A Conversation with Reuben Tozman about Learning on Demand: Part Two
Here is part two of a great discussion with Reuben Tozman about his book, Learning On Demand
KK:How do you think “Big Data” is going to impact the learning and development field?
RT:What I’m hoping for may not be what actually happens….What I would like to see happen is that we begin to explore Big Data and begin to design our interventions with an intentionality for creating data streams that allow us to determine the ‘value’ of our interventions. I’m not an ROI believer. The fundamental problem I have with ROI is it looks to establish a causal relationship between intervention and some financial result. The truth is, the only financials that really matter are the P&L (Profit and Loss) statements of our organizations, not our isolated ROI calculation.
In that vein, the data we ought to be designing for, is data that helps build a correlative relationship with business success by demonstrating value in conjunction with business success. In other words, lets show that our interventions were valuable to people while the business was successful.
Big Data is about real time data not after the fact data. Given that we can now do that, we need to start allowing our interventions, our designed experiences to adapt based on that data….kinda like a game getting more difficult as a player begins to show competence.
KK: What is the most important message you that learning and development professionals will take away from reading your book?
RT:I hope that the message learning and development professionals walk away with is that they need to update their skills to reflect a web that can be used very differently than how we’ve been using it to date.
KK:Switching gears a little, you’ve been successful in a growing a learning services company, what do you think are the challenges of starting a business in the learning and development field and how have you overcome those challenges?
RT:I think you have to set your sights on what you want your business to be. edCetra Training has been built on a vision that there are better ways of designing and developing instructional materials based on semantic web principles. We have been focused on this since day 1. The ‘success’ of our business is measured on dollars true, but a key success metric for us is whether we have been able to grow our vision and be true to it at the same time. Other folks who have successful businesses want to service existing needs so they become proficient in Rapid Development tools. The biggest challenge L&D professionals face is that we are only important to ourselves.
It is only us, ‘the community’ of L&D professionals that think we’re critical and we have been trying to prove ourselves without ever considering that it us that need to change. Our expertise tends to be very narrowly focused on L&D without understanding the systems around us. I gave an example recently in a blog about using the SalesForce API to create intelligent dialogue between ‘sales’ training and sales results captured in SalesForce.
Why build performance metrics outside the system that already captures performance metrics for an organization in sales? Its because we don’t take the time to understand these things. I’m not sure we’ve overcome that challenge. As a service organization, our clients fight with their organizations all the time about what they can and can’t do. Their challenge becomes our challenge.
KK: Finally, if you were giving advice to students about the field of instructional design, what advice would you give?
RT:Don’t be afraid to challenge the norm. Don’t be afraid to dialogue with people and challenge long held beliefs. Right or wrong, the conversation is needed. We need to rethink how we’re doing things and we need those coming into the field to ask us ‘why?’
KK: Thanks so much for taking the time to answer these questions.
