We continue our study of epistemology today with a look into Drucker's view that “the adult – and especially the adult with advanced knowledge – will be as much trainer as trainee, as much teacher as student.”
Drucker was very prophetic when claiming in 1993 that “training in one form or another will …become lifelong” and that “the adult…will be as much trainer as trainee, as much teacher as student” (p. 207). In my over 20 years as a workplace learning and performance improvement professional serving the corporate sector, I have observed and participated first-hand in the evolution of the knowledge worker as both continuous learner and instructor.
When I first developed training in the late 1980’s, workplace training was being treated as an event, often long and going over multiple weeks—very similar to what employees experienced when they were in college. Indeed, as instructional designers we were directed to design these courses like boot camps to indoctrinate the new employees into the culture, procedures, and expectations of the company; lecture, discussion, and business-school style case studies were the instructional approaches of choice. Fast-forward now to today and training is no longer a school-like event; it is woven into the every day processes of all the leading corporations with which I work. The direction to instructional designers today is not to recreate a college-like experience but rather to design highly-interactive practice and application-based programs that also incorporate pre- and post-learning event elements to ensure better transfer of the learning. Courses now are much shorter in duration, often just ½ day or less and only multi-day at major career milestone/promotion points. Courses no longer just occur in a classroom; they occur via web conference or more informally via coaching relationships and on-the-job training supported by knowledge bases, job aids, and the individual’s own research and reading.
Thus, today’s knowledge worker alternates between trainee (when participating in short classes or web conferences, reading the company’s Intranet/knowledge base, or collaborating with their coach, supervisor, or other peers) and trainer (when leading short classes or web conferences, adding their expertise to the company’s Intranet/knowledge base, or coaching and developing their direct reports and mentees). This alternating of the individual between trainer and trainee is critical to fostering the self-directed lifelong learning which Drucker argues is critical to the knowledge worker. Davenport and Prusak also echo this need in their emphasizing that everyone in an organization needs to actively “create, share, search out, and use knowledge in their daily routines” (2000, p. 108).
Add to this the research being done to quantify the impact of these HR-related activities on firm performance (Becker & Gerhart, 1996; Niehaus & Swiercz, 1996) . Hopefully research will soon be able to display solid empirical evidence that knowledge and learning are both critical components of individual and organizational performance. Meanwhile, as knowledge managers in the knowledge society we can do our part to continually support and foster employees’ ability to apply their meta-learning skills individually and collectively to help ensure the sustainability of both individuals and organizations.
- Robin
References:
Becker, B., & Gerhart, B. (1996, August). The impact of human resource management on organizational performance: Progress and prospects. Academy of Management Journal, 39(4), 779.
Davenport, T. & Prusak, L. (2000). Working knowledge: How organizations manage what they know (paperback ed.). Boston: Harvard Business School Press. (Original work published 1998)
Drucker, P. (1993). Post-Capitalist Society. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, Inc. (Reprinted in Xanedu course pack).
Niehaus, R. & Swiercz, P.M. (1996). Do HR systems affect the bottom line? We have the answer. Human Resource Planning, 19(4), 61-63.
Wright, P., Gardner, T., Moynihan, L., Park, H., Gerhart, B., & Delery, J. (2001, Winter). Measurement error in research on human resources and firm performance: Additional data and suggestions for future research. Personnel Psychology, 54(4), 875-901.
