Supporting workplace learning

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It takes much more than courses delivered through a learning management system to support workplace learning in the network era.

The basic building block, in my experience, is personal knowledge management. People who can seek new information, make sense of it, and share it with their colleagues, will be an asset to any work team. However, they need access to their learning networks while at work, and this is often a challenge. Reduce these barriers, and support PKM practices, and the organization will benefit.

Performance support tools can be developed by observing how work gets done and then creating ways to make it easier, or simpler, or safer. Good performance support enables workers to focus on the important things.

Communities of practice provide the bridge between new ideas and the workplace status quo, ensuring innovation.

Professional networks outside our workplaces keep us connected to new ideas and diverse opinions, which we may not come across, even in large organizations.

I haven’t mentioned knowledge management in general, because I think it underlies all of these components. As Patti Anklam explains:

In this last, the role of the corporation in supporting KM then becomes facilitating personal content management, providing methods (and training) to support information processing, and providing a rich and integrated infrastructure for employees to use the personal content management and the social tools that make sense for each them, their teams, and their communities.

 

Learning by doing

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What does life in perpetual Beta mean for your business on the internet?

First of all, there is no real privacy online [Cluetrain Thesis #13 – There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.]

But … social media are very powerful business tools.

Understand your business first, and then understand social media.

Then set negotiable boundaries and be flexible.

It’s all about Probes [as in Probe-Sense-Respond]

How to launch a Probe, such as a community of practice:

1. What are you testing?
2. How will you know if you have made progress?
3. What is the smallest probe we can do?
4. Measure the results.
5. Do it again, and again, with slight variations as needed.
6. Measure the results and either amplify it or stop doing it.

Ensure that over 50% of your probes fail.

Is this how your organization functions? What are doing to encourage failure and learning by doing?

Here is how Jane Hart and I have been doing some probes this past year.

We started running workshops at the Social Learning Centre after a discussion about getting connected with our actual customers. For example, in most consulting projects, the client is a manager/exectutive but the end-users are distributed throughout the company. The client may be satisfied but we often do not get to interact with all of the actual users. We thought we would like to try something different from a standard consulting arrangement.

We thought it would be good to try something that could be purchased directly by individuals. Jane had done some online workshops previously and had learned what works and what doesn’t, though this is constantly changing, as we have learned. I did my first workshop on personal knowledge mastery in April and  35 people signed up. I learned that there was an additional need for a live meeting that would get people talking a bit more, so this was added. I ran two more workshops on PKM and kept adjusting the schedule and resources. It was definitely popular. Jane and I then tried out a five-week Summer Camp that finishes this week. This was something quite new and a real joint effort. We learned that it’s a lot easier to do these workshops as a team.

As these workshops progressed, we wondered if this was the best way to reach out and if we could build a larger community. There are currently +1,700 members registered at the SLC, so we had an idea that some of them were looking for what we can offer in the way of workshops. In slightly over two weeks (September 2012), we are launching a full year of workshops, with six themes, a Summer camp, and a private Salon for discussions amongst community members. Themes are: PKM; social media for professional development; from training to performance support; online communities; social learning in business; and enterprise community management.

We don’t know how this will go, as it is another probe. It’s based on what we have learned so far, but we don’t kid ourselves that this will be a huge success. The feedback to date has been quite positive, so we are confident that most participants will gain something. We are doing it for one year, and during that time we will assess, monitior and evaluate our progress. Where it will lead, we do not know.

My hope is that the Social Learning Centre will become a dynamic community that we can support and guide with a gentle hand. Dealing with people who are directly paying you is a validating experience. Repeat customers mean you are doing something right. As people can vote with their feet, we will have to stay connected to the needs of community members. This year has been a wonderful learning experience for me and I am sure that next year will be as well.

By the way, if you are looking for an example of a failed probe, one workshop I proposed three years ago, has never been conducted.

Let the droids do the boring stuff

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Is simpler work getting automated and outsourced? I think so. That leaves complex and creative work that continue to be in demand, and even increase. Work that has a high degree of task standardization is getting replaced by machines, and this trend will only accelerate.

Andrew McAfee discusses technology’s impact on the labour force in a TEDx Boston presentation, particularly 1) language translation (already here & growing) and 2) automated vehicles (coming soon). If something as complex as translating an article or negotiating a vehicle in heavy traffic is already being automated, how many of today’s jobs will go that way? There will be less demand for standardized human labour, and the whole notion of a standard job will quietly go away. The end of Taylorism cannot come soon enough, in my opinion.

McAfee says that networked computers are as revolutionary as was the steam engine, in how they change the way people do work. The steam engine overcame our physical limitations and computers will help us overcome our cognitive limitations. Here’s why, says McAfee:

  • economies run on ideas, which drive innovation
  • computers are making innovation more open and inclusive (especially for the bottom of the pyramid)
  • technology is freeing us to do better things and this trend will increase

We are not just losing standardized work tasks but we are gaining the tools and the time to do greater task variety, and of our own choosing. Networked computers allow us to learn informally and share tacit knowledge, leaving the boring stuff to the droids. Probably our greatest limitation is our ability to cast away our old ideas about how we learn. We need to think for ourselves and take advantage of network technologies, wider social connections, improved peer interactions, and informal learning. Economies run on ideas, not assembly lines. Work is learning, and learning is the work.

empty space

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Here are some of the observations and insights that were shared via Twitter this past week.

I have selected only one insight this week, in addition to some empty space …

 

 

 

 

The Heretic’s Toolbox: Seeking the Emptiness by adam weisblatt – “We fill our brains with information, but it’s within the empty spaces of not knowing that we actually learn.”

 

Idea management requires shared power

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Nancy Dixon discusses The Three Eras of Knowledge Management, an excellent read on how lead organizations are using idea management. This post confirms, in my mind, the three principles of net work, or how work gets done in the network era. The description of convening  is similar to openness, though in the explanation below, it is a more deliberate process than what might be thought of as a community of practice. .

The NASA example illustrates the three enablers of the third era, 1) convening, 2) cognitive diversity and 3) transparency.

1. Convening
Convening is the skill and practice of bringing groups together to develop understanding of complex issues, create new knowledge and spur innovation. It is about:
• designing meetings as conversations rather than presentations
• identifying who needs to be in the conversation, including those who do the work and are impacted by it
• framing the question in a way that opens thinking
• arranging the space to facilitate conversation
• using small groups as the unit of learning
I have written about convening and the role of the leader in The Power of the Conversation Architect to Address Complex, Adaptive Challenges

Cognitive Diversity
Cognitive diversity is the deliberate use of difference to bring new understanding to an issue. When faced with complex issues our inclination is to collect more data, survey, or assign a task force to conduct interviews; when what is needed is a new way to frame the issue. Cognitive diversity brings people trained in different heuristics, problem solving strategies, interpretations, and perspectives into the room. Cognitive diversity can be found in different parts of the organization (e.g. marketing, finance, engineering), in different disciplines (e.g. biology, neuroscience, archeology), or outside the organization (e.g. suppliers, customers, consultants, academicians, alliances).

Transparency
Transparency includes the willingness of management to say, “I don’t know” and therefore to employ the organization’s collective knowledge. It is also about management providing all the available information and data on an issue so that those convened have what they need to do the work of sensemaking. Organizational members also have a role in transparency, that is, to be open about what is happening at their level, rather than hiding or discounting bad news to appease management – to bring the best available knowledge to bear on organizational issues

What I find implicit in the notion of idea management though, is shared power. Just doing idea management, like narration of work, is not enough. If the high-value work today is in facing complexity, not in addressing problems for which a formulaic or standardized responses have been developed, then learning and solving problems together is a real business advantage. If idea management requires those in control to say, “I don’t know”, then there are many organizations where this will not happen. If idea management requires  employees “being open about what is happening at their level”, then personal knowledge management skills need to be widespread (something I have yet to see in most organizations).  Command & control remain the major stumbling blocks in effective idea management. However, it is great to see that there are lead organizations, like NASA,  setting the example.

Negotiating between chaos and project deadlines

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I watched Dave Snowden talk about tacit knowledge, and many other things, at the State of the Net Conference. Several comments are worth repeating, in my opinion:

If we don’t understand the why of things, we can never scale the how.

Management science regularly confuses correlation with causation.

We will always know more than we can say. We will always say more than we can write down.

Fallacy: If you give the right information, to the right people, at the right time, they will act accordingly. As “pattern-seekers” we may not even “see” the data when it is presented.

Human knowledge requires mediation.

Resilience comes from early detection, fast recovery & fast exploitation of the opportunities presented, which then becomes a new paradigm. We need to architect organizations based on an assumption of failure, not an assumption of success.

As I reflected on Dave’s comments I thought about my previous presentation on coherent communities and how it is important to connect people in the most appropriate way for the problem at hand. It seems that chaos abounds on the Internet, with a flood of ideas  and nobody really knows what is causation and what is correlation. However, there may be something to be learned here, hence the value of disparate social networks. Communities of practice have the openness and flexibility to deal with complex problems as people can share freely but are in a constrained problem space, so that over time we can share more than what we say or write down. Meanwhile, getting work done inside the organization has to be further constrained, and focused on projects where we can see the relationships between cause and effect.

For the knowledge worker, and for networked organizations, the challenge is in negotiating, and understanding, all three spaces. It is necessary to know where failure is optimal (early) and how to mediate knowledge from the chaotic edge to the work bench. Work needs to be simultaneously informal & structured and balanced between both goals & opportunities. Constantly negotiated boundaries (as Dave says, it’s like raising teenagers) can help organizations become more resilient. Identifying the boundaries is a good start.

 

Narration is only the first step

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I think that narration is one of the key principles of an effective networked workplace, or social business. Narration is making one’s tacit knowledge (what one feels) more explicit (what one is doing with that knowledge). Narrating work is a powerful behaviour changer, as long-term bloggers can attest. In an organization, narration can take many forms. It could be a regular blog; sharing day-to-day happenings in activity streams; taking pictures and videos; or just having regular discussions. Developing good narration skills, like adding value to information, takes time and practice. Narrating work also means taking ownership of mistakes.

Jane Bozarth discusses the nuts and bolts of narrating our work in this Learning Solutions Magazine article:

By sharing what we are doing and how we are learning, we distribute the tacit knowledge otherwise so hard to capture; invite feedback and encouragement from others; invite others to learn with us; document our work and learning for future use; and tie our learning to the efforts of others. Here’s a true story about physical rehab turned learning turned hobby turned community of practice turned two successful businesses, all via informal, social means. And all within six months.

The story that Jane tells happens outside the walls of an organization. I think this is important to note, because one of my other principles for an effective networked workplace is shared power. Shared power enables faster reaction times so those closest to the situation can take action. In complex situations there is no time to write a detailed assessment. Those best able to address the situation have marinated in it for some time. They couldn’t sufficiently explain it to someone removed from the problem if they wanted to anyway. This shared power is enabled by trust. Power in knowledge-based organizations must be distributed in order to nurture trust.

But sharing power is really difficult. In the video Dare to Disagree, via Jim Hays, Margaret Heffernan describes how people inside organizations, and professional communities, are afraid to challenge conventional wisdom, even when the data are overwhelming. The power structure exerts great pressure to conform. Only organizations that share power and encourage conflict can advance different ideas. As she says, “openness alone can’t drive change”.

Power-sharing decreases the fear of conflict. When those at the top hold most, or all, of the power, then  those near the bottom will try to avoid conflict. But conflict is essential for learning. As Heffernan describes in the video, only in trusted relationships can conflict for learning happen. Sharing power creates trust.

Unfortunately, power is addictive. For example, simulations reveal that when there are no levels of hierarchy, everyone shares in the rewards of the system. When only one level level is added, then those at the top get 89% while those only one level down have to share the remaining 11%. No wonder hierarchies are so appealing. Power, and its effects on organizational performance, are holding us back. This is why we need to experiment with new and much flatter work structures.

As Heffernan says, the truth will not set us free until we have the courage to use it. Our organizational structures, and their power systems, are a major part of the problem. Command and control are the barriers to an effective networked workplace. I have written that Enterprise 2.0 and social business are hollow shells without democracy because without power sharing, narration of work & transparency are a useless two-legged stool.

 

Complex is the new normal

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“Change becomes chaotic when employees see and hear two or more different change methods and messages“, writes Jay Deragon in managing on the edge of chaos. Jay has an image that shows that ordered organizations need to empower their employees to deal with more complexity, while those in chaos need to gain alignment in order to get out of chaos. Complexity is becoming the “normal” state, and it can be dealt with, but not with traditional management methods.

I have combined Jay’s image with the Dave Snowden’s Cynefin framework, and some added arrows, here:

Complex is the new normal. However, it requires more than just discarding some of our traditional ways of dealing with change. It also means staying out of disorder:

The fifth domain is Disorder, which is the state of not knowing what type of causality exists, in which state people will revert to their own comfort zone in making a decision. ~ Wikipedia

Not knowing whether you are in a chaotic or complicated state is a large part of the problem with organizational change initiatives. Thinking you can manage your way through the change assumes a complicated state, where you can sense & analyze before responding. Assuming a chaotic state means acting before sensing, and often getting it wrong. If the situation facing the organization is indeed complex, then neither approach is suitable. The approach is to Probe, Sense & Respond.

To shift to a complex reality, the seven essential criteria for an increasingly complex world would be a good starting point for most organizations, something I rarely see in action. More detail is provided in a guide to complexity and organizations. Managing organizations on the edge of chaos needs an understanding of complexity. Most organizations and institutions have a long way to go, and I am sure that employees will continue hearing two or more conflicting messages about change, as their leaders flounder for control.

Education and, of course, the Net

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Here are some of the observations and insights that were shared via Twitter this past week. 

Roger Schank: the on line education revolution: its all about the design

Learning by doing is really how we learn: Teaching others to do this is the next step in the education revolution

@aronsolomon – Generation Why

We had two sources of information: adults in our limited networks and the few books in the public library. We learned painfully passively and tentatively. We were pre-pre-digital, Generation Why is post-digital. They have eclipsed the foundation of their digital native-ness to make information work for them. Done well, it’s an art form of depth and texture.

@CathyNDavidson – Standardizing Human Ability – via @quinnovator

And in the first burst of Fordist assembly line labor, educators took the apparatus of scientific labor management and turned it into scientific learning management. Virtually all of the protocols now in place for measuring academic success are based on Taylorist principles. Not on ages’ old traditions of learning, but on a system of reducing human qualities to measurable, standardized productivity designed for the assembly line.

@S4pattern – @jerrymichalski Education as Embracing Agency

This caught my attention: “What we really want is for kids to have again a sense of agency.” He variously describes agency as: permission; the ability to do something, to act on something; a sense that it’s ok to go out and change your world, to try to make a difference; a responsibility for the task at hand.

@dweinberger – Louis C.K. and the Decent Net, or How Louis won the Internet

The Internet is a calamity of norms. Too many cultures, too many localities, too many communities, each with its own norms. And there’s no global agreement on principles that will sort things out for us. In fact, people who disagree based on principles often feel entitled to demonize their opponents because they differ on principles. The only hope for living together morally on the Net is to try not to be dicks to one another. I’m not saying it’s obvious how to apply that rule. And I’m certainly not saying that we’ll succeed at it. But now that we’ve been thrown together without any prior agreement on norms or principles, what else can we do except try to treat each other with trust and a touch of sympathy?

Coherent communities

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Jay Cross has initiated an online conversation about the Coherent Organization/Enterprise:

At the Internet Time Alliance, we’re big fans of narrating our work. We encourage clients to get their people to narrate their work, through blogs or other sharing media, for a number of reasons.

If you are a blogger, you know how blogging makes you reflect on your experience and draw conclusions. What’s more, if you are transparent about what you’re doing, your colleagues and acquaintances will know when and how to lend you a hand. Sharing your discoveries adds to the value of the networked Commons; I think of it as a requirement of good network citizenship.

In the last ten days, Harold Jarche, Clark Quinn, and I have been building on one another’s thoughts in public. We’re each teasing out the meaning of what we call the Coherent Organization with models.

Let me narrate my work so far.

I am interested in the role of communities of practice in knowledge sharing. I have been looking at how communities of practice can bridge our social networks with our work teams, helping us get the job done while being open to innovative ideas. This presentation is a work in progress but I think it is ready to go public and get your feedback. Here is my logic:

  1. Sharing complex knowledge requires strong social ties, but only working with our peers may blind us to outside ideas.
  2. Networks with diverse and weak ties are the best places to get new ideas, yet these are often unstructured and difficult to manage.
  3. Communities of practice, which share strong & weak social ties and have some purpose & structure, can bridge the gap between getting the job done and innovating.
  4. Therefore, encouraging and supporting communities of practice is essential for the knowledge-based enterprise.

Effective, or coherent, knowledge-sharing requires not just collaboration, but also cooperation and especially connections (communities).