Aggregate Understand Connect

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I’ve changed one word, but doesn’t it make more sense like this?

As I talk about PKM here or with this graphic and discussion, “understand” is more descriptive of the human sense-making activities than “filter” is. Perhaps I should go back and change these posts to reflect what we are actually doing – understanding as part of the sense-making process.

This is inspired  partially by The Problem with DIKW as well as comments by Stephen Downes, but I still want to keep the PKM concept as simple as possible, for business reasons, not academic ones.

Aggregate Understand Connect

Create you own blog – review

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CreateYourOwnBlog

I have to admit that I enjoyed reading through Create your own blog by Tris Hussey. The subtitle, 6 easy projects to start blogging like a pro, did not attract me initially but the book is well written, covers a lot of ground and is quite helpful. The first three chapters cover the basics and then there are sections on personal blogs, business blogs, blogs for artists, etc. If you’re 18 years old and a digital native, you don’t need this book and neither do you if you’ve already been blogging for several years. However, there is still a good segment of the population who may be interested in this book.

Create your own blog is quite different from Social Media for Dummies which I reviewed a while back. The introduction says it all, “It’s all about storytelling”. This book is well-researched, based on experience (it seems that Tris started blogging about the same time I began this blog) and includes lots of anecdotes – more learning through storytelling.

There are also details on podcast blogs, video blogs and fairly up to date information on Twitter and Facebook. It’s the kind of book you give your boss, your colleague thinking about blogging, or someone who is looking at a second career as a free-agent. I have several clients for whom this book would be perfect and the list price is very reasonable. On top of that, Tris lives in Canada!

Would I recommend this book to someone starting out blogging? If you’re over 30, definitely yes, because you probably won’t dig through all the online forums to find out what you really need.

You can check out the book’s website for more information sixbloggingprojects.com.

From the Summary:

One of the hallmarks of blogging has been its culture of transparency and openness, which means that it is expected that you will disclose affiliate links and other similar things (like when I receive a free product for review that I get to keep). Not disclosing this information can get you in hot water. It’s happened to even prominent bloggers (who should know better), so don’t feel alone, but it’s best to just avoid the whole issue and let people know.

[Disclosure: The publisher, Pearson Canada,  sent me a complimentary copy of this book and I am an Amazon.com affiliate. If you click through the book link and order a book, I will receive a small commission. Over the past few years I have only used these commissions to purchase more books and write reviews on them. I have given most of these books away – to clients, friends and conference attendees.]

Learning to work anew

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My Net Work Learning presentation on Slideshare has garnered a fair number of views in the past two weeks and I’m assuming there’s an interest in the themes presented. Slides alone are rather limited in getting a message across, so I’ve created a slide show with audio that covers most of the first part of the larger presentation. I will make more of these if there is any demand.

I like the audio & slide format because I don’t need video editing skills and the pictures/words seem to work well together. I used Jing Pro to make this.

Click image or link to launch MP4 (4 minutes):

Net Work Learning Screenshot

Net Work Learning

Presentation available on Slideshare (slightly modified)

Learning is (still) conversation

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The folks at Scotland’s GoodPractice for leaders & managers have a white paper on How Managers Learn, with some interesting, but not surprising, results. They conducted a survey to find out more about informal learning in the workplace, inspired by Jay Cross, who has shown that “informal learning plays an important part in the learning and performance landscape“.

Respondents reported that the  most-used as well as the most effective informal learning method was: informal chats with colleagues. Other top-rated methods include the use of (external) search engines; trial & error; informal on-the-job instruction; and professional reading. Without looking at any other ways to encourage informal learning among leaders (everyone is a leader in a knowledge-intensive workplace) – just promoting informal conversations would be beneficial. That’s one small step for each person; one giant leap for the organization.

Yes, learning is conversation (2005).

informl_member.jpg

Here’s a quote from Jay’s book on Informal Learning:

Conversations

“Conversation is the most powerful learning technology ever invented. Conversations carry news, create meaning, foster cooperation, and spark innovation. Encouraging open, honest conversation through work space design, setting ground rules for conversing productively, and baking conversation into the corporate culture spread intellectual capital, improve cooperation, and strengthen personal relationships.”

There are many great tools and technologies to facilitate conversation, which I’ve discussed here and used with clients and partners, but the key is having a culture of conversation. Part of it is just being interested in what’s happening in the enterprise. It’s likely easier for managers to be interested in what is happening because they are empowered to do something. The challenge for organizations is to get everyone involved in conversations. With complex problems, we need as many and as diverse conversations as possible, and there are a variety of ways to get started.

Blind Monks 2.0

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David Guillocheau at Talent[Power]Management describes what I would call human resources in a wired world [enough of this 2.0 appendage]. He discusses (in French)  the various aspects of networked-enabled HR.

Recruiting: social networks; online events; serious games.

Integrating new workers: online mentoring; internal blogs.

Evaluation: online employee profiles; internal markets or currency.

Training: communities of practice; learning communities.

Internal communication: manager blogs; internal social networks, micro-blogs, chat.

Social interactions: private collaborative work space; blogs, internal polling.

HR management: communities of practice; project management space; blogs.

In the comments, Frédéric Williquet adds a definition of this new approach to human resources, which I’ve loosely translated: Human Resources is a community agent that ensures an environment where employees have the opportunity to collaborate, innovate and excel. It provides a framework to inspire employees to work collaboratively according to their interests and abilities.

This definition sounds very much like wirearchy, especially the notion of a two-way flow of power and authority based on information, knowledge, trust and credibility. The above examples of networked HR are wirearchy type work: based on knowledge, trust, credibility AND a focus on results – enabled by interconnected people and technology.

Enterprise 2.0, Learning 2.0, HR 2.0 or Social Business Design are all the same thing seen from different angles. They are the proverbial blind monks examining an elephant.

Blind_monks_examining_an_elephant

We are all examining how best to get work done in a networked economy, because the Internet has changed everything. This is most evident today in publishing and journalism, but ever more so in how we manage work without geographical boundaries. We are all learning how to work anew. It’s time for the blind monks to start working together.

From training to learning

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Informal Learning Conversations
Image: Jay Cross

I came across the article From Training to Learning by Brigitte Jordan via two sources yesterday. It was written c. 1997 based on ” … a common discourse, carried on for the last several years at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (Xerox PARC) and the Institute for Research on Learning (IRL).”

“In a fundamental way, all work is about learning: it is about learning to fit in and to collaborate, about learning to take initiative when appropriate, it is about really understanding customers, about acquiring intimate knowledge of the products and services the company sells and how they can fit into customers’ lives. Acknowledged as such or not, learning has to be an integral part of work. But, somehow, integrated [work+learning] activities have become split into the separate spheres of [work] and [training] which have come to be dominated by quite different interests.”

This article synthesizes my own work practice and is a hot internal topic at the Internet Time Alliance. It covers:

  • Why Conventional Training Doesn’t Work Anymore
  • Shifting the Paradigm from Training to Learning
  • Learning is fundamentally social
  • Informal learning is crucial in the workplace

This makes the argument for change a bit easier, in that informal and social learning in the workplace is not that new of an idea and actually we’re a bit behind the times.

From Training to Learning is a highly recommended read.

Building common ground

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The focus of this blog is on learning and working on the web and how work and learning are becoming one in a digitally interconnected world. I believe there is a critical need for new organizational frameworks, such as wirearchy, and a shift from learning as training & schooling to a more agile approach. Evidence that the old management models are no longer effective abound – see The Future of Management or The Future of Work.

Lilia Efimova is looking into Agile software programming teams, where work is geographically distributed and has observed the challenges of communicating without “common ground:

From what we have seen, the communication in distributed teams often shrinks to purely functional and, compared to face-to-face settings, there is much less unstructured informal interactions – this works for getting the work done (at some level), but seriously limits the opportunities to build awareness of the bigger picture and relationships. Most of the solutions in respect to building the common ground in distributed Agile teams still rely on making sure that there are opportunities to visit each other, while there is a lot of space for a technology-mediated ways to do so next to the f2f.

commonground_lilia_efimova

Building common ground at work takes time and many informal interactions, such as those afforded in a shared physical space. For distributed teams to work well, they need to develop common ground through social grooming. My experience in working with distributed groups is that the more effective teams are those who know each other. I will be more forgiving with someone I know through several years of blogging than some new business acquaintance who has just joined the team. After several thousand tweets I have some understanding of people’s sense of humour, and perhaps they understand mine as well.These casual interactions make the leap to collaborative work much easier, as I am experiencing with my Internet Time Alliance colleagues.

For distributed teams, informal social learning has to take place with digitally mediated communications. Allowing, and indeed promoting, casual social media use may actually be good for work and business. Blocking these channels may inhibit the development of common ground.  This is something to consider as more work becomes distributed – break down those firewalls and let workers be people.

Teaching and Controlling

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Some of the interesting things I found on Twitter this past week.

How we teach:

“Any teacher who can be replaced by a computer …. should be!” — Arthur C. Clarke. via @charlesjennings

@moehlert: “My son, the not-so-excited about math, won’t quit playing carrotsticks.com”

mkyam_mark_oehlert

Video: “Most schooling is training for stupidity & conformity” ~ Noam Chomsky. via @courosa

What we can teach:

Educators beware: The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement #ACTA. via @josiefraser

The treaty would provide legal protection for digital locks and security protection on material, provisions that draw upon the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA), but extend far beyond existing international law. As some American teachers and researchers have learned the hard way, these so-called “anti-circumvention” measures have had the unintended consequence of stifling scientific research. Since the DCMA has been in force, a number of computer scientists researching software and network security have faced lawsuits and criminal prosecution as a result of their legitimate research activities into anti-circumvention technologies.

Wherever Crown Copyright would be used, Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) would be used instead. Copyright Consultation via @mgifford

RIP Howard Zinn:

Howard Zinn passed away this week:

A People’s History: what the classroom didn’t teach me about the American empire, by Howard Zinn

The Social Network Business Plan – Review

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SNBP_silverThe Social Network Business Plan: 18 strategies that will create great Wealth by David Silver

The central premise of this book is how to build “recommender networks“.

“The next great wave of online communities will focus on specific interests such as health, travel, improvement of government services, wealth, beauty, neighbourhood watches, hobbies, protecting one’s estate, and rating the abilities and prices of lawyers, realtors, electricians, hospitals, physicians, judges, school teachers, and vendors of a host of products and services for the home.”

David Silver is a venture capitalist and explains the type of online communities that he would invest in. He then goes on to explain several (18) models. You might think that Facebook already has the social network market cornered, but Silver thinks differently:

“Although the earliest social networks get their launch value by attracting massive memberships, the ones with highest revenues per member, are, at the end of the day, the social networks that have found the empty chairs in the musical chairs game of recommender social networks. It is the best execution of the cleverest business models that will decide the winners.”

This reminds me of the MD community of Sermo that charges sponsors about $100,000 each because it is a gated community for US registered physicians only.

Silver even thinks that recommender communities will one day usurp MySpace, Facebook, and other general communities. There are lots of specific tactics in this book so it’s quite appropriate for entrepreneurs. There is not much theory on groups or networks, but lots of anecdotes. For the theory behind social networks, read Connected: the surprising power of our social networks and how they shape our lives. For me, this is the kind of book to keep handy and refer to with the various communities that I’m engaged in. Who knows, maybe it’s time to start one myself.