Whenever I have invested in learning and development for others or been the beneficiary of great training myself I have had one over-riding return mantra – we must be able to apply the learning quickly and do some important work very differently on Monday.
Why? Because we forget if we don’t apply the new approaches quickly.
German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus pioneered experimental studies of memory in the late 19th Century, culminating with his discovery of “The Forgetting Curve.” He found that if new information isn’t applied, we’ll forget about 75% of it after just six days!
This super article researches this issue deeply and shares a view of what is going wrong with much L&D investment ~ $500 billion at the end of the last decade annually!
The article echoes the key points I also advocate:
– All new learning has to be applied to real-world situations and questioned immediately – on Monday!
– Receiving immediate feedback from a partner or leader on the new learning and its application is key.
– People learn best when they have to learn, so timing is fundamentally important.