Interview with Bob Mosher

Citation

(2009), "Interview with Bob Mosher", Development and Learning in Organizations, Vol. 23 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/dlo.2009.08123cab.001

Interview with Bob Mosher

Article Type: Leading edge From: Development and Learning in Organizations, Volume 23, Issue 3

Bob Mosher is Global Chief Learning and Strategy Evangelist for US-based company LearningGuide Solutions. Bob was previously Director of Learning Strategy and Evangelism at Microsoft and is a member of a number of learning industry groups and forums. He has been an active and influential leader for over 25 years and is renowned worldwide for his pioneering role in e-learning and new approaches to learning.

Firstly could you describe what informal learning encompasses for organizations?

It is a very debatable topic right now because it seems to be falling into two camps and organizations have to be careful about the definition. There is an intentional informal learning and then there is a more abstract or unintentional informal learning. The unintentional types are the meetings over coffee or elevator talk or informal e-mails that go back and forth, and the informal networks that we develop with our peers. That will always go on and it is a very powerful form of informal learning but the ones that are emerging that we can be more intentional about are emerging through technologies like blogs or Wikis, informal learning around performance support tools and things that can enable references, be them paper-based or electronic, the types of things that occur more in a moment of need but that the training community can actually enable a bit better than the ones that are more impromptu.

You mentioned the two types there, so how do you think managers can begin to build a structure to formalize informal learning?

I think it has to go hand-in-hand with formal instruction. I think managers often misinterpret informal learning because it is not seen as structured so when it comes to tools like communities of practice or technologies or the performance-support technologies that are emerging, managers have to understand that those are the types of domains they want to enable within a work environment. The best way to enable them positively is to have them do one of two things. First have them aligned with formal instruction so that they are a natural extension of the classroom and managers can see a return and the learner sees a relationship between the formal experience where they gained knowledge and a following informal experience that enhances this. And second they need to make informal learning more intentional by attaching it to a business outcome or process. The learning frameworks that are emerging now are allowing us to align informal learning methodologies to specific business practices or technologies. For example we can embed performance support into an IT application, we can build performance support or communities of practice frameworks around specific business disciplines like sales training, on-boarding and leadership-type soft skills training.

You mentioned how technology can enable informal learning. But do you think there is a friction between the demands technology puts on employees and using it as a learning tool?

Absolutely and that is where I think we have to be careful and that is a concern a lot of people are having around the community of practice movement that is going on right now. I think it comes back to the fact that we have always been so wonderful on the formal side, coming up with learning objectives and doing task analysis and we have very formal processes which help us justify and validate formal learning both in the eyes of those who purchase it and consume it. We need to do the same on the informal side for the very reason that you mentioned, so that we are careful not to have it just be something that is thrown out there as an add-on and therefore is not sold well and then is seen by both the manager and the learner as just one more thing in the way of their work or is not regarded as being helpful. The irony of the whole thing is that where it is most successful is when informal learning is formally approached, that is when we see a greater alignment and higher utilization.

In your keynote presentation at the World of Learning Conference 2008 you spoke about how we have moved from thinking about employees as learners to performers. How do you think this will develop in say, the next ten years?

Learning theory has been around for a long time but in some ways it is the performer movement and the emergence of new technologies that have shown that we still have a lot to learn. The ability to formalize or better formalize the domain of informal learning changes the way we have historically or traditionally looked at the consumer and up until these technologies came along, “learner” was the best tag we had. The evolution of performance support tools and social networking tools has allowed the learning body to extend their influence beyond learners to performers and to help them do more than just gain knowledge (which is the learning skills part) to help them with knowledge application or transfer which is the performer part. Currently we’re still an industry that focuses predominantly on learner design and I’d love to see that being the complete opposite with 70 percent of our work and efforts being performer-based in five to ten years time. I want to be clear that does not mean we do less learning activity, why I’m hoping that the emphasis shifts is because we are able to do more performer-based activities. I’m always careful when I make these kinds of statements, because I don’t think that learning goes away, I think instead our ability to support performers gets better and our toolset gets stronger so we adopt a broader approach.

On a more general learning and development note, what do you consider to be the biggest obstacle to L&D within organizations?

Especially in today’s climate I think it is our ability to prove our value. That is why I’m so excited about this whole performer work because for years we have been sitting on the expense side of the ledger. To speak candidly I don’t know many managers who when they are looking at the budgets would say that learning and training have a direct impact on the bottom line. No-one argues that there is an indirect impact and I have yet to meet any manager that doesn’t think that learning and training is a great thing for their employees, but when you push them further than that and ask them to compare that to other business investments for the upcoming calendar year I think that is when we start dropping down the priority list. So I think the biggest obstacle, and again it’s why I’m so excited about us being able to move more into the performer domain, is that our ability to prove true business impact has been a huge challenge when we have only played on the formal learning side. Now that I’m going into organizations and talking to them about building performance support or informal learning and having to be contextual and immersive I have a higher chance of being able to directly attach it to a business outcome or productivity gain or even revenue.