>>>Watch the Charity Learning Award winners webinar
Examples of charity L&D success can remind us, reveal to us and recharge us for the year ahead says Perry Timms. So what are you waiting for? Get scavenging and get ready to copy some great ideas!
You’re not just a training resource or professional, you’re creating memorable and useful learning experiences. Perry Timms
Remind us…
It’s a challenge to keep your mind open to every opportunity and recall everything you’ve ever learned that can help you create a purposeful and productive learning experience can’t it. How do you hit the mark every time? Well, a recent webinar with the winners of the Charity Learning Awards was a great reminder of several key things in our pursuit of low-cost, high-impact learning in any sector.
Be scavengers
There are plenty of assets to utilise, free-content to lasso and past content to repurpose in the learning you do. Past webinars, TED talks, existing digital assets/images all just need some scavenging.
Be a frugalist
Many of the most innovative things we see around us have been created out of the least costly ideas and mechanisms. Indeed, often the mere act of limited finance causes the most impactful ideas to surface. For more on this see http://jugaadinnovation.com/
Reveal to us…
Winners of awards reveal their ‘secrets’ to us. It’s often what we know already but revealing it helps. It’s generous and in the spirit of greater good. Two things in the webinar in particular stuck out for me were being an asset leverager and miniaturiser.
Be an asset leverager
There is as much merit in L&D professionals expending efforts as asset leveragers as there is in asset creation. In other words, we’re not just here to create assets that help people learn, but help them know about them, have context and comfort in using them and help us refine and relevance check them. So this is where we don’t just create new but make good on what we have already done. Iterate not just recreate and put effort into making sure promotion, awareness and communication are high and active and maintained.
Be a miniaturiser
It’s very trending to talk about micro learning. Many of us point to the way we consume web content on the move as a model for the way we should construct learning, and there’s some merit in that. What is clear is that we’re a time-poor and attention-starved workforce, so the smaller the learning content the more likely it is to curry favour and be consumed. So the smaller the better. This means more of a learning pathway mentality when it comes to design, so the learner can build their own inventory of this smaller content to suit their needs.
Recharge us…
Just when we think, here we go again with another year of tight finances and high demands, we realise more than ever that we need inspiration to spark us and get us over the line again. The Charity Learning awards winners prove that there is a way to keep the energy sustainable and renewable as impact narrators and experience creators.
Be an impact narrator
We forget how valuable it is to know the impact of our work. It provides a great sense of achievement but also a re-energising force to go again. Narrating impact is a way of sharing this with others in our own organisations and the wider charitable world without the concern of an ego attached to it. Or a grandstanding “aren’t we great” feel to it.
Be an experience creator
I think we also forget that we are here as part of the wider world of people development and management, to create experiences that match the aspirations they have when they choose to work in the charity sector. Learning can, and should be, an experience to value and treasure. We help those of good intent and skill be better with that skill and intent – in helping their fellow humans/animals/planet. You’re not just a training resource or professional, you’re creating memorable and useful learning experiences.
These are all fantastic reminders of the power of storytelling. And that’s a perfect mantra for the year ahead.
Perry Timms is a Friend of the CLC; founder & Chief Energy Officer at PTHR & the iPractice; a WorldBlu® Certified Freedom at Work Consultant and Coach; TEDx Speaker: The Future of Work; Social Media & HR Adviser to the CIPD; Visiting Fellow at Sheffield Hallam University Business School; a Fellow of the RSA.org; a Non-Executive Director of Starling Arts; a Member of IBM Future of Work and ProFinda Workforce of the Future Programmes.