Enterprise innovation has several success stories–usually companies launching new products and services. But there seem to be very few best practices on individual innovation–the kind where employees think like entrepreneurs and actively seek out and share their ideas. Some companies that do this better than others actually have allocated 10% of work time for exactly this purpose and have created traditional and virtual places where these ideas can be processed. Since there are a number of good books and articles out there that you can Google to learn about Innovation Methodologies, what I’d rather focus on today is the emotional intelligence dimension of innovation.

First, as I’ve discussed in previous blogs on creativity, a fear-free time and place must exist. This is something you might have experienced in college or high school classes where you had a teacher who welcomed your raising your hands and encouraged you to question things. Juxtapose that to another class or teacher where you were expected to simply shut up and listen. It’s easy to see in what environment an employee and a leader will be more innovative.

So removal of fear-based environments is absolutely essential to high levels of innovation. It is rare that the first idea you have will require no fine-tuning; almost all ideas need divergent perspectives to get to that great idea stage. Fear will not only inhibit the first idea, but will also make the final idea much more vulnerable to flaws as fear prohibits that necessary collaborative due diligence. If you are a leader of a team or department and feel like your days and weeks are like groundhog day, and nothing new ever seems to happen, then start by asking if fear is present by imagining what kind of “classroom” you have.

I agree that lack of fear alone does not create innovation–there are obviously skills involved and equally important is a sense of deep curiosity and questions. If you cannot look around you right now and list 5 things to improve just a little bit in your current environment, then you have to question your self-awareness regarding curiosity.

Most people can actually come up with the 5 items but they often immediately follow them up with another 10 reasons why it can’t be changed. Some tell me they have tried and given up. They have peers and bosses who steal credit. Demoralized, they revert to simply doing their jobs. Apathy. If this sounds similar, you are not alone.

Organizational fear (what I spoke of earlier) has turned to personal fear–“if I keep pushing, I’ll be an outcast.” This is a legitimate personal fear that is paralyzing both personally and to the organization. The truth, however, is that unless something changes, the status quo will continue. This week I ask you a rhetorical question for your reflection–how much fear–organizational and personal–exists on your workplace team?

“Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you!”  Steve Jobs  

It is quite paradoxical that we have so many explicit and implicit business and life processes (social norms) that are inherently and powerfully designed to maintain the status quo and resist both death or change.

I have often told clients in coaching sessions that behavior is one of the hardest things to change both in ourselves and in others… unless there is a traumatic event or a severely burning platform. In fact, the hardest time to change is when things are going well, yet that is often the best time to reinvent and change.

This is arguably what Steve Jobs did so well. What was the reason to invent the iPad when the iPod and iPhone (and other devices) had already propelled Apple to be the most valuable company in the world? I watched his presentation unveiling the iPad last week and realized that Apple literally invented a market that neither the competition nor the consumer knew existed… this in-between device between a laptop and a smart phone.

You see, to be innovative requires a deep sense of curiosity of the human condition. This awareness is borne of a healthy discomfort of where you are presently… and this is the paradox as we inexplicably try to make the present as comfortable and repetitive as possible.

This week – curiously look around your office or home. Find one thing about it that you think will improve how things happen. If you’re brave enough – ask everyone to do the same!

1. By year end of 2011: nearly forty percent of executives plan to incorporate media tablets into learning and development initiatives and three-quarters of these learning executives plan to incorporate smartphones by the end of this year.
2. By 2015: Human Resource executives plan to leverage mobile devices not only for learning & performance support but also for coaching and mentoring employees (37%), micro-blogging (27%), augmented reality (14%), and mobile gaming (12%).

My colleague Jeanne Meister blogged about this and I’d like to add to the discussion, given the significance of this.  I have been predicting this kind of change in learning for the past five years. The days of classroom-style learning are being numbered and not so much because they are ineffective, though some might argue that.

It is more so because of the costs and logistics associated with the traditional models, and most importantly, the timing of these event-based models. Matching up a date in advance to the right learning moments of the audience (i.e., when a learner is not only ready to learn it but also ready to apply it) has always been troublesome for both the facilitators/instructors as well as the learners.

This is where the mobile devices come in. There were less than ½ a billion of them in 2000 and now over 12 billion exist. So there are more of them. Which manager or leader  doesn’t have one? In addition, they’ve become increasingly more user-friendly and diverse in their functionality. They are not just for making phone calls, doing emails, and housing your contacts.

Hundreds of business applications are now in full use that are allowing folks to have unprecedented accessibility to information in real-time anywhere and anytime, across the world and across business functions.  In fact, learning has actually lagged in this context. In others words, business functions on mobile devices are much further along than learning functions. This actually bodes well for learning functions as adoption has preceded learning, and will make it easier to integrate, as it will be more SOP.

Many experts have been saying for years that learning organizations, those constantly leveraging information to improve their condition (personally, professionally, or organizationally), are the ones that will survive and thrive in these times.

This week at work, conduct a personal assessment. How much of what you do outside of work, in your personal life, relies on some form of mobile technology? Compare that to your life at work. How big is the delta? What can you do to bridge the gap so you can be as efficient at work, as you are outside of work?

Less than 20% of their products actually have their logo on it (e.g., scotch tape) and most of their products sit inside or behind countless other products. I learned from the visit that 3M made a major shift in their R&D several years ago that has proven invaluable to them. The shift was away from making products that they thought the market needed and therefore push sold to them… to producing products that the market demanded. They made a shift to responding to legitimate needs instead of trying to create need.

At the heart of their innovation model was the concept I talked about at length in my last book — they call it collaboration. Their motive was to get different departments and various expertise together to collectively leverage R&D. One of the cornerstones of this model was their 15% Rule: every employee at 3M can take 15% of their time to work on or engage with any other person(s) in the company on an innovative idea. That means everyone from an office administrative assistant to a doctorate researcher can get together and work on something. The result is hundreds of small teams organically collaborating, bringing together perspectives and skills that otherwise would also see each other only in the parking lot.

This is truly an impressive model I think most any organization–profit or non profit–can duplicate. At the Innovation Center lies a “Wall of Fame” where employees who have hundreds of patents and made major discoveries are showcased, with only one caveat–they are voted into the wall of fame by their peers, not the organization.  Even the reward model is collaborative!

Questions covered include:

• How does EQ relate to high performance?
• Can you discuss ways organizations can address EQ from the perspective of EPowerment?
• Can you make some connection points between EPowerment and the changing nature of the workforce and world around us?
• Is there a place in EPowerment for the formal delivery of training?
• What is the relationship between EPowerment and the virtual organization?

Most of these calls, and certainly the ones I specifically stated, could have been corrected if FIFA (the governing body) allowed for instant replay or the use of some other form of technology (like the line call in tennis). But FIFA refuses to do so to the dismay of worldwide fans.

Now this  blog is not about sports but it drives home a topic I wrote about at length in my book where I discussed how the aversiveness to the of use of technology in our lives (personal, professional, and sporting) is becoming a great barrier to being efficient and effective. The dichotomy of life between organizations/teams/leaders that are averse to it versus our own individual lives is striking. In our personal lives, we can access anything from anywhere. We can use this mobility of efficiency to make better decisions for ourselves.

Last weekend, my family and I got lost off a detour in the mountains and we simply plugged in our addresss on the GPS on my cell phone. Within seconds were verbally given instruction and directions on how to get back on track. Each one of you can give an example from your everyday lives in how you are using some form of technology to live fuller. And so it is with unsettling bafflement to hear FIFA ignore the outcry to be better and make the game free of human error.

Organizations and employees within them feel less empowered when handcuffed by outdated business processes that don’t embrace technology in the name of “tradition” or whatever those averse to change can come up with. It used to be only the techie geeks would flood their resumes with all the IT capabilities — (I say that resembling the remark!) — and today, as an employer, I want to see candidates who are maximizing their potential by leveraging cutting-edge tools. This is the learner employee I discuss a few blogs ago (as opposed to the knowledge employee).

So this week, take inventory of what you and your teams do each day and ask yourself, How much more effective and efficient could we be if we embraced some enabling technology. I think you’d be surprised at your answers. All it would take would be to juxtapose what you do at work with what you do outside of work — the dichotomy would trouble you.

Thanks to mikkelz for the photo

The idea of capturing knowledge beyond our brains and onto cave walls or writings of some kind evolved once we learned how to draw/write and created a common language. Extended writings morphed to books and books led to libraries as people began to appreciate how vulnerable and biased it may be to store knowledge in human brains only. Stored knowledge–Professional Knowledge–really took off in the last few centuries and institutions were created to actually create knowledge, outside of formal experiences. These research-oriented institutions, academia, took over the “general body of knowledge” and contributions to it were limited to scholarly work with rigorous parameters to ensure the validity of the knowledge.

Over the last 40 years, knowledge has become a commodity–Gartner Group was one of the first to publish articles and case studies and sell them to organizations and people who wanted them. In the last 10 years, knowledge has undergone quite possibly the most significantly transformation of all. Knowledge has become free (like the air we breathe – “just google it”), it has become mobile (we can get it anywhere from our devices), it is being co-created in real time by more people (virtual communities) and it’s half life has gotten shorter and shorter. Yes, all in the last 10 years or so.

Is it possible for anyone who wants to do something new or to be the best at something to not be able to find information that can enable them? The operating mantra is  no longer “he who knows most” but “he who learns most”–if you grew up in a world where what you knew defined you, got you employment, etc… know that this will no longer be enough. You will be passed over by those who know less than you but are resourceful to get what they want, anytime from anywhere.

How prepared are you to embrace this change?

Photo thanks to Tinkerbell57

The recession of the last 18+ months, the start of a new decade, unprecedented levels of unemployment, systemic re-thinking of how we do things, the dynamically changing landscape of the workforce and workplace all led to a perfect storm of creativity and collaboration. We know things aren’t going to be the way they used to be, but we also don’t know what the future holds.

In this context, it is challenging for an individual to subscribe to one school of thought, or to their craft, especially if both are becoming outdated. I see a ton of folks trying to “reinvent” themselves. I see organizations trying to do the same. Are there things that both can do to take advantage of this uncertain and changing world that are more ‘foundational’ and immune to these shifts? Yes. I believe one such concept is emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence is a competency that will never be outdated and out of use and in fact, the very competency that can be most useful in dealing with change and others in it. To paint an analogy, that’s the Indian. The bow and arrow is the E World–the digital world we all live in now–and failure to maximize its advantages and impact on how we live and work can only hurt us both in the short- and long-term.

Embracing the electronic world, in all its form, with a high degree of EQ is a powerful way to feel empowered–or what we call, EPowered. This book talks about all this in great detail through case studies, interviews, researched data and collaboration from over 50 practitioners from all industries. I invite you to read the Introduction and 1st Chapter as well as learn more here.

Now juxtapose this with an emotional hangover. Some negative experience has occurred in the broad spectrum of negative experiences — from a negative experience such as your pen not working this morning (a relatively minor event) to something more traumatic as the death of a loved one. Clearly, some negative experiences have more impact than others, but ALL change the composition of our chemical/physiological construct. The emotional condition you feel after this negative experience is what I am calling an emotional hangover. Similar to a traditional hangover, our ability to perform our best is compromised during an emotional hangover. The challenge with the latter is that the symptoms are not as dramatic, and not as noticeable, as with a traditional hangover. In an emotional hangover, symptoms include lack of focus, anxiety, tension in the body, and the like. Some negative experiences are so powerful (i.e., emotional abuse as a child) that the emotional hangover can last a lifetime (i.e., Post Traumatic Stress Disorders).

This week I wanted to draw your attention to your emotional hangovers. How many of these do you have each day? Have many do you have from last week, last year, or ten years ago? Do you honestly believe that you are at your best in this state? While most of us are certainly functional during an emotional hangover … we are not at our best. This baggage we carry, like a traditional hangover, is incredibly debilitating. Take the time to monitor your emotional hangovers this year, from your reaction to simple negative experiences each day or more substantive ones. It is the ignorance of this state that leads to stress and the accumulation of them that leads to unhealthy relationships, sub par performance, and unfulfilled lives. Next week, I’ll share some specifics of how to manage these emotional hangovers.

I spoke with several clients about this recently. I first ask them what they do for their emplyees’ safety. They respond by going through a series of well-defined security measures – such as security passes, night lights with phones, security officer patrols, parking passes, and so on. Then I ask them what they do for the emotional safety of their employees and I get the proverbial deer-in-the-headlight look. What is troubling is not there aren’t any answers, but that this question has never been asked.  In all fairness, it is much easier to assess other forms of safety defects. When a car is stolen, well, you have a missing car. When someone steals a laptop, well, you have a missing laptop. What happens when someone’s dignitiy is compromised?  What is missing then? Is it not plausible to assume that the person with the lost dignity will mentally check out long before they physically check out? And what is the cost of that disengagement? What is the cost of not caring? What is the cost of not having standards/protocols over emotional harrassment in the same way as there are sexual harrassment protocols? The counter-argument I get from my peers is that this is hard to measure and even harder to agree to what constitutes emotional safety. Really? It’s hard to know when I feel safe to say “I don’t know” or “that’s a bad idea, boss”?

I am sure many of us have a perspective on this. My point is simply to ask leaders and managers to consider the emotional safety of their teams as vigorously as they would their physical safety. If you don’t care about them, why should they care about you?

In healthcare, there has been a powerful movement to get away from “Memory-Based Care” to what some call “Knowledge-Driven Care.” What does this mean? In memory-based care the caregiver decides the course of treatment on the spot, at the examination or during the consult, based solely on their training and effective memory. This has been the modus operandi for clinicians throughout the world for centuries. There is a problem though. 

A study published over 10 years ago in the Institute of Management showed that there are over 100,000 deaths in the US (conservatively) that occur due to medical errors. These errors are not committed by bad clinicians — these errors are committed because at the time that the treatment was prescribed in the examination room, there was not enough data to alert the clinician of any issues.

For example, the doctor knows that given a certain set of symptoms, the appropriate prescription is 20mg of Drug X.  The doctor prescribes it, unaware of perhaps other drugs the patient may be taking that might produce adverse reactions. The doctor – at that moment – may also be unaware that there was a recent study showing that the dosage of that drug to a profile of this patient had certain side effects previously unknown. Clearly there is a lot of information and data points that a clinician has to store, recollect, and retrieve from memory all at the right time and all in a matter of seconds. As a consequence, this approach contributes to the #3 cause of death in the US.

The fact is that with as much data as we have flying at us in this new millenium (emails, calls, apts, text messaging, etc.), our memory is simply not the best place to store and retrieve valuable information, especially in healthcare where the consequences can be fatal. The shift to “knowledge-driven care” provides best practices, patient profiles, etc. to clinicians at the point of care so that the unintentional poor decisions are minimized or eliminated entirely. In other words, complementing the memory with knowledge at the point of care is the secret recipe.

Now, how is this relevant to those of us not in healthcare but in management or leadership roles? Though the consequences of our bad decisions are not fatal, dramatic, or immediate, we too are relying on our past memories and experiences to make daily decisions. In the workplace, we often make decisions where consequences show up way down the line, sometimes in someone else’s business processes and departments, and when the poor decisions are ratted out, we often raise our hands and say “Well, I did not have all the right data.”

Working professionals, especially managers and leaders need to also avoid relying solely on memory. Instead, we should be complementing our memories with knowledge at the time when decisions are being made. With easy access to technology, this has never been more doable and relatively easy to systemize across organizations. Organizations that provide this knowledge at the point-of-need for their managers and leaders will clearly avoid more mistakes than those that don’t.  And for those of us in the consulting, training & development, coaching world think about this; if what we teach our clients is predicated on them remembering what we teach them, then we are falling far short of empowering our clients.

What I mean by this is that when you show up at work on a Monday morning, the best way for you to learn at that time may be to read an article. On Tuesday morning, it may be to talk to someone. On Wednesday, it may be to watch a video. On Thursday it could be to collaborate in a team environment. The point is that the more modes of learning that we can provide a learner, especially a working professional whose needs change so fast, the higher the probability that the learning will pick one of them that for them, at that specific point in time, is the right one for them. Multi-mode learning is very consistent with the growing popularity of the 70-20-10 Model of Learning (10% classroom, 20% experiential and 70% on-the-job). So, if most of our workplace learning (90%) is supposed to happen while we are working, the multi-mode learning is all the more relevant. Multi-mode learning also addresses the concerns that learners learn differently, based on their personality styles, their moods, their needs, and their motivators.

This principle should not suprise you because it make sense both intuitively and empirically. What I am sure is a concern is “how” in the world can an organization provide so many modes? And therein lies the 3rd “E” of EPowerment — which is through electronic platforms. In a world where Web 1.0, 2.0 and now 3.0 have gained tremendous traction, multi-mode learning has never been easier to orchestrate. The challenge is that most of learning practitioners are not exposed to the power of technology and the exponential growth in accessibility and platforms (modality). For example, TED has created popular 10-20 minute videos that are simply awe inspiring and give unprecedented access to everyone to some of the most amazing people that we otherwise would have either never met or known. Same with You Tube. Research and knowledge repositories that house case studies, articles, best practices are also available now with the click of a mouse that houses knowledge and wisdom that traditionally existed only within consulting firms. Wikipedia is a great example of finding quick facts and knowledge that again adds to the modality of learning. And in the case of wikipedia, the latest numbers show that it is actually more accurate that Britannica. Who needs to go to the library anymore? And with powerful search engines built into all these platforms, finding what you want has also never been easier.

What should not be forgotten in the multi-mode principle is that human connections to each other can also lead to unprecedented levels of insight and knowledge generation. We can connect to new people who are experts at what they do and they are also easier to find than ever before. We can also connect to new communities of experts or collaborators that are well outside of the traditional boundaries of your own company, geography, and area of expertise. The idea of cross-industry collaboration is gaining tremendous popularity as some industries are better at certain dimensions of work than others. The idea of Six Sigma, for example, started in Manufacturing as a quality initiative and today, industries like Healthcare have adopted is for care of services — but it took over 20 years (since the mid 80s) before it found its way to healthcare in the last decade or so. These best practices, or morphed versions of them, can now be transient in real time. The onus is clearly on CLOs (Chief Learning Officers) and leaders of every organizaiton to actively seek multiple modes of learning for their employees so that they can make the best possible decisions at the time that they need to be made. Isn’t this what empowerment was supposed to be?

A study released in January by the Corporate Executive Board revealed that the modality of learning was independent to the effectiveness of the learning. So an organization that prides itself in one or two ways of training and developing its people, especially in the traditional 10% (70-20-10) is simply going to lose to others who take advantage of the growth in modality of learning.

One has to admit that there is tremendous power in the classical model. And ironically, it is seems to be mostly employed only where human performance is at a true premium. If you look at athletics and professional sports, you will find that the coach of say an NBA basketball team is someone who … well … played basketball … not someone who played soccer. If you look at Olympic athletes, their coaches are also people who spent a lifetime in the field that the young athlete is trying to master. And indeed, these athletes perform at tremendous performance levels on some of the grandest stages in front of thousands and millions. So why is it that we do not follow the same model for working professionals? Working professionals are also “paid” for their performance are they not? It just seems like the workplace has simply accepted the fact that most of their employees will be mediocre and can’t all possibly be superstars. And it also just seems like many professionals have also accepted this fate – that they are simply going to be average.

Here the controversial part now. It seems that companies have resolved to provide executive coaching to well … executives. There are some fundamental differences between coaching and mentoring. First, coaching is reserved mostly for top executives while mentoring is ideal for middle managers. Second, coaching is mostly an intervention model, meaning that coaches are often hired to “fix” some flaw of an executive whereas mentoring is a wellness model – nothing is wrong with the mentee but they certainly can benefit from being better. Coaches are generalists, and often times never have worked in the industry they have clients in nor have they worked in the positions of their clients. Mentors, on the other hand, are folks from the industry and do have experience in the very same roles their mentees are in. I concede there are exceptions to these differences and that there is some overlap between mentoring and coaching, but these distinctions are important to note in the context provided above regarding optimal human performance. It may appear that I am biased against coaches but this is simply not true. While there is a place for interventions and for executive coaching, these solutions are a very expensive and not scalable. As we peek into the workforce of 2010 and beyond as baby boomers begin their migration out of the workforce replaced by a newer generations who are more comfortable in different modes of learning, then the idea of mentoring should become even more appealing. In fact, in a recent study, the younger generations reported Mentoring as their #1 preferred model for workplace learning.

The reason that traditional mentoring disappeared is because we grew in size and then geographically dispersed business across the world. To find a person wherever you lived or worked who had done what you wanted to do became challenging. With the advent of the web and devices that can now connect you to new people, new communities and new sources of knowledge, the definition of mentoring itself needs to be revisited.

Last year I spoke at a national mentoring conference and I offered to redefine mentoring. You see, I have clients that call me all the time and say they want mentoring. I respond by saying,”No ….tell me what you really want.”  And they insist that their surveys show their employees want mentors. Mentoring is NOT an outcome … it is a process. It is a process of getting experiences, knowledge, and wisdom from wherever it exists (traditionally in the minds of older folks) to whoever needs it AT THE TIME they need it most. In this process, should it matter what the source of the experiences, knowledge, and wisdom are? Whether it is internal or external to your company? Whether it comes from a person or a community or a knowledge source? Companies and organizations that say NO are the ones who are going to take significant advantage of the new world – a world where geography has virtually been eliminated as a barrier to finding that one person, that community, and that knowledge source that can get you to perform at higher levels. EPowerment is truly coming alive now and it will only grow. I encourage leaders to think about this paradigm-shifting model of mentoring to empower unprecedented levels of performance.

I have always been a fan of continuous learning – the notion that we learn each day and are open to new and divergent ideas and perspectives. There is overwhelming research showing that those of us that capture new skills perpetually are not only are more productive at work but significantly happier in life. The continuous learning model keeps boredom away and competition at bay, so goes the theory. To this end, professional training and development companies and consultants have had very successful runs. Internal Learning and Development programs have also flourished when many companies even creating internal Universities offering all kinds of skill-based learning programs. Most companies even have Chief Learning Officers in place to lead this continuous learning model. But this is not what Outcome-Based Learning is all about.

There was a recent study that showed there was no correlation between learner satisfaction and impact to business. This means that there is no relationship between learners saying they loved the presenter or the content or the they thought they learned something, and there being an actual positive impact to the business as a result of that learning. The study confirms what many of us have known for a while now. The end-of-session evaluation forms that is the standard measure of successful knowledge transfer is actually one of the worst possible ways to measure the impact of what you have learned. These evaluation forms cannot measure whether the learner actually learned something or that the learning resulted in some positive impact to the business of the learner.

What is worse that is when the results are not achieved, many in my profession turn their attention to changing the content or figuring our better ways to present (modality) the data in lieu of figuring out how the learning can directly impact the business by addressing a business issue. This connection between learning and impact to business is what Outcome-Based Learning is all about. I am not suggesting that continuous learning is a flawed model nor that the genuine attempts to improve it are not warranted. What I am suggesting is that continuous learning with a direct connection to application of that learning (some call this action learning) to a business issue is significantly better.

I know that in tough time like the ones we are in now often lead to necessary budget cuts and almost always, it is the training and development budgets that get cut first. The reason for this is that it is not clear to the executives, and CFO in particular, how continuous learning impacts their business. To those outside of the human capital profession, it is very non-intuitive that in tough times, the right answer is actually to invest more in professional development so that new ideas are explored, harnessed, and can manifest in necessary business changes to get out of the downturn faster and come out better prepared for the new business climate.

EPowerment is all about learning in real-time based on your needs, which can change multiple times a day but feeling that you can get exactly what you need to learn so that you can make a better decision for yourself and your business. Outcome-based learning is incredibly consistent with how we live our lives. For example, when you see the gas meter in your car approaching empty, your need is to get gas, and all your emotions and actions are driven towards getting gas so that you are not stranded anywhere. The outcome is clear – to get gas. Getting the gas then lets you do whatever else you need to do. Learning needs to be like this metaphor – what purpose is the learning serving, what is the outcome, and how will you know if you have successfully achieved the outcome. Learning models that answer these questions truly create empowering workforces. And dare I say they would keep the CFO from cutting the development budget because the consequences would be clear…a less empowered workforce which is the last thing we need, especially in these challenging times.

A recent study of over 40,000 participants asked people to rank ten places from an emotional and personal safety perspective. On the list were bars, homes, workplace, gyms, airports, etc. It was noted that the workplace ranked amongst the bottom of list — even below bars. In other words, people feel emotionally safer in a bar than they do at work. Though this may seem odd, it really should not. The researchers inquired why and respondents cited the workplace as a place where they had to be on their best behaviors, in their best clothes, and at their best performance or else the consequences could be fairly severe and ranging from losing your job to being stereotyped to simply having others getting cherry opportunities and promotions in the future. 

It never quite occurred to me, but just think of the effort that goes into preparing to go to work each day — wearing the right clothes, showing up and leaving at specific times, balancing work and life needs, and being constantly “on stage” in front of others co-workers, bosses, or customers/clients. At times such as these, when more and more Americans are spending longer hours at work than ever before, both physically and mentally, then work can truly be an emotionally exhausting place. Contrast this to a bar where you show up and leaves whenever you want, you leverage the alcohol to loosen up the nerves and take a little more risk with the opposite gender, and perhaps even yell, scream, and groove to the music – and suddenly it becomes clear why a bar rated emotionally safer than one’s workplace.

This begs a profound question – do people perform their best when they feel emotionally safe or when they feel vulnerable? This question, fortunately has been answered in numerous studies. The answer is, performance goes up when people feel emotionally safe. So how can it be that this basic tenet is continuously, and in many cases, atrociously ignored by managers and leaders? Do you feel safe to say things like: I don’t know, I am confused, that’s a bad idea, I am afraid of that. Most of us don’t. And yet, these are the very attributes of a high-performing person and team since they lead to fundamental diligence of tasks at hand.

There is additional research suggesting that the culprit in creating emotionally unsafe environments are not just the employer or leader, it is the human being himself, too. All of our external characteristics, as it turns out, such as what we look like, what our title is, where we work, where our office space is, what we know and don’t know – all these external characteristics are actually barriers to substantive learning. Studies repeatedly show that the only attribute required for substantive learning is the ability to simply share what is truly on your mind. External characteristics cause us to revert to the instinctive fight or flight mode in lieu of emotionally safe and intellectually rational modes of learning. This fight or flight mode acts as a deterrent to high performance. Working adults today have built up enough defense mechanisms and shields to protect nuclear weapons! And think about how much effort it takes to be in a constant defensive mode versus a creative and high performing mode. A very good friend of mine is a former NFL player and he has a great perspective: Our coach used to tell us that if we’re not on the offense, someone else is moving the ball forward on us. Those with higher EQs are unquestionably moving the ball forward as they have figured out healthy balances between risk and reward and can intelligently leverage their skills to promote their gifts and talents.

To get to empowerment, the role of emotional safety cannot be overemphasized or underscored enough. It is critical for a learner to feel emotionally safe while acquiring and practicing new skills so that old thinking and habits can be replaced with newer and better ones.

So as we approach 2010, a new decade, feeling like it was just 2000 yesterday, what are some lessons to be learned in specific regard to learning and professional development?

The first lesson is that the traditional ways of development have just not worked. By traditional, I am referring to mostly “event-based” learning models. An event is a workshop, seminar, conference, book, assessment, speaker, webinar – all short and constricted in time. While events are great for building awareness, they are not sufficient for true substantive learning and growth. The reason? Odds that a learner is (1) READY to learn what is being taught, (2) ready to learn in the MODE that it is being taught, and (3) ready to APPLY what is being taught on the particular day of a pre-scheduled event in most cases is … slim to none.

The three key necessities – need, learning, application- have to be as close together in time as possible for substantive learning to occur. The odds of success go way up when the learner learns over an extended period of time – say 6 months or a year. In an extended learning model, the constraints of timing and the effort of synchronizing all three points are somewhat eliminated because you are learning as you go - as your needs change. Another way of saying this is to think about “aha” moments. Aha moments are unorchestrated and result when the timing of need, learning, and application come together. This is why ASTD industry reports repeatedly show that over 70% of workplace learning occurs informally. We call this point-of-need learning. When you learn at the point-of-need — which can only occur in an extended model – then the odds of having many “aha” moments go up significantly.

As a result of the recent economic downturn, learning models like Action Learning or the 70-20-10 rule have gained considerable momentum. The latter prescribes that only 10% of professional development occurs in the classroom, 20% is experiential and 70% occurs — you guessed it — on the job or as I call it, point-of-need.

Some of you know I spent some time working in the healthcare industry. There has been a growing trend to convert medicine and care from a memory-based model (delivery of care based on what the clinician knows) to a knowledge-driven care model (the integration of both memory and best practices all available to the clinician at the point-of-care).  So when you are in a physician’s office and being looked at, the physician, by having access to data on the patient and external sources, can give the best care to the patient. In light of the fact that most medical errors, a major cause of death in the US, are not caused by bad physicians, they are caused by good physicians who at the point-of-care do not have access to all the latest and pertinent information regarding the patient and the treatment.  Why should this rationale not apply to ALL professionals? Why should working professional rely on that very unreliable tool called memory to make the best decisions for themselves and the companies they work for? Just like physicians have access to the best care, why can’t professionals not have access to best practices, case studies, articles, etc, so that at the time that they need it, they can access it and make a better decision? Most would respond to these questions by saying that physicians, unlike working professionals, make life or death decisions and therefore need it. I agree but look at the companies that are dying right now. Look at the companies that were successful but are no longer. If their learning models were point-of-need based in extended-learning models, could they have done better? 

To sum up, my first principle in achieving empowerment is to give employees real-time access with point-of-need support through an extended learning model.