Experts Answer 5 Questions on Learning and Performance - Carl-Adam Hellqvist
I'm delighted to add to this series of interview blogs with Carl-Adam Hellqvist.
Carl-Adam is an "obsessive learner, curious behavior change experimenter, lover of languages, and passionate about crafting high-quality products."
He's co-founder of Knowly, an employee learning firm that offers a toolset for L&D pros to design, track, and support learning before, during, and after digital, physical, and hybrid training. It helps corporate trainers enhance the effect of their classroom training by triggering on-the-job application and supervisor support.
Carl-Adam is passionate about transitioning learning teams from being "content factories" to providing innovative solutions that change employee behaviors and deliver demonstrable value to organizations.
DAN: Why do you think companies get so much from focusing on systems and tools for transferring learning to the workplace?
CARL-ADAM: On the most basic level, a transfer tool can be the difference between doing *some* transfer-related activity and doing none at all. For example, most transfer tools offer some form of scheduling, which a strapped-for-time L&D department can use to put in place a set of before/between/after activities that require minimum administration.
One level above that, a transfer tool can enable powerful program formats that effectively drive new behaviors at scale, that were simply beyond reach without a dedicated tool. A few examples:
In an onboarding program, the new employees’ managers can receive timely nudges to help them complete key tasks relative to their new employee’s start date at exactly the right time.
In large-scale change projects, managers can be split into self-directed peer groups, which serve as the projects’ primary vehicles for change.
In leadership programs, well-timed nudges and assignments on the job can be the difference between having the program transfer into better leadership “on the floor” and having it remain as merely a series of inspiring meetups.
DAN: How have companies used transfer of learning tools and systems? What's been their return on investment?
CARL-ADAM: Over the years I’ve seen many successful applications, but one in particular that stands out in my memory is the Swedish bank Handelsbanken. They faced a company-wide change project where they wanted their 500+ managers to drive the change.
They decided to move away from their traditional format for developing their managers, which revolved around facilitators traveling the country to host workshops and instead used Knowly to launch a concept where managers were split into peer groups that facilitated themselves in a virtual setting.
The result was honestly quite remarkable. Using the *action learning* framework, each group member brought with them into each meeting a challenge from their work environment, which meant the topics discussed were always highly relevant and unique to each group. Instead of spending time administering workshops, the L&D team focused on crafting crystal-clear instructions for how to run the groups autonomously. Additionally, they supplied key leadership tools in the form of recorded webinars, that each participant watched on their own between group meetings.
In the end, they delivered a program with orders of magnitude less administration, at a fraction of the cost, that could be rolled out in one big wave instead of having to pass through the bottleneck of a limited number of facilitators. Most importantly, though, over 90% of managers reported back after their group meetings and showed signs of having applied the tools that were introduced in real situations relating to the change project.
DAN: What makes technology-enabled transfer of learning tools and systems so effective and worthwhile?
CARL-ADAM: Most transfer initiatives can be initiated in a basic form using email, some decent copywriting, and fierce email inbox discipline. Before long, though, the administrative burden tends to become unmanageable and the participant experience too scattered. An investment in a transfer tool will help with both: The tool will help deliver the program in a way that requires far less admin, and package it to become a way more stringent experience for both participants, their managers, and other stakeholders.
Additionally, most transfer tools will provide significant help with analyzing the outcome of a program, as the participant’s activity in the tool will form a paper trail of their journey toward application in the workplace.
DAN: Talent development and training professionals in organizations have varied and diverse subject matter, stakeholder interests, and employee roles to support. How have the transfer of learning tools been leveraged across the breadth of these demands?
CARL-ADAM: Subject matter experts (SMEs) can be involved in a learning project in many ways: They might be creating a piece of content inside a learning module, deliver a full or part of a training session that tackles their area of expertise, or they might just providing feedback.
Regardless of how they’re involved, the fact that most transfer tools come with some kind of built-in pedagogical structure means that the SMEs can focus on doing what they do best – being experts. Instead of having to learn to structure their knowledge in a pedagogically sense-making way, they can rely on the transfer tool’s format to ensure their expertise gets transferred into new behaviors and business results.
A similar logic can be applied to business stakeholders: They care less about learning for its own sake and more about tangible business outcomes, which in turn stem from actual changes in behavior. Knowing that a transfer tool is used in a given program can therefore be an important signal to business stakeholders. You’re essentially telling them that you’re putting business-critical behavior change front and center, as opposed to just delivering content.
As for employees – the “learners” – the value of a transfer tool can hardly be overstated. Correctly set up, a transfer tool will help participants apply new knowledge on the job, in the right situations, at the right time, which is crucial for a learning program to have a real impact.
In particular, a transfer tool helps most participants do what they already want to do: They want to succeed with their change journey and practice new skills, but they keep getting overwhelmed by other tasks, their inbox, or whatever else is calling for their attention. A transfer tool helps them fight the war over their to-do lists so that transfer-related tasks get done regularly.
DAN: What energizes you about your work?
CARL-ADAM: I’m endlessly grateful to be working with learning every single day, but a particular source of energy is whenever I get to collaborate with a customer who’s created a concept that is truly groundbreaking. Learning about their research findings, seeing how they’ve translated them into new formats for learning, and, perhaps, being able to chip in with a few more ideas is an experience I can’t get enough of.
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