Experiential learning: What’s missing in most change
programs
Successful transformations demand new
capabilities. To build them, experiential learning leverages the intimate link
between knowledge and experience.
There is an intimate and
necessary relation between the processes of actual experience and education.
—John Dewey (Experience
and Education, 1938)
Leading organizations in every walk of life have already had
to cope with more change in this millennium than was seen in the entire second
half of the previous century. Most global companies have undergone more than
one technological and workforce reorganization in the past decade. Launching
one change program after another, they have had to embrace automation and
digitization, shared services, lean operations, and other transformative
innovations. The prognosis for business planners: more transformative change.
On the horizon, for example, is the full digitization of economies on a
national scale, with big data, advanced analytics, and the “Internet of
things”—where connectivity goes beyond company and consumer, to interactive
smart products and services.
Efforts to keep pace
have so far had mixed results, to say the least. McKinsey research reveals that
two-thirds of business transformations do not adequately meet their
objectives. Only one in ten companies actually sustains cost improvements
beyond four years. Programs are sometimes mismatched with needs or poorly
executed, but in most instances the broken link in the chain has been
capabilities. Successful programs are by and large those that create needed
capabilities. Transformational aspirations must be adequately supported by a
skilled workforce, ready to achieve the change mission.
Capability building through experiential learning
Our 2014 research results indicate that
capability building has become one of the top three priorities of executives
around the world. How can these leaders best address the priority? To begin
with, we know that in successful transformations, organizations identify
relevant skill gaps and use needed resources to fill them. To sustain the
improvement over time, new capabilities have to become the new norm, so
learning and development must take place throughout the organization.
Organizations make significant investments in
learning and development, but too little of it actually results in behavioral
change in the workplace. Like change programs, learning and development efforts
can fall short of their objectives for a number of reasons, often in combination.
The basis of the effort could have been misconceived: key capabilities may have
been overlooked or the skills learned may have few on-the-job applications.
Participants may not be sufficiently informed of why the new skills are needed;
the learning experience may be overly abstract and unconnected to the actual
tasks it is meant to serve. The effort, furthermore, may not recognize the
importance of personal motivation or foster a new mind-set.
Cognitive scientists and educational
philosophers have long grappled with the concepts inherent in these issues, as
they sought to discover how people learn. In the 20th century, insightful
educators such as John Dewey and Jean Piaget closely explored a concept known
even to the Greeks—that knowledge and experience are intimately linked. They
came to recognize that approaches to education must respect this connection and
in their writings especially emphasized the importance of experience-based
learning.
In the workplace, experiential learning has a
long tradition, having proved itself over time to be the most effective means
to acquire skills. It is an essential component in the functioning of society
and in economic well-being—as the ubiquity of internships, apprenticeship
programs, and on-the-job training shows. When it comes to the systematic
acquisition of the knowledge and skills needed to support business
transformations, success depends on a combination of intellectual comprehension
and hands-on experience. In modern corporate settings, effective capability
builders rely on dedicated experiential-learning programs to achieve the
results they need. Our latest research shows, however, that too many companies
struggle with capability challenges while leaving the path of experiential
learning unexplored.
An immersive approach
Experiential learning
immerses participants in an active and shared learning environment.
Practitioners follow a variety of methods that may differ in the details but
foster similar experiences and outcomes. Participants explore and analyze
content along with their peers in a shared experience, and then individually
reflect upon the experience. Conclusions are then reached and the lessons
applied in context. The approach thus integrates shared contextual exploration
with reflective thought processes—a dynamic combination that amplifies
individual and group comprehension. It has been shown to be the most effective
method of adult learning, as evidenced in our research and the research and
experience of many scholars and educators.
A typical staged
process in experiential learning can be described as follows:
·
experiencing and
exploring: doing
·
sharing and
reflecting: what happened?
·
processing and
analyzing: what’s important?
·
generalizing: so
what?
·
applying: what
works for me?
An experiential-learning program takes
participants on a journey through a real-life environment. This environment can
be an actual workplace, a purpose-built capability-development center mirroring
a work-place setting, or even an ordinary classroom. The program is designed to
link participants’ day-today work to value generation and business impact. The
learning experience challenges people to move beyond established work routines
into a learning zone. Elements of this immersive experience include role playing,
guided discussions, and simulated situations. Participants are asked to work
with new tools and methods, practice new skills, and make decisions. Feedback
on the effectiveness of the new skills is an important part of the process.
Experiential learning is a preferred approach
for building the skills of adults, who are accustomed to learn through action
and experience. They especially learn by interacting with peers to acquire new
knowledge and skills. The process is designed on these premises, and aims at
establishing a friendly space where learners can digest manageable knowledge
nuggets, follow their curiosity, and chart their own learning paths.
Participants are encouraged to focus on the essential skills, take risks and
learn from their mistakes. The experiential-learning environment is meant to be
a safe place, where participants are at ease to enjoy their own personal growth
process.
We have found that experiential-learning
programs are best guided by facilitators with subject-matter expertise and practical
knowledge in conducting dynamic, interactive sessions. The programs should be
designed to help everyone involved in the change. The facilitator acts as a
sensor for the experience of the people in the program and seeks to guide each
participant in their learning journey, opening the doors to learning so that
all may enter.
How do
experiential-learning programs work?
We have had more than
a decade of experience designing and deploying experiential learning for
clients and our own consultants through a network of capability centers around
the world, as well as in purpose-built centers at client sites. Here we discuss
our experience with programs in lean manufacturing, pricing, leadership,
digital marketing, lean IT, supply-chain optimization, and service operations;
other programs address sourcing, product development, and energy productivity.
Lean manufacturing
In a complex model manufacturing environment,
participants first observe a typical workflow for the end-to-end production of
a pneumatic cylinder, from raw materials to quality-tested finished products.
The simulation takes place on the shop floor of a model factory. The production
line includes a machining center and an assembly line with several work
stations. Participants can map the entire value stream in the model factory and
identify sources of waste. The hands-on environment of the model factory allows
participants to understand the principles of lean manufacturing from the ground
up and end to end. They see before their own eyes how lean tools and methods
can bring about significant change in the manufacture of products. They also
learn to build the necessary capabilities and create the right company culture
to lock in sustainable results from lean manufacturing.
B2B pricing
The experiential-learning journey to build
sustainable pricing capabilities is set in a realistic industrial environment.
A workshop addresses pricing-excellence practices for top managers, including
CEOs and business and commercial unit heads. The full program involves sales
heads and reps, as well as managers from key functions. The program addresses
pricing as a process, from finding opportunities to setting prices to
excellence in execution. Participants build expertise by analyzing pricing
scenarios, studying large transactional data sets, and identifying areas for
pricing improvement. Opportunities are sized for value and captured using key
pricing levers that have an immediate bottom-line impact. Participants can use
their own company’s datasets and apply knowledge and tools directly to their
own situations. A “train the trainers” program helps the new pricing experts
learn how to transmit their capabilities quickly to an entire organization with
hundreds of sales reps.
Performance leadership
The learning journey for executive leadership
strengthens key leadership skills, building capabilities for leading successful
transformations and sustaining performance improvements. In workshops,
participants work in pairs, small groups, and larger plenary meetings. They
explore problem-solving and communications methods that simplify and resolve
daily problems as well as help surmount the challenges of more ambitious
projects. In a realistic yet risk-free environment, leaders can adopt and
practice different mind-sets in the settings that matter to them: the
boardroom, the shop floor, or meetings with customers or clients. They also
acquire crucial capabilities of self-reflection and the use of delegation and
coaching to magnify their leadership leverage. The journey has many dimensions
that can be tailored to address the needs of top executives, functional
managers, and project leaders and teams.
Digital marketing
In an experiential-learning simulation,
participants act as chief marketing officers (CMOs) of an e-commerce start-up:
a real online wine store offering 4,000 different wines, ordered online and
delivered within 48 hours. These CMOs enter a step-by-step training session
covering all elements of digital marketing. Participants are immersed in a
lively simulated business environment and given the opportunity to acquire and
retain knowledge and develop skills. They quickly appreciate the relevance and
dynamics of the digital marketing. They learn to choose the appropriate tools
and channels, plan their own digital-marketing strategies, conduct digital
campaigns, and measure outcomes and success. They can then drive digital
transformation within their own companies, enabling optimally profitable
digitization.
Lean IT
This experiential simulation combines learning
and doing in another realistic working environment: a software-development
company. Participants are responsible for handling customer orders, gathering
customer feedback, and testing their IT products. Participants learn to
identify sources of waste in IT development environments and measure the amount
of rework these inefficiencies cause. Another focus area is the active
management of demand for finite IT resources. Participants learn to triage IT
work so that requests essential to the business are handled first and quickly.
Performance dialogues are used in a risk-free setting, as participants develop
and test the future state of the IT system. To do this, they evaluate the
different dimensions of a lean IT system and experience how the improvements work.
Supply-chain
optimization
In this simulation, participants become
supply-chain managers operating a control tower at a virtual company with an
extensive supply chain. Operations are improved by improving the information
and material flow for the company. Interactive sessions define the agile supply
chain, implement an integrated planning process, and launch a best-in-class
supply-chain operating system. Participants become familiar with the latest
trends in supply, optimally adapting them to serve their companies. The array
of skills and knowledge acquired includes the latest thinking and
industry-specific insights in supply-chain management. Participants ultimately
learn to use the supply chain strategically as they achieve excellence in
integrated operations.
Service operations
The approach focuses on improving performance
in a variety of service environments and back-office operations. The point of
departure for several experiential-learning journeys is a non-optimized setup
in a realistic bank environment. In the “lean branch” journey, for example,
participants become skilled in such lean principles and techniques as process
observation, performance management, and value-stream mapping. They study
branch “choreography” to learn how to free up and structure time so that
customer interactions are optimized to improve sales effectiveness and customer
satisfaction. Daily banking operations are experienced through simulations and
role playing, as participants take the perspective of the customer, tellers,
financial advisers, and managers. Lean tools such as customer observations are
used to analyze the branch’s current state; participants then design and
implement the future state, and are coached in the new way of working.
Experiential learning to build capabilities is one of the most
important elements of a successful company transformation. Our experience has
taught us that to ensure success in any industry or functional area, leaders
must put a few things in place: resources sufficient to gain momentum and
achieve rapid progress, clearly defined pivotal roles and responsibilities, and
fully engaged employees and leaders. Employees need to be drawn in with clear
and open lines of communication. Leaders must take an active role in designing
the changes and modeling results in their own conduct. Change is challenging,
but successful companies know how to achieve it. So can you
byClaus Benkert and Nick van Dam
http://www.mckinsey.com/Insights/Operations/Experiential_learning_Whats_missing_in_most_change_programs?cid=other-eml-alt-mip-mck-oth-1508
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