Work is learning. Learning is the work.
Here are the links for my presentation today on The Future of the Training Department for the Canadian Society for Training & Development:
Main Article co-authored with Jay Cross
Slideshare presentation
Wirearchy framework
Cynefin framework
Delicious bookmarks on Personal Knowledge Management
Creative Commons search engine for shareable images
Wikimedia Commons for shareable and copyright-free images
GapingVoid cartoons
In response to questions from participants:
David Eaves writes in Why the Government of Canada needs Bloggers:
“One theme that came up was that public servants feel they are suffering from information overload. There is simply so much going on around them and it is impossible to keep up with it all. This is especially true of those in the senior ranks.”
I saw this when I was working on the Advanced Leadership Program with the Canada School of Public Service last year. I can’t discuss any specifics of what I observed, but there is no doubt that senior public servants are inundated with information and that their time is not their own, with many days filled with meetings and other time-consuming activities.
However, blogging is not enough because managing information overload is more a question of attitude than skills. We need to understand that we’ve been in a state of information overload since the 15th Century when there were more books than one person could read in a lifetime (watch Clay Shirky’s interview on FastForward). Blogs, or their equivalent, are only one part of the knowledge management equation.
I think that public servants really need PKM (personal knowledge mastery). PKM is a way to help make sense of the information flows that face us and I’ve written about PKM many times. It is basically a process of:
The bottom line of web-based PKM is to develop a process of sense-making. It’s much like the discipline of maintaining a professional journal, attending lectures or reading good books and does not negate any of these activities.
So I would say that public servants, especially in senior positions, need more than blogs and that they need their own, individual PKM process, incorporating various web social media tools. If the Indonesian Minister of Defence has been able to maintain a blog for the past fours years, our public servants can do that and maybe a bit more, n’est-ce pas?
Aaron Chua at Wild Illusions sees financial measurements as no longer able to tell the complete story. He mentions various other areas for measurement, including “talent development” but in a different context from the tired “talent management” perspective we’ve heard for several years:
This means a total redefinition of what talent development means in organisations. The first implication is of course to throw out the idea of having a talent development unit. Instead, we need to think about ways to rebuilt how talent is truly developed via connections to the resources at the edge, connections to different organisational competencies that plugs their gaps, connections that increases cognitive diversity and brings about unexpected learnings et al. All these are rich areas for a new breed of talent development companies to think about and to create new products/services upon.
If you buy into Richard Florida’s concept of the Creative Class (which I mostly do) then it becomes obvious that for organizations to succeed they will have to nurture creativity in their workforce. Creative people are at all levels, including the janitor, and are not ‘human resources’ but individuals who have the capability of gaining wisdom. From the Creative Class Blog is an article on The Workplace in a Wiki World, with this idea about the changing emphasis for workers:
Therefore, for an individual to succeed in a wiki-corporation or wiki-organization it will increasingly require being more than an engineer, programmer, economist, or accountant. It will also require the “soft skills” to do media relations or “wiki” relations, interacting daily with a range of customers and outside contributors, as well as collaborating with others in the company.
Here’s my speculation on workplace learning in ten years.
Soft skills, especially collaboration and networking, will become more important than hard skills. Smart employers have always focused more on attitude than any specific skill-set because they know they can train for a lack of skills and knowledge. The soft skills require time, mentoring, informal learning and other environmental supports. Once you have the soft skills to perform in a networked workplace, you’ll have foundational competencies.
I think many people will say of course we’ve known this all along, but in a workplace where our networks are as important as our skills, it will be more difficult to hide the fact that you’re a highly skilled jerk.
The LCB Big Question for March is, What will workplace learning look like in 10 years?
I’ll start by going back 10 years to my workplace and see what is different from early 1999:
In the intervening decade I wondered about some of the technological changes. We now have practically unlimited digital storage, increasing bandwidth, almost ubiquitous connectivity, and the ability to digitally capture and share everything we see and hear. I’ve also had the ability to work on my own, from a small town in Atlantic Canada, because of our networked infrastructure. This was not really possible in 1999 but by 2003 it was feasible, though a challenge.
Workplace learning in 2019:
In — No more “learners” — Jay Cross uses the preacher-congregation metaphor to show the dysfunction in our educational and training systems. Much as the Reformation, sped by the new technology of the printing press, ushered in an era of believing and thinking for ourselves, we have the makings of our own Learning Reformation.
The removal of overt rules (Jay uses traffic signs as an example) can empower people, while thinking of them as just “learners” is condescending and plays to the power game of teacher-students. Let’s face it, especially in light of how our institutions have screwed up the world, we all have to be learning together.
In The future of the training department, Jay and I put forth the idea that in order to help organizations evolve in a complex environment we have to move away from training delivery and focus on Connecting & Communicating. Workers, provided the right tools and resources, can figure out what they need to learn. Tony Karrer has picked up on this, as has David Wilkins.
Here are some suggestions for people in training organizations as they shift to supporting the networked workplace:
All of these skills are dependent on #1. You can read about being a good learner and then put the book back on the shelf, but learning is a process and leadership by example is needed. Be an example.
Q: What’s the best way to use social media in your organization?
A: Start by using them yourself.
Steve Simons recently wrote:
I read with interest your article “The future of the training department”, particularly the last paragraph. As an IT trainer in the UK (I train on a contract basis for large organisations), I’ve often wondered what uses people will get from their learning. Sometimes my general feeling is “none”. Your phrase “shift the focus to creativity, innovation, and helping people perform better, faster, cheaper” really hit the spot with me.
I recommended the book From Training to Performance Improvement to Steve, as it helps get training departments out of the “solution looking for a problem” approach. As much as books like this are a good start, a shift to performance improvement is not enough. There is no single best approach and we need to bring in other frameworks such as connectivism, wirearchy and social network theory. The era of silos is over.
Here’s some advice for anyone in charge of a training department:
No single, sure-fire, cookie-cutter approach can be implemented in a top-down or consultant-driven manner to create a networked workplace performance model that works for “your” organization. Don’t believe the hype that one technology or one method will save you, because no single method in the past has done that. You have the best knowledge about your organization. You may need some direction, support, data, advice or a sounding board, but you have to create your own inter-dependent network.
I’m following up on yesterday’s post discussing how established institutions (schools, universities, research facilities) change only after working organizations (businesses, enterprises, social groups) have. Hugh’s cartoon of work as a “loose confederation of skunk works, joined by insanity” aptly describes the modern workplace and the surrounding social and technological environment. I find it more appropriate every day. The big questions is, how can we move from the mindset of schools to skunk works? Now there’s a worthwhile quest.
Charles Green got me thinking with this post:
Ideas lead technology. Technology leads organizations. Organizations lead institutions. Then ideology brings up the rear, lagging all the rest—that’s when things really get set in concrete.
Put more succinctly:
When we look at the past century of business, the progress has been:
I am fairly positive that the industrial era based on cheap energy (oil) is coming to an end. At the same time the Internet has changed the way we work, learn and most importantly, converse. Combine ridiculously easy group-forming with energy scarcity and you get the demise of command & control and mass production & distribution.
We’re now at the stage where we have some new ideas for work (wirearchy, natural enterprises, workplace democracy) and some new technologies (social media, nano-bio-techno-cogno). The next step in this evolution is the new organization. Remember that business schools only followed after the mass production model had been proven. Therefore we cannot expect leadership from our institutions until we have proven a new organizational model. It’s time to get to work.
Jay Cross and I have written and posted The future of the training department [link updated] on our togetherLearn blog:
Prior to the 20th Century, training per se did not exist outside the special needs of the church and the military. Now the training department may be at the end of its life cycle. Join us for a brief look back at the pre-training world and some thoughts about what may lay ahead.
I’ve also developed an accompanying slideshow, which will be the basis of my CSTD online presentation on March 4th.
On 19 February 2004, I went down the rabbit hole and started this blog:
This is where I post my thoughts and comments on ideas, events or other writings that are of a professional interest to me. Current areas of interest include social networking applications, like blogs, wikis and the use of RSS feeds, which is one reason why I have this blog; to practise what I preach. I’m also interested in the use of open source software platforms for learning. The development and nurturing of communities of practice online is another area of applied research that interests me.
And so I began blogging in earnest, having set up a few others previously, but this time with my own domain and a bit of a plan. My personal knowledge base is now over 1,400 blog posts with +3,000 comments. Mostly, I write for myself, though I know that others read what I’ve posted and a smaller fraction make comments. Many of these people have become friends and even business colleagues. That’s been the best part, meeting people who share some of my passions.
I’m writing fewer posts than when I started out, with a peak of 58 in May 2004. I can’t imagine doing that many now. I have settled on an average of 15 per month which seems to be enough for personal knowledge management (implicit => explicit) and I don’t feel under pressure to publish. I’ve found a daily commitment a bit much, such as when I helped fill in for Stephen on OLDaily.
I’ve also taken up micro-blogging on Twitter this past year and that is enabling different kinds of conversations. What might have been a few comments here are now many 140-character tweets. This blog is still central to my Web presence but I have other windows on the world now.
Thank you for coming by here during the past five years and helping me make sense of my place in the world.
Nicola Avery commented on my last post on changing the structure:
How do you bring everyone together though – we do it in learning through various networks and initiatives but don’t know with this – who would be interested, how to connect them up ? It would be great to start an economic education initiative – but who to involve – as well as individuals – would it be organizations like World Economic Forum as well as the alternative World Social Forum – just some thoughts.
So is it possible to use “frivolous” social media for real change? 
Vinay Gupta thinks so and has written a visionary essay on The Future of Poverty. Vinay sees social network development, coupled with the billions of people who have cell phones, as the necessary change infrastructure for the developing world.
“By the time I retire in 20 years, I believe that poverty that people die of will be a thing of the past. If you do not think that is possible, I ask you to think on this question: if the Linux nerds had needed to learn to grow food and build wells, do you think they could have cooperated to figure it out and implement it everywhere it had to happen?”
From tweets, to blog posts to pictures and videos; statistics can become real people. Events like Charity Water can make a difference. Take the time to read the entire article or at least go to the bottom and find out what you can do.