Nigel Cassidy: Learning off the job. How to tap skills and experiences gained from hobbies, sport and life itself. I'm Nigel Cassidy and this is the CIPD podcast.
NC: Now with financial and daily work pressures piling up like never before, this might not seem the time to focus on what people do in their own time outside work. But just think if like me, you often find yourself watching YouTube tutorials to find out how to do something around the home, you're already a devotee of just in time learning without even realising it. So whether it's volunteering, running, boating, learning a language, all these and more sharpen our skills and give us some self knowledge, but they might also be life lessons that are going to waste across the workforce. So this podcast is all about the value of this so called adjacent learning and how it can best be tapped by learning professionals to improve individual and business performance. Alongside me, Carol Bower, Head of Learning at BAD, that's BestAtDigital, with 20 plus years of experience in using learning to unlock potential and change behaviour. Hello.
Carol Bower: Hello.
NC: And the CIPD's own Learning Content Lead, Steve George, co-author of a soon to be published book on adjacent learning. He's clocked up experience working on digital learning with a string of successful global brands. Hi, Steve.
Steve George: Hi Nigel.
NC: So I'll start with you, Steve. Let's be clear on what we mean by adjacent learning and what kind of help it might be to organisations, as well as how it enriches the individuals who are doing it.
SG: Sure. Yeah, so in the book we define adjacent learning as the way that we work with and learn from other professions. So that's professions outside our work, as learning and development professionals. In its simplest form we quite often hear people in learning and development talk about how we can learn from marketing and how they communicate with influence. And that's an absolutely certain fantastic place to start, because why reinvent the wheel when marketing are doing it so well. But it's also possible to go deeper. So what works within marketing might not work every time within the context of learning. So then you look at those adjacent communities, not just as marketing, but where marketing got their information from, where they learn from, what their evidence base is and I know Carol's got lots, so she can come in on that as well.
CB: So for me, I always define it personally, that's because learning is personal, we do things for our own reasons, we don't do things for the reason of others, so it really doesn't matter how much learning we experience. Ultimately we make our own decisions around whether we'll do the new thing or we'll do the new behaviour. So from a personal perspective, I'll give the example of when we set up BAD two years ago, we looked at what we should be and I think we have to learn from what's around us. We've had a massive pivot away from traditional learning approaches and so we decided to even drop the word learning in our name. We focus on creating digital experiences that change behaviour, which is actually what learning's all about. But even just saying that, you realise that other people do this too, Steve gave that lovely example of marketeers, they're all about changing behaviour. So for us, it was defining us in broader terms. And then that gives us an opportunity to then, to pivot, to actually make sure that we can offer what we do, to others as well.
NC: OK, I get that. But Steve, I want to bring this down to earth a little bit more say that I enjoy boating, which I've done and I discovered I wasn't a great leader, I didn't explain things to people very well, so I learnt a bit about myself as we all do. How do organisations actually tap that? Half the time you don't even know what people are doing outside the office.
SG: So I think there's two angles to that. Firstly, it's not just about how organisations tap into the adjacent learning that people are doing outside of their role at work. It's also how we, as learning and development professionals, tap into adjacent communities to help us be better at what we do. So using your boating example Nigel, you could then apply this framework to look at what you can take from that, to then apply in your practice. So it's being intentional about the things that might not seem obvious at first. So reflective practice being a big part of learning and development.
NC: The suggestion there Carol, is that we learn things outside, I know you don't like the term learn very much, but maybe we don't actually use them to improve bad habits or something.
CB: Yeah, well I think we do. I think we do learn things outside and they do help us to improve habits. And I think we're using behavioural science a lot, we have a behavioural insights team, who know about changing behaviour. And I think, again, it's an adjacent community, but we can learn a lot from companies who create apps that are all about creating these habits, that change behaviour. And with the boating example and you also mentioned in your introduction, if you want to learn something, you go and look at a video. That's entirely right, that's what we do, that's how we learn. We learn in the moment, we learn based on the context, we have a problem to solve, I think we have to always think about learning as about solving a problem. So myself, I fixed my dishwasher the other day by looking at a YouTube video. And I think that as a learning organisation ourselves, we have to learn from those experiences and replicate them because these are the experiences that we're all familiar with. And I think we have to, we have to change that focus away from learning, being a once off event and it's happening, but we still got a lot of traditional learning out there that is all about telling, as opposed to influencing. And I think that's where we need to be moving to even more strongly than, stronger than we are now.
NC: Steve.
SG: Yeah, so I think the point Carol made there around moving from that telling approach, that also applies to how as learning development professionals we encourage people to bring that learning from outside the organisation into their work. If we're role modelling how we're bringing those experiences that we've had, to make us better professionals and to make us better at what we do, then that creates not just permission, in inverted commas, for other people to do that, it also starts to create that culture of sharing of expertise. And, yeah, like I say, it role models the behaviours that bring that about.
NC: Just before we go back to Carol, Steve I'm not being funny, but to what extent is this just kind of rebranding of common sense? It is pretty obvious isn't it, that you learn a lot when you're off work doing something you choose, or you're seeking out knowledge that you need to complete some task you want to do? It's almost as if suddenly this is a thing, this is adjacent learning.
SG: That's a fair challenge and my co-author David Hayden, talks about how common sense isn't necessarily common knowledge or even common practice. And I think one of the things that we can quite often see in organisations, is almost an artificial barrier between who we are and what we do outside of work and who we are and what we do inside of work. And one of the things that we can do through that role modelling, through being intentional about the way we bring learning from our activities outside work, is we can start to pull people out of context, so they can start to think not just about what they do. So maybe they coach a football team or coach a rugby team and that's made them a better manager through that coaching. But what are the behaviours that they're applying in that coaching and how can that transfer more broadly across work as well?
NC: That's interesting, reminds me actually of, I used to do a fair bit of presentation training with people at one time and when they were uncertain interviewees, or they weren't seeming very confident, I'd say, look forget work, talk to me about your favourite hobby or the sport you do, or something you do outside of work. And quite often, people who were very dull suddenly became very passionate. And I think they then got the point, well why don't you put some of that into your work? Does that strike you as part of this Carol?
CB: Yeah, most definitely. I think learning is a skill in itself and you're right, if we learn things that we care about, then we're not really thinking too hard about that process. But as a learning professional, if you think about that process and then think about behavioural science, how you can apply behavioural science principles to influence people, how you can get people to create those habits, make things stick, how you can get people to care about things. Then suddenly that's, that skill is really honed, that skill is honed. Myself, I've been learning Spanish on, using an app called Duolingo and the reason I'm, well there's two reasons for doing that, one is that I want to learn to speak Spanish, but the second reason is, that I want to understand how behavioural designers are designing apps that do influence behaviour change, influence people to create those really sticky habits where you sustain the habit. And I think I've been learning Spanish now for about 280 days, so it's working. Doing this stuff is for me common sense, but it's very valuable for me when I take that back into the workplace and I think about how we apply behavioural science, how we improve the learning experiences that we create to influence people to change their behaviours, or to influence their behaviours.
NC: Well if that's the case, it's almost as if we're hearing here Steve, that understanding adjacent learning is as much for the trainer, for the L&D individual, in thinking a bit more carefully about how everything they do is delivered and how people are going to get a benefit from it and how they're going to learn from it.
SG: Exactly that, we work in learning and development because we're passionate about learning and we're passionate about things like behaviour change. There can be a temptation, because we're always working at such pace, that there can be a temptation to almost narrow our focus. What we're talking about with adjacent learning is broadening that and making sure we're taking the best from multiple disciplines. And exactly as Carol said, learning is itself a skill and skills need to be practiced. I think it's a quote attributed to Einstein about how curiosity is superior to knowledge. And again, that's one of the things, that if we're intentional about adjacent learning, we are building that curiosity muscle and we're constantly looking at, why do people do this? How does that work? Why does that work as well as it does? So exactly that.
NC: Now this is I think a difficult question because it takes us a bit away from the theory. But Carol, if we're agreed that all this stuff that you learn about yourself outside can be good for the organisation as a learning and development person, how do you actually ensure that some of this adjacent learning is making people better performers?
CB: A lot has been said in the past about self directed learning and the importance of encouraging it, but I also think it's important to create mechanisms for sharing that. So replicating what's out there. We know how successful TikTok is, we know how successful social media platforms are, we talked about YouTube earlier, but we need to replicate that. We need to stop thinking about learning as a classroom event, or a digital learning program, it's a series of events. And then I was thinking a lot about the community or the team that I work within and we learnt through a community of practice and that's different every week we share stuff, we present stuff, some of it's formal, some of it's discussion based, some of it's problem solving or brainstorming, but it's in a learning experience nevertheless. So I think I was also reflecting on a conference I went to, I went to a neuro convention, which has nothing to do with learning, I just want to learn more about brain science and neuroscience and what's happening in a different field, because you can draw a lot of parallels from that. But I noticed that you could get CPD points for just attending. Now learning again there is being recognised as something that's not a formal event, attendance of event, being curious, Steve said are all important attributes to encourage. And I think, how do we bring it in? We encourage those attributes. We might create a platform that allows people to self select learning and we did actually do that once and allow people to select any topic they wanted, we didn't actually prescribe learning paths or curriculums for them, they could choose whatever they wanted to do, so if they wanted to learn crochet or cooking, they could do that. But encouraging people to learn and be curious is part of it. And actually, I think companies now are looking for people to be like that as part of their recruitment, they are looking for people who are perpetual learners, people who are curious, people who are happy to develop, that's almost as important as anything that's been learnt historically.
NC: But there are, Steve, people who resist all this. There are people who keep their home life and their private life quite separate from work. They don't want to talk about, what they do at home and they might also regard it rather intrusive to have an interest in that. So, is that a danger sign almost with somebody who's a bit insular?
SG: No I wouldn't call it a danger sign, I think it's really important we respect people's people's boundaries. And it's one of the most important things I think you can do as a manager, to your last question Nigel around how we extract it, is to understand what those boundaries are and to respect them. And if you can create an environment that is encouraging people to share and acknowledges that there might be some vulnerability about that sharing, if you can create that environment that encourages it and that's a good, good place to start.
NC: How do you do that? Have you had experience of that with people who have opened up over time?
SG: Yes I have. In my experience I think that there's no hard and fast rule, it's contextual depending on who you're working with. And it's really important that, as I say, you respect boundaries and you don't force anything. But to your earlier point Nigel, when people are passionate about something they can really open up and their enthusiasm can come across. And it can sometimes be as simple as just asking someone for advice on something. But just one personal example I've had is, being aware there's someone gradually opening up with one of their hobbies around cooking at weekends and then asking for their advice on something and then turning that into a conversation around structure planning and then discovering that through cooking, they have the most incredible project management skills, which are entirely untapped and which they can then bring into work.
NC: So I suppose Carol you could have somebody who might be good at project management, but they've never been given the opportunity and their skills outside might never have been recognised.
CB: It's so true,
NC: Which just also leads me to the thought, well, is the onus on the individual to show they've got these skills? How do you actually get the two to meet?
CB: I agree with, Steve that, the manager relationship plays an important role there in looking at the goals, the personal goals and aspirations of the individual. I had a, I had someone working with me who was working in a design role but, so graphics, UX, but had aspirations to get up on stage and do something like a Ted talk. This person, extremely creative, wanted to do this personally, but suddenly you realise as an organisation there's an opportunity there to help somebody to realise those passions in a work context. So through an adaption of the role, it's like changing role, within the business, suddenly those opportunities became real and this individual then worked in more of a marketing led role, getting involved in events and has actually now done a presentation. So she's still, she's leading towards her big goal of getting up on stage one day and doing a Ted talk. And I think that's inspirational. And I think that businesses too have a responsibility to keep their talent within the business. We've got a lot of people moving around at the moment, so it's important that people can realise their personal goals through work too. So I think it's great when someone can align the two.
NC: OK. And what help might adjacent learning be, in a situation where you've got somebody who has many of the right qualities for a promotion, but is lacking in some particular area, that may be something they're personally well aware of. You can't kind of ask somebody to go on a, I don't know, sale training or something, but can you think of ways that this approach might be helpful in sort of building them as a person?
SG: It's a really nice continuation from Carol's point. So again I'm going to quote David Hayden, who is very fond of saying, we are more than our role. And if you can identify where perhaps people have development needs that aren't immediately available within their role, you can find other passions that inspire them, that can help them address some of those gaps, address some of those development areas. Then not only are you showing them that you have empathy with them, that you can hear them, that you see them as a whole person, which again, is incredibly important, but you're also helping them be the best they can be out of work as well as in work. Which again is something that, as a manager, I really aspire towards people seeing work as a springboard, not just to earning a living, but to more than that too.
NC: Do you think Carol, a lot of senior managers might be sceptical about all this, if it involves effort around things which are not even directly related to the day-to-day functions of the organisation?
CB: I guess the answer to that is sort of yes and no. I do believe that organisations now are so focused on retaining talent and essentially stopping the talent drain, that they're going to have a focus more on helping people to realise their personal ambitions. I do think it obviously has a lot to do with culture too, within organisations certainly encourages that. Ultimately yes, organisations often have targets and they're target driven, but if they allow individuals some flexibility within that and they are reaching the, their performance goals, then I can't see why it would be an issue. I do believe that a lot of organisations are very forward thinking when it comes to encouraging people to self develop and redevelop skills. We have people within the business who have taken responsibility to learn things themselves within their own time and then have created products within the business and changed roles. That is all to do with innovating, that's how businesses change, that's how businesses innovate, through that passion. So I think it's not a good thing to suppress it.
SG: Yeah. I think that there's also something in recognising the talents that people have got, that they may not necessarily see themselves. So full disclosure that Carol and I actually worked together several years ago and there's one project we worked on where we were working on a new UX, so user experience for a piece of learning. And where we would typically just work with our ad designers and our visual people around that approach, for this one we broadened out the pool that were involved and some of the greatest input we had into that conversation was one of our coders, who you might not typically associate with being so visual and design driven, but they played lots of games and because of the way that games are designed to be intuitive and motivational, he was able to offer incredibly valuable input that changed the way that we thought.
NC: So how to get started on this, if adjacent learning is something that you haven't really thought about very much in your practice, Carol, how do you start?
CB: Well, I think first of all, organisation has to encourage it. I would say from a personal point of view, again I like to talk about my own personal learning experience is, look outside of the obvious places. So it would be very easy for me to just go along to learning trade shows and conferences to learn about the latest thinking, the latest stuff that everyone else is doing. But I chose to go to exhibitions that covered subjects like, how artificial intelligence is being applied in business, how products are being created with AI engines to change the way that things are done. Cybersecurity is a great example of that, where one guy created this product to essentially predict what sort of cybersecurity threats would exist in the future. Now we spend a lot of time creating compliance learning, all about helping people to avoid typical cybersecurity issues. But this other example showed me a different way of thinking, it's about, it's a future thinking approach, it's beyond the reactive approach we often take with learning. Another example is, I mentioned going to the neuro convention, just seeing what people are doing to help patients who have had like some cognitive challenges, what apps are being created to help them, again you can learn so much from that. So I would say if you want to get started, go beyond your own area, your own industry, marketeers, they do this stuff they have bigger budgets, it's a natural place often to go to look at how they use insights and how they drive behaviour change. And even look at some of the debate around the ethical considerations that need to be had. So just widening your thinking beyond your space, I think is the way to start.
NC: Yes it's interesting that, that focus is a bit different to what I was thinking when we started this was, there's a great fashion for learning from sport and from some of the things we talked about earlier, with the hobbies and past times, but this really is now Steve, very much into the sort of science of what people do, but moving it away from the immediate office situation.
SG: It's being curious and it's being curious about everything, it's that piece I said earlier around breaking out of context. So it's looking beyond what you're doing and looking what you can bring in from elsewhere. Again, Carol's used some personal examples, as a personal example for me, I'm training in counselling and I've found nothing has improved my ability as a manager more than training in counselling. So the amount of counselling theory I bring into one to one conversations into the ways that I interact with people, particularly around some of those challenging conversations, is absolutely never ending. So it's looking outside that context and not seeing things as bound by just where they originate, but seeing how everything is applicable, incredibly broadly.
NC: So we're not going to go back to the days of the compulsory office away day building a box girder bridge?
SG: I wouldn't want to tell, I'm sure that's got its space.
NC: A lot of us still have nightmares about that sort of thing. It's been a great discussion. Thank you both very much. You'll find resources on adjacent learning on the CIPD website. Steve's book for Kogan Page with David Hayden is out when?
SG: 3 February 2023.
NC: OK. Just wait till the New Year for that. And Carol you'll find on the BAD website. Next time we hope to be looking at the four day week desired by many workers certainly, but rather mixed experiences in organisations so far, we'll look at what we already know about how it might shake out. So please subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an addition, but for now until next time, from me Nigel Cassidy and all of us here at the CIPD, it's goodbye.
