Applying Systems Thinking to Learning Experience Design

As a professional deeply involved in talent development, I consider the cornerstone of my practice to be systems thinking. This holistic approach is crucial for the success of any learning organization. When designing a broad array of learning experiences, it’s essential to integrate systems thinking to ensure that learning is clearly linked to organizational and individual needs and goals. This raises an important question:

Do our conventional instructional design methodologies, particularly ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, Evaluation) and SAM (Successive Approximation Model), incorporate enough systems thinking to identify and meet these needs?

Fundamentally, systematic instructional design must address three essential drivers of learning: cognition, learner motivation, and environment.

• Cognition pertains to ensuring that learning design supports how the brain processes, retains, organizes, and recalls information.
• Learner motivation signifies that individuals must see immediate relevance in the content and believe learning new skills will enhance their lives.
• Finally, the environment must strongly support learners in applying what they have learned before, during, and after interacting with the content.

As talent development professionals, we must be critical thinkers, thoroughly considering all facets of learning. While we may not control all elements, particularly the environment, we must still formulate strategies to address each. For instance, it’s ultimately up to managers to cultivate a learning culture that motivates and excites learners to practice their new skills. Failure in this area can undermine the entire organization’s efforts and reduce the likelihood that employees will engage with future learning opportunities. If we cannot persuade managers to engage, we can empower learners to “manage up” and obtain the support they need to be successful.

We also need to apply systems thinking to our understanding of industry trends. Our mission is to sort out trends from fads and determine the best way to incorporate meaningful innovations into our work. For example, it is crucial to approach future forecasts in the learning profession with a healthy dose of skepticism. When I joined ASTD in 1997, many predicted classroom learning would become obsolete within a decade. However, classroom learning thrives, and online learning has evolved unexpectedly. At AARP, our most successful learning initiative has been CONNECT, a blended learning program designed to build mission-critical leadership capabilities tied statistically to higher performance. CONNECT is cohort-based, capability-focused, and heavily reliant on social learning components. When we designed the program, we challenged the conventional wisdom that courses must continually get shorter and shorter.

CONNECT operates on the premise that people are willing to invest more time in learning if they can go deep into a critical topic rather than superficially covering a wide array of issues. Each curriculum within CONNECT, focusing on a single capability like decision-making or collaboration, includes approximately 80 hours of learning over 90 days. This involves classroom sessions, online learning, peer-to-peer interactions, and social learning. Additionally, learners apply numerous on-the-job resources and exercises with their managers, who also undergo a separate curriculum to become adept at developing their employees.

We also decided early on that we did not want to be in the position where we were “chasing enrollment.” So, we used a systems approach with significant numbers of interested participants. To do so, we had to make the program “cool” rather than trying to persuade people to attend. Despite each cohort accommodating only 30 participants, we often received double or triple the number of applicants due to the buzz surrounding the program. We then created a “managed lottery system” to determine who got to participate and ensured all business units had representation (participants loved meeting others from across the enterprise).

Traditional wisdom might suggest such a program would be ineffective — it’s too lengthy, too classroom-intensive, lacks sufficient online delivery, and so forth. However, our experience at AARP demonstrated that talent development departments often make erroneous assumptions about learner engagement and passion without thoroughly examining the proper drivers.

Reflecting on today’s consumer and employee experience movements, it’s clear that the next logical step for our field is to focus on the “learner experience.” As talent development professionals, it’s crucial to understand learner experiences beyond initial feedback data. Doing so reveals numerous incorrect assumptions we might be harboring about our learners.  Incorporating systems thinking into our instructional design is not just beneficial; it is essential. By looking beyond traditional methodologies and genuinely understanding the holistic experience of learners, we can create impactful, engaging, and enduring learning environments. This approach not only enhances individual skills and behaviors, but also aligns seamlessly with organizational goals, ultimately driving the success of the learning organization.