6.4 Competence, Learning and the Learning Dip

APMG Change Management Foundation Exam

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1 Chapter 1: The v3 Foundation Exam and the Organisational Context

1.1 Exam Structure, the Five Syllabus Areas and the Certification Path 1.2 Scene Setting: External and Internal Factors Shaping Change 1.3 Change Management, Benefits and Dis-benefits

2 Chapter 2: Understanding the Change Context

2.1 Kelman's Three Levels of Adoption 2.2 VUCA and the Cynefin Framework 2.3 Planned Change versus Emergent Change 2.4 Systems Thinking in Change 2.5 Organisational Culture and Its Three Levels

3 Chapter 3: Diagnosing and Structuring the Change Approach

3.1 Lewin's Force Field Analysis 3.2 Co-Design 3.3 The ADKAR Model 3.4 Evolving the n-Step Process and Kotter's Eight Accelerators

4 Chapter 4: Delivery Strategy, Agile Practices and the Change Strategy

4.1 Delivery Strategy: Big Bang, Phased, Voluntary and Iterative 4.2 Agile Practices and Agile Change Practices 4.3 The Continuous Change Management Cycle 4.4 The Change Strategy

5 Chapter 5: People and Change — Individual Difference and Response

5.1 Differences in People and Personality Preferences 5.2 Neuroscience and Change: SCARF, Mindset and Insight 5.3 The Change Curve 5.4 Bridges' Transition Model

6 Chapter 6: Motivation, Resilience and Learning

6.1 Rewards, Punishment and Pink's Three Motivators 6.2 Positive Psychology, Resilience and Appreciative Inquiry 6.3 The Beckhard-Harris Change Formula and Schein's Two Anxieties 6.4 Competence, Learning and the Learning Dip 6.5 Learning Preferences: Kolb, Honey and Mumford

7 Chapter 7: Key Roles in Change Leadership

7.1 Key Roles in the Change Process 7.2 The Role of the Change Sponsor 7.3 The Change Agent's Role and Personal Influence 7.4 The Role of Local Leadership in Change

8 Chapter 8: Psychological Safety, Leadership and Culture

8.1 Psychological Climate and Psychological Safety 8.2 Carolyn Taylor: How Leadership Shapes Culture 8.3 Leadership Styles and Organisational Climate

9 Chapter 9: Teams and Change

9.1 Team Structures and Change Agent Networks 9.2 Tuckman's Stages of Team Development 9.3 Lencioni: Assessing and Growing Team Effectiveness 9.4 Harvesting the Value of Team Diversity

10 Chapter 10: Stakeholder Identification, Analysis and Engagement

10.1 Stakeholder Definition and Identification 10.2 Stakeholder Analysis, Segmentation and Empathy Mapping 10.3 Stakeholder Mapping and Sources of Power 10.4 Barriers to Engagement 10.5 Planning Stakeholder Engagement

11 Chapter 11: Communication Theory, Messaging and Emotional Connection

11.1 Communication Theory and the Communication Process 11.2 Barriers to Communication and Cognitive Biases 11.3 Messaging: Setting Context and the Tell, Sell, Include Approach 11.4 Appealing to Hearts and Minds

12 Chapter 12: Communication Channels and Planning

12.1 Ways of Communicating and VARK Language Style Preferences 12.2 Communication Channels: One-Way, Two-Way, Lean and Rich 12.3 Communications Planning

13 Chapter 13: Assessing Change Impact and Severity

13.1 Change Management as Risk Management and the Two-Step Assessment 13.2 Step 1: Categorising Impacts and Identifying Impact Areas 13.3 Step 1 Continued: Gap Analysis, Impact Profiles and Monitoring 13.4 Step 2: Change Impact Severity

14 Chapter 14: Resistance to Change

14.1 Causes of Resistance and Oreg's Four Neural Factors 14.2 Common Reasons for Resistance and How to Deal With Them 14.3 Building a Strategy to Manage Resistance

15 Chapter 15: Change Analytics and Exam Readiness

15.1 Measurement Types and the Change Delivery Scorecard 15.2 Building a Change Analytics Strategy 15.3 Exam Technique and Final Revision

6.4 Competence, Learning and the Learning Dip

Key Takeaways Explain This Topic AI

The conscious competence ladder runs unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, unconscious competence

Conscious competence is the stage where a person has learnt to deliberately do something in a new way but still has to think about it

The learning dip is the fall in performance while new skills are acquired, before competence is reached

The extent of the dip and the speed of recovery depend on the timeliness and effectiveness of training provision

Change managers should identify subject matter experts, L&D specialists, whether skills are new or developments of existing ones, the learning load, and early adopters who can support later learners

Last updated: September 2026

Change requires people to acquire knowledge, skills and attitudes they do not currently have. CM3 addresses the learning cycle people experience during change and the effect the learning dip can have on the embedding of change .

The conscious competence ladder

Learning a new skill passes through four stages. The exam tests these by describing a state and asking which stage it is.

Stage What it feels like Example

Unconscious incompetence You do not know what you do not know; you may not accept the skill is needed A manager who has never used the reporting tool and does not see why it matters

Conscious incompetence You now know you cannot do it, and it is uncomfortable The same manager after their first attempt at building a report

Conscious competence You have learnt to deliberately do something in a new way , but it takes concentration Building the report correctly by carefully following the steps

Unconscious competence The skill is automatic and requires no conscious thought Building the report without thinking about it, and able to teach others

Two points repay attention. First, conscious incompetence is progress, not failure — the discomfort people feel at this stage is a sign the learning has started, and change managers should frame it that way rather than treating it as a warning sign. Second, conscious competence is where most change programmes stop measuring . People can do the thing, so the change is marked complete — but performance is still slower and more effortful than before, and under time pressure people revert to the old method they can do unconsciously.

The learning dip

The learning dip is the fall in job performance for an individual or team before basic competence is achieved . It is not a sign that the change is failing; it is an inevitable consequence of asking people to work in an unfamiliar way.

CM3 states that the extent of the performance dip and the speed with which recovery takes place will depend on the timeliness and effectiveness of training provision . Both words matter:

Timeliness — training too early decays before it is used; training too late leaves people working live without capability. This is exactly the concern flagged for big bang delivery, where a large gap between learning and doing must be bridged

Effectiveness — training that transfers knowledge but never builds ability leaves people at conscious incompetence when they go live

The dip also has a direct cost implication: productivity dip is one of the named cost categories in change impact severity assessment.

What change managers must identify

CM3 gives a specific list of what change managers will want to identify:

• The subject matter experts who can support the assessment of learning needed
• The L&D specialists who can carry out effective learning needs analyses

Whether the new skills required are developments of an existing skills base or completely new — the two demand very different learning effort

• The amount of new learning , especially of new and different skills, required and over what period of time
• The risks of the learning load becoming overwhelming
• Any early adopters who can support those whose learning comes later
• Why the existing-skills question matters most

Distinguishing a development of existing skills from a completely new skill is the judgement that most often goes wrong. An accountant moving from one ledger system to another is developing an existing skill base — the accounting knowledge transfers and only the interface changes. The same accountant moving from ledger work to data analysis is acquiring a genuinely new skill, and the learning effort is an order of magnitude greater. Change plans that treat both as "two days' training" produce a much deeper dip in the second case than anyone budgeted for.

The learning load risk

"The risks of the learning load becoming overwhelming" is a real and under-managed constraint. Where several changes overlap, individuals can be asked to learn three new systems in a quarter while maintaining output. The dips compound, performance falls further than any single change would explain, and the resulting failure gets attributed to the last change rather than to saturation. Assessing the aggregate learning load across the portfolio, not just within one initiative, is part of the change manager's job.

Using early adopters

Identifying early adopters who can support later learners does three things at once: it reduces demand on formal training, it provides help from a trusted peer rather than an outsider, and it gives the early adopter a mastery and status boost at exactly the moment change is threatening both. It connects directly to change agent networks and to the voluntary adoption delivery strategy, where looking for success stories among early adopters is explicit guidance.