Update from ASTD TechKnowledge

I attended a very interesting session by Marc Rosenberg at the recent ASTD TechKnowledge conference in Denver last week, entitled “Beyond E-Learning: New Approaches to Managing and Delivering Organizational Knowledge.” Marc’s major point was that E-Learning (in terms of E-Training) is but a small piece of the overall organizational learning process and we should move rapidly toward a more encompassing “learning and performance architecture.” No disagreement there—he’s absolutely right, and his contribution to defining such an architecture was very worthwhile. And Marc has a new book in which he wouold be happy to tell you more.

But the more interesting experience for me happened at my table. Marc took most of the first hour in a group therapy session in which he laboriously facilitated a discussion about just how bad trainers feel about the state of E-Learning today and how desperately they would like it to become more interesting, relevant, and meaningful. Amidst the around-the-room self-flagellation process, Marc came to my table and Jennifer Higgins (from a company named Lithia--A merica’s Car & Truck Store) had the audacity to say: “Actually, everyone in our company really likes E-Learning.” She uttered the statement with a voice of pride tinged with confusion about why everyone was trashing E-Learning when it seemed to work so well for her.

After a pregnant pause in the large room, the microphone was quickly circulated to the next table where the despoiling of E-Learning could continue. Surprisingly, everyone wanted to bad-mouth E-Learning, but no one bothered to stop and ask Jennifer to tell us more about why it was working so well for her. Except me, and here’s what I found out during the break. E-Learning is driven by the management at Lithia and the managers and executives at Lithia are all ex-automotive sales people. They take performance very seriously and believe that good management and professionalism on the floor are key factors in differentiating themselves from the rest of the industry.

They take training very seriously and wash out any new-to-Lithia salespeople who don’t make the grade. And, since they are all successful ex-salespeople themselves, they actually know what training people need and how to do it most effectively. Therefore, when it comes to E-Learning, “…they only do what works.” And, that’s why “everyone likes E-Learning” at Lithia and why it is successful. How simple and how profound.

Funny thing was, that while Marc wanted to excite us about the future potential of emerging E-Learning technologies, I was brought abruptly back to the simple truth of any effective management methodology: be sure management drives the process and only do what works! The problems for everyone else in Marc’s therapy session, unfortunately, were: their management doesn’t grock the relationship of learning to performance; they actually don’t know what the people who work for them need to know (since they never did their jobs themselves), and trainers try to do the best they can while stranded in some remote department like human resources. Another very interesting insight from Jennifer: apparently they don’t like the phrase “human resources” at Lithia, and much prefer the title Human Development Department.

And I suspect if we ask Jennifer for an E-Learning update in a year or two, we’ll probably find that she has put the parts of Marc’s model that actually work in place at Lithia--and no one in the company will have ever heard the phrase "learning and performance architecture."