#Keystone habits professional

Suppose we are responsible for training salespeople to maximize relationships when selling and we are held accountable for the business impact of growing revenue.

Let’s take learning off its pedestal and put it in service of habit building. We don’t have to exit the business of learning we just need to enter the business of habit building. Training professionals must design that holistic approach rather than simply creating engaging learning experiences. What was the last poor habit you easily conquered? To unseat old habits requires a systematic approach, not just the learning. Learning Isn’t the Holy Grail, Building Keystone Habits Isįorming a new habit is notoriously hard. This creates business impact we can measure. If training identifies the keystone habit needed on the job and changes our mission to forming new habits, we benefit from the same unintentional cascade of good behaviors. Stickiness comes with habits – not in learning. Keystone habits were first introduced by Charles Duhigg in his book, “ The Power of Habit.” He described these habitual routines as small changes in behavior that unintentionally create a cascade of other good behaviors. What we need to see on the job are new habits – more specifically, keystone habits. We need to shift our focus to helping them form habits. There is no business impact to be measured if learners don’t do anything different. Yes, these kinds of interventions can improve their learning, but unfortunately, the organization they return to reinforces and rewards the old behaviors. Then, we try to solve the learning problem by invading their personal space to reinforce the behavior and win the battle against the Ebbinghaus’s forgetting curve. And if they don’t use it within 48 hours, much of the learning is lost.

If our traditional end game remains learning and skilling, then participants leave with something they may or may not use. But learning doesn’t show up on the job the same way new habits show up on the job. They are the anchor for our design the north star for our measurement. Learning objectives have been our center of gravity. I know taking learning objectives off the pedestal feels uncomfortable – and maybe even disturbing. We just can’t count on that happening.įor now, let’s loosen our grip on this core belief around learning objectives. It might be time for learning professionals to let go of the hope that if our trainees successfully learn how and why to do something, they will implement that back on the job. We have all heard the saying, “If we know better, we do better.” But is anyone else still balancing their expensive, sugary coffee while speeding down the highway and participating in a heated business call? We likely know better, but we aren’t doing better. If we have been fighting to prove the value of training since 1950, could it be time to broaden our focus on what will enable us to answer that question and consider something more core? What if we shifted training’s core focus from learning objectives to keystone habits?įrom Learning Objectives to Keystone Habits But that only leaves business leaders wondering if learners even used that knowledge. Perhaps, you share comments from participants exclaiming how much they loved the program and can’t wait to use what they learned.

The more you brag, the bigger their concern becomes: “So, you did all that training last year, but how did it impact the business?” Leaders may hear that and wonder, “How much could I have saved in expenses if we hadn’t done that?” Hopefully, you don’t just share the impressive numbers of bodies you trained or how often you delivered the courses. How have you responded to that question in past? In order to secure the budget for those innovations, we must prove to leadership that our training impacts the business.

To solve that, we chase new innovations in learning to improve the impact our training has on business – and those learning innovations require money. So, why are so many of us still struggling to quantify the business impact of training? It has been 70 years since the publication of Donald Kirkpatrick’s “Four Levels of Learning Evaluation,” responsible for focusing training professionals on the measurement of training’s impact.

#Keystone habits professional

The Certified Professional in Training Management Program.