As I get older, I realise that maybe the Wu-Tang Clan hoodie I’ve been wearing for twenty years is filling the same function that Status Quo denim jackets did when I was a kid – putting up a big flashing sign to let people know I’m out of touch.
The world changes quickly, and it’s easy to feel like you’re being left behind. The humanitarian sector is not immune from that. I can’t say that it’s worse than others.
But there are lots of new initiatives, standards, organisations, frameworks and pledges. There’s always something new that’s happening.
And the way the work gets done is changing too. Remote work, sub-contracted work, mobile surveys – there’s lots going on.
That change is real, and if you never change you’ll become irrelevant. But that is different from fashion. And the world of learning in aid agencies is bedeviled by fashion.
Part of that is trying new technologies and methods. Micro-learning or online simulations, for example. That has its issues. But more pervasive, and more important, is fashion in themes for learning.
Agencies run a course on one topic – and then drop that and do a course on something else, that’s more fashionable. You rarely get enough of a push in one area, in one specific skillset that you get to see real change. Why that happens is what this article is about.
Donors have a bright idea – and money.
Sad but true – aid agencies follow where the money leads. Where donors have a (new) pet cause, or someone in a donor agency has an idea about what’s important, then agencies will start running training about it. Sometimes that’s explicit. The donor publishes a call for proposals to deliver training on a topic and agencies submit their proposals. Other times it isn’t so explicit. Perhaps a donor suggests that a proposal could be improved if it included training on a certain topic. Or agencies work out what’s on the donor’s priority list and include something about that.
Often these are about new ideas, frameworks or initiatives – so the idea is floating around.
Perhaps both the agency and the donor are interested in it. That joint curiosity might make it seem like a good choice. The donor’s not forcing their agenda on the agency. But actually, it’s just both sides being curious about the same fashion. It’s not being driven by what will really solve problems. It’s being driven by trends. And the money pulls it down that path.
And then there’s not wanting to spend money twice.
Many donors aren’t happy to pay for something that they’ve paid for before. And that’s even more the case when it comes to improving organisations’ ability to do their work. They think that the previous training they paid for should have fixed that problem, so they don’t want to spend more on the same topic.
That might be reasonable – but it often isn’t. Even when training does do its job (which is sadly rare), one course will not cover everything everyone needs to know forever. People come and go. People forget things.
But the underlying problem is reliance on donor funding for training.
Aid agencies don’t want, or don’t feel able, to spend their “own” money on training programmes. And there’s an important reason why they aren’t willing.
Deep down, aid agencies don’t believe that their training really will help.
So they don’t invest. A lot of the time, that’s fair enough. Training and other learning programmes don’t get much in the way of results.
There is some truth in the idea that agencies are not paying attention to the impacts learning programmes are creating. And continually underinvesting removes the chance to get impact. Can an organisation with 5000 global staff expect much impact from training 4 of them?
But learning professionals in the sector have to realise that on a profound level that belief isn’t there. If it was, then the investment would come.
That means another driver of fashion is senior management belief.
A new CEO comes in, and money is there for the topics that they care about. Because they believe it’s important. And very often, they believe in a particular training approach or framework.
Sadly, there isn’t always a strong link between that belief, organisational performance and achieving strategic aims. Of course, there should be. The CEO is being judged on the organisation’s performance and takes steps to improve it as mandated by the board or other stakeholders. It’s very similar for other senior managers – it could be a head of department, a Country Director or a Regional Director.
But results and impact are only one part of belief. And belief is what counts when investment choices are made.
Investments will follow the beliefs of senior managers about what will improve things. Some of the time, that is closely linked to agreed measures of performance. Some of the time it isn’t. Often, they’re nice or interesting ideas that might help.
I’m not trying to second-guess someone who runs an organisation or an important part of it. They can see a lot of what’s going on.
But they’re fallible, and there are lots of trends in management, or organizational psychology that come out, sound great and then fade away – because they don’t work as well as the initial proponents claimed. It’s easy to see a new idea that sounds great and get sucked into it.
An idea being fashionable is no guarantee of it helping to solve your organizational problems. It is very possible that the most boring learning programmes about using budget templates correctly could have a huge benefit for the organisation.
And there is always some new idea coming.
New initiatives, guidelines, methods, and approaches give the impression that training is needed. Managers might push you that way to make sure their staff know about them. Or maybe you yourself are interested in them.
Perhaps they will help. But if it isn’t linked to an analysis of your specific performance issues, then it’s just good luck if it helps. You have to address the causes of your own problems. If you’re not accountable to affected people because you are structurally hiring people who don’t speak the languages of the indigenous people you’re trying to be accountable to, your accountability training won’t help.
We’re all human, and doing the same thing again and again gets dull.
It’s not surprising that you want to do something different now and again. There are some courses that I’ve trained on for years and I don’t have the same excitement any more. Not everyone has the same desire to flit around after new ideas, but I can definitely be a bit of a magpie. Especially if there’s a new way of doing something, I’ll go after the bright, shiny, new thing.
In the world of learning, that often manifests in chasing technology or methodological fads. But it can also manifest in chasing thematic fashions. You have a new idea or spot something that isn’t working well. Perhaps you even do an analysis and find out that it is a real problem. That can be a good reason to start a new initiative.
But even if you will tackle a real problem, you should still be cautious about starting something new.
Not so cautious that you cripple yourself with doubt. But cautious in the sense of pausing for a minute and checking in with yourself and others if that really is the priority. Your job might not be done on the old topic. That old topic might be even more important. Or simply, they’re of equal importance, with equal impact, but you don’t have a First-Time First-Use penalty on the one you’re doing already. There are costs (effort, money, attention…) in doing something for the first time, so all else being equal, and assuming you will stay relevant in the long-term, running another iteration of what you’ve done before makes sense.
That assumes that you’re getting results from what you’re doing though – and that may well not be case.
I’ve trained on lots of courses that haven’t got good results. And even more where the results were unclear, or not convincing. That can make trying something else to see if gets results seem like a good idea.
Jumping on to another topic just because what you’re doing isn’t working isn’t logical, though. Perhaps your learning design needs to be changed so that you challenge learners more. Perhaps the programme is too vague or too conceptual, with people left wondering how to translate it into their job. Perhaps a lot of things, really. Jumping topics won’t fix those problems. In fact, if you’re jumping because it seems interesting, rather than because your analysis shows you that’s the issue, then you’re likely to end up with another programme that doesn’t quite hit the mark. That misses opportunities to really change things.
What happens next?
All these factors push you to follow the latest trend in training topics. Occasionally, that will work out for you. But more often, bad results follow. You’ll get distracted, you won’t reach a critical mass of people with the right skills, you’ll always be running trying to do something new rather than getting the benefit of work you already did – and so on.
Grounding your plans in a really substantive analysis will definitely help. And a big part of that needs to be being open to non-training solutions. Too much of the time, when we’re looking for a training solution to a performance problem, we latch onto running a course about the fashionable concepts or approaches in that area. A lot of the time, the best approach could be a much less glamorous flow chart, set of instructions or something else. Looking for that kind of solution will go a long way to protecting you from the vagaries of fashion.
And when you do that analysis, you can tell whether you should stay with what you’re doing or move on to another topic. But then, you’re not following fashion – you’re following your analysis. And that could even set a trend!
