Question 1: How did you get where you are?
I started my company Stellar Learning way back in 2000 and started training trainers to design and deliver with ‘brain friendly’ techniques. Six years ago a Belgian CEO tracked me down after reading my book ‘Neuroscience for Learning and Development’ which changed the way he thought about training. His tech talent company became a client and I audited their training and supported them to get more ROI from the extensive training they did. One thing led to another and the CEO, Raf Seymus and I decided to start a company together focused on effective blended learning – bringing more digital focus. Imagine my surprise when he told me he’d been hatching the idea for a while and already had a name, before we’d even met – Stellar Labs! We like to say our journey was written in the stars!
Question 2: I know you are on mission – to elevate workplace learning, using neuroscience to take people from knowing – to doing – can you explain?
Training that doesn’t enable people to put new knowledge or skills into practice in the workplace is a waste of time, energy, goodwill and money. The lack of transfer from ‘classroom’ to workplace is consistently between about 15 and 20% – that means 80% of training is not adding value to employees or the organisations they work in. The science of learning gives us the know how to offer training that has impact but it’s not as straightforward as designing some eLearning or running a workshop. When you know how our brains, and bodies, learn you see the necessity for people to experience all the elements of learning: motivation, input, experiences, practice, reflection, support, repetition, but it’s harder to implement and harder to measure so there’s still a focus on delivering content – job done! When you ask them how they actually learned to do something whether it’s riding a bike or negotiating a deal most people recognise that there were multiple steps, over time – you can’t learn a skill simply by doing eLearning, reading a book or watching a video. Compulsory training often checks whether people remember or understand something but that’s not enough to do the job – and often the testing is done immediately – without recognising that our brains evolved to forget – remembering requires work over time.
Question 3: How does the brain work to build skills? Do you have a step analysis to share?
The brain is neuroplastic and learns naturally – but your brain is also an energy conserver and doesn’t waste energy on building new connections if it only encounters information or an experience once. It’s a process that takes place over time and needs effort. The exception is we learn fast from a massive stress event that we absolutely need to remember to survive – but that’s usually not optimum for employees.
Based on the science of learning, neuroscience and years of practical experience we’ve devised, and use the GEAR methodology with a focus on learning transfer; it’s the optimum way to learn to ‘do’, not just ‘know’.
And we’ve built GEAR into our technology so that anyone can design and deliver impactful training – especially now AI does a lot of the design work. You can literally design a learning journey in minutes, ready to launch in days.
GEAR is an acronym for the 4 main activity types that are applied within Stellar Labs:
- Guide: Absorb crucial information at the learner’s own pace.
- Experiment: Explore new knowledge and practice new skills in a safe environment.
- Apply: Build habits through targeted practice, feedback & coaching on the job.
- Retain: Beat the forgetting curve & build long term memories.
There’s a lot of science that underlies each part of the methodology but we keep the model simple so it’s easy to adopt. Most standard training has the ‘Guide’ and maybe ‘Experiment’ but it’s the Apply and Retain that are usually missing and not actively supported and they are crucial.
