High Performance
Organizations
It’s no secret that high-performance organizations pay
attention to employee training.
Training opportunities do more
than help employees do their jobs better. Employees who are
learning feel valued and are less likely to leave the company. They’re
valued for what they can become and what they can learn, not just
because they’re another cog in the machine.
However, employees have widely differing needs. In 2014, O’Reilly
Media commissioned a study that distinguished between three
different types of learners:
beginners
who are interested in
fundamentals,
practitioners
who have already achieved a degree of
proficiency, and
high performers
. Their needs depend on where they
are in their learning path. Our research found that each type had
specific preferences and needs for how to learn. Someone who is just
starting out has needs that are fundamentally different from an
The Performance Stack
S T R U C T U R E C O N T E N T
P R O F I C I E N T E M P L O Y E E S
Learn through both linear instruction (for new skills) and non-linear discovery
(when building on current knowledge).
Want to keep current and solve problems on the fly.
Need
high-quality, relevant content, with some structure.
N E E D T H E F U N D A M E N T A L S
Learn basics through comprehensive, sequential instruction.
Want “speed to understanding” via a formal learning experience
that starts from the beginning and leads to competency
Need the
most structure and the least amount of (highly curated) content.
H I G H P E R F O R M E R
Learn through non-linear discovery.
Want “speed to idea,” inspiration from many sources, and credible answers for problem-solving.
Need quick access to
content with depth, breadth, and quality.
Who Learns, and How
The first job of any beginner is to build a framework that allows them to learn effectively. If you’re learning to program, you’re expected to assimilate a lot of facts about syntax, data types, control structures, functions, and many other ideas. What looks most important (is there a semicolon at the end of the line?) is often
unimportant. Good teachers help beginners by shaping facts into a narrative. That narrative becomes an outline for a book, the syllabus for a course, or the playbook for a video. It’s central to the beginner’s learning experience. It provides the context that helps them figure out what’s important.
High performers have different needs. They already know the basics and can fit facts into a framework that they’ve already built. They can formulate questions, search for an answer, and get back to work. A lengthy narrative is neither necessary nor helpful, regardless of the medium.
Practitioners have needs that fall between beginners and high performers. They are proficient at what they do: they have a conceptual framework that helps them to assimilate new material, but it might not be well developed. They can learn a new language without too much difficulty, but they still find a more structured
presentation helpful.
Structural Literacy
course. Learning your second programming language was much easier because you had already started on your
conceptual framework: you could say “OK, a loop in Python is basically the same as a loop in JavaScript.” By the time you’ve learned five or six languages, you have a broad conceptual framework that allows you to get to the heart of the matter quickly. What’s the type system like? How does scoping work? Are functions first class objects?
What’s important about structural literacy isn’t helping people to attain it. They will do that with traditional training, and there’s no shortage of resources to help them. It’s
recognizing that, once someone has structural literacy, all the scaffolding of traditional training gets in the way. The
narrative explanation just isn’t necessary.
Empowering the Leaders
Successful organizations are built around high performers. Their needs are different, and frequently overlooked. It’s easy to shortchange the high performers; you’ve seen their
successes, not the hard work that went into achieving those successes. But it’s critically important to give your best people the tools they need to perform as effectively as possible. How do they learn? What questions do they ask? What are they looking for?
Breadth and Depth
It’s difficult to satisfy the needs of high performers because their needs are unpredictable. They’re not the people tasked with building a simple web application. They’re the visionaries and entrepreneurs leading your organization into new areas. So they might need a brief intro to Ruby on Rails—but they’re as likely (probably more likely) to need cryptography, artificial intelligence, design, or even topics like biology and physics. Are you dealing with issues like security and privacy? Are you thinking about developing next-generation tools for
scientists?
When we studied the content available on Safari, we found that over 70% of it was aimed at people who were beyond structural literacy; roughly half of the content was aimed at advanced, high-performance learners.
How Safari Content Stacks Up
S T R U C T U R E C O N T E N T
P R O F I C I E N T E M P L O Y E E S 2 1 %
N E E D T H E F U N D A M E N T A L S 2 9 %
H I G H P E R F O R M E R S 5 0 %
For one Safari client, we found that 60% of the content
consumed by employees was advanced, while roughly 40% was appropriate for beginners. For another client, we found that 65% of the content accessed by high performers was
considered “proficient” or “advanced.” Users accessed data in over 200 different categories, taking advantage of the breadth of information in Safari. Most users accessed content outside of their specialty, showing that their interests and requirements aren’t confined to a narrow specialty, but are wide-ranging.
Everyone needs beginners’ material from time to time. But you won’t satisfy the needs of high performers if you feed them a diet of beginners’ material. Experts need to to go both deep and broad. And even beginners and proficients need the resources to become high performers.
Get In, Get Out, Get It Done
One big problem with traditional training is that it’s inherently sequential—it assumes that linear learning is the most effective approach. You start at the beginning and work through until the end. High performers need to jump in and get what they need, then get back to their work. What’s important isn’t how much time they spend in a training resource, but how little. If they only read a page of a book or watch 3 minutes of a video and come away satisfied, that’s a win. The opposite is also true: if high performers are forced to spend a few hours plodding through a book or a video series to get what they need, they haven’t been served well.
High performers also need information on demand. They can’t say “I think I’ll sign up for a course on identity and
authentication, because I suspect we’ll be dealing with those issues next year.” That’s a luxury they don’t have. When the need arises, they need to deal with it NOW, whether it’s during normal business hours or the middle of the night. At the Botness conference in San Francisco (June 2016), Slack co-founder and CEO Stewart Butterfield said that knowledge workers spend 47% of their time looking for information. If that’s even close to correct, there’s nothing more valuable we can do than putting that information at their fingertips. And there’s nothing less effective than forcing your high performers to search through long, linear courses and videos. High
performers need nonlinear, “random access” to information. Personal &
Python Cisco Softw
are
Top 15 Topics for a Fortune 500 Safari Customer:
Specific Technologies, General Tech Subjects, and Management/Leadership
Courses, videos, and books need to be broken up into short chunks that allow high performers to discover what they need, digest it, and get back to work.
The Beginners and
the Practitioners
There’s no shortage of training programs for beginners. Almost all the training we see is aimed at beginners. Linear video courses, multi-day training programs, full-length books: these all provide the narratives that beginners need to build structural literacy.
Such training programs are also useful for practitioners who have already achieved proficiency—although practitioners are much more likely to roll their eyes and think (if not say)
“Show me something new. Where’s the good stuff? Where’s the meat?” They’re on their way to becoming high
performers—and training for practitioners needs to take that into account. Their goal isn’t to acquire basic proficiency, or build a conceptual framework, but to acquire the kind of knowledge that lets them push their tools to the limit.
Taking Care of the
High Performers
It’s difficult for high-performance organizations to take care of their high performers and innovators. Their needs are
frequently overlooked; you’ve seen their successes, not the hard work that went into achieving them.
High performers need resources that enable them to do their jobs well, and to feel satisfied and supported, rather than frustrated. Plus, even the most skilled practitioners often find themselves beginners in a new domain—management. With Safari, they can find a plethora of resources that help them learn how to manage people and projects, in the same plat-form they turn to for tech answers.
Your high performers are the ones who will build your future, not just maintain your present. They’re the ones who are hardest to replace, whose loss you’ll feel the most, should they leave.
