Seeing motivation with new eyes

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Several years ago, I wrote in Training: A solution looking for a problem, that some barriers to performance which are often overlooked when prescribing training, include:

  1. Unclear expectations (such as policies & guidelines);
  2. Inadequate resources;
  3. Unclear performance measures;
  4. Rewards and consequences not directly linked to the desired performance.

In some cases, these barriers could be addressed and there would be no further requirement for training. Where there is a genuine lack of skills and knowledge, training may be required, but it should only be in cases where the other barriers to performance have been addressed. A trained worker, without the right resources and with unclear expectations, will still not perform up to the desired standard.

I’d like to revisit point #4, Rewards & Consequences, because it is often overlooked by Human Performance Technology (HPT) practitioners and is usually passed over to those folks in Human Resources who handle pay & benefits. There’s a compensation “system” and we’ve just accepted it for many decades. We should have paid more attention to the data.

Recently, Dan Pink has looked at the area of rewards, consequences and motivation at work and has shown that much of what we have taken for granted is just not supported by the research. Extrinsic rewards only work for simple physical tasks and increased monetary rewards can actually be detrimental to performance, especially with knowledge work. The keys to motivation at work are for each person to have a sense of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose, as shown in this video.

In my career, I have drifted away from instructional design methods like ADDIE because they only address the How and not the Why of work performance. I became deeply involved in HPT for several years because it provided good tools for work analysis, but then found that HPT did not help in understanding the social side of work and learning. I have since looked at the Organizational Development and Knowledge Management fields for different perspectives. Once again, I see that most of us in these various disciplines are nothing more than blind monks trying to understand an elephant. We have to look outside our cloistered fields in order to see with new eyes.

Introduction to Social Networking

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Looking for deeper insight on social networks as they relate to work and learning? Here are four guidebooks for the network era: the perpetual beta series – social networking and much more!

Introduction to Social Networking

This was originally posted in 2008, after Michele Martin and I ran what today would be called a MOOC (massively open online course) with over 700 participants. It was called Work Literacy and was hosted on the Ning software platform. As the platform changed its fee structure, I exported a number of the pages and resources to my blog. What follows below the image, is what we suggested in 2008 [updated October 2016].

network-learning-model

Online social networks facilitate connections between people based on shared interests, values, membership in particular groups (i.e., friends, professional colleagues), etc. They make it easier for people to find and communicate with individuals who are in their networks using the Web as the interface.

By some definitions, just about all Web 2.0 tools are a form of social networking, but each platform highlights certain aspects. Ian McCarthy’s honeycomb model is one way to see the differences between consumer social media platforms, as it highlights 7 functions with 7 implications. For example LinkedIn is strong in Identity and also supports Relationships and Reputation. On the other hand, Facebook is strong in Relationships, and also supports Presence, Identity, Conversations, and Reputation. Ning is strong in Groups, and also supports Sharing and Conversations.

honeycomb-social-media

 

There are several different online social networks, but for our purposes, we focused on the three that tend to be used the most by learning professionals in 2008 – Facebook, LinkedIn and Ning. Each of these networks has its own unique style, functionality and patterns of usage. You will also find that different people are active in these different networks.

LinkedIn is primarily a professional network, designed to facilitate linkages between people who are wanting to connect for work-related purposes. It is more “buttoned-down” than Facebook with a more formal culture of relationships and connections. It is also the network of choice for most professionals.

Because LinkedIn is designed for professional networking, there’s a greater emphasis on building a reputation and connecting to employment and business opportunities. LinkedIn Questions and Answers is a way for people to ask questions and receive expert advice. Answers can be rated and people who do this well can improve their LinkedIn reputation. There are also employment listings and an ability to receive recommendations from your connections that then become part of your profile. You can also create and join groups.

Facebook was originally developed for college students to connect, so it has a more informal, social air than you find on LinkedIn. Now open to anyone, you will still find that Facebook is the preferred network for Millennials (2008) who see the encroachment of Boomers and, to a lesser extent, Gen X into the network as cause for some alarm.

Facebook combines the personal and the professional. Members can play games, join groups, share photos, and send each other virtual “gifts.” This is the network where you’re most likely to see both pictures of someone’s weekend activities, as well as a link to their online portfolio or professional website. Many companies are using Facebook as a recruitment tool for Gen Y, while college and university professors are exploring it’s use for their classes.

Ning is what’s referred to as a ‘white label’ network–anyone can use the Ning platform to create their own social network related to a particular topic or area of interest. We operated the MOOC on the Ning platform.

As a learning professional, you can think of Ning in two ways. First, there are a number of Ning networks related to various topics of interest to learning professionals that you could join. In addition, because Ning allows you to create your own network from scratch, you can also use it to facilitate learning events or activities. Therefore Ning offers opportunities for you to be both a joiner/collector and a creator.

One great advantage of Ning for learning is that it allows you set up your own private space that can only be accessed by members. It also offers great functionality, including allowing members to write blogs and engage in forum discussions.

A short note on owning your data

Open source gives you something extra though, and that is the ability to take the whole application, source code and all, and move it or even modify it. For instance, this website is on WordPress, an open source blogging platform. If I am not satisfied with my host, I can take the whole application and set it up somewhere else. I cannot do that with Gmail or Skype or Ning. Therefore, I own my data and the application that makes my data available to my readers. With almost 2,850 posts on this blog, these data are becoming quite important to me as my knowledge base. The decision to use an open source system as well as an OS database gives me a certain amount of flexibility, evidenced by my switch from Drupal to WordPress in 2006. My only costs were labour. I could not have taken my data out of a proprietary system (like Ning) as easily.

More information on owning your data.

Common Features of Social Networks

The ability to create a Profile page–this is your main “home” on the network. Different networks offer varying abilities to personalize your page in terms of look and feel. They may also differ in terms of the types of information you would include, such as name, location, education, etc. Facebook, for example, asks for your relationship status (because it’s more “social”), while on LinkedIn, which is primarily for professional use, does not.

A way to find and link to “friends” or connections–The purpose of a network is connections, so facilitating a members’ ability to find and connect to other people is important. Each network offers different types of search capabilities and once you’ve located a potential friend, you must send an “invitation” to invite them into your personal network.

Privacy Controls–In most networks, your ability to access more detailed information about a person is based on their status as one of your connections; “friends” can see much more information than those who are not your “friends.” You can control who is actually in your personal network by effectively managing who you invite into your network and whose invitations you accept.

The ability to send public and private messages–In Ning and Facebook, you can communicate with your connections either by sending a private message or “writing on their wall.” On LinkedIn, you communicate via person-to-person messages. Ning also provides Forums where members can interact with one another on specific topics (you’re reading this in one of the Ning forums).

Ability to share various digital objects and information–Both Ning and Facebook allow members to share various online items, including photos, videos and RSS feeds. LinkedIn offers some ability to share links, although it’s multimedia capacities are nothing like what you find on Facebook or Ning.

As in real life, the value of an online social network lies in the people. While you can have some fun playing around with some of a network’s online functionality, if you don’t have the right people in your network, it will be a waste. Here are some good resources on building a social network:

To learn more about the basics of social networking, check out Common Craft explanatory videos. You may also want to read this article (2008) on myths and risks.

Further Reading

PKM: social media for professional development

Blogs: Social Media’s Home Base

Social Media for Senior Managers

Social Business & Democracy

Social Networks Require Ownership

Social Media for Onboarding

Tweets from Twits

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Some of the things I learned via Twitter this past week:

@snowded – Good, Bad & Ugly on the Wikipedia

Despite the frustrations, experience tells me that in general right wins out in Wikipedia but there are times when it gets downright frustrating. Right finally won out, at least for the moment on British issues when two disruptive editors were proved sock puppets but it took a year! That’s the Good of the title. In comparison two currently unresolved issues show the dangers that are inherent in a system where some editors are better at playing the game that others.

via @KoreenOlbrish Your company culture is a meaningless platitude

The great corporate cultures are a simple mix: a few polarizing decisions or excesses, with a handful of quirks mixed in. Preferably quirks that reinforce the rest of the culture.

Are you illiterate if you don’t know how to program?

In November 2009, nine researchers from MIT’s prestigious Media Lab were among the eleven authors of a paper that espoused the value of programming as an essential skill for all. For those who cannot program in the 21st century, they declared solemnly, “It’s as if they can ‘read’ but not ‘write.’” Is it true: will we be lost without the ability to create code?

via @smitty1966 Roger Ebert’s take on Twitter: should be Twitter’s manifesto for new users.

I vowed I would never become a Twit. Now I have Tweeted nearly 10,000 Tweets. I said Twitter represented the end of civilization. It now represents a part of the civilization I live in. I said it was impossible to think of great writing in terms of 140 characters. I have been humbled by a mother of three in New Delhi. I said I feared I would become addicted. I was correct.

QUOTES

via @minutrition RT @umairh: in the age of strategy, what counted was knowing the terrain. in the age of wisdom, what counts is knowing the soil.

@VMaryAbraham “These guys are some of the smartest in the microsharing room, but I haven’t yet heard the 140-nugget that makes the case.”

@charlesjennings “ROI on social learning? ‘social networks are necessarily loose-edged and impossible to make fully explicit’ (David Weinberger)”

IP Workshop

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I attended an intellectual property workshop in Moncton today. It was at the  DDx Health Strategies boardroom, a good location with lots of LAN ports and wi-fi. Of course, I hadn’t brought any devices as I assumed that the place would be locked-down. Lesson for next time.

The presentation was good, by a lawyer from Miller Thomson. I noted, “good presenter, but too much use of bullets on slides, should buy copy of Presentation Zen“.  A common criticism of many presenters, I’m finding, today (should follow TED Talks examples).

Highlights on IP, Patents and Trademarks:

1st Question to ask yourself: “What would a competitor need to use to compete effectively?”

IP = results of innovation that have market results.

Conversion to IP: Informal Knowledge => Formal Knowledge (codified assets) => Protected Assets (patents, trademarks, copyright)

Note: Several examples showed how patents stifle innovation, especially in software development.

Advice to Market Entrants: Attack incumbent patents early and confirm their validity.

Patents: Cover new technology but not business methods. Make sure you have clarified and know the difference. All applications should include “use cases” and make sure you have checked your industry for “patent trolls”.

An interesting aside: It seems that China is embracing patents because soon it will become a net exporter of technology, so it needs to protect its investment. At the same time, trademarks are not afforded the same protection and will continue to be appropriated.

Bottom Line: If you are developing intellectual property, get legal advice from a firm that understands this stuff.

Where organizational support needs to go

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Patti Anklam is blogging the E2 Conference and discusses how Tony Byrne distinguishes between Networking and Collaboration with this diagram:

Networking could also be called cooperation, as Stephen Downes helped me define it:

collaboration means ‘working together’. That’s why you see it in market economies. markets are based on quantity and mass.

cooperation means ’sharing’. That’s why you see it in networks. In networks, the nature of the connection is important; it is not simply about quantity and mass …

You and I are in a network – but we do not collaborate (we do not align ourselves to the same goal, subscribe to the same vision statement, etc), we *cooperate*

In the above matrix, I’ve shown how different levels of complexity call for different levels of work practice and group work. This is a key problem with our current systems of human resources (HR) and training systems. The majority of the effort goes into developing individual skills. From recruiting for skills, knowledge and attitude to individual assessments and salary scales, we pay little attention to how groups and organizations work and especially to the greater community from which we all draw support, information and knowledge. Adding “must be a team player” to a job description doesn’t cut it any more.

As our interconnectedness increases in the digital surround, it’s becoming obvious that we are not individuals doing our own thing, who from time-to-time have to deal with others. We are becoming our networks, but most organizational support functions do not  understand networked work and learning. They don’t even speak the language. HR, OD, L&D and training need to develop new literacies to discuss and account for those spheres that are outside the individual, yet are becoming such an important part of each of us.

Those large grey spheres are areas of significant importance and opportunity for the next generation of organizational support. They are also the fields of play for every snake-oil salesman around.

Cognitive load

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Here’s what I learned via Twitter this past week.

Social computing (or Knowledge Management) is not a strategy, it’s a support tool, a sense-making tool, a way of being. via @johnt

You could say we could use new social tools for everything, that’s why we see HR 2.0, Sales 2.0, Marketing 2.0, etc…that’s why existing products are starting to get features like blogs, social networks. So really it’s a way of being or a literacy, rather than a strategy. But yes, to get buy-in you may go the strategy route; but that’s just to get your foot in the door, and it’s also to help the blank faces when they are given tools that aren’t designed to do a specific thing…and what it takes to get adoption (the difference between transactional and interactional).

JOHO the blog: From ~5000 BCE to 2003 CE: 5 exabytes of information were created. In the last 2 days: about 5 exabytes of information were created [exabyte = 1 billion gigabytes]

via @downes: “In other words, it’s less about cramming people into universities and colleges, and more about getting universities and colleges integrated into the wider community.” OLDaily

@willrich45 – “Reading: “Does the Internet Make You Smarter?” by @shirky Nice response to Carr.”

The response to distraction, then as now, was social structure. Reading is an unnatural act; we are no more evolved to read books than we are to use computers. Literate societies become literate by investing extraordinary resources, every year, training children to read. Now it’s our turn to figure out what response we need to shape our use of digital tools.

An excellent set of priorities: 1. Collaboration 2. Performance Support 3. Learnscape Design by @BFChirpy

It’s useful to look at collaboration anxiety through the LADR [Language, Authority, Direction, Role] lens but the cognitive limits to our ability to collaborate are just as important as the social limits. They quote Herbert Simon2 in the introduction:

“solving a problem simply means representing it so as to make the solution transparent.”

One way to make a solution transparent is to reduce cognitive load.

@timoreilly “Excellent: The greatest change in the history of media is not analog to digital but scarcity to surfeit, via @macslocum” Digital Deliverance

As I’ve been writing since 2004, the greatest change in the history of media is that, within the span of a single human generation, people’s access to information has shifted from relative scarcity to surfeit. Billions of people whose access a generation ago to daily changing information was at most one or two or three locally-distributed printed newspapers, one, two, three, four television channels, and one or two dozen radio stations, can now access virtually all of the world’s news and information instantly at home, office, or wherever they go. The economic, historical, and societal ramifications of this epochal change in media will be far more profound than Gutenberg’s invention of moveable type, Tesla’s and Marconi’s invention of broadcasting, or any other past development in media.

QUOTES

via @VasilyKomarov RT @nickthinker: Those who can lead an inexpensive (low cost) life and appreciate the simple and free things are actually the “new rich”!

@reactorcontrol “Tim Berners-Lee describes social networks as “vertical silos”, because they are not interoperable. #dzf4″

University research and industry projects

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I attended the MonctonConnect business collaboration workshop yesterday. The event was sponsored by UNB and started with a presentation by Ken Kent on his joint project with IBM on the improvement of the Java Virtual Machine. They will be hiring 29 students and experienced developers in September. For more information see the CASA site.

Vivendra Bhavsar presented on semantic matching and Weichang Du talked about his cloud computing research, especially the development of new design patterns for business. Du clarified the difference between infrasructure/platform/software “as a service”, citing Oracle’s example.

A presentation on the MITACS program that funds mathematical sciences research projects was followed by a description of the new NSERC Engage program, a $25K grant that fosters the development of new relationship between companies and the academic researchers.

Synergic3

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I had the pleasure of spending the day getting up to date on the Synergic3 project, a joint effort between the National Research Council of Canada, l’Université de Moncton and Desire2Learn. The research agenda covers areas that may be of interest to those working with learning technologies:

DDRM – Distributed Digital Rights Management
MDX – Automated Metadata Extraction
LD Accelerators – Learning Design (and other) Accelerators
WWF – Weak Workflows

Some papers are publicly available here.

This applied research project has already resulted in commercial software:

The new Desire2Learn Instructional Design Wizard™ and Desire2Learn Course Builder™ are complementary to the existing content management tools, and are the result of substantial investment and years of intensive R&D involving clients, strategic research partners, including National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and Université de Moncton, along with many members of the Desire2Learn R&D group. For more information about this research partnership, please see www.synergic3.com.

I have watched this project evolve since 2004 – from idea to business model to proofs-of-concept & prototypes, and now to enterprise software. It has been most interesting and very educational.

Freelance lessons

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Today marks the seventh anniversary of Jarche Consulting. With my semi-sabbatical just beginning, perhaps it’s a good time to reflect on some of what I’ve learned about being a freelance consultant. Here’s my advice:

  1. Start out with some cash in the bank because cash-flow is absolutely critical. You need to keep paying bills through the slow times and it’s almost guaranteed there will be slow times.
  2. Don’t start until you have a paying client. If you can, keep your job until you know for certain that you have a contract. This will help make the leap and avoid early-stage desperation.
  3. Diversify. Much of my paid work is high value, high paying consulting. This is great but it can be sporadic. Find some lower-paying work that will help you through the tough times. This could be seasonal contract work, perhaps in a different field. Also look for sources of residual income. I just started allowing advertising on my site and I regret not starting sooner. A few hundred dollars a month could come in handy and it takes time to build this up. Start early [this revenue stream was discontinued. I now host a community of practice].
  4. Keep your expenses as low as possible and pay with cash whenever you can. The low cost of living in Sackville has been a real advantage. However, look into leasing business equipment because you can claim the entire expense and it helps to keep you cash-positive. I lease my computers.
  5. Be careful what you give away for free. Sharing everything may not be in your best interest. I’ve only recently learned this lesson, as I was fairly certain that the more I shared, the better it would be for business. That’s not quite what has happened.
  6. Make sure you understand where and how money is made in your field. How do clients make purchasing decisions? If brand-name consulting firms are preferred, you may have difficulty marketing your services. Find clients who prefer freelancers.
  7. Join forces with others. The best thing to happen for my business was collaborating with my friends and colleagues at the Internet Time Alliance. Not only is it better for marketing, I also have learned much from them.

Learning on Twitter

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Some of the things I learned on Twitter this past week.

“Research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing.” ~ Werner Von Braun; via @LDguyMN

via @just4you & @jalam1001 – Video: Introduction to the semantic web 3.0

@jalam1001 : “Semantic web will always remain domain dependent niche; instead linked data and data moving and getting recombined again and again”

Adults can learn from 7th grader how a personal learning environment works; via @minutrition Interesting user interface: Symbaloo

Learning through Games:

World without Oil – play it before you live it; via @wesunruh
Superstruct: massively multiplayer forecasting game & Evoke: a 10 week crash course in changing the world; via @moehlert