Drinking Water from a Firehose

Ever tried drinking from a firehose? I haven't, but I remember being delighted at the idea of playing in the spray of a fire hydrant that was being worked on; the reality was that I was knocked off my feet, and not in a good way. NOTE: It was a different era when "health and safety" was more of a vague suggestion than a law.

Change is coming fast and furious right now and all signs and predictive analystics don't point to it ending any time soon. The rush to introduce tools like MS Teams and Zoom plus a plethora of other digital apps is sky-rocketing as we all begin to create a new "normal" for how we work; the "Future of Work" is the "Now of Work". Which means learning, and lots of it. It also means development budgets are going to be pretty darn tight creating the perfect environment for "firehose" training approaches.

Patti Shank described this phenomenon in one of her books recalling a conversation she had with learning professional: the organisation's leaders wanted multiple topics to be covered in a one-day event and had asked Shank "How can we get people to 'drink' (learn) from a firehose?" to which Shank replied, "You can't. People will go thirsty."

What she was communicating is that cramming multiple topics into a short period of learning is a false economy of savings; the human brain has a limited amount of load it can cognitively process at one time and then store down into long-term memory for recollection and application.

And if the learning is focused on behavioural change? We are talking about creating and/or re-wiring neural pathways to apply the new behaviour consistently: trial, error, frustration, extra time.

Here's the reality: organisations want to get the most value they can from an investment of time and money in learning activities. And that's being financially responsible. In the short term.

There may even be great reviews of the event and how great it was on "happy" sheets.

But in the long-term, if the organisation wants to see results and behaviours from the learners, it will take more than a 1-time blast of the hose to the thirsty.

And it doesn't have to cost an extraordinarily amount more, it just takes more planning and thought behind:

• the desired future state

• the current state-of-play of your learner profiles or personas

• the best elements to bridge the gap for the learners

• how the application of learning measures up to an ROI.

Will organisations still ask development companies to cover 7 items in half a day? Yes. Will learning providers go against their gut and experience and try to provide it? Some will be in a position to say "no" and others will not.

The very best outcome for all involved - organisations, learners and learning professionals - is to use what we know about the science of learning and apply this to the ROI we desire to achieve.

Essentially, provide water in a way that the thirsty can easily access it.