Come Sit by the Fire

When you think about people in Human Resource Development, are they generally friendly well-meaning people? Individuals eager to chat with you and be fascinated by any bit of information you are willing to reveal about yourself? That’s been my typical experience. But like many things in life, there is a dark side, where lines are drawn and harsh words spread through academic journals like a flame wars on a Brittany Spears bulletin board. In HRD the gauntlet is thrown when professionals in the field begin talking about paradigms, or a school of thought on a subject, in this case human resources. While there are some younger paradigms still in their infancy, namely the meaning of work and spirituality at work paradigms, almost everyone in the HRD sets up camp in either learning OR performance. To the uninitiated they may seem similar, there arguments congruent, but be forewarned friend, to say as much will draw sharp critism from both sides. It seems the point in which agreement is formed is that you must pick a side. And who am I to gainsay what must be done? Can you guess at which camp I am currently roasting my marshmallows? If you guessed performance, then smores for everyone.

The performance paradigm focuses on the results on learning, and has often been labeled as “bad” and mechanistic by critics. Depending on whom you speak with, performance is viewed as a natural outcome for human activity, necessary for economic growth or instrument for organizational oppression. So how can those in Camp Performance ensure that HR is used for the powers of good? By ensuring that learning is made available to everyone and that transferring learning into job performance is a holistic measure. This is partly based upon Assumption 11 of the Performance paradigm (the transfer of learning) but I have added the availability and holistic approach. I think the performance paradigm scares people because they have this image of some horrible training with an impossibly difficult task to learn and then an immediate test of this task with everyone who can’t immediately replicate the said task with perfection being fired on the spot and sent home to starve to death. This all seems quite silly to me. The truth lies much more in the understanding that what is learned should be incorporated into how one does their job. In some cases it may be a direct task-performance relationship, but in the majority of cases performance comes in the form of integration, resulting in an improved methodology and happier worker.

Over in Camp Learning, the focus is on the learning itself for individuals, teams and organizations. In a system where learning, not results, are the bottom line how can HR play a strategic role in organizations? I’m not sure it can. An important role yes, but strategic? That’s questionable. While learning new things is three shades of fantastic, if that learning has no effect of organizational practices what is the point? I appreciate the dedication to individual development and growth, as I believe everyone in the performance paradigm does, but stopping the outcome there is totally missing the point. As we are in camp, lets talk about fire. Suppose I built this big, beautiful fire at our camp. The only down side is that this fire has no heat. Yes it can still look just as pretty, but without heat (or in this case performance) there is no light, no protection from wild animals, no way to cook food (hence why we have the smores) and no point for this fire! While I agree with many of the beliefs in the learning paradigm, I disagree with their stopping point. And I think regardless of position (manager, employee, or CEO), everyone can see the logic of having a reason for learning and growth. While knowledge is key to organizational development, knowledge without action is worthless.