The blind spot called education implementation.

Implementation as an afterthought

I do recognize this. And with me a whole group of L&D practitioners who often have to deal with this. That is why I put forward the proposition that the implementation of change is often overlooked in these kinds of projects. Implementation is included as an afterthought, or sometimes only thought of toward the end of the process. While we all know that change takes time. So why not choose to give implementation a place in the entire process?

Probably because the importance of implementation is often realized too late AND because L&D practitioners are usually not change agents, but experts in educational development. This is a different sport, which we do need in order to enjoy our hard development work.

Why implementation projects often fail

“That’s quite a position to take,” I hear you thinking. And I understand that. That’s why I list here three causes of implementation failure. Do you recognize your organization in one or more of the statements below? Then you’ve probably already had to deal with them.

1. “What has the manager come up with next?

The employee usually does not formulate an educational need themselves. This comes from a desire by management to meet a KPI, HR to keep staff employable, or L&D because they see that skills needed for the job are not being mastered or not mastered enough. The result? Management gets a memo, budget is released and a small group of people start running hard to make everything possible. But that employee has no idea this is going on. And then six months later, when he or she is presented with a wonderful program to change the work he or she has been doing every day for years, resistance comes. And that makes sense.

It is also one of the biggest stumbling blocks to implementation. And yet your people can (and should!) be your biggest success factor. So how do we solve this? For this, two moments are important:

• Create support during the development process. Engage people with knowledge, with enthusiasm. Approach your informal leaders and communicate what you are doing and why it is a good solution for them too. Bottom-up, from the employees.
• Create support after the development process. Make sure your product is visible. Give it attention and a pedestal. And on that pedestal also put all those ambassadors you have gathered during the development process. Managers, team leaders and informal leaders who lead by example should not be missing. And while you’re at it, be sure to add some social recognition from people who have had a positive experience with your educational program.

In short: don’t go developing on an island hoping someone will spontaneously decide to build a bridge, but see the bridge as part of your process.

Yes, I’m really not going to do that.

Learning is change, and change is uncomfortable. You have to do something you’re not sure you can do. And that requires safety, because you have to make yourself vulnerable.

In a work environment where there is little hierarchy and making mistakes is allowed, most people will feel comfortable enough to say they find something exciting and ask for help when they need it.

While hierarchy may be appropriate for the work environment (think medical care, financial institutions or police work, for example), the fear of “failure” will be deeper for people in such a hierarchical environment, because making mistakes is often punished.

We now have two choices:

• Changing the culture of the organization. This can be a good choice if low security is perceived and it is part of management’s strategic choices. But then we are talking about a complex multi-year plan.
• Accept that the culture is what it is (regardless of whether this is as it should be). Make sure the learning products chosen in your pathway fit the culture and not just the learning objectives. Lots of hierarchy or a diminished sense of security? Then social learning, open experimentation or public reflection (such as peer review) are not the best forms to ensure a supported and well-received trajectory.

Ultimately, your goal in this case is to ensure that your employees acquire and apply new knowledge in the short term.

3. “I can’t do anything with this, can I?

As a final point, let me cite an example of my own. But one that I have often heard back over the years. When I started working, I was fresh out of college. Enthusiastic to create beautiful, educationally sound products within my new organization. I had an assignment and a deadline and created a (I thought to myself) beautiful e-learning for it.

When the e-learning was ready, it was put on our LMS (learning management system) so that all employees could work with it and an email was sent with a reminder to create the e-learning.

Since I was also curious about how my hard work was being received anyway, I stopped by some of the people who were supposed to be following him. What did I hear? Most of my colleagues weren’t keen on it at all.

What turned out: my colleagues in the workplace didn’t see the relevance of it. They saw learning as something separate from work and less of a priority than everything else. And thus not as part of their job. This not only makes them unwilling or unwilling to do it, but also means that when they do learn, it is difficult to integrate knowledge from the learning solutions into the work (low transfer). And low transfer is precisely not what you want to achieve your organizational goals.

How this could have been done better? At least by promoting learning in the organization as an inseparable part of working. And by making room with colleagues to apply what they have learned. Yes, the learning materials should be well designed for this and stay close to the participants’ practice. But it must also be part of the way-of-working.