#TLDChat is a webcast hosted every morning US time (4pm UK time) by Brent Schlenker. A number of different L&D topics are covered on different days.

Bob Mosher was the guest today, and I shared several tweets of some of his key messages. I thought I would gather them with some other detail as Bob’s work is so important for us all to be aware of or reminded about.

This is the bio of Bob, from the community website for performance support:

The #TLDchat was about an hour and covered a variety of different topics. You can watch the recording here and below are some of my tweets:

This is a different way of thinking to a lot of training design. This is firstly about what people need in their every day job role in order to perform as they need.

You might need to make one sheet guides, quick reference guides, give people access to short videos to support them. It could also be bigger solutions such as the help tools available with software.

Either way, Bob highlights to make sure people have what they need to be able to do their job. The training is to “back up” the support materials – to add extra richness and depth. It’s not about the training first, and hoping that people will rely on your emailed slides!

 

Bob says this was what someone said to him once, “oh, you are the guy that hates training” or similar. Just because there are other things to do, like performance support materials, it doesn’t mean that training isn’t good or the right thing. It’s just not the ONLY thing!

 

It was hard to get this all in one tweet, and I’m not sure I did it gracefully! The point here is that there is often time between a training event and when a person next needs to perform that task. The point Bob made was that you might we have a tick in the training box, a tick to say that they passed the test, but if they can’t do the actual task, then it will be the fault of the L&D department who did the training.

So if we rely solely on training to equip people to do their jobs, then it’s training that will get the blame when people can’t perform. If we provide other elements too, such as a PDF or video or whatever to help them do their job in the moment, then we are the hero’s.

 

An analogy used early in the discussion was about swimming. Bob had said that the minimum you need in a swimming lesson is how not to drown! Learning the details of difficult swimming strokes is for another day.

Taking this analogy further, the detail of different things about swimming (or not drowning!) are best learnt in the pool, trying them out. However, if you’ve never, ever gotten in the water before, without the help of some training, that very first toe you dip in is going to be scary.

It’s our job in L&D to help people get in the water, to make sure the know how not to drown, and, over time, get them competent in other areas and help them as they need it.

 

This point about the 70:20:10 model is to design first for the workflow, where people need help in the moment, as mentioned above. Another Bob Mosher (and his partner Conrad Gottfredson) also talk about are the five moments of learning need, and that’s well worth a read.

 

Here’s a tweet from Marco, the only other content tweet from this chat, capturing a lovely point!

 

Click here to read my blog post for more on Instructional Design.