5 Principles for Better Learning Design
There is no single answer to great learning design.
That was one of the hardest truths I learnt in my career. I still can't escape the difficulty of creating solutions that work for individuals, teams, and businesses. My personal strategy is to treat every project with an open mind, care, and a consistent dedication to quality.
This is the idea I explored for The Learning Conference last summer, 5 Principles for Learning Design that I’ve evolved and worked into the team’s practice over a number of years. Originally recorded as a series of videos & supporting information, what follows is a loose framework I use to guide my thinking with complex problems.
Looking at the whole picture
We have a lot of demands at work - and you have to be honest, training is rarely top of anyone’s priority list. So you need to consider the wider work experience. And that’s what my principles are about, looking end to end to create a consistent approach to analysis, design and implementation. Not just a process. Not just a quick fix. This is an encompassing way of approaching your work.
Solve a specific problem
Theory is fundamental
Know your audience
Courses vs Resources
OD Before L&D
Solve a specific problem
Firstly, solve a specific problem: seeking measurable change. This is all about analysis, outcomes & metrics. We’re talking data right away. What are you trying to solve? Always start there.
Theory is fundamental
Second, theory is fundamental: it's foundational & non-negotiable. Understanding how people learn needs to form the bedrock of your work. Then get to grips with how groups and systems affect behaviour, learning best practice for designing solutions for different contexts & media.
Know your audience
Third, know your audience. This expands on the second principle; the complexities of humans: emotion, motivation and how to create ongoing impact. Learning doesn’t exist in a vacuum- you have to build programmes into the realities of the workplace.
It seems obvious. But attention is a basic part of how people learn. That means your solutions need to be relevant & interesting to your audience. Understanding their concerns is the only truly effective way of tapping into intrinsic motivations, which in turn is how you can create meaningful engagement. Not shallow ‘smoke & mirrors’ solutions. They can be pretty, but they need to be targeted and personalised for your audience.
Courses vs resources
Fourth: courses vs resources. This is an oversimplification, yet a massively helpful rule of thumb to save you time & effort, and to treat your audience like adults. Are you working on building new skills, or just trying to support/improve existing performance? The former, new skills, requires friction, slowing people down to challenge their beliefs before practising new skills. The latter, performance support should be the opposite: create the smallest intervention you can design to keep people at their desk.
New skills: make it experiential & impactful
Existing skills: get out of the way & don’t take me away from my work
OD Before L&D
And finally, always think OD before L&D. That’s Organisation Design: roles, structures, rewards, strategy. Yep, all the stuff that’s beyond the reach of a traditional L&D team. How often is a training request not about capability, but about culture? So you need to think about ways of working, mindsets, managers etc…
If you’re familiar with performance consulting, you’ll know why this principle is so important. By focusing on this you’ll be able to spot when learning isn’t learning, why sometimes doing nothing is the best answer, and when you need to be involving your colleagues from across HR to create more effective solutions.