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Michael E. Pepe is the chief human resources officer at Virtua.

Michael Pepe

March 2013 - TD Magazine

Invest for the Long Haul

At the beginning of the past two years, I’ve written a post on important points I think you should know. In 2021 I mentioned the importance of context, emotion, and learning to learn. In 2022 I discussed some of the newer cognitive science models of cognition—including distributed, social, and embodied cognition—as well as the role of mental models. This year, I’d like to focus on a trend that we should extinguish: the belief that we are formal, logical, reasoning beings.The cognitive revolution transcended the view of behavioral psychology; we couldn’t talk about what went on in the brain. While many valuable insights were generated by that scientific paradigm, including the role of performance objectives, the move to thinking we could isolate necessary components provided further advances. Results that have stood the test of time—the recognition of sensory, working, and long-term memory as well as core cognitive processes like attention, elaboration, and retrieval—were identified.We tend to adopt existing models as frameworks for thinking about the brain, and the cognitive revolution was no exception. For example, consider the computer as a general-purpose information processing system. It made sense to adopt that model to reflect our abilities to process information and complete a variety of tasks. Thus, the dominant framework for thinking about thinking was to view our brains as formal, logical, reasoning machines.Such models, with some assumptions like mapping the world into formal representations, accomplished impressive tasks. Systems built upon that model could break down problems into components and solve them. They could even learn. Artificial intelligence (AI) advanced as a result. So-called “expert systems” were built upon interviews with the best practitioners. Sadly, these models failed in practical situations, leading to an AI winter. This was a disconcerting time, when behavior naturally observed in humans did not reflect these symbolic systems.The Postcognitive RevolutionOne of the most impressive capabilities of our thinking is the ability to organize the world into flexible frameworks. What David Rumelhart called schemas, Marvin Minsky called frames, and Roger Schank called scripts all reflect our ability to infer knowledge about the world. Thus, we had representations such as wheels that scaled up to vehicles but differently for automobiles versus bicycles. Symbolic logic struggles with this, however. Attempts were made to adapt, such as Lofti Zadeh’s Fuzzy Logic and Douglas Hofstedter’s Slipnets, but suffered in practice.An alternative framework emerged that could be characterized as “subsymbolic,” operating below the symbolic level. John Holland, Keith Holyoak, Richard Nisbett, and Paul Thagard created a genetic algorithm approach in Induction, which borrowed mutation from biology, but wasn’t aligned with neuroscience. Rumelhart, along with Jay McClelland, proposed connectionist models instead in their two-volume set Parallel Distributed Processing with a neuroscientific inspiration. These models were found to exhibit rational behavior similar to humans. They represented the same types of behaviors, including errors, that were empirically obtained from psychology research.These neural net models created not only a psychological revolution, capturing elements of cognition, but also a renewed basis for artificial intelligence, underpinning much of today’s work in machine learning.A Cognitive LegacyOne small legacy of the formal, logical, reasoning model of cognition, however, seems to linger. It appears that many of our practices in learning and development (and business in general), still seem to be based on this idea. This is a potential problem.If we’re formal logical beings, there are several things we should be able to assume. For one, if we give people new information, they’ll appropriately adjust their behavior. Moreover, the person with the greatest access to information should be the one to make a decision, and that decision will be the best one possible. We see this manifest in several ways.For one, our training frequently resembles the presentation of new information with an expectation of behavior change. Too often, we see bullet points of information extracted from (and even presented by) experts. After this, there’s an expectation that we’ll do something differently. Similarly with annual or quarterly reviews. People need feedback at the appropriate time and support for change. We don’t just change when we wish to; it takes time and practice.We also see decisions made by individuals without consultation. Folks will decree a new approach because it’s been determined by the person at the appropriate decision point. Yet the evidence suggests that we get better outcomes when we bring more people into the decision-making process, such as in Keith Sawyer’s Group Genius. When we follow practices that help us suitably explore a problem individually, and then collectively brainstorm solutions, test, and adapt, the outcomes are better.A Problematic LegacySadly, there is also evidence that this approach to work isn’t working. We see it in the outcomes of learning investments, and when we evaluate organizational success as an outcome of our approaches, we see that more informed ones work better.In the 2012 Harvard Business School working paper The Great Training Robbery, Michael Beer, Magnus Finnstrom, and Derek Schrader cite metanalyses that suggest only 10 percent of training investment has an impact. There may be multiple causes for this, but it does suggest that we’re wasting money with our approaches. The Serious eLearning Manifesto suggests that much of traditional learning is based on information presentation, so it’s safe to say that we’re not doing as well as we could.Similarly, efforts like Laura Overton’s Toward Maturity and Lauri Bassi’s Human Capital Capability Scorecard suggest that organizations do better when they’re better aligned with how people think, work, and learn. Organizational performance reliably improves with better employee approaches.Overall, the continued use of ineffective practices undermines our organizational success. We need to effectively achieve our organizational goals, which includes ensuring we can optimally execute what we know we need to do and continually innovate when we have to invent or adapt.Moving ForwardWhat should you do differently?Truly understand how your brain actually operates. Know the basics of the human information processing loop and extensions for learning and performance.Avoid the myths that continue to hinder our industry.Conduct deep needs analyses to find important performance gaps and their root causes. There are many causes of problems besides a lack of knowledge or skills. Stop thinking that if you give people knowledge, behavior will change.Leverage external resources. Decision making is best done collectively and iteratively. To do otherwise is to minimize your potential.Move from legacy practices to evidence-based practices. There are vested interests that continue to exist based on perpetuating approaches that aren’t effective. Many products that are quite lucrative—profiling instruments and development programs —aren’t effective.Start measuring impact. This doesn’t mean what people prefer (there’s no correlation with what people think of a program and its impact). Instead, assess the actual change in the organization. You can’t collect this yourself; you must partner with the business units that require change.Align programs to demonstrable gaps, and then measure until they’ve improved.Ultimately, L&D should be the folks that are responsible for not only optimal execution but also continual innovation. When you’re innovating (problem solving, designing, or researching), you don’t know the answer when you start, so inherently it is learning. It’s informal learning, and no one knows the answer (yet)! Still, it’s an opportunity for L&D to attain a more valuable role in the organization.To make this strategic move and start bringing evidence-based practices from formal to informal learning, take ownership of these practices within your teams. Make it safe to fail; share stories of what you tried; and learn together. Create and understand a learning microculture before taking it to the rest of the organization.Last, identify the organizational legacies that are holding you, and your organizations, back. Then, find alternatives, and implement them. When you’re free of your unexamined past, you can move forward to an evidence-based future that means better outcomes. That’s a trend I’d like to see and encourage you to undertake.

A Trend to Supersede

Michael E. Frisina is founder and president of The Frisina Group and The Center for Influential Leadership. He is responsible for teaching, publishing, and speaking on the current trends in organizational performance. Dr. Frisina is a retired career officer the United States Army Medical department serving in a variety of leadership positions of increasing responsibility.Dr. Frisina's professional faculty positions include The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York; The Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences and School of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland; The Academy of Health Sciences, San Antonio, Texas, and Chairman, Health Administration Advisory Council, American Public University/American Military University. (Current).Dr. Frisina has authored over 50 papers and published articles on leadership and organizational effectiveness. He is a contributing author to The Borden Institute's highly acclaimed textbook series on military medicine. He also is the author of Influential Leadership – Change Your Behavior, Change Your Organization, Change Health Care (Health Forum, American Hospital Association Press, May 2011) and Leading Yourself to a Higher Level of Performance (Center for Influential Leadership, July 2014).Dr. Frisina is a Visiting Scholar at The Hastings Center in New York, a Visiting Fellow in Medical Humanities at The Medical College of Pennsylvania, a John C. Maxwell Top 100 Transformational Leaders for 2018 and 2019 and a two time Educational Grant Awardee for the American College of Healthcare Executives. And he serves as Chairman of the Health Administration Advisory Council for the American Public University/American Military University.

Michael Frisina

Michael Robson is the general manager of General Assembly’s Enterprise business. Under Robson’s leadership, General Assembly’s Enterprise business has grown to provide ongoing training to thousands of executives and marketers at companies including American Express, GE, Viacom, Conde Nast, and PepsiCo.

Michael Robson

Michael Colburn has built his career on performance improvement at the organization, team, and individual levels for a broad range of clients in the private and public sectors for more than 30 years. He recently retired as an associate professor of management at Ashland University where he taught organization development, operations management, strategic management, and self-management and accountability. Colburn has authored numerous papers in academic, professional, and trade publications. He is the author of Own Your Job: Five Tools for Self-management and Accountability in the Workplace.

Michael Colburn

Michael Kester is the CEO and founder of Lead Belay, providing peer-supported, coach-led leadership development for new managers. Previously, Michael was co-president of The Regis Company, which creates top-tier custom leadership development programs for large enterprises. Michael is a former McKinsey & Company consultant and financial analyst for Lehman Brothers’ Merchant Banking group. Michael holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a B.A. in philosophy, summa cum laude, from CU Boulder.

Michael Kester

Dr. Michael Prince is a professor of chemical engineering at Bucknell University, where he has taught since 1989. His research and consulting focus on engineering education, understanding the conditions that promote learning and how to bring those conditions about in a classroom or corporate training environment. Professor Prince has published over 100 articles and conference papers on education related issues and have delivered over 150 workshops to academic and corporate audiences. He is co-director of two national faculty development programs: the "National Effective Teaching Institute" (managed by the American Society for Engineering Education) and "How to Engineer Engineering Education," a workshop that has been offered to a national audience of engineering faculty since 2001. Dr. Prince travels extensively to give educational workshops. He was recently elected to the rank of Fellow in the American Society for Engineering Education.

Michael Prince

Michael Milroy had designed award-winning courseware and websites. He’s currently a manager in L&D at NetJets, bringing to the corporate world his skills and knowledge from his work in K–12, higher, and outdoor education. Milroy cut his teeth designing the technical training program for Compuserve’s award-winning technical support team. Since then, he’s consulted with some of the world’s largest brands, including PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Southwest Airlines, Honda, Cardinal Health, Macy’s, Luxottica, American Eagle, Chick-fil-a, Marriott Vacations Worldwide, and Ace Hardware.

Michael Milroy

If you are concerned about time and want to improve execution, be sure to involve employees who know the process.

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