Why do we in our industry of learning and performance get our wires so crossed sometimes when we seem to be using a standard vocabulary? Quite often, we could be either talking about the same thing and using slightly different language, or talking about subtly different things but using exactly the same words.
Imagine how many meetings you’ve had between the business side and the learning side of the company where time has been lost to defining words and clarifying expressions.
The one that most often comes to mind for me is the definition of ‘content’. For me as a learning guy, content means the activities of learning – discussing, reading, listening, collaborating – which need to be designed, and not ‘information or knowledge’, which is what business executives think it is.
If such a simple expression can easily be confused, then how about more trendy or recent expressions like Knowledge transfer and Learning transfer? In fact, these catchphrases have both become popular quickly, and are being misunderstood or taken to be the same thing.
We’ve published an article here about the confusion between learning and knowledge transfer. It’s a good read for all those who want to avoid those crossed wires.
Enjoy, and of course feel free to share and like the post, below.