The Garden of Ignorance

This is our garden. When we moved here 6½ years ago, it was just a grassy rectangle with a small square patio.

Once we had settled in, we got some quotes from gardeners to design an easy-to-maintain layout and planting. This is what we ended up with, and it has proved to be sufficiently low-maintenance for me to engage with trying to keep it tidy, planted and pleasant to look out onto and relax in. 

But I'm no gardener.

I do what I do from an ongoing position of horticultural ignorance.

Like many people, I suspect, I want to have a nice garden (be able to play the piano / be a Digital Learning Expert) without necessarily doing all the heavy lifting (practising / theoretical & experiential study) required.

But I’m happy to get stuck in.

I Google / read up / ask others / observe / try out stuff / persevere / try again – with the incentive that others have an expectation of me so doing but are also willing to work with me and support me to achieve the desired outcomes.

Does that make me ‘lazy’ / a ‘chancer’ / a yet-to-be-outed imposter? 

Or a learner?

Judge me by my results.

And keep challenging me to be better.

I might just surprise you.

And myself.

It's Permissable

Last week, I attended the excellent two day 'LearningLive' conference in London, hosted by the Learning and Performance Institute - great sessions, great speakers (especially the two - yes TWO - keynotes, Elliot Masie and Richard Wiseman), great company, conversations, dinner and learning. 

If you were an attendee yourself or if follow me or any of my PLN (Personal Learning Network) on Twitter and other social media you may have noticed - or indeed, contributed to - a lot of the resulting online sharing and comment. I won't re-present that stuff to you here. If you wish to access a comprehensive curation of the event, then follow this link to David Kelly's excellent blog site The 2016 Learning Live Backchannel: Curated Resources #LearningLive

No, what I wanted to talk about was something that's been very much part of my live learning (see what I did there?) recently, and was a recurring theme in many of the discussions in and out of the conference sessions - that of 'permission'. Who thinks they need it, and from whom? For what? Why do so many of us think that we need permission to do stuff or to do stuff differently? Is it the way we've been brought up? Educated? Trained? Inducted? Managed? And what would happen if we didn't seek permission, but went ahead anyway and sought forgiveness afterwards? What's the worst the could happen? Could we even be using not having permission as an excuse not to try, but to play it safe?

Many conversations at the conference revolved around changing our approach to learning and development, by applying technology, by developing new skills and by changing the relationships between the traditional provider/methodologies and the emerging self-aware, self-managing learner. For me, a  recurring and resonant theme throughout was about what permissions we feel we need to have to be able to choose and follow the paths of change.

I've been giving these questions a lot of thought recently, as I have allowed myself to start considering the possibility of no longer pursuing full - albeit self - employment, and perhaps even semi-retiring. Regular readers and other friends will be aware of my turbulent year last year, with heart surgery, followed by redundancy and my subsequent setting up of an independent L&D/Learning Technologies consultancy.  To cut a long story short, I found that my heart wasn't in it, that I didn't feel able to put in the hard work that was required to make a viable and growing business of it, but that I had to press on, despite how I felt.  But I also felt that I needed permission to take the decision to slow down, to take my pensions, and to try other things - permission from my wife, my children, my friends, my peers, ex-colleagues, PLN, clients and other professional associations.

Well guess what? They all - to a person - gave me their blessing, their permission, to follow my heart. And in opening myself up to sharing my thinking about a future without the pressure to 'do stuff' and 'make money', it turns out the only individual who's permission was being withheld was myself. It was my own perceptions of self-worth, credibility, usefulness which was holding me back. I am so grateful to my family, but also to my friends and PLN for the conversations we have had recently online and face to face at last week's conference. I know it's going to be OK; different, but OK.

Always needing permission to do stuff, or to stop doing stuff, or to do stuff differently stifles enthusiasm and creativity. But working out loud, sharing ideas and exploring possibilities, looking up and asking 'what if...?' opens up a world of opportunities. Maybe Learning & Development should give itself permission to at least try to do that.

P.S: I'm not burning all my bridges tho'. I continue to be fascinated by L&D, LearnTech and social media, just not to the exclusion of everything else. I'll still turn up at the tweetchats, the conferences and the unconferences. I'll still be mouthing off in social media. I may be doing more writing. I'm continuing to work with my existing clients and am open to any other opportunities which emerge.

Are You a User or a Pusher?

Relax! I have no interest in your recreational habits. Let me explain where the question comes from and all will become clear.

I came into training as a novice. Having struggled for 12 years to make a career as an actor, and having spent most of those 12 years doing other work to keep the wolf from the door, my wife Mandy (@MandyRG) and I started an IT Training company with another couple in 1989. I had very limited previous exposure to using a computer, nor had I any formal training experience (although I did manage to last a whole term in post-graduate teacher training after I gained my  Drama Degree in 1976).

But that meant that I came to the IT Training business essentially untainted by a lot of background technical knowledge and expertise. I came in as a user of the technology with, frankly, no interest whatsoever in what was going on inside the box. I just wanted to know how to make the software do the things I needed it to do. And that software was still green screen Lotus 123 and WordPerfect!

It was several months - as we slowly built up our client base - before my colleagues were prepared to unleash me on an unsuspecting group of client  Lotus 123 learners. I had had the benefit of being trained by Mandy and had sat in and witnessed her and them training the course and done several dummy runs myself with their helpful feedback. I managed to hold it together and delivered a successful course - but it was to the letter of the albeit very good lesson plan and, if anyone had asked me any questions for which I had not been prepared (and let's face it, there are a million of those), it could all have gone horribly wrong. I was not entirely comfortable with being in that position.

And so we grew the business and I developed both my application and my trainer skills. But my ethos as a trainer was always the user/learner and the context in which they would be using these tools; to make the software work for them and not them to work for it. So we talked to them (as opposed to talked at them).  We asked them what they wanted to do and why they wanted to do it. And, yes, we did have to cover some basics in those days, but even then it was in the context of their jobs and their productivity - as users. 

This was radical stuff in those days! I'd experienced IT training from other people and it was clear that many of them, whilst technically very good indeed, had no understanding of nor empathy with their trainees. They were pushing their knowledge and information at them, rather than discussing their needs and contextualising the learning accordingly.  I personally never learned anything from the pushers, the show and tellers, who would sail through their 'schtick' without pause or concern for whether or not their learners were actually understanding what they were telling them.

And it's still going on. I still come across and hear about many different instances of trainers pushing information onto trainees. Facts piled upon facts. Bullet point after bullet point on text-heavy, graphically-challenged PowerPoint slides. No questions or discussion. And we wonder why people are turning their backs on traditional, classroom-based training.

So, here's an opportunity to reflect back on my original question. On the trainer/facilitator spectrum - are you a user or a pusher?

Your thoughts and comments are very welcome.