Pulling informal learning

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Take a look at these 8 demand-side knowledge management principles by Nick Milton.

  1. People don’t pay attention to knowledge until they actually need it.
  2. People value knowledge that they request more highly than knowledge that is unsolicited.
  3. People won’t use knowledge, unless they trust its provenance.
  4. Knowledge has to be reviewed in the user’s own context before it can be received.
  5. One of the biggest barriers to accepting new knowledge is old knowledge.
  6. Knowledge has to be adapted before it can be adopted.
  7. Knowledge will be more effective the more personal it is.
  8. They won’t really know it until they do it.

They highlight the difference between Push and Pull learning. Training is Push. Informal learning is mostly Pull. Look at what Push can mean in the context of demand-side KM:

  1. How often are training courses aligned with the moment of need?
  2. Do participants request and value compliance training?
  3. How credible are trainers with those in the business units they support?
  4. How much time and affordance is there to put training courses into individual context?
  5. How is old knowledge respected and then challenged in a non-confrontational manner?
  6. What kinds of tools are available to adapt new knowledge?
  7. How personal are courses and classes?
  8. What opportunities do people have after a course to practice and get feedback?

There are many do-it-yourself applications available today that let people take control of their learning. Traditional courses can be designed or taken from a wide variety of sources, such as Udemy. Professional communities on platforms like LinkedIn abound. Knowledge workers are shifting their professional development from Push to Pull. They are also more in control of who Pushes to them, through social networks and other sources of online information. Networked sense-making frameworks like PKM can give more control over one’s learning.

For learning & development departments, a Pull workplace changes the traditional expert-led dynamic of content creation. The shift to more Pull and less directed Push learning also challenges the role of the instructional designer. The ID, who spends a long time getting a course “just right” with  learning objectives aligned to Bloom’s taxonomy, engaging graphics, and absolutely correct wording; may be becoming an anachronism. By the time the instructionally-sound course has been developed, the work requirements may have changed (again).

It’s not that informal learning support is better than anything instructional design can deliver, it’s really a question of time. Getting roughly integrated knowledge assets and professional advice from a network is better than waiting six months for a polished course to be developed. It’s also a matter of  increasingly complex work requirements and dealing more with exception-handling, rather than routine procedures. Exceptions cannot be taught through training; but learning about them on the job, and in networks, can and should be supported.

In the network era, the days of an instructional design team working in splendid isolation to produce award-winning courses may be numbered. The pace of change and the level of complexity are outpacing the ability to Push the knowledge artifacts needed for an agile workforce. Connections are more important than content in the networked enterprise. As workers take control of their learning by Pulling it in, the training department had better adapt.

Engage, out loud

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Why Google Isn’t Making Us Stupid … or Smart, by Chad Wellmon is a very good look at our relationships with knowledge, how we codify it, and how we connect to it.

Only at this macro-level of analysis can we make sense of the fact that Google’s search algorithms do not operate in absolute mechanical purity, free of outside interference. Only if we understand the Web and our search and filter technologies as elements in a digital ecology can we make sense of the emergent properties of the complex interactions of humans and technology: gaming the Google system through search optimization strategies, the decision by Google employees (not algorithms) to ban certain webpages and privilege others (ever notice the relatively recent dominance of Wikipedia pages in Google searches?). The Web is not just a technology but an ecology of human-technology interaction. It is a dynamic culture with its own norms and practices.

A key idea here is that our actions are much more important than any technology. One group that has developed new norms for knowledge-sharing is the software development community. Dave Weinberger talks about public learning, what I call learning out loud (LOL), in this video where he describes how developers are “learning in a way that simultaneously makes the environment smarter”.

Dave’s video is his contribution to the Adidas blog carnival on a new way of working and learning.

John Stepper describes working out loud as the most practical way to start online collaboration.

Confused about what to write? Simply post about what you’re working on every day. Who you’re meeting with. The research you’re doing. Articles you find relevant. Lessons you learned. Mistakes you made.

The form factor of short posts that are easy-to-skim make this kind of narration practical – for both the author and the audience.

This reinforces my three key principles for net work: narration, transparency, shared power. By changing our norms and practices, we can use the Internet in ways that are best for people, workplaces and society. But first, we have to be engaged.

Complexity thinking

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So in summary systems thinking is about closing the gap to an ideal future state using and focusing on individuals while complexity thinking is about understanding the present, and evolving through collective action to a future state which could not be fully anticipated but which is sustainable and resilient. Now I know its a lot more complex than that, and also that some of the greats before popularisation are probably turning in their graves, or their emeritus chairs when they see what has happened. However systems thinking is pervasive, and its linked with models and ideas such as memes and Dawkin’s attitudes in general, i.e. we have an emphasis on causality at the cost of evolution. ~ Dave Snowden

Thanks to John Tropea

Social systems

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

“A System is a set of variables sufficiently isolated to stay constant long enough for us to discuss it. ~ W. Ross Ashby” via @cyetain

@dlnorman – “that’s not curation, it’s hoarding. curation is a mindful act of storytelling, which is not what these scoop.it / paper.li things do.” [I definitely agree]

@JeanHouston – “It is as if a worldwide nervous system is in the works. Each of us is a brain cell in that system, with powers that once belonged to kings”

@metaphorage – “Life is complex, unpredictable & messy: just admit it & act accordingly. “7habits” & “10 Rules” can be helpful, but overly simplistic”

@HildyGottlieb – “Nobody convinces anybody of anything. People come to their own learning. What does that mean for how you’re doing your work?”

The rise of social everything – by @marciamarcia

The organization began using social tools as an internal document repository for operations; yet over time, it grew to become a dynamic communications tool across their internal and external partners. By capturing learning in the moment, the organization could quickly leverage the collective knowledge of its consultants and provide more value and collective intelligence, to the organizations it served.

Networked Individualism: what in the heck is that? – via @LindaP_MD

At the same time, the networked individualism operating system requires that people gain new social skills to operate within it. They need to develop new strategies for handling challenges as they arise. They must devote more time and energy to practicing the art of networking than their ancestors did in order to get their needs met. They can no longer passively let the village take care of them and protect them. They must actively network to leverage the human resources they need, and they must actively manage the boundaries of their self-presentation in these networks.

Organizational models for social business – via @VernaAllee

You can’t plan networks or force fit them into any pattern. You can’t constrain a network to be purely within your own organization – at least not if you want to get any value from it. Networks involve customers/citizens and partners. In fact every participant in a network is a partner – not in some corny marketing sense but in the reality of the exchanges in the network. Networks support communication across channels you didn’t predict in advance. They cross any organizational unit you might have defined – even following the VSM [Viable Systems Model]. For all these reasons networks are great sources of innovation – and that innovation is emergent.

The learning organization: an often-described, but seldom-observed phenomenon

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What should a true learning organization look like?

W. Edwards Deming understood that systemic factors account for more organizational problems, and therefore more potential for change, than any individual’s performance. The role of managers should be to manage the system, not the individual functions. The real barrier to systemic change, such as becoming a learning organization, is command & control management. This is why the third principle for net work, shared power, is a major stumbling block to becoming a learning organization. Narration of work and transparency are easy, compared to sharing power. But learning is what organizations need to do well in order to survive and thrive.

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It's time to focus on your LQ

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Learning is everywhere in the connected workplace. Networked professionals need more than advice (training); they need ongoing, real-time, constantly-changing, collaborative, support.  However, many of us have relegated our own learning to the specialists over the years – teachers, instructors, professors. We’re not used to handling all of this learning on our own. But if we want to thrive in complexity and if we want our work teams to be effective, we have to integrate our learning into the workflow.

On 11 June 2012 we will start the next online personal knowledge management workshop.  PKM is the foundation of connected work. It’s up to each of us to develop, and continuously revise, our sense-making frameworks as we work inside and outside the increasingly permeable walls of our organizations. Unlimited information, distributed work, self-publishing, and ridiculously easy group-forming all point in one direction – the organization will no longer address all your learning needs in the network era.

Additional skills are needed to help groups and teams learn as they work. Narration is a base skill for the networked workplace. Other skills include network weaving, curation, and network analysis.  We also have workshops on how to use social media for professional development, as well as setting up and sustaining an online community. These workshops are not just for ‘learning professionals’ but for any role; from sales to marketing to production, and especially for management. More workshops are in development and we are always interested in getting suggestions. Custom workshops and skills coaching can also be arranged.

To improve our own and our organization’s learning quotient, we need to look at ways to be more self-directed,  social, and agile learners. Life in perpetual Beta requires a high LQ.

Leadership is an emergent property of a balanced network

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This is my second recent quote from Mark Fidelman, who writes in Forbes. He has a good perspective on the integration of work and learning, and how technology is only a very small part of social business.

Investment in social business platforms and mobile solutions are great – we’re finally on the right path. But ignoring the workplace infrastructure to accommodate them will be a missed opportunity. We have to move away from the Mad Men era office, to digital workplaces that take advantage of the entire social, mobile and content being produced by an organization’s greatest asset.

Its employees.

Fidelman discusses the new role of management in the future workplace.

The new role of management is to facilitate the finding of solutions; not to dictate them. The new role of management is to facilitate “connections”, to match people with the right skills and abilities to projects where those skills are most needed. The new role of management is to remove hurdles to engagement by building approvals mechanisms into workflows. Management won’t do this alone. They will leverage new technologies that automatically introduce employees to employees, partners and suppliers in order to build relationships that help you and the organization become more effective.

Culture is an emergent property of people working together. For example, trust only emerges if knowledge is shared and diverse points of view are accepted. As networked, distributed workplaces become the norm, trust will emerge from environments that are open, transparent and diverse. As a result of improved trust, leadership will be seen for what it is; an emergent property of a balanced network [“in-balance” may be a better term for this changing state] and not some special property available to only the select few.

Network Culture

Building on my previous post – that in complex environments, loose hierarchies and strong networks are the best organizing principle – here is my view of how a transparent, diverse & open workplace should function.

Networked contributors (full-time, part-time, contractors) need to work together in a networked environment that facilitates cooperation and collaboration. This is why the narration of work  and PKM will become critical skills, as work teams ebb and flow according to need, but the network must remain connected and resilient. A key function of leaders (think servant leadership) will be to listen to and analyze what is happening. From this bird’s-eye view, those in a leadership role can help set the work context according to the changing environment and then work on building consensus.

I’ve noted before that the power of social networks, like electricity, will inevitably change almost every business model. Leaders need to understand the importance of organizational architecture. Working smarter in the future workplace starts by organizing to embrace networks, manage complexity, and build trust.

Networks thrive in complexity

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In complex environments, weak hierarchies and strong networks are the best organizing principle. One good example of complexity that we can try to fathom is nature itself. Networks thrive in nature. As Howard Bloom stated in a speech at Yale University:

One the many lessons bacteria teach with their colonies of trillions is this. When it comes to groups, Nature does not favor tribes, she favors size … She favors humongous social groups that network their information so well that they form a high-powered collective intelligence, a group brain.

The Internet has given us a glimpse of the power of networks. We are just beginning to realize how we can use networks as our primary form of living and working. David Ronfeldt has developed the TIMN framework to explain this – Tribal; Institutional; Markets; Networks. The TIMN framework shows how we have evolved as a civilisation. It has not been a clean progression from one organizing mode to the next but rather each new form built upon and changed the previous mode. He sees the network form not as a modifier of previous forms, but a form in itself that can address issues that the three other forms could not address. This point is very important when it comes to things like implementing social business (a network mode) within corporations (institutional + market modes). Real network models (e.g. wirearchy) are new modes, not modifications of the old ones.

Another key point of this framework is that Tribes exist within Institutions, Markets AND Networks. We never lose our affinity for community groups or family, but each mode brings new factors that influence our previous modes. For example, tribalism is alive and well in online social networks. It’s just not the same tribalism of several hundred years ago. Each transition also has its hazards. For instance, while tribal societies may result in nepotism, networked societies can lead to deception.

Ronfeldt states that the initial tribal form informs the other modes and can have a profound influence as they evolve.

Balanced combination is apparently imperative: Each form (and its realm) builds on its predecessor(s). In the progression from T through T+I+M+N, the rise of a new form depends on the successes (and failures) achieved through the earlier forms. For a society to progress optimally through the addition of new forms, no single form should be allowed to dominate any other, and none should be suppressed or eliminated. A society’s potential to function well at a given stage, and to evolve to a higher level of complexity, depends on its ability to integrate these inherently contradictory forms into a well-functioning whole. A society can constrain its prospects for evolutionary growth by elevating a single form to primacy — as appears to be a tendency at times in market-mad America.

Each form also seems to be triggered by major societal changes in communications. The written word enabled institutions, the printed word fostered regional and global markets, and the electric (digital) word is empowering worldwide networks.

Here is David Ronfeldt giving a 20-minute overview of TIMN.

You are social!

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

@ChrisNahr – “Socrates would haunt discussion forums. And probably get banned for trolling.” – via @lemire

@nilofer – “In the Industrial Era, the unit of power = Organization. In Information era, power was = Data. Social Era, unit of power = Connection”

@MeetingBoy – “Boss asked for ‘some impressive-sounding stats to support my presentation.’ Decision first, then check the data. That’s how LEADERS do it.”

@montberte – “With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine.”

Five Whys – Business Plans Don’t Work – via @TimKastelle

Let’s take a look at some of the activities which are not being done:

  • The business is not validating who its customers are, what problems the product is solving, or how well the product is meeting customer needs
  • The business is not finding out which customers will actually buy the product, which distribution channels and pricing strategies work best, or whether the sales model will scale
  • The business is not revisiting the business plan in any way, or making any corrections as it discovers new information about its customers, its suppliers or the operational activity needed to generate revenue
  • The business is not controlling cash burn, or waiting to find out whether the business model actually works before committing itself to a series of execution milestones and sales targets

@JohnnieMoore – Hierarchy, innovation, disruption

I think innovation often eludes big organisations because they’re just too fat-fingered to pick it up.

I wasn’t there and can’t judge the difference all this made but I am struck by how easy it is to reinforce hierarchy in the name of constraining it.

@sjgill – The unexamined leadership program is not worth doing [I also came across a similar post on measuring the effectiveness of a leadership programme, by Paul Kearns]

Evaluation is not an option; it’s an integral part of the learning process. If you want a leadership development program to be more than entertainment and you want it to achieve learning that results in significant performance improvement, than you must evaluate the program and the organizational environment of that program.

@EskoKilpi – in the social workplace, there can never be just one “boss”

Thus, an individual always has many leaders that she follows. You might even claim that from the point of view taken here, it is highly problematic if a person only has one leader. It would mean attention blindness as a default state.

Following is at best a process of active, creative learning through observing and simulating desired practices. Leading is doing one’s work in an open and transparent way. Leading is engaging with people and being openly reflective. Patterns of recognition and patterns of communication are the most predictive activities there are in forecasting viability, agility and also human well-being.

Identity is a pattern in time. The individuals are forming in the social. You can’t add a social layer to what you do, or to your IT-systems – you are social!

Victorian Family socializing at the Beach
On the Shores of Bognor Regis by Alexander M. Rossi

It’s all about networks

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It’s all about networks. Understanding networks that is. This is the shift our organizations, institutions, and society must make in order to thrive in an always-on, interconnected world.

Changing the mechanistic mindset: Work is changing as we get more connected. The old ways of organizing work are becoming obsolete, as 84% of workers in the US planned to change their jobs in 2011. Workers want out, in spite of a lacklustre economy. We are seeing mass, decentralized and social movements that confront existing hierarchies, politically and in the workplace. The uprisings in North Africa were good attention getters. There is no normal. All our institutions are facing the challenges of always-on connectedness and the need to adapt to Internet time. Social media are just the current tip of the Internet iceberg, making work relationships much more complex. Workers do have to step up, but they also need the tools and authority. Encouraging workplace practices like personal knowledge management is a start.

It’s the network: Thinking like a node in a network and not as a position in a hierarchy is the first mental shift that’s required to move to a collaborative enterprise. Nurturing Creativity is now a management responsibility. The old traits of the industrial/information worker were Intellect, Diligence, and Obedience. The new traits of the collaborative worker are Passion, Creativity, and Initiative. These cannot be commoditized. People cannot be creative on demand. The collaborative enterprise requires looser hierarchies and stronger networks.

Network Thinking: One major challenge in helping organizations improve collaboration and knowledge-sharing is getting people to see themselves as nodes in various networks, with different types of relationships between them.

Network Walking: One way to convince managers of the importance of network thinking is to force them to connect with their networks by getting out of their offices, physically and virtually. It’s not a question of what keeps managers awake at night, it’s what can we do to make sure they are awake to their networks during the day. Go for a walk.

Finally, this RSA Animate video provides an excellent overview of the power of networks and the challenge of mapping an increasingly complex world. It’s well worth watching.