However, there is another option that I do not think I have ever really heard talked about in L&D discourse – standardization.

International Standards reflect the global consensus and distilled wisdom of many thousand technical experts – https://www.iec.ch/understanding-standards

The opportunity to contribute to national, regional or international standards will be of real interest to many of your experts as well as a benefit to your organization (not least keeping your experts aware of trends and changes).

Anyone working in learning is working with change – it is directly related to how we re/upskill, how we change behaviours, how we decide what combination of solutions will lead to performance improvement, etc etc.

We also know that training alone is rarely the solution. This has contributed in part to the preference for “learning and development”, in that people need to learn and develop over time. More fundamentally models like Performance Consulting help us clarify with stakeholders if we are talking about knowledge, information, skill, motivation or environmental challenges. Yet when we do deliver learning solutions the industry often struggles with evaluation to demonstrate impact and value. This often leads to arguments for learning needing a “seat at the table” and other such discussions that, in my opinion, too often ignore the fact IT, marketing, finance and every other teams would likely say the same.

On option for more strategic learning has always been to ensure learning team time is closely aligned to strategic initiatives. However, the traditional challenge of learning needs being thrown “over the fence” or learning teams being “order takers” for courses has suggested that, for many, the experience has been that they are too remote from decision making. I would presume most people will have experienced a mix of this in their learning careers, certainly I have at times been an “order taker” but often when the intention is a more holistic curriculum. At other times learning programmes have been central to projects, organisational development and other strategic, business critical planning. At the same time many of us will have seen different change management approaches – one of the most common, at least in reference if not application being Prosci/ADKAR.

It is with this background that I recently completed a three day programme (via Zoom) to achieve my Prosci® Change Practitioner Certification.

As expected, the course can only go so far in building competency with this methodology. However, there is an impressive set of resources available via the Prosci portal during and after the event. This includes online and offline options for completing the various assessments, plans and other components that make up the methodology. The core tenant of the model being that change management is about the “people side of change” and part of the course was discussing how CM should interact with project management (PM). Having previously completed, and facilitated, various project management training initiatives over the years, the Prosci programme did bring provide a very detailed and potentially powerful way to focus on the CM/people side. Ultimately every organisation really needs such a model – the question is if you want to go “all in” and adopt something as robust, research-based and multifaceted as Prosci’s 3 stage method.

Having completed the programme I went back to my old P30 (2013 edition!) manual and, to be fair, the “people side” is limited. Therefore, the fundamental justification for combining CM to PM (at least with these very popular methodologies) is justified.

For anyone wanting to do the certification themselves, I would certainly recommend it. 3 days was a lot, via Zoom it could have perhaps been done over 5 days but logistics (of course) always impact on instructional design. As is often the way a lot of the interesting parts came from the interaction with others (both facilitator and participants) and sharing of experience but the Prosci team clearly have a structured approach for their (franchise?) trainers that ensures some consistency.

Overall, good to have formal training in a method I have long been familiar of – the challenge now, as with all training, is to apply the learning and not revert to bad practice(s).

This post is a little early, as applications were no longer available from Jan 2011 but we are now basically at the 10 year point for the EMA closing in England.

It is still available elsewhere in the UK.

First the bad, I worked in Further Education (16 year olds +) when the EMA existed and it created problems. The college I worked at had a very “them and us” divide within the student body between students who wanted to be there to learn and students who were (at least seen by their peers) only there to claim the (small) allowance. The insinuation was that some of these “just turning up” people had other sources of income (for example drugs) or simply were attending for something to do, a small amount of cash and/or to keep their parents happy (to the point where there were accusations that tutors were intimidated to report attendance even when learners were late or absent).

@TheIFS report from 2010 reviewed the impact of the EMA and if closure was a good move: https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/5370

Even with my concerns over the previous experiment (see above) where might an EMA style system fit in the future? I would argue that an EMA would be more effective in the 18+ age range as a form of Universal Basic Income. As a guaranteed income, it could allow adults of all ages to continue their personal development and formal accreditation whilst potentially not having to take as huge a pay cut to try a new career route via apprenticeships, etc. In such a scenario we would ideally “top up” salaries to some previous level, meaning mortgages remain affordable whilst people take time to “reset” their income generation, or at least can sell a house with slightly less pressure that what redundancy or other enforced change of career normally brings. This “top up” would be similar to how some unemployment schemes work worldwide, i.e. you do not just baseline everyone to a minimal level of income, and encourage more mid-career reskilling and moves to sectors needing people.

Yes, this would be hugely expensive but given that state finances have gone out of the window in 2020 (even more than in 2008-2019) perhaps not in a bad way. This is of course timely given the current state of the job market and the need to think of “creative” solutions for the future:

Rishi Sunak to use 'creative' ways to keep people in jobs | Rishi Sunak | The Guardian – including proposals from ⁦@LearnWorkUK⁩ to help unemployed adults find new work and change careers. https://t.co/ksBb6jlWjO

— Dr Fiona Aldridge (@FionaAldridge) September 17, 2020