Training Industry Magazine - May/June 2021 - 49

JULIE WINKLE GIULIONI

PERFORMANCE
MATTERS

PUTTING TOGETHER THE
DEVELOPMENT PUZZLE

During a recent conversation, a long-term
client shared how she and her family
entertained themselves during the darkest
days of the pandemic - by assembling
jigsaw puzzles. Each evening they'd come
together and find the pieces that would fill
in the image they were trying to complete.
Did you know there's a name for people
who enjoy completing jigsaw puzzles?
It's " dissectologist " (based upon a time
when the puzzles were referred to as
" dissected maps " ).
While I'm not one to work on jigsaw
puzzles in my spare time, the
conversation and the label itself did get
me thinking about parallels to learning
and development and its changing role.
Over the past several years, building
skills and competencies within an
organization has become more puzzling
than ever before as a result of trends
like: downward pressure on seat time,
increasingly distributed workforces, the
need to become more efficient, and the
shift toward more learner control.

Today's L&D professionals must be more
intentional, creative and flexible than ever
before to meet organizational challenges
and take advantage of innovations and
newly available development options.
Rather than delivering a " completed
picture " or the comprehensive training
events of the past, they must parse learning
out differently, more incrementally, as
interconnected pieces that learners
put together for their individual benefit.
As a result, highly effective learning
professionals are increasingly leaning into
their dissectologist role.

1. Are
learners
consuming
or
constructing the content? For instance,
when it comes to learning a simple
new process, an instructional video
or job aid may be all that's required
because consuming this information
is sufficient to build awareness or
skills. On the other hand, highly
sophisticated competencies require
more engagement, learning by doing,
trial and error and coming to one's own
conclusions about how to be most
effective. That involves constructing
insights and understanding.

The challenge, however, is that traditional
frameworks may not be nimble or discrete
enough to inform new approaches to
learning. We might need to organize the
available puzzle pieces (or the vast number
of learning options and objects) differently
to be able to deploy them more flexibly
toward today's development challenges.

2. Is the activity solitary or social in
nature? Given the nearly universal
pressure to reduce seat-time to its
realistic but bare minimum, this second
distinction is key. There are plenty of
activities that learners can do on their
own to enhance knowledge or skills.
As L&D professionals, we need to
take advantage of these opportunities
- and when we do, it preserves that
precious face-to-face time for the
activities that demand and produce
value through social exchange.

For me, it's been helpful to sort the learning
puzzle pieces into a simple two-by-two
matrix based upon two factors:

Table 1.

Consuming

Constructing

Solitary

Social

Self-assessment and reflection
New assignment
Greater responsibility
Stretch assignment

Networking
Information interviews
Communities of practice
Coaching

Special project

Mentoring

Books
Articles & podcasts
Videos/TED Talks
Online learning
Apps

Workshops/webinars
MOOCs
Conferences
Feedback
Cross-training

Table 1, with suggestions for beginning
to build out my schema, offers one way
of sorting the individual jigsaw pieces.
But, as a learning dissectologist, this
is your puzzle. And the most important
question is: How will you organize the
pieces so they can be assembled in
fresh configurations that create a clear
and complete picture of individual and
organizational success?
Julie Winkle Giulioni has 25 years of
experience working with organizations
worldwide to improve performance
through learning. Email Julie.

T R A I N I N G I N DUSTR Y MAGAZ INE - CLOSING SKILLS GAPS I WWW. T RAI NINGINDU S T RY . C OM/ MAGAZ I NE

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Training Industry Magazine - May/June 2021

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