How to grow a forest of learning or what I learned from "The Social Dilemma"

 A man is walking along a beach covered in starfish. The starfish are still alive, but are rapidly drying out and probably won't last much longer. A girl and boy are dashing back and forth, grabbing starfish and flinging them back into the sea. The man says to them, "you will never be able to save them all." They pause after flinging two more and reply, "we saved those two, come help us save some more."

There are times when training and learning can feel the same way as saving starfish. There is so much to learn, and so many that need to learn, that the sheer number can be overwhelming. To address this, we can wring our hands and say, "this is impossible." Or, we can pick one topic, one objective, and learn it. And, then another. And, another. Each building on the last. As instructional designers, we can help this process by creating scaffolding to help our learners structure their approach to accomplishing this often daunting goal. Elon Musk refers to this as "building a tree of knowledge." Start at the core or trunk, understand it thoroughly, and then add the branches and leaves. If you start with the pretty leaves, you get the shiny objects, but lack the strength and connectivity of the trunk and the roots that support it. 

Did you know in some forests, especially Ash, if one tree is injured or sick, the other trees — some miles away — know their peer is in trouble? That connectivity is like the connections between different topics. When one subject of training is in jeopardy, say D&I for example, it often impacts the material in other subjects. Sometimes directly and other times indirectly, in subtle ways we might not imagine. It can be as obvious as behavioral interviewing or as invisible as the syntax we use for programming skills. When you have a sick tree, you may have to cut off a limb to save it. In extreme cases, you may have to burn down a whole grove of trees to save the forest. The same goes for a curriculum. If the issues in a specific subject permeate the whole curriculum, we may need to throw it out and start from scratch.

My wife and I were watching the Netflix documentary, "The Social Dilemma" the other night (I highly recommend for anyone in our profession) and I realized what they were describing was not just the impact of social media and social networks on our society. They were describing a fundamental change in how we might consider training or behavioral modification in the future. They describe a process of their AI networking systems gathering immense amounts of data about each of us and then use that data to formulate a prescription to train us to stay engaged with their systems. This results in modifying our behavior for shopping, voting, organizing our communities, etc. Imagine if we could apply the same techniques for good to drive a desire for learning, being better managers and employees, supporting our communities through corporate outreach, becoming better at our jobs. This process occurs in micro increments over weeks and months. Much like adding rings to a tree year over year. As with any technology, this can be used for good or evil. It is up to us, the designers, to choose the former and make our organizations a better place for us and our customers.

So, imagine a future learning environment here at the bank where we use social media techniques to help our employees find the best training for their specific needs. This training helps them lay roots and grow a strong trunk of knowledge and theory. From the trunk they grow behavioral branches and shiny leaves. The process is not overnight. It takes nurturing and feeding and watering. Occasionally a diseased limb must be pruned to allow for healthy growth. Hopefully, each tree drops seeds and new growth occurs and the learning is spread across the forest. And, in the end, we all grow and learn together and our organization becomes an old growth stand of trees, able to survive for hundreds of years.

Take time today to find a fertile patch of soil and sink your roots in deep.