Fuel up your workforce with Adaptive Learning

Create a workplace obsessed by curiosity, enable employees to learn in the flow of work, and build an adaptive culture.

We’re on a mission to make work engaging and meaningful. We help leaders tackle business problems with solutions that are seamlessly integrated with day-to-day work and not viewed by employees as compliance checklists.

Adaptive Learning is a method to engage employees in solving business challenges and involves embedding learning into the flow of work and ramping up an engaged culture.

In an HBR Article, Making Learning a Part of Everyday Work, Josh Bersin cites that a majority of CEOs state that developing new skills is one of the biggest challenges facing business today. The task of developing new skills by creating Adaptive Learning doesn’t have to be a daunting task. In fact, employees crave learning and leaders can create an environment that enables employees to take ownership over their development.

How does Adaptive Learning work?

Humans are curious by nature. Curiosity and seeking out solutions to problems is deeply embedded in our DNA. How else would the steam engine, light bulb or AI be things? Humans created them to solve challenges with transportation, darkness, and intelligence.

When we turn our attention to our work there is nothing more engaging than learning new skills that provide opportunities for employees to grow and develop while at the same time making their work lives better and your organization more competitive.

By better, we mean better service to customers, innovative or efficient ways to get work done or mastering the latest data visualization software or getting the most out of ERP platforms.

Adaptive Learning works by tapping into the curiosity that is inside of all of us. To create Adaptive Learning, leaders enable employees to learn in the flow of work by solving timely and relevant problems. Adaptive Learning is embedded in the day-to-day and leveraged to solve real problems through cohorts of collaborative teams.

According to research conducted by the National Institute of Industrial Training (NIIT) companies with adaptive learning spend 27% less on learning yet they are 53% more likely to experience growth in their business.

When compared with competitors, employees in adaptive learning organizations report 15% more career opportunities and rate leaders 15% higher.

5 steps to activate adaptive learning in your organization:

1.      Start with creating adaptive learning mindsets

Identify a handful of individuals (about 6 to 8) who are keen and can see the connection between solving business problems by building new skills and capabilities.

Create a forum for these participants to discuss, explore and define Adaptive Learning and how it can be embedded in the flow of work in your organization. Build dialogue using virtual design techniques and Journey Maps to identify pain points and opportunities for solutions that learning can help solve.

Leverage this group to generate adaptive learning solutions that will work in your organization and start building a pilot. Start small, learn and scale.

2.      Make learning an incredibly fun experience

Structures are needed as part of Adaptive Learning programs. In providing structure, you can inject fun and friendly competition into the learning process.

Adobe’s Kickbox is a leading example of injecting fun and engaging employees in a non-traditional, adaptive learning experience. Kickbox is an open source and literally out of the box kit that any employee can access to explore and fund innovative ideas.

Other fun and innovative learning structures include Dragon’s Den events, Hack-a-Thons, F*ckup Days and Design Thinking Labs.

Choose what makes sense to you and will work in your organization’s culture. The main idea is to make learning fun and engaging.

3.      Define and tackle a legitimate business problem

Use your adaptive learning network to identify and define real problems that your business is facing and explore how learning can help to solve these problems.

For example:

Our organization must achieve 10% new customer growth each month through digital channels to sustain channel profitability.

This problem statement is presented to the team as a learning challenge that is supported by data such as customer satisfaction scores, pain points or friction, profitability targets per customer, and other relevant information.

Adaptive Learning turns problem statements into challenges that are specifically created for cohort(s) who compete over six weeks to define and design solutions to the challenge while learning in the flow of work.

Cohorts connect between weekly sessions to collaborate and co-design a proposal that is presented in the final week.

To get there, engage your small group of stakeholders in meaningful dialogue on the problems your organization is facing, and which Adaptive Learning solutions will work or not work in your organization.

4.      Enable teams to take ownership over learning

Build and launch a pilot around the top problem(s) with cohorts of 6 to 8 people from across the organization and provide them with structured guidance to tackle specific problem challenges.

The team works together over a 6-week sprint. Content related to the problem is curated and is based on facilitated coaching/mentoring and experience-based learning.

Leaders play active roles as facilitators, mentors, or coaches. Technology is used to scale the reach and impact of learning, and collaboration platforms allow immersive, interactive learning experiences that connect employees as a network of innovators, equipping them to adapt and take risk that are supported by what they are uncovering and learning.

5.      Measure and share successes and failures

Take the group you started with, review the business problems that you defined and create an ongoing dialogue around the impact that learning had on the problem. Explore and discuss if the problem was solved.

Document the results achieved (good and bad), discuss what worked well, what could be even better and embed lessons into your next cohort.

What organizations need from learning is evolving. Capabilities are needed that go beyond traditional skills. As digital and emerging technologies disrupt traditional business models, innovative, Adaptive Learning is critical for survival.

This represents a shift in how leaders might think about learning from individual skill development and courses to building capabilities that enable organizations to create, innovate, and constantly adapt.