The Blended Learner

Irish Culture, Jewish Learning

The first time research brought me to Ireland, I was struck by a national oxymoron: "it is and it isn't." As in...

• The situation is hopeless. Well, it is and it isn't.
• The weather is fine. Well, it is and it isn't.
• Is this the way to Ballyglass? Well, it is and it isn't.

To someone with Germanic bloodlines like mine, it either is OR it isn't. It can't be both. And furthermore once we believe what is, then "strait is the gate, and narrow is the way" forward.

I was recently reminded of the oxymoron by guru Donald Tam, for whom it is a credo. Like most rabbis, Tam's vocation is teaching rather than preaching, questioning rather than vouchsafing. His faith is centered on learning and intellectual growth. Its scripture and devotions are spiritual and yet practical templates of education and training for life.

For Tam, "it is and it isn't" explains how traditional Jewish learning works, and works very well at that! Among other things he told me about two defining principles of Jewish learning. These principles happen to be alien to popular instructional design theory; they are missing from the standard corporate curriculum:

• Empowerment
• Dissent

Principle of Empowerment

Disciples of Robert Mager may scratch their heads. "Are you serious? How can empowerment be missing from the corporate curriculum, when training exists ONLY to enable people to do things?"

Well, that may be true, but a more precise statement of purpose for criterion-referenced instruction is that "training exists only to enable people to do as they're told." That is no closer to empowerment than training animals to perform in a circus.

In contrast to this, empowerment is primarily about engagement. The individual is taught to engage directly with the text, and encouraged to "own" the message.

Training of this kind does not exist to produce workers who do as they're told. It exists to cultivate human beings who can do what they believe is right, necessary and best in any situation.

There is a huge difference between these outcomes. And I am sorry to report that most corporate learning is admittedly about circus-like performance rather than empowerment.

In contrast, Jewish learning is mainly about empowerment and really not about performance. That may be why Jews (like the Irish) tend to argue about everything!

Principle of Dissent

Corporate learning takes direction from business leaders, as it should. However the leadership model that prevails in most businesses is a top-down hierarchy.

I think you'll agree that clarity, certainty and decisiveness are hallmarks of effective business leaders. Most don't condone dissent among employees. They expect performance rather than empowerment. They want employees to do as they're told quickly and expertly.

Is anything wrong with that? Well, there is and there isn't.

At the risk of citing way too extreme an example, I ask you to recall a scene in Schindler's List, when the Jewish inmate of a lager protests the faulty construction of a building. The lager's CEO, Amon Goeth, has the inmate shot on the spot, but not because she was wrong (she was a professional engineer trained to do what is right, necessary and best in any situation.)

No, he ordered her immediate execution because she dissented. She did not do as she was told.

I know, the example is provocative, but I use it to make a point. In contrast to an organizational model premised on obedience, traditional Jewish learning prizes dissent. Jews who are empowered by learning to become more authentic human beings are not expected to agree with authority all the time. On the contrary, they are encouraged to investigate, doubt, reconsider, reframe; and yes, to argue with peers, parents and even teachers (poor rabbi!) for their personal and informed point of view.

A concept that underlies Jewish learning is that no individual stands apart; that everybody exists in the community. For that reason, people who dissent are nonetheless bound by their common purpose, a social contract in practical terms. Dialectics get them to truth together, better than marching in lock step with transient and imperfect leaders.

Fair enough, I thought, but what about productivity and efficiency? A business can't be run with arguments! I asked Rabbi Tam why chronic dissent doesn't lead to anarchy. He had a ready answer.

Yes, Jewish learning is messy; but no, it doesn't lead to chaos. Why? Because underneath the differences is a bedrock of values. Jewish learning promotes empowerment and encourages dissent. But it doesn't tolerate deviance from core values of the faith.

Values rather than discipline and obedience have been enough to sustain the Jewish community through unimaginable vicissitudes. I was amazed to learn that there were never Jewish police until Nazis created them.

And the Irish?

Ireland has a traditionally scholastic Christian culture. But the hero of Ireland's national epic, Leopold Bloom in James Joyce's Ulysses, is Jewish.

Joyce's vision of his native land was that nothing is absolutely certain for everybody. Everything can be known, and lost, and found again in something different and perhaps nearer the truth. Every student is a seeker. Every teacher is a guide and fellow traveler.

If I were to say that traditional Jewish and Irish culture have much to offer the designers of corporate learning, you could say, well, it does and it doesn't. And I would reply, now we're getting somewhere!

Sales Training that Works

As we brace for landfall of Hurricane Economy-Run-Amok, let's recall a happier time for retail: the eighteenth century.

According to Judith Flanders, in 1759 the greatest retailer of Western Civilization opened his first store in Staffordshire. His name was Josiah Wedgwood. He was the Ralph Lauren of his era.

For Wedgwood then as for Lauren now, life began humbly. With astonishing imagination, both men built vast commercial empires around luxury brands, and made plenty of room for the aspiring middle class to partake.

Flanders explains Wedgwood's success. For him, "selling was an intellectual pleasure, an art form." I know exactly the same is true of Lauren. No business model or formula explains their success. They are beyond the template.

However for most of us in the 21st century, selling has degenerated from a service that informs and delights consumers, into a custodial task of looking after the store.

I don't know why this is, but I suspect it's because selling is no longer a pleasure or an art among those who do it for a living. It's a grind, done for the paycheck. And learning pros bear some responsibility for this.

The typical sales training we design is about memorizing product information and greeting the customer, discovering needs, identifying solutions, overcoming objections, and closing the deal.

Let's be honest, this is manure.

There's nothing wrong with the proverbial five steps of selling, except that almost no retail sales associate actually performs them today. We train sales associates to do things that rarely actually happen on the selling floor.

Why? Because the five steps of selling are behavioral expressions of something that is missing from the average girl or the boy at the counter; something richer and deeper in the soul of a true retailer: Wedgwood's intuitive grasp, his flair, his zest for selling.

In so many words, experts as diverse as Len Berry and Scott Bedbury tell us that retail sales training should cultivate intuition, flair and zest for selling. If it does, then the five steps will occur naturally, maybe inevitably.

But not because associates follow a sterile template. Rather because they can connect more uniquely, relevantly, sincerely with consumers. Those are the selling skills we should teach after the current storm clouds disperse.

Onboarding with Values

Becker Multimedia has designed orientation for several fine organizations, including a global shoe and apparel company that was a top 100 Great Place to Work for many years running.

The company's CEO admired social activist Bill Shore, so I took a look for myself. I found this gem in The Light of Conscience. I imagine it's what Stephen Covey would say about onboarding new employees:

So much energy goes into legislating what people can and cannot do, like efforts far downstream to channel waters that have already taken on a course and speed of their own.  Far too little is spent on the headwaters, on creating experiences that will determine what people want to do and how they want to conduct themselves. The kind of leadership that seeks to inspire rather than control has at its foundation a faith in the conscience of people, that the more they know the more likely they are to do the right thing.

New Year's Resolutions

Learning is often a bridge over troubled water. It gives us the shore on the other side. It transforms who we are, how we behave, what we create. Always for the good. Always for the better. 

The amazing year of 2008—annus horribilis—increases the urgency of learning beyond anything I’ve seen in my lifetime. White collar parasites, blue collar troglodytes, chimeric markets, hollowed out institutions, the collapse of financial systems, industrial meltdown, a teetering global economy. The cross currents of this troubled water are a furious Hell’s Kitchen. For the most part, we ourselves are the demons.

It’s time then for learning pros to pull out the stops for our New Year’s Resolutions. Everybody makes their own. If you’ve got good ones, share them here. I’ve made a Top-10 list for myself and learning pros I work with.

1. Fun. Give pleasure. The journey over the torrent should be thrilling.
2. Games. The silver bullets of learning. Make them deep, variable, challenging.
3. Scenarios. Replace slides with stories. Experience trumps bullet points.
4. Simulations. Make sure learners can do what they know. That’s our job. 
5. Virtual Worlds. Tear down the walls of learning. Make it easy for everybody to enter.
6. Learning Management. Teach more, manage less. Stop shoveling! 
7. Social Networks. It does take a village. Catalyze peer-to-peer learning.
8. Return on Investment. Spend as little as possible on great stuff. Don’t buy crap. 
9. Training Evaluation. As in baseball measure the details. That’s how we win.
10. Instructional Technology. Put your head in the cloud. It’s the future of learning.

Resolutions like these may get us to a better world in 2009. Our time has come to shine. All our dreams are on their way.

Second Thoughts about Leadership Development

Researchers at the Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University, have spent years identifying the core competencies of leadership. The top two they recently reported are hardly surprising:

• Honesty (telling the truth)
• Vision (forecasting the future)

What is surprising is the absence of these competencies among the most successful business leaders of our era (measured by net worth). Many have been profoundly dishonest and deeply mistaken about what the future has in store for their shareholders, employees and customers. 

This may help to explain why executive turnover is at a historic high. But with rare exceptions, it hasn't diminished executive power or celebrity. Senior executives continue to be seen as the smartest guys in the room, even though many act as dumb as the rest of us. 

As learning pros, should we be having second thoughts about the ROI of leadership development? After all, we're the ones who trained those parasites in the C suite. What have we done? 

Over the past decade or so (while research at Santa Clara University was in progress), leadership development grew from a small component of management science into a kind of religion based on the Great Man Theory of history. This religion holds that aggressive middle aged men, with gross appetites and an admirable golf handicap, are mainly responsible for the success of American enterprise.

Oddly though, it wasn't enough to recruit great men and bid up their compensation to well over $50,000 per day (yes, that's what many executives have been paid for their leadership, 365 days a year). Realizing they were not great men in reality, it was also necessary to shore them up with executive education, executive coaching and executive leadership development. We tried to transform the sow's ear into a silk purse. But it hasn't happened.

If the research from Santa Clara University is correct, then the minimum we can expect from true leaders is honesty and vision. After all, we (not they) paid for it! It doesn’t take Dilbert to see that we got just the opposite over the past decade or so. 

As great men are urged to fly first class instead of using a corporate jet and delay cashing in stock options, learning pros can also get to work on reforming our leadership development practices. In line with the professors' research, demonstrated honesty and vision should be required for a passing grade.