JOHN HINCHLIFFE – CRYSTAL BALLING WITH LEARNNOVATORS
ABOUT JOHN HINCHLIFFE:
John Hinchliffe is an internationally recognized award-winning digital learning expert with over 13 years in the field. He is Head of Talent at Jam Pan, the #1 Global On-Demand Digital Learning Marketplace, which connects the right expert freelancers and agencies with the digital learning needs of organizations.
He also is the founder of the Global Learning and Development Community (GLDC), and has served on the Board of Directors for the eLearning Network. John was shortlisted for COVID Champion at the LPI Learning Awards 2021 in recognition of his efforts in helping others in the industry during COVID.
ABOUT THIS INTERVIEW SERIES:
Crystal Balling with Learnnovators is a thought-provoking interview series that attempts to gaze into the future of e-learning. It comprises stimulating discussions with industry experts and product evangelists on emerging trends in the learning landscape.
Join us on this exciting journey as we engage with thought leaders and learning innovators to see what the future of our industry looks like.
THE INTERVIEW:
1. LEARNNOVATORS: We are great fans of you, John. You are a digital learning expert who has been continuously influencing organizations across the world by reimagining the ways we can approach workplace learning. It’s an honor to have you here today to discuss the past, present, and future of workplace learning.
As one of the leading authorities in freelancing service in the space of online learning, you have been trying to help clients with the right talent to fulfill their digital learning requirements. More than that, you have been supporting freelancers in their career by, as you say, “telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth… Including the not-so-pretty side of freelancing”. Looking back, how has your freelancing service journey been so far? What have been some of the challenges and inspirations? How is freelancing faring in this new world of work where work from home has become the new norm? What would it look like in the future (with a hybrid model)?
JOHN HINCHLIFFE: Since joining Jam Pan as their Head of Talent in August 2020, it’s been fantastic to see more and more global organizations recognizing the benefits that freelancers can bring to their business, which has seen a major increase in the utilization of a large number of freelancers covering a variety of roles.
I’ve been particularly inspired by how organizations are evolving the roles being utilized to carry out their projects rather than sticking strictly to the use of traditional roles to carry out tasks. This has included incorporating copywriters to distill information into short, sharp pieces of content for easy consumption by the learner. As global organizations evolve the use of platforms, this has created a rise in the need for Community Managers to provide the flexibility of learning experience design mixed with platform expertise and data analysis to understand what solutions are needed as well as the ability to create and curate the required resources in an effective timeframe.
I think this pandemic has really shown businesses that they can trust people to do the work required without needing to physically watch over them, which means that they are then able to incorporate and benefit from a far wider range of incredible talent from around the world moving forward which is a real bonus for all parties.
I think there are still several freelancers who miss the ability to physically interact within businesses, thus I see there being far more open and transparent conversations between freelancers and clients as to what would work for both going forward for the best working relationship possible.
2. LEARNNOVATORS: Not long ago, we were particular about conformity and processes in our workplaces where the focus was on following already established processes and best practices. However, we have since realized that these were the qualities of a bygone, industrial era. Today, we have started embracing curiosity, creativity, and empathy as the new qualities for this imagination era. However, organizational development experts feel that hiring for these skills makes more sense than upskilling the existing talent force. Being a big proponent of these qualities, what are your views on this talent strategy, and your recommendations for talent managers?
JOHN HINCHLIFFE: When it comes to these skills, I think there is a great deal to be gained from social learning and in particular utilizing external talent to inspire and develop internal people.
Organizations may not be fully aware of best practices, and tips or tricks that can practically be integrated within their businesses. By incorporating freelance talent, for example, they are not only able to get people who are incredibly talented, they are also getting access to their knowledge of ways of working from the wealth of their previous client experience.
We as humans are very much bought into what has worked/not-worked, just look at how important review sites have become to us. Similar benefits can be realized by bringing external experience in and working alongside these to provide learner resources which are backed by proven results.
I see the future very much consisting of organizations being far more flexible in the way in which they work by having a focus on the skills needed to carry out work, which ones exist internally and where can they dip into external skilled talent to fill gaps when required. They can then use this data to understand where the largest gaps exist and the frequency these occur, to explore how that gap can be filled through upskilling viable candidates internally.
3. LEARNNOVATORS: You are a big proponent of putting learning at the ‘point of need’ (specifically, where we want it, how we want it, and when we need it). For this, you advocate for changing from our traditional model since it doesn’t really work anymore. We wholeheartedly agree. Formal training interventions can only partially help in transferring knowledge to the workplace. Hence, our real focus should be on opportunities to enable learning beyond formal training courses to support people in their ‘flow of work’. However, according to Bob Mosher, implementing workflow learning requires a different approach, though it doesn’t mean you need to completely give up formal instructional design and eLearning. In this context, we would like to hear from you: What are the challenges that L&D is facing with respect to putting learning in the workflow? And, what would be your advice to achieve the needed shift in mindset to design such learning?
JOHN HINCHLIFFE: The problem that L&D faces is that it is continually battling against the legacy of how L&D has been done in the past. Organizations trust what has been around for a long time and thus go for what is seen as most efficient rather than what is most effective. Also, because learning has had such a bad rap for so long because of this, organizations are not enthusiastic in finding a better way of doing it as it hasn’t brought them joy both through experience and also in terms of ROI.
To try and turn this around, we must relate this to how we live our lives. When we think about this, we think about Google and YouTube, whereby we’re provided with answers to questions at the points of need, which for me is very much how we need learning at the point of need. We know that, as humans, we are fallible and we forget, thus it’s on us as L&D professionals to work with this rather than to hope that someone will remember all their one-hour training course material 6 months later.
This means evolving the way in which we instructionally design rather than seeing it as a completely different process altogether. An initial point to start at would be to look at the business processes and identify where the pain points are that can be turned around by resources. From this, identify what solutions could be provided to give the answer to a question and at what point they need to be available. Then identify where this would live so that your people are able to access these resources easily and effectively to reduce the barriers to accessing this learning. Also, consider how to market this to your people so that they are made aware of this and what is it in for them.
Finally plan and implement steps to measure the data surrounding this change in delivery, e.g., how many people have accessed, how has this improved the intended pain point and the metric used to measure this, etc.
Change is difficult but by being able to justify this through evidence of improvements is a great way to implement further change for the better.
4. LEARNNOVATORS: You feel that content curation is the way forward in place of re-inventing the wheel by creating everything ourselves. We too believe that content curation is a significant skill for L&D to support the learning or performance need of today’s self-guided learners in the ‘flow of work’. However, today there is also a school of thought on the risk associated with content curation due to ‘its inability to foster an active learning process due to its focus on promoting the consumption of static content’. What’s your take on this view (that content curation does not foster active learning)? What is the present situation (with respect to curation’s acceptance and evolution), and what does the future look like?
JOHN HINCHLIFFE: Absolutely we want the learner experience to be the best it can be, but I am also acutely aware that we want to make the learning as effective as possible.
With that in mind, we really do require a focus on how to give our people the answers to questions at the point of need, and content curation provides us with that ability to produce these far quicker than a traditional method of creating.
The job of a content curator is to ensure that the content being presented is factually correct and contextually relevant to its need as well as being constructed in a learning experience that engages the learner to serve their need. This does move us away from a traditional interactive piece of authored e-learning but when we observe how we live our lives, Google and YouTube are two of the most consumed sources of knowledge that we use, however we don’t complain about this experience as it gives us the information we need when we need it.
Depending on the need, this can be either a 1-minute YouTube video or a number of varied pieces of content such as articles, videos, or podcasts to serve the learning need. The key is to ensure we are giving the learner the information they need that they can easily revise when they need it.
From my vantage point, I’m seeing more and more organizations exploring the functionality of their LXPs by utilizing off-the-shelf content from such places as LinkedIn Learning whilst also blending this with short form created content to ensure their learners have the information they need, when they need it, in bite-sized formats.
For me, this is a skillset that will become more and more relevant as organizations look to make the most of their technology, and is the reason I curated and created content as part of the ‘Becoming a Learning Content Curator’ course which I released free to the industry.
5. LEARNNOVATORS: It is inspiring to note that, in recognition of your extensive help to the industry during the pandemic, you were shortlisted for ‘COVID Champion Individual Award’ at the LPI’s Learning Awards 2021. You were awarded the ‘Learning Professional of the Year (Silver)’ at the Learning & Performance Institute (LPI)’s Learning Awards 2020 (selected due to your demonstration of innovation, exceptional performance and contribution to the learning profession). You were also shortlisted for ‘Learning Designer of the Year’ at the Learning Technologies Awards 2019, 2017 and 2016. In addition to these, you were also the winner of the ‘Learning Professional of the year’ Bronze Award at the Learning Awards 2018. All these, we believe, were absolutely deserving recognitions for your incredible work in inspiring the learning community. How do you look at these honourable achievements? How do you think such recognitions will help fuel your vision for the L&D community?
JOHN HINCHLIFFE: The recognition I have had so far in my career is amazing and humbling, but for me I always have a desire to do more. Awards are a great measure for me to assess my career at that point in time and explore what to do next to reach the next level. Through this it’s evolved my career in so many ways and has seen me be on the board of directors for the eLearning Network, become a freelancer, moved countries, completed huge projects in impossible timelines, established a Global L&D (GLDC) Community and so many other things outside of my 9-5 ‘work’.
This currently drives me to provide as much value as possible to the GLDC and also the industry as a whole. Seeing the positive impact it has had on people in the community so far is truly incredible and possibly more rewarding than any award title.
LEARNNOVATORS: Before we sign off, we thank you so much for your time today, John. We’ve had an amazing time reading your insights with many valuable takeaways. We’ll take these learnings to foster our commitment to practice and promote continuous learning and innovation at work. Thank you!
