Solving L&D’s 'Apprenticeship Problem' in an AI World
Happy Wednesday!
This article looks at the social and economic consequences of AI. The whole thing is worth a read but I liked the part on the “apprenticeship problem.” In the past apprenticeships were easier to set up because you could cut out smaller parts of a job to give to junior employees till they can take on larger responsibilities. AI has taken out many of the smaller tasks from knowledge work jobs. As I’ve written in the past this means you have to be much more intentional about setting up apprenticeship. It can’t be about delegation and workers putting in their dues anymore. Instead you have to create the right experiences that people need in order to scale up to their job quickly.
Building on the concept, this piece from McKinsey explores how traditional apprenticeship models can combat cognitive debt by fostering deep, hands-on learning. It’s a strong argument for not losing sight of foundational skill-building in a tech-accelerated world. To modernize they suggest giving everyone 2 responsibilities. The responsibility to learn and the responsibility to teach. You do this by having leaders speak to it of course but also creating incentives for individuals to teach and learn. When I worked at Google they were masters of this. Learning and teaching were built into the performance management system as well as the culture.
Finally, this in-depth report from Google’s DEC (Digital Economy Council) delves into a task analysis of jobs and how they’ll likely be impacted by AI with an AI skills opportunity map at the end. It’s 62 pages If you regularly read this newsletter you’ve likely seen some stats like what they share before. Back office structured roles are more exposed to AI automation and jobs with legal, ethical accountability are less exposed. It’s a good analysis but what caught my attention most is that career pathways are becoming less linear and less automatic. They never come right out and say apprenticeship is the way to go but they do prescribe intentional capability building instead of passive accumulation as a consequence. Wayyy down on page 36 they get into what those skills are. If you’re prepping people to be good mentors and good apprenticeships they need to be able to name the skills they’re working towards to give time to intentional practice. Systems thinking, for example, used to only be taught to certain disciplines like supply chain, upper management and senior software engineers. With AI agents, this will be a bedrock skill. The seniors in roles today have to start imparting these skills directly. Why not just make a course on systems thinking? Sure, do that. But I want to offer in addition apprenticeship is important to impart a sense for the systems that people are working in which cannot be systemically taught in the same way.
This Old Country Buffet training video makes the rounds every couple years. The comment section on this is the best part of it, I’m not nearly as funny as these people. Also, I think they did a fairly good job. For 10 minutes you do get a lot of information and it doesn’t commit the sin that a lot of microlearning makes of providing content without context. It shows you what to do as well as how to do around customers. If I were to cut up anything it would be to move the procedural knowledge like knife sharpening to a separate video or documentation. Even with the technology of the day it would be good to have a title screen in between for discussion and reflection.
This book is targeted at the learner but for those of us in L&D it can be helpful to understand the cognitive science behind learning and study habits. We often work with SMEs to generate new content or facilitate content we’re not an expert in. Either way, we need to become credible experts fast.
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