80% of Learning is Social

 “Traditional learning theory focuses on how an individual person learns, and although the context of the learning may be considered, it is generally about that person, not that person learning in and from relationships with others. This sounds odd, given the emphasis on groups and interactive methods in education, but learning has long been seen as an individual process even though discussion and group work may be used to achieve learning.”

We *know* that most learning is social but have no structured approach for acting on that knowledge. 

This afternoon I had a fantastic discussion about learning with a colleague. I have a few thoughts related to this topic that are tumbling over each other without a particular order. 

1) managers are the direct beneficiaries of learning and enablement. If my job went away, it would be their responsibility to provide the knowledge and resources to equip their people to be productive and successful. This means that training will only be adopted to the point where it makes managers’ lives easier. It also means that managers are my closest partners for creating success in the organization. 

2) people generally want to be successful and do well in their jobs. If they don’t, that’s an organizational problem that training can’t solve. To reiterate Thiagi: Simply informing people of the success criteria equips them to be successful. They will seek out people and resources in their own to the best of their ability. We know that - it’s why we include performance objectives in training. But we don’t take it far enough. Additionally, the act of providing success criteria simultaneously *makes the manager’s job easier*

3) structuring learning to the success criteria simultaneously solves performance and coaching challenges for managers AND provides guidance for employees seeking to be successful. However, too often we keep this structure visible only to the L&D community, treating learners as customers, rather than inviting managers and learners in as partners.