Using Experience Maps to Accelerate Development | The Talent Strategy Group

As I mentioned in a LinkedIn post last week, learning from experience is one of the most impactful ways to accelerate employee development. But since not all experiences provide the same development impact, it raises the question: what makes a high-impact experiential on-the-job learning? In that same post, I referenced a new Gartner article covering six high-impact experiential development attributes (Table 2 on page 16). One attribute mentioned is change and adversity (e.g., leaders should be involved in turbulent situations to build flexibility and adaptiveness). As organizations unlock the potential of experiences as an enabler of development, this newly updated article by Marc Effron provides additional guidance. It shares how organizations can accelerate job and career development through experience maps—defining the specific experiences needed to excel in a role or function. Experience maps describe the outcomes—not just the skills — that someone must demonstrate to prove competence (i.e., create a business strategy for a $50M unit; bring a factory to ISO9001 standards). The article includes a few examples of experience maps, including one for HR. Both references (Gartner and The Talent Strategy Group) provide valuable insights for accelerating employee development through experiences.