Work is learning. Learning is the work.
Just when you think you know what you’re doing on the Web, along comes another tool. In Borrowing from the Library to Support Workplace Learning, Michele Martin gives some great advice and links to several tools. She mentions the Google Wonder Wheel, which I hadn’t heard about, though it’s been right in front of my nose. It’s a quick way to get an understanding of what makes up a field of practice or a subject area and here are two examples:
Jon Steinman presented “Deconstructing Dinner” last night at Mount Allison University:
He’s touring the Maritimes with his theme of food purchases as investments, not expenditures. Jon showed that 90% of beef slaughtering occurs in only 5 plants across the country, just one example of corporate concentration in the industrial food system.
Corporate Concentration results in:
He quoted Canada’s Minister of Public Safety on the recent closure of prison farms, saying that “labour-intensive farming is no longer relevant”. The current government obviously sees no future in smaller scale or family farming.
Jon then went on to show what is happening in his town of Nelson, BC.
Jon also emphasized how all of the initiatives were grassroots and started with little, if any, funding. Furthermore, using the Net to share information is one of the greatest assets we have in creating resilient communities: aka ridiculously easy group-forming.
Some resources in our area:
Here’s a book to examine some of the more radical options available: The Revolution will not be Microwaved
I’m following up on my post earlier this month on “free-agentry“:
My own observations include the notion that Work 2.0 has resulted in more fluid and ongoing job searches, that learning is becoming part of work routine and that we now take our social networks wherever we move and need the workplace less for socialization. I’ve also observed a rise in self-employment and made my recommendations on how free-agents can market themselves online.
The Creative Class blog just raised some more points on free-agency:
Fewer jobs in manufacturing, a recession and a shift to networked business makes for an increasingly itinerant workforce. Contract work is what companies may want but it is in the worker’s best interest to approach non-salaried work from a consultant’s perspective. You are there to solve the client’s problem, not just do as you are told. Also, if you have to be in a workplace where the employer provides you with office space and tells you when to show up for work, the tax man may not regard you as self-employed, so you lose what few deductions you have.
If contract work seems like the only option, then start networking with co-workers and competitors. Band together as a guild or association and help each other out. Think of it as a freelancers union and look into group health care, joint marketing and shared administration. You can’t do this working 40 hours a week for The Man. The deck is stacked with laws supporting either employers and employees but the future of knowledge work is free-agency. The powers that be, corporations and unions, won’t change to help out freelancers, we have to help ourselves.
Check out: Freelance Switch
A friend asked about online repositories of photos that can be used for academic presentations and I mentioned several sources. I realized after sending the list that many others may not know about the wealth of resources available, especially for teaching and learning.
Online photo repositories (check usage rights for each):
Free images for your inspiration, reference and use in your creative work, be it commercial or not! http://morguefile.com/
Creative Commons search, but check license of each photo: http://search.creativecommons.org/
Commons project from various institutions, including The Library of Congress: http://www.flickr.com/commons/
Wikimedia Commons, with many public domain images: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
Updated:
Most of the media in these collections are attached to generous copyright licensing. http://copyrightfriendly.wikispaces.com/
Weekly summary of interesting items I’ve found on Twitter:
Half an Hour: An Operating System for the Mind (a must read) “facts learned by rote & at a younger age bypass a person’s critical & reflective capacities”
The BioTeaming Manifesto via @jonhusband some similarities with wirearchy
Killing off Mickey Mouse: Open Knowledge, Open Innovation via @josiefraser
Masters of Illusion: The Great Management Consultancy Swindle via @umairh
“‘Buy American’ Hurts Canada Connection“: Canada buys more from the US “than the UK, Japan, Germany and China combined” via @pwmartin
Teens don’t look beyond the first 6 search results (& other interesting data points) No More Teachers, No More Books: The Social Student Comes of Age via @gfbertini
Enterprise 2.0: instead of workflow, think flowing work
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Where it all connects, Twitter HQ by takuma104
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The survey results from the Chief Learning Officer survey show that 77% of respondents feel that people in their organization are not growing fast enough to keep up with the business. Is this anyone’s fault or just a sign of the times?
Human performance in most organization is an afterthought, if thought of at all. Various deparments handle certain components of it, as if you could actually separate workers’ skills from their knowledge and then separate again their attitudes. Here are some possible culprits:
IT: for locking down computers and treating all employees like children, closing off a wealth of information, knowledge and connections outside the artificial firewall.
Communications: for forcing employees to use approved messages that do not even sound human.
Training: for separating learning from work.
HR: for forcing people into standardized jobs and competency models that do not reflect the person.
Individual growth is not promoted when communication, learning, and even curiosity are blocked. If 77% of senior learning professionals feel that people are not growing fast enough, then either these professionals are not doing their job or they have the wrong job. I think it’s the latter. Separating the responsibility for ‘people’ among an assortment of departments makes no sense from the individual worker’s perspective, it’s just administrative efficiency. With better communication tools available today, these divisions are no longer necessary.
There is an opportunity to identify overlapping areas and redundancies in organizational human performance support. It’s doubtful that departmental incumbents will address the issue because of tribal loyalties, but an anonymous employee survey would be a good start. A unified support function, focused on really serving workers and helping them grow, could significantly reduce this 77%.
We were discussing this amongst the InternetTime Alliance team and Jon Husband asked why all human processes in an organization are in silos. Jay Cross said it was because of different DNA. Training, HR, OD, KM use different models, speak different languages, and go to separate conferences. However, they’re all in the business of connecting and communicating. They just don’t do it with each other. Given the imperatives for continuous growth today, organizations need to give serious consideration to recombining their organizational DNA.
As more of our social and work life moves online there is a growing demand for community managers. Betrand Duperrin discusses the differences between community managers and organizational managers (in English & in French), stating that “Sometimes you need a community manager. Sometimes a manager is enough…”
I’ve discussed The Community Manager before and others have shared their experiences in the role of community manager. From our collective experience to date, it is obvious that online community management is much more art than science. It’s like herding cats. Bertrand makes the specific differentiation between communities and work groups or teams. Communities need a soft guiding hand and more of a master of ceremonies than a directive manager.
Online communities are networks. Any group “work” is co-operative and non-directive. Keeping it going requires a facilitative community manager, or what Bertrand calls an animator (a very accurate term in French). Communities exemplify complexity, with fuzzy boundaries, shifting cultures and autonomous members.
Online work team environments do not and cannot have this level of complexity or work would not get done in the manner that those paying for it would like. The work may be complicated but there are rules, boundaries and processes. Work groups need managers who can direct activities in order to achieve goals. This type of work is collaborative.
Community management is not organizational management. Co-operation is not collaboration. Co-operation requires free will on the part of all participants. It’s messy and complex.
This raises some questions:
What happens if the dominant model of how we organize work moves toward a network model and away from a market model?
What would that mean for how we structure our workplaces?
If most of our jobs are directive or reactive in nature, will our work skills help us in co-operative networked environments?
Anthony Poncier (in French) covers the eight challenges of management in the virtual era, which I’ve loosely translated:
This list brings out the challenges of managing in a networked environment and highlights some of the different facets that managers will need to focus on. The trend is also that there will be fewer managers, making the job much more multi-faceted or as they say in French, polyvalente. It might make for a good checklist for executive recruiters and Boards of Directors. This ain’t your daddy’s management, folks.
Updated 2011: Managing in a Networked World
Just picked up my copy of Jay Cross’ latest book, Work Smarter, which sells through Lulu for a reasonable $19.99. As Jay says, this is not a traditional book. It’s an unbook and not meant to be read linearly, though you can if you want. It covers a wide variety of topics, as you can see in the preview, and features all of our colleagues at InternetTime Alliance as well as other friends of Jay.
The book is also updated from time to time, so it’s always current.
This is the kind of book to keep at your desk and peruse as you need, refreshing something you know or a quick read on a new concept. The sub-title tells it all, “informal learning in the cloud”. This is a great book to hand out to clients and others who want to get up to speed on working and learning in networks.
Thanks for all the hard work in putting this together, Jay.
Writing If TV Ads were Free, Seth Godin looks at the business and says that the reason there was so much talk about advertising instead of just doing it was because TV ads are expensive. Not all ideas could make it to the broadcast medium. However, with web social media, the cost is minimal with few barriers to entry:
You guessed it: new media is largely free. So why teach it in school as if it were a scary theory? Why encourage people to be afraid? Just do it. Build your own platform. Appear in the places that seem productive or interesting or challenging or fun. Experiment quietly, figure out what works, do it more. No need to be a dilettante, and certainly you shouldn’t spread yourself too thin or quit at the first sign of failure… but… quit waiting for the right answer.
Anybody see a parallel here with instructional systems design or curriculum development? These processes take time and money and once the investment is made, nobody wants to do it again. Web media can be created quickly and, if designed in an open manner, can change according to the needs of learners and facilitators. For instance, we developed the Work Literacy site in about a week and at no cost. It was added to and modified by the participants. Everyone was an unpaid volunteer. Total cost: zero.
Design is a craft and takes practice and so does instructional media design. Now you can practice these for free. With the web, learning is free; “quit waiting for the right answer”.