Slav Solic | Manifesto

My Manifesto

Every organization’s most important asset is people. I play a vital role helping people develop and grow through learning and development and, thus, have an impact on business success. That means it is crucial for me to continuously build and enhance my own skills. However, what exactly are the needed skills and how are they changing? It is more than just mastering core competencies, it is about identifying certain traits that allow me to meet today’s needs and move nimbly into the future.

My Manifesto identifies the traits and characteristics that separate me from other L&D practitioners, and the skills I will continue to need in the future.

Creative, Innovative, Strategic

I play multiple roles. The instructor must facilitate…the subject matter expert must instruct…the instructional designer must produce short videos…. The list goes on, and the need for crossover skills will only increase. However, varied skill sets alone will not propel me to the next level.

While familiarity with the emerging technical landscape and business environment is important, deep knowledge typically is not required. Instead, it is the uniquely human characteristics set me apart. These traits include curiosity, divergent thinking, resilience, agility, emotional and social intelligence, and the ability and willingness to collaborate individually and in teams.

I am creative, innovative, and strategic in order to become a true partner with the business. I am comfortable with change, because its pace is relentless. Every aspect of business—from the technology and regulations to the scale and scope of an organization’s reach—is transforming. I anticipate those changes and prepare teams to lead in the future, as well as today.

Despite rapid changes in business and technology, my qualifications, a CTDP Designation, provides me with a foundation. I need to go beyond core skills and learn how to learn in a continuously changing workplace.

Experience Architect

To prepare for what is coming, I need to determine the optimal role of L&D within my/any company.

My function is morphing from a provider of courses to a provider of experiences. As an "experience architect", I am capable of selecting, defining, developing, and deploying a holistic set of L&D solutions that puts the learner at the heart of the design and development process.

I go beyond content development to integrate learning into the work itself, and to help learners expand their networks and strengthen their relationships. This holistic approach incorporates developing virtual instructor-led training, live simulations, experiential programs, on-the-job opportunities and activities, peer learning, mentoring, communities of practice, and curated content, as well as instructor-led training. Although business units control many of these experiences, I work to further those opportunities.

I configure the learning system in new, more flexible ways. This may mean adding coaching to a program or requiring cohort feedback. Whatever the details, I am able to rapidly create learning solutions while considering the entire experience, start to finish.

I understand that even with iterative development, solid instructional design is key to ensuring measurable outcomes. This is especially true given the need to work with subject matter experts, ensure hands-on practice, and document and repackage content for multiple channels and platforms. I am exploring recent insights into the neurological basis of learning and memory to content design in an effort to enhance such design.

Today, designing a good course with measurable outcomes is the baseline. Those expectations are expanding to including articulating the skills, tasks, and performance of the most effective people throughout the organization, translating them into clear learning objectives, and aligning those objectives with business priorities. This addition benefits the business by making it more effective, and the L&D organization by make it more prescient and, therefore, more effective and valuable.

While skilled in multiple disciplines, my competency need not always be deep. Outsourcing to access specific expertise is a viable option. I understand how the myriad, diverse pieces of learning and development fit together to create a seamless learning experience.

Facilitation-Based Model

I have transformed content delivery from an instruction-based model to a facilitation-based one. I understand an instructor’s role is to be the expert who provides data and insights. A facilitator’s role is to guide learners through that data so they develop their own insights. The skills are different. It is not an easy transition for instructors, and some never make it. I have. To develop facilitation skills, I use phrases as, “What were you thinking then?” or “Does anyone else have an answer they’d like to provide?” Then wait.

As a skilled facilitator, I adapt to a virtual world. I know how to facilitate a class spread across the world, or a course that may be online and accessed on the learner’s schedule, or adapt material designed for face-to-face encounters that may not translate well to virtual settings. Therefore, I link design, development, and delivery, for best results.

I manage learning events and offer “office hours”—either in person or online—to support continuous learning after a course has ended. My role remains the same: to coach people and help build connections in a continuous learning environment using any methods available.

Rather than “one-and-done” events, I offer a series of perhaps ongoing gatherings on a topic. This allows time for learners to reflect on the information, apply it in their jobs, and meet during office hours to discuss the learnings.

Teaching People How to Learn

There is a sharp difference in how people learn in their personal lives and how they learn professionally. Unless I can better mimic commercial options, I will fail. Therefore, I investigate how employees consume commercial learning and incorporate that into my own offerings.

Employees as a whole want to learn from their managers. Recognizing this, I consider actively minimizing my role as a deliverer or facilitator of training. Instead, I solicit leaders to deliver and facilitate the learning. Thus, leaders are content experts, and are responsible for developing their own people. Their active participation improves alignment between L&D and the business, and builds a pipeline of strong L&D candidates.

Millennials, conversely, prefer to be assigned a task and left to determine how to deliver on that task themselves. General wisdom says this generation is technologically savvy. The reality is that they are often digitally naïve. They understand how to use technology in their personal lives, but not necessarily in their professional lives. Consequently, they can find the data they need, but not the information to do their jobs optimally.

Although people are learning on the job, they want help in figuring it out. Thus, I teach people how to learn in today’s complex, content-saturated environment.

Curate Opportunities

To continue to add value to my/any organization, I consider myself a learning consultant offering a wide range of solutions. In this role, the ability to think critically and strategically is vital. I first help managers define the problem, determine whether learning can solve it, and, if so, design solutions that integrate a range of formal and informal learning opportunities.

To provide the right level of guidance, I recognize and include learning opportunities that exist outside the standard courseware solutions. I understand addressing a specific learning need may involve blending a variety of opportunities such as job assignments and projects, mentors and coaches, internal courses, and external resources.

Before that becomes possible, I find out what is available. I curate opportunities and create structure. I thrive as a curator. The challenge is to catalog not only internal learning options, but to include options from a variety of large and small learning platforms.

I am a Philomath

Although companies are pushing for digital learning options, I recognize those options are no replacement for people. Working directly with people provides a level of insight (particularly in terms of institutional knowledge, networking, and innovation) that technology cannot.

The relationships learners form with peers, facilitators, and instructors provide a network they can turn to when they are stuck on something or need to kick around an idea. Therefore, I focus, not only on honing their content-developing skills, but foster more human connections among learners.

One of my greatest traits is curiosity. I am a “Philomath”— a lover of learning and studying. A passion for learning why things are a certain way and how they can be improved sets me apart from the rest. I ask probing questions aimed at connecting the dots within the function, the business, and the industry. I put myself in the position of learners, asking the questions that may not occur during a class.

Although curiosity is hard to measure, I ensure I have a breadth and depth of the networks of people within the organization. With a large network, I know who to ask when I need help. I also possess enough humility to ask for that help. I realize we each have specialties and niche knowledge, so asking for help—whether they call it background information, advice, insight, or something else—is a strength rather than a weakness.

I am also curios and have empathy. I continue to enhance existing levels of those traits. Sometimes it is just a matter of remembering to ask “Why?” or taking a moment to imagine myself in another’s position. Sometimes it is a matter of learning the skill well enough to teach it.

Innovating with Diversity

Innovation is another one of my crucial traits. Innovation is both a mindset and a process. Some¬times there are “eureka!” moments, but most often innovation occurs because I set myself up to succeed. I do not allow myself to be stuck in the weeds, performing constant mainte¬nance. Instead, I see the world as a beta version, just one iteration away from, if not perfection, then something better than what exists now. I am willing to experiment.

Diversity is an important contributor to innovation. While race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation are top of mind when it comes to diversity, the concept also means including people with divergent perspectives, backgrounds, experiences, and ages, and those from different parts of the organization and geographic locations. The person from the tax division may have a great idea that applies to the advisory part of the organization, for example. I understand that networking with a broad mix of people stimulates insights that catalyze innovative ideas and approaches.

I also challenge my own assumptions of how things work. A boots-on-the-ground perspective (which is not always that of the subject matter expert) lends credibility and often provides fresh insights on how a process or procedure, actually works.

Mastery is my Ultimate Goal!

"Mastery" is my Ultimate Goal. However, what does this look like? It has less to do with specific skills and more to do with building overall capability.

I build experiences that enhance proficiency at all levels within the organization.

Proficiency is assured by testing for relevant knowledge—not arcane facts—and observing performance. Proficiency is determined by the ability to do the job well.

To enhance proficiency I allow critique of my work. For example, I may bring a course or course outline to the creative collective and ask for suggestions for improvement. I experiment, beta test, sample the course and am open to feedback regarding course length, instructors, delivery methods, locations, and even the time of day when the course is to be taken. Nothing is final. It can always be refined.

Good is not Good Enough

For me, being "good" is not good enough. I aspire to rise to the top of the profession and take my skills to the next level. I think, up front, about the outcomes I want to achieve in L&D solutions and use that to shape the entire L&D program lifecycle. I determine the business priority being asked to address, the capabilities that must be built among learners, and whether, in fact, an L&D response is the best course of action. I determine what success looks like and design reliable measurements. I recognize accountability ends not when a program is deployed, but when the defined outcomes are achieved. That leads to a culture of continuous learning.

I have a mix of business, people, and technical skills that set me apart and help me thrive in a rapidly changing environment recognizing me as the “Best of the Best”. Core skills, are invaluable, but they provide merely a baseline from which I must continuously grow in order to become “Masterful”. Technical platforms will change and business expectations will evolve, but I also possess curiosity, empathy, flexibility, resilience, and the other key traits in order to adapt and grow.

These traits define me, are embodied by me, now, and I aspire to posses all the traits in the future.