Harold, I have to admit this term "social learning" is bugging me and perhaps even more so when the Training Department (or whatever it is called) become the social learning team. If the organization isn't learning... or isn't learning fast enough then it has a problem. An organization needs new insights and the ability to know when to take action.

Whether a training session or a facilitated strategic workshop the best "learning" often takes place in the breaks. Yes I believe there are real opportunities to use social software (these tools have been available for years) to stimulate the conversation. Similarly, there's the backchannels too.

I also have a fear that by calling this social learning team you let them off the hook. Let me provide an example. For years I ran sales. We had weekly reports that were sent in. Few saw them but they were circulated. Later these were emailed and thus shared with the group. Today the same things can be blogged in. By opening up the information and enabling both sharing and searching the organization learned best practice, what worked, translated new ideas, and went directly to sources of help. If you want to enable social learning... then I'd advocate the social learning team getting rid of email, moving to blogs and wiki's and encouraging some opening up... "practices" and conversations..

I have another example of how this type of learning was once hierarchial and could be wirearchical. See http://www.henshall.com/stuart/2003/03/06/team-brief-community-brief/ - I seem to be looking at all that old stuff at the moment!

There's a piece that I learnt once that Adults really learn by doing. Eg bringing "Facilitation Skills" into an organization. I did this many times.. not that I wanted every manager to become a facilitator rather to train them or learn them what it takes to facilitate change and growth. Then it makes it easier on those that really do facilitate. For my two cents "facilitation" remains key. It's the only way to deal with organizational wisdom and collective intelligence.

I'd also put this department in charge of making communications "real-time". Speed up the transparency of the organization and training will become less about top down and more about enabling attention and capability.

Perhaps just rambling at this point. I concur re above comment re collaboration office although I'd want some metrics on it to drive some changes. At the end of the day... the CEO must empower the organization to learn differently and then facilitate that change.