How much of what we have lost during the pandemic is hidden?

Hidden Learning is one of three themes I am helping to explore in some work with the Nuclear Industry Project Management SiG. Hidden Learning describes everything that we learn (that relates to the work we do) that is specific to us as individuals.

That is: the insight that we get from an impromptu conversation with a colleague, or from attending a networking event or perhaps one of the Major Projects Association fringe events; the ideas we glean from attending an offsite training course, watching a webinar or reading a business book; but also the light bulb moments we have when are reading a newspaper article, watching the News on the television or even our favourite Scandi Noir thriller.

Nancy Dixon describes these lessons as ‘private office learning’ because it is something we learn for ourselves. In that sense, these are hidden lessons. Whilst they may account for the Lion’s share of what each of us learns over a given year, they remain hidden from colleagues or from the organization as a whole. This is partly because some of these lessons do indeed only have meaning for us or because they represent tacit knowledge, which is difficult to share without a shared experience, a demonstration or some ‘sitting with Nelly’ time. It’s also because there are few organizational systems and processes that allow us to capture and share this kind of knowledge in anything approaching a meaningful way.

Unfortunately, the other common feature of most forms of hidden learning is that it is transferred socially: the back to work chat on a Monday morning; in the office kitchen for coffee; in the registration queue or during the lunch break at an Association seminar; or simply in a ‘tap on the shoulder conversation’ with one of your immediate colleagues in the shared office.

These are all things which have been severely curtailed, if not prevented entirely by lockdown. We’ve not been going into the office. seminars and workshops have gone online, which makes networking small talk a challenge. Consequently:

• How much hidden knowledge has failed to become shared learning?

• Which individuals or groups have particularly suffered as a result? Is it the obvious suspects; those who have moved from one project to another or new recruits to the workforce, or is it someone else entirely? 

and, in the face of this loss:

• To what efforts has your organization gone in order to create what Nancy calls ‘Hallways of Learning’ that is, the “places where collective meaning is made” since “what is most important about any event is not what happened but what it means.” If they have designed and made available some of these hallways, which ones have been most successful and why?