Getting to Effective Microlearning
Focus on microbehaviors, not scattered learning around big behaviors.
Change management is about helping people shift their behaviors, mindsets, and skills—and microlearning is a powerful tool to support that. It delivers change in small, timely moments, making it easier to absorb and less overwhelming to apply in the flow of work. Because it’s quick and practical, it helps reduce resistance and makes the change more likely to stick.
But not all microlearning is effective.
Poor microlearning often takes one big behavior and teaches it multiple times in small lessons over time—simply slicing the learning experience into parts without truly supporting behavior change.
Effective microlearning takes a different approach. It breaks that big behavior into distinct microbehaviors—small, focused actions that can be practiced and mastered one at a time. Each microbehavior becomes a meaningful step toward lasting change.
This is the heart of the Green Path approach. We build capability by deeply learning each microbehavior through a series of momentum experiences and artifacts, followed by integration experiences and artifacts that help embed the change.
The success of microlearning is to chop up the behaviors,
not to chop up the learning experience.
These small microbehaviors are simple, practical behaviors that can be applied immediately and lead to a clear result.
A microbehavior is any small, intentional action that:
Takes 2–5 minutes to perform
Has a clear trigger (a cue for “instead of this, do that”)
Produces a visible or measurable result—something you can see, use, or learn from
Once you’ve defined a strong microbehavior—whether it’s a leadership habit, a planning behavior, or a technical skill—you have the foundation for real behavior change.
The first three steps on what I call the Green Path focus on building early neural pathways. This stage relies on whole-person engagement and quick feedback loops to strengthen new habits.
The second three steps of the Green Path focus on solidifying those neural pathways, which requires time to experiment, make mistakes, and learn through connection with others.
