24.1.1. Learning as metanoia: a behavioral transformation

If we refer to the origin of ancient Greek texts, metanoia meant a change of state of mind, transcendence, mutation, in the profound sense of learning as the realization of a transformation.

In this sense, learning naturally imposes itself as an increase in knowledge, and also as the development of capacities to adapt, change, evolve and build a future. As a result, the vast field of soft skills and, more generally, the requirement of evolution of the behavioral dimension of the actors concerned are emerging.

This introduction of the range of learning for everyone is accompanied by the need to examine the environment (from the team to the company), in order to mobilize new learning conditions and modalities, and establish a learning mindset.

24.1.2. Learning in a systems approach: the learning organization

Peter Senge (2006) expressed it in a rather pioneering way 25 years ago in La cinquième discipline, and no one disputes it today: we are faced with the imperative need to adapt through lifelong learning, the keys to which lie with both the individual and the collective, and it is therefore necessary to consider it at both the individual and organizational levels.

It is the congruence and synergy of actions at these two levels that will enable these individual, collective and organizational apprenticeships to be translated into performance.

Borders are opening up beyond the territories, times and forms in which training is traditionally limited to a given company. Ensuring that everyone is in a dynamic favorable to their own transformation, and creating facilitating and motivating working conditions to adapt to organizational changes are the new paradigms of learning today. The ambition, or even a major key to success, will thus be finding an environment understood as a balance of people and their working environment in order to succeed in bringing about change.

24.2.1. Developing self-awareness: a form of prerequisite for apprenticeships

To know oneself, without sinking into exaggerated introspection, presupposes a real connection with oneself.

The challenge is to go beyond the identification of one’s capacities, even as an awareness of them and their limits remains a diagnostic tool and a necessary and useful base.

Putting oneself in optimal learning conditions must also lead us to identify our values and beliefs and to rethink our mental models. This is the way to establish a framework for a real dynamic of change. To ignore our “world vision” limits our personal dynamic of transformation.

How can we operate pragmatically to do this? Coaching-type support can, of course, support such an approach, allowing the supported person to reinvigorate his or her functioning, beliefs and motivations. However, a pragmatic and relevant way of developing better self-awareness is also “self-observation”. This also makes it possible for everyone to be autonomous in their practice. Advocated by behavioral psychology and, in particular, by Jacques Van Rillaer (2009), this approach and these “self-observation” techniques consist of observing, by means of simple reading grids, our own functioning in situations.

It should be noted that the author defines behavior as composed of three registers: the cognitive component (memory perception), the affective component (pleasure, suffering) and the motor component.

In concrete terms, an individual, faced with a situation, has thoughts that come to mind and feels emotions, underpinned by representations. He or she expresses physical signs, inducing behavior that has effects, impacting behavior itself. This loop – which refers to our full subjectivity – is described by the author as “a behavioral equation”.

In the self-observation exercise suggested here, taking a “meta position” or promoting “self-supervision”, it is then a question of identifying in different situations of action or interaction our behaviors in their three dimensions: action, thought and emotion – “what I do, say, think and feel” – in the action and relationship.

Knowing how to distinguish, qualify and specify these three dimensions is, moreover, already an apprenticeship experience in itself.

This exercise, repeated regularly, makes it possible in a way to distance oneself, to better regulate one’s way of acting and to make it evolve. The process is that of an awareness of one’s usual behaviors and their dynamics in a given situation, then of an identification of gaps with those behaviors that should be adopted and of commitment to a logic of progress. This can thereby be the concrete and positive outcome of this very systemic observation.

These highly contextualized behaviors are also in fact able to evolve through initiatives, taken by organizations in their environments, which can also move the parameters. We will discuss the levers and give some examples (see section 24.3) that, combined with self-help, will lay a solid foundation for more focused and efficient apprenticeships.

24.2.2. Creating a virtuous circle of trust for quality apprenticeships

Learning implies accepting that oneself is in imbalance, not yet competent in the apprenticeships fields that are to be developed, and therefore taking a form of risk that can go so far as to learn to unlearn.

This approach, which is, in a way, bold, requires everyone to trust themselves and their environment, reflecting their relationship with themselves, their relationships with others and their relationship with risk.

Trust is not the direct consequence of a more or less favorable situation, but rather, above all, the product of a decision by each individual according to his or her own point of contact, experiences and perception of the environment (more or less facilitating, or even inspiring).

It is true that our relationship with ourselves structures our projections on others and the rest of the world.

Anyone who doubts a given individual is willing to be suspicious. The one who has fears, more or less consciously goes to see the danger in the behavior of others and in his or her environment. If this danger comes to pass (not excluded hypothesis), it will reinforce his or her conviction of mistrust and bring up a classic choice: fight or flight.

In the context of apprenticeships, it is often the first version that will be established and therefore bring an inertia and resistance to act, to change.

To act in confidence, as a structuring element for apprenticeships, it is necessary to start finding the resources to trust oneself.

The question goes as far as the challenge of developing self-esteem: knowing how to capitalize on your successes to structure and enrich your skill base. It is also about learning not to fear the judgment of others so that you can ask for support and positively manage your mistakes.

Trust in others also makes it possible to hear and respect their differences. The de facto constructive relationship will then enable both the optimization of the apprenticeship through sharing and the valuable collection of feedback.

All these effects of trust are sources of learning and components of the (virtuous) circle of learning from others and from the community or communities (see equation 70/20/10).

It is also through managers and executives that a climate of trust is created. Through the coherence of their action and their supportive posture, it is their responsibility to help their teams to progress in their self-confidence.

Approaches such as those described in Part 2 can also contribute to creating a more trusting environment.

24.2.3. Strengthening your attention span

As Stanislas Dehaene (2014) states¹, one of the major supports of apprenticeships is being able to pay attention. A careful brain amplifies and reinforces the quality of information.

Unfortunately, we are at all times the target of thousands of pieces of information that simultaneously reach our ears, eyes and even our touch, going to our brain without our being aware of it. However, the brain is not “consciously” multitasking. It can only focus on one task at a time. Developing one’s ability to pay attention, and thus to concentrate, is the antidote to this risk of dispersion. Selective attention, known as concentration, consists of focusing on part of our information and putting the rest in “surveillance” mode.

As soon as attention is paid, the information benefits from a multiplicative effect.

As a result, the concentration that also involves a clear and conscious integration of objectives (the brain only retains what it thinks is useful) is, perhaps above all, a defensive action against external incursions. The good news is that this faculty is also being acquired and strengthened.

Certainly, facilitating elements can be devised during apprenticeships to encourage and direct learners’ attention. But resisting an internal conflict, remaining focused in the presence of distraction, being able to quickly access all your resources, in short, strengthening your attention capacities more deeply, is the most sustainable challenge. This is all the more important because the current world does not benefit concentration: “An average teenager will receive and send more than a hundred SMS messages a day, or about 10 per hour of being awake.” Technologies have invaded our adult lives via messages, emails, various and lasting information in a push on our smartphones and various “materials”. This may raise questions: is attention deficit disorder (ADD), classified as a cognitive disorder, on the way to becoming a new form of illness for our society?

Awareness of the phenomenon is itself a path to progress. Moreover, as Daniel Goleman (2014) explains, and as brain imaging confirms, attention, and it is a certainty, is muscle.

It is also worth mentioning that what we commonly call “attention” corresponds to the more accurate qualification of “external focalization”. The inner focus, on the other hand, corresponds to self-awareness. This is what brings us in line with our intuitions and helps us to make decisions. Lastly, focusing on others, the third type of attention, is empathy. It is part of the “mental equipment” needed to manage our relationships well.

Training in the development of concentration on a subject, on others and on their mental processes – alternating attention to detail and to an overview – can lead to overall attention. This overall attention is currently considered the key to “success” for better learning and the component of a personal learning ecology.

Several types of activities can be involved in building attention capacity. Let us mention mindfulness meditation, in particular, to which we could add all related approaches, whose virtues have already been demonstrated through brain MRIs.

24.2.4. Restructuring emotions and emotional intelligence to better adapt

The pattern of action of individuals, acting or not acting and knowing how to act, has now been clearly “decoded” by the field of neuroscience.

Faced with a situation, a person experiences positive or negative emotions that will (schematically) trigger behaviors.

Emotions, in this context, profoundly modulate apprenticeships. Recognizing, naming the emotion, as mentioned above, and perceiving its advantages and limitations are the first steps to change and an asset to anchor a new apprenticeship.

On the other hand, negative emotions tend to interrupt apprenticeships; stress can be completely distracting and cause us to lose all the resources we could use.

A look back at the phenomenon: everyone feels emotions. Contemporary cognitive sciences no longer really distinguish between emotion and cognition. Emotional circuits are part of the calculation algorithms of our brain.

However, only 36% of people are able to identify them accurately when they occur, according to a study conducted by TalentSmart, the leading provider of EQ (Emotional Quotient) measurement tests. However, emotions, when not named, can lead to misunderstandings, inappropriate choices and counterproductive actions. In contrast, people with developed emotional intelligence control their emotions because they understand them. They then use a palette of words to describe them. For example, if many people say “I’m not well”, people with sharp emotional intelligence can identify whether they feel “irritable”, “frustrated”, “oppressed” or “anxious”. The more precise the words, the more precise the understanding of the emotions experienced is, allowing the choice of the best way to deal with them and/or to use them effectively.

In this way, the subtle management of emotional intelligence, a vector of balance and personal ecology, is set in motion.

In some cases, it will be a matter of limiting the impact of a negative emotion and keeping it at a distance. In other cases, it will be a question of transforming – by modifying one’s perceptions – the situation under consideration and finding an interest to act, namely in substance, and to learn.

The development of emotional intelligence can itself be the subject of an apprenticeship, as Daniel Goleman recommends.

The path is the passage from experienced emotions to emotions expressed, regulated and transformed. The consequence can be, in this case, a definite regression of the fear of behavioral change and the expression of a pleasure in learning.

Finally, this action on the emotional dimension will contribute to a real anchoring, in the deeper sense, of the behaviors modified by an apprenticeship.

24.2.5. Favoring letting go and renouncing perfection

Success can be learned through role-playing, simulations and other “exposure” to new situations, and opportunities for challenges.

However, it is a question of knowing, and therefore often also of learning, to learn. If we refer to business theorist Chris Argyris, overly developed intelligence, in its classic form of IQ, can be a barrier, especially to learning how to fail.

Renouncing “total control”, and not being part of a, generally unattainable, objective of perfection is a first step in a vacuum, towards the unknown of new apprenticeship fields.

Accepting this vulnerability in a business environment, which is itself not always open to the “right to make mistakes”, is therefore a first challenge in itself.

The learning loop is to switch from unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence through not knowing by navigating through the two intermediate stages of incompetence and competence: “I know that I don’t know and I know that I know.”

Most apprenticeships must begin with a conscious phase. There is then an automation that can make the treatments totally unconscious and even inaccessible to the consciousness. For example, as Noam Chomsky, a renowned linguist, has shown, our brain applies extremely complex grammatical rules without being aware of them. Being part of this dynamic is one of the challenges of letting go.

This letting go will also allow us to leave our comfort zone in order to learn better, in the sense of discovering and experimenting with possible solutions in new territories, and in contact with a wider variety of actors.

Finally, beyond risk-taking, this letting go, in our “new world”, is also learning translated into a form of resilience of people and organizations.

24.2.6. The virtues of systemic learning in the face of complexity and uncertainty

Complexity and uncertainty have become widely shared characteristics in companies.

As Laurent Bibard professor at ESSEC points out, it is appropriate, in this context, to balance or rebalance the various tensions established in terms of structure, culture, power, motivation and communication. These tensions are between the short term (control) and the long term (uncertainty). There is also the division of tasks, and their necessary transversal nature and coordination. There is a virtuous stability (as a support point for emergence) and a pressing need for change.

Competition must also coexist with the need for greater collaboration within new forms of organization. The management of these balances and imbalances, in a good personal ecology, is in itself a condition of learning. This line between balance and imbalance is also at the very heart of any apprenticeship with a degree of complexity. The answers provided by these apprenticeships cannot be unambiguous or even definitive.

While we spoke at the very beginning of our approach to apprenticeship as “reducing gaps” in order to move towards a future, this must be part of an ever-changing reality, made up of interactions and, consequently, of systems. These are not solutions (which would quickly become obsolete), but keys that it is logical to provide.

These key elements must enable their beneficiaries to be equipped with the capacity to understand and act in a context and under often, if not always, changing circumstances. Developing an ability to question and reinforcing the dimensions of interpersonal communication are all components of apprenticeships. In this context, they are likely to qualify and enrich contributions of a more “prosaically technical” nature or linked to knowledge and know-how.

These personal dimensions and anchors, combined with new apprenticeship environments within companies, must work in the same dynamic. They aim to produce concentration (for effective alignment in itself and optimization of the act of learning), regeneration (for change), inspiration (or at least motivation) and finally “activation” in the sense of developing the ability to act.

What framework of facilitation and coherence can create the “learning enterprise”, beyond a few original but often “dispersed” initiatives? This is what we will try to illustrate later, through the approaches of the insurance sector and the example of AVIVA.

24.3.1. The timescale requiring a new learning framework

Digitization and globalization are impacting the strategies of companies moving towards a results-oriented culture in the short term. The implementation of the transformation is intended to be accelerated, thanks to the organizational changes that are implemented and the resources dedicated to it.

Employees’ expectations and roles are equally affected. The boundaries between private and professional life are increasingly blurred and involve “safeguards”. We will discuss those later, in particular through the prevention of connection addictions linked to the untimely use of these communication tools and the security of data.

In this context, the acquisition and development of new employee skills become essential to maintaining employability in view of the speed with which business lines are impacted by these developments, particularly technological ones.

Employees must be able to demonstrate their learning capacities by being actors in their employability and in their adaptation in a work environment conducive to their professional development.

Companies are invited to review their organization and learning methods. The apprenticeship then aims to adopt a participative approach where the apprenticeship takes place through the company’s developments, i.e. employees are involved upstream in the transformation of their professional environment.

24.3.2. Daily learning: a construction through a new social dialog

The legislative context is an opportunity to support these developments. The negotiations on Employment and Skills Planning Management (GPEC) and Quality of Life at Work (QVT) offer companies the opportunity to engage in these reflections according to their own procedures.

Being vigilant about a form of learning ecology may be an opportunity in this context to adopt an innovative approach when preparing for such negotiations with social partners. The aim is to propose that we reflect upstream, some would say “coldly”, with the employee representative bodies on the consequences of these organizational and social changes at the company level, and delimit the field of reflection, thus preparing the field of negotiation.

This principle has been applied to the insurance sector, whose many agreements illustrate the dynamics of social dialog.

The QVT negotiation was preceded by joint working groups that enabled stakeholders to identify four objectives: support change, involve all company stakeholders, reconcile professional and private life, and encourage experimentation and the sharing of feedback.

The constructive exchanges on both sides made it possible to enrich the themes, by reflecting on the meaning of the approach, the objectives and the roles of each party. A glossary attached to the agreement signed on January 26, 2017 clarifies the intentions and definitions of the stakeholders. This innovative approach, with the contribution of external expertise, was highly appreciated by the participants. This particular focus on change and learning, also understood as experimentation and the sharing of practices, lays the foundation for a real learning ecology.

24.3.3. A favorable working environment for learning differently

Changes in economic models are also reflected in changes in frameworks and labor relations within companies.

The working environment is changing: we are referring here to desk-sharing. Individual offices are replaced by “privacy bubbles”, allowing any employee to isolate themselves at certain times of the day to conduct interviews related to their professional lives or their private ones. Beyond the economic challenges of reducing real estate costs by better optimizing the use of space, the aim is to offer working conditions that are conducive to ensuring the company’s performance when implementing its strategy. It also involves paying attention to employees by preserving their mental health by integrating the prevention of psychosocial risks.

Workspaces are reviewed according to the “times of the working day”:

• – open and colorful spaces facilitating contact and exchanges between employees equipped with laptops who no longer necessarily have a dedicated office within an identified or unidentified team area;
• – spaces to organize meetings of standing teams with walls equipped with panels described as “idea walls”, communicating meeting rooms with new computer equipment (video screens, virtual meetings, conference calls);
• – relaxation areas equipped with adapted furniture to replace traditional cafeterias;
• – the disappearance of offices for managers, even executives. After an experimental approach, Aviva’s Comex was one of the first teams to install this new configuration.

These new work environments aim to facilitate exchanges and feedback between teams in work situations, both in terms of material conditions (local tools) and relationships. This creates a favorable learning environment.

The learning can also be illustrated through the modalities of the implementation of these new spaces.

Before any project management takes place, preparatory working meetings are organized to share with the various stakeholders – trade union organizations, occupational medicine, CHSCT (Health and safety committee), ergonomists and employees. The reasons and objectives for these changes, and the different stages of implementation are thereby shared.

Downstream, the implementation is enriched by feedback from employee experiences as the new work environment is deployed.

The ambition is to be part of a participatory quality of work life approach, i.e. one that engages the working community, the company and its employees in the search for a balance that is favorable to all stakeholders in improving well-being.

For example, at Aviva, a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) page is updated as the project progresses, based on the questions asked by employees, allowing the development of a participative support plan.

The objective of these new arrangements is to create the conditions for real learning, valuing learning and initiative and promoting the framework and test and learn positions.

It is also about adopting active learning methods, giving more freedom of choice, encouraging movement and offering varied spaces that facilitate exchanges and optimize connections between learners.

24.3.4. The evolution of managerial positions in the service of the development of learning

Transformative initiatives in learning styles are often cited as those of so-called collaborative or even “liberated” organizations. In these schemes, the very existence of the manager’s role can be understood. A total openness is given at the initiative of everyone in the organization.

To date, more prosaically, it has to be said that the majority of companies have been moving towards greater autonomy. However, to discuss less open-ended time frames, or even a long time to come, we need rather to talk about the evolution of the manager’s role.

This evolves in response to changes in the organization. If it continues to exercise authority and control over the performance of tasks and assignments to be carried out, it is mobilized more on the basis of accountability and the development of autonomy within its teams.

To this end, one can be trained through, for example, 360° evaluations to develop the leadership skills inherent in supporting the transformation.

To this end, annual interviews give way to coaching interviews conducted by the manager, encouraging the adoption of a “coaching” attitude and encouraging the employee to think about the best way to achieve his or her objectives under the best conditions. Learning is illustrated, in this case, by the congruence of the apprenticeships implemented for that end and the synergy of actions that should make it possible to deliver the performance expected by the team. One particular stakeholder is taking an increasing place in this framework: the team. The collective is likely to better meet some of the challenges and objectives defined.

With the development of these new organizations of work and, in particular, the development of working from home, managers also learn to manage their teams remotely, to develop autonomy in their work using desktop virtualization tools (e.g. Electronic Data Management, or EDM, the cloud) and trust.

These organizational changes have an impact on managers’ behavior and roles and encourage new forms of learning, including experimentation. This implies clarifying the right to make mistakes and advocating the rational use of new technologies. Hence, the rules for using the tools are defined, written and shared. An example is the adoption of charters on the right to connect and disconnect that address addiction prevention and cybersecurity prevention rules.

Encouraging innovation and experimentation also requires prior clarification of the definition of the right to error, which in companies often also refers to sanctions detailed in the rules of procedure. The learning process then becomes reciprocal.

24.3.5. Open apprenticeship approaches for sustainable learning

Access to information is no longer a domain reserved for experts: the company’s extranets and (secure) intranets provide much wider access to a whole field of professional information that enriches everyone’s knowledge at all times: MOOCs and training devices allow knowledge to be updated “online” at any time of the day, i.e. I can choose when I will train at home or at my workplace, without being dependent on a registration or travel schedule.

Beyond the more open physical environments aimed at breaking down organizations into “silos” and facilitating exchanges, equipping everyone with a microcomputer that has the user’s usual applications allows new skills to be developed in real time.

Training on software updates in the classroom is replaced by FAQs that are updated in real time by users. The immediacy of our operations no longer allows us to wait. It must be possible to respond to a problem as soon as it occurs.

The development of apprenticeships can be one of the solutions to meet the challenges faced by employees in developing and updating professional or extra-professional skills, by enabling them to respond to the technological and social upheavals that companies are experiencing in a context of digitalization of processes and customer relations.

This innovative approach, based on taking into account the capacities of each individual to take charge of their own development, makes it possible to support the objectives of expected changes in behavior and organizations, in line with the company’s strategy.

This approach, which is carried out with respect for everyone’s well-being, can be considered in an action plan or by means of an agreement on quality of life at work. Beyond the impacts on transformation management processes, employee behavior change management aims to improve collaboration between teams, trust and commitment. A lasting commitment is based on strong well-being².

The social contract negotiated with the social partners and implemented at Aviva France reflects what the mutual commitment to learning can be, illustrated by the employer promise based on a “win–win” approach: “What I bring to Aviva and what Aviva brings to me”. Successful transformation challenges require a balance between employees and their working environment or, in other words, a balance between professional and private life.

24.3.6. Apprenticeships, a vehicle for supporting the transformation of structures and their operations

Starting from the premise that learning is a factor in supporting individuals, it can undoubtedly also be the “common thread” of an approach to support the transformation of certain aspects of their professional environment.

In particular, we should mention the increasingly “digitalized” customer relationship and its supposed immediacy of exchanges. We also discussed transformations linked to IT tools and the rise of digital technology. To this we must add the implementation of new shared working environments and the managerial positions to be revisited in this context, with assignments evolving towards expert or remote manager positions, or even actors in collaborative mode.

These transformations, in themselves “learning” experiences, in the sense given by Peter Senge, also see successes built on the learning capacities of the employees.