From the perspective of Learning & Development, performance support and learning are very different things. One is to help succeed in the moment without learning, and the other is to achieve a new capability. But from our audience’s perspective, particularly in the flow of work or use, the distinction is less clear. They just want […]

“…today’s business schools are busy teaching and researching 20th century management principles and, in effect, leading the parade towards yesterday.” – Steve Denning I recently was asked to contribute to a survey on the ‘new leadership’ in business. Without going into too much detail on the source of the survey itself, as it's not relevant here, […]

In 1999, Pine & Gilmore released The Experience Economy. In it, they argued that our business models have gone from agricultural, to product, to service.  And they argued that the next transition was the ‘experience economy’. Here, people are focused on not one aspect of a product or service, so just the food at a […]

Among the many areas drawing interest of late is that of adaptive learning. Enabled by technology advances, we can now begin to change learning on the fly.  This can be a good thing, but it can also be used poorly, and can be a source of unnecessary confusion. The origin of adaptive learning really was […]

It’s easy, with all the buzz around new technologies, to get excited about the possibilities. We can imagine implementing machine learning, chatbots, Virtual and Augmented Reality, the list goes on. However, in the excitement of the potential new, we can’t forget the possible now. There are things that are of proven value, and yet aren’t […]

An important point of reflection for any field of endeavor, and members therein, is: where are we and where do we need to be?  The issue at stake is professionalism; what constitutes an appropriate basis for conducting ourselves as members of the L&D community?  It’s worth reflecting on what constitutes the necessary components of competent […]

As our news headlines trumpet questions about ethics in workplace behavior and government, it sparks reflection on our own industry. What are our responsibilities? What behaviors should we practice, or avoid? There are several stakeholders we have to keep in mind. First, there are our learners. They are in our hands and we need to […]

Modeling Decisions The world’s changing faster, and our ability to respond depends on our ability to adapt.  It’s become clear that what will make the difference for organizations will be the ability to make decisions quickly in the face of increasing ambiguity.  And I think the answer is mental models. My point is fairly simple: […]

At the recent Association for Educational Computing & Technology conference, Thomas Reeves addressed the topic of conation in his keynote. Conation is an idea that is relatively unknown, yet increasingly of interest. In short, it’s about one’s intention to act (and learn). And that makes all the difference. One of the persistent mistakes that we […]

In the early 80’s, I read an article calling for a cognitive engineering: designing systems that matched how our brains work. I was designing educational computer games at the time, and was struggling to find good guidance to choose between interface (and learning) alternatives. I realized that this was a field that really meshed with […]