What would your competitors do if they could learn faster than you?

Or better yet, what would your organization do if it could learn faster than your competitors?  The concept – and most interestingly, the science – of accelerated learning is explored in an article by WTRI.  They believe that:

"…the 'accelerated learning' cycle may be the most crucial to meeting a company's mission critical goals. However, accelerated learning doesn't just refer to faster training for new employees, it requires rethinking how you look at problems, from the shop floor to the executive suite. Accelerated learning involves three key elements:

1. Focus. Its not about getting the job done, but getting the right job done, using the right people

2. Adjust. Develop the ability to rapidly readjust one's focus to the right problem

3. Apply. Harness and apply the existing expertise within your company to tackle novel situations. "

What I find especially intriguing is the idea that this acceleration of learning can be achieved in a virtual environment – all the benefits of reducing costs to connect people, coupled with the safety and mind-expanding benefits of simulation.

So who will benefit from this first – you, or your competitor?

One response

  1. Tim Kelpsas Avatar
    Tim Kelpsas

    Hi Bill. Thanks for asking this question because I like the way it makes me think.
    An executive summary of my comment below is that I believe the integration of Accelerated Learning and virtual delivery channels helps to minimize the risk of upskilling your people when preparing them to launch forward when an economic downturn starts to recover. And, anyone who doesn’t figure this out, probably is letting their competitor gain the advantage.
    To your question…whether someone is learning faster than me, or I’m learning faster than “they” are, I believe it simply increases capacity to do something. Your point is that two things increase this speed:
    1) Acclerated Learning provides a more intense, densified intervention, which allows either less time to be taken or more development to take place in the same amount of time.
    2) Virtual delivery channels better control the opportunity and T&L costs, increase the depth of your reach to the farthest geographies of your business, and keep your work-life balance issues flat (or in my opinion, improved because employees can learn and still make it to their kids’ swim meets or dinners or whatever).
    The integration of Accelerated Learning and virtual delivery in order to increase capacity should be everyone’s focus–if you’re worth your salt in your learning consultancy. Without this focus, you’re needlessly lengthening all the time involved for all your content. This not only impacts opportunity cost of the participants, but also the retention of the learning. Here’s why: I believe retention is better with Accelerated Learning because it creates a higher level of intensity and engagement by increasing the density of the content by making the learning intervention a complex and layered engagement with the participant’s brain. Further, I believe that virtual delivery is better than face-to-face because no matter how hard we try, even the best face-to-face facilitators become visual room distractions, taking away from the content with the potential to dilute it so greatly that it slips under the Level 1/2 evaluations and doesn’t show up with enough contrast on the Level 3/4 evaluations to change future behavior.
    However, virtual delivery requires learning facilitaotrs to truly focus on what’s important–not how they look, but how they direct the learner.
    The less distracted and restricted focus of virtual delivery channels requires learning facilitators to be more aware of how learning occurs in people’s brains. Never that I know has that been proven to reduce instructor effectiveness.
    In addition to that and somewhat on an aside, I also find that virtual + accelerate learning must be much less of a gamble to determine what in the world should be taught. Because of its intensity, density, and reach, you’re holding a cannon full of learning rather than a teaspoon. A facilitator or designer who doesn’t understand that may reasonably be called dangerous to the business, to the learners, or both.
    I agree with WTRI to center on being able to 1) Focus, 2) Adjust and 3) Apply. Adding your points makes it extremely powerful. That amount of power deserves a lot of respect and risk management. If you lose that gamble by wrongly predicting in which direction to point that cannon, and in turn wrongly guiding your people to “up their game”, then at a minimum you’ve probably wasted more time and money than you realize. Your human resources will quickly dodge all that learning and not be able to retain your mis-aligned and mis-focused interventions for a long enough time to capture the benefits of your intentions to result in increased knowledge, skill or attitude.

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