In the city I live in, Melbourne, Australia, we have been in drought for most of the last decade. Water storages had recently fallen to just over 25% full. A few weeks ago however it rained and rained and rained, not drought ending rain, but the best anyone could remember in ages.
Each day in the local papers are updates on the state of the city's water storages, the updates show how many megalitres the storages have gone up or down from the previous day. During the recent rainy period the first couple of days showed no increase in water levels, but after a few days of rain water levels started going up and then kept going up for the next two weeks. In fact they kept going up for a week after the rain had stopped.
What has this got to do with learning?
Perhaps my brain works differently to others! However as I watched this happening each day I thought of learning!
My thoughts went a bit like this........just as the dam levels don't immediate respond to rain, employee behaviour or business results don't immediately change after learning either......just as there is a lag between rain and water storage, there is also a lag between learning input and behaviour/results output.
In the case of formal learning events it is possible to still see the connection between learning and results. But, for informal learning methods, such as corporate wikis, social networks, employee directed learning and so forth, the link between learning and results is harder to see.
I suppose what I'm saying is this, if there are obvious results from learning events it is possible that a learning drought has been broken. The link between learning and results becomes obvious in feast or famine scenarios.
Avoid learning droughts!
The aim should be to establish a slow and steady drip-feed of learning (best achieved by strengthening informal learning channels), it is always best to avoid a drought.
