Changes in Behaviour

Trainers are perhaps used to thinking of behaviour in terms of direct job performance after all many jobs, and hence training, have been specified in terms of so called

behavioural objectives. So for a craftsman the ability to handle tools or operate complex equipment may be a desirable behaviour whereas for a computer programmer the ability

to translate a programme specification into a line of structured code may be highly regarded. So when I enquired about behaviours I half expected to be treated to a catalogue of job related activities; this was not the case. Indeed all respondents talked of higher level, some might say softer behaviours, as being the factors that really made a difference. It should be stressed that all the programmes in the study could be termed as professional or management level training, but none-the-less amongst these broadly based learning initiatives the generic behaviours that were prized above all others were those that could be said to build community. Visible signs of creating and sustaining community were seen as anything that indicated an increase in:

♦ Networking

♦ Collaborating on tasks

♦ Sharing experience and knowledge ♦ Changes in circle of influence

♦ Changes to levels and nature of relationships ♦ Capitalising on the success of others

♦ Willingness to learn from the mistakes of others

[Note: here again we see a heavy emphasis on the characteristic of Sharing.]

In this list of behaviours we can discern echoes of many of the organisational fads of the 90s and the new millennium. The emphasis on networking and sharing experience is evocative of the move towards knowledge management, collaboration is supportive of the trend toward organisational learning as is learning from others and finally circles of influence is redolent of the new thrust in relationship management. There appears to be a possibility that these broader organisational imperatives have assumed a currency and level of importance in our organisations that colours and informs most pseudo management training. One wonders if we would have found a different list if this research had been carried out in the 70s and 80s when the organisational change agenda was largely driven by the quality movement and a fascination with process improvement. It raises the question of how enduring these facets may be, at what stage might we see a new wave of change imperatives and what would be the accompanying list of behaviours that would be prized under such conditions.

When we looked at reasons for the initiation of training programmes we found that high percentages were linked to organisation wide change initiatives. Such initiatives often exhort people to take a broader perspective on their jobs; there was some evidence of this in comments that pointed to behaviours that showed workers starting to:

♦ Think like a customer ♦ Take a wider view

♦ Understand the value chain ♦ Engage in longer term thinking

♦ Change their patterns of thought ♦ View things from alternate perspectives

[Note: the above behaviours have already been characterised as Transforming.]

All of the above must be discernible in the daily actions and interactions of the

workplace. When asked what might be the outward signs that these things were indeed taking place the interview respondents pointed to self confidence and increased

enthusiasm which together contribute to a better preparedness for the job and often to a greater willingness to try new things and take risks.

The behaviours listed above are clearly important, they are part of the fabric of today’s high performance company but such behaviour do not lend themselves to simple capture nor to display on a financial scorecard. They have no place in the panoply of evaluation models that stress financial return on investment (ROI) and are rarely, if ever, specified as desirable outcomes at the start of a training initiative. And yet we see that they enjoy a place at the heart of the successful organisation. To be effective we must devise evaluation models that are sensitive to such behaviours and provide a simple indicator of organisational health on these dimensions.

During the interviews and focus groups it also became clear that there is an increasing recognition that to be truly effective in enabling trained personnel to put knowledge into practice the receiving managers need to be proactive in creating and sustaining an appropriate environment. Kirkpatrick alluded to this when he identified five different types of climate that could be created by the trainees immediate supervisor as being; preventing, discouraging, neutral, encouraging or requiring. Whilst there is no doubt that the immediate supervisor has an enormous impact on a trainees ability to put learning into practice, it appears that in today’s flat organisations with high degrees of autonomy the influences are more all pervasive. None-the-less, amongst the managers in the survey there was an acceptance that they had an instrumental role in creating an appropriate practice ground. Some of the ideas that were specifically mentioned were:

♦ Assisting with action planning ♦ Removing barriers to action

♦ Creating space to experiment / try things out ♦ Tolerating occasional failure

♦ Coaching for performance

[Note: the above behaviours are characterised as relating to Transfer.]

So we see recognition of the importance of the receiving environment on the part of the operational managers, but where is this consideration in the standard instructional design model and how does it find its way into the evaluation framework?