A Learning Reformation

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In — No more “learners” — Jay Cross uses the preacher-congregation metaphor to show the dysfunction in our educational and training systems. Much as the Reformation, sped by the new technology of the printing press, ushered in an era of believing and thinking for ourselves, we have the makings of our own Learning Reformation.

The removal of overt rules (Jay uses traffic signs as an example) can empower people, while thinking of them as just “learners” is condescending and plays to the power game of teacher-students. Let’s face it, especially in light of how our institutions have screwed up the world, we all have to be learning together.

In The future of the training department, Jay and I put forth the idea that in order to help organizations evolve in a complex environment we have to move away from training delivery and focus on Connecting & Communicating. Workers, provided the right tools and resources, can figure out what they need to learn. Tony Karrer has picked up on this, as has David Wilkins.

Here are some suggestions for people in training organizations as they shift to supporting the networked workplace:

  1. Be an active & continuous learner yourself (e.g. personally manage your knowledge).
  2. Be a lurker (passive participant) & LISTEN
  3. Communicate what you observe.
  4. Continuously collect feedback, not just after formal training (yes there’s still a place for some of this).
  5. Make it easy to share information by Simplifying & Synthesizing.
  6. Use Networks as research tools.
  7. Identify learning skills and develop them in yourself and others [thanks, Clark]

All of these skills are dependent on #1. You can read about being a good learner and then put the book back on the shelf, but learning is a process and leadership by example is needed. Be an example.

Q: What’s the best way to use social media in your organization?

A: Start by using them yourself.

Steve Simons recently wrote:

I read with interest your article “The future of the training department”, particularly the last paragraph. As an IT trainer in the UK (I train on a contract basis for large organisations), I’ve often wondered what uses people will get from their learning. Sometimes my general feeling is “none”. Your phrase “shift the focus to creativity, innovation, and helping people perform better, faster, cheaper” really hit the spot with me.

I recommended the book From Training to Performance Improvement to Steve, as it helps get training departments out of the “solution looking for a problem” approach. As much as books like this are a good start, a shift to performance improvement is not enough. There is no single best approach and we need to bring in other frameworks such as connectivism, wirearchy and social network theory. The era of silos is over.

Here’s some advice for anyone in charge of a training department:

No single, sure-fire, cookie-cutter approach can be implemented in a top-down or consultant-driven manner to create a networked workplace performance model that works for “your” organization. Don’t believe the hype that one technology or one method will save you, because no single method in the past has done that. You have the best knowledge about your organization. You may need some direction, support, data, advice or a sounding board, but you have to create your own inter-dependent network.

From schools to skunk works

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I’m following up on yesterday’s post discussing how established institutions (schools, universities, research facilities) change only after working organizations (businesses, enterprises, social groups) have. Hugh’s cartoon of work as a “loose confederation of skunk works, joined by insanity” aptly describes the modern workplace and the surrounding social and technological environment. I find it more appropriate every day. The big questions is, how can we move from the mindset of schools to skunk works? Now there’s a worthwhile quest.

Institutions follow

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Charles Green got me thinking with this post:

Ideas lead technology. Technology leads organizations. Organizations lead institutions. Then ideology brings up the rear, lagging all the rest—that’s when things really get set in concrete.

Put more succinctly:

  1. Ideas
  2. Technology
  3. Organizations
  4. Institutions
  5. Ideology

When we look at the past century of business, the progress has been:

  1. Taylorism
  2. Mass Production
  3. Corporations
  4. Business Schools
  5. Management Theory

I am fairly positive that the industrial era based on cheap energy (oil) is coming to an end. At the same time the Internet has changed the way we work, learn and most importantly, converse. Combine ridiculously easy group-forming with energy scarcity and you get the demise of command & control and mass production & distribution.

We’re now at the stage where we have some new ideas for work (wirearchy, natural enterprises, workplace democracy) and some new technologies (social media, nano-bio-techno-cogno). The next step in this evolution is the new organization. Remember that business schools only followed after the mass production model had been proven. Therefore we cannot expect leadership from our institutions until we have proven a new organizational model. It’s time to get to work.

The future of the training department

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Jay Cross and I have written and posted The future of the training department [link updated] on our togetherLearn blog:

Prior to the 20th Century, training per se did not exist outside the special needs of the church and the military. Now the training department may be at the end of its life cycle. Join us for a brief look back at the pre-training world and some thoughts about what may lay ahead.

I’ve also developed an accompanying slideshow, which will be the basis of my CSTD online presentation on March 4th.

Training 21 C V2

5th Anniversary

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On 19 February 2004, I went down the rabbit hole and started this blog:

This is where I post my thoughts and comments on ideas, events or other writings that are of a professional interest to me. Current areas of interest include social networking applications, like blogs, wikis and the use of RSS feeds, which is one reason why I have this blog; to practise what I preach. I’m also interested in the use of open source software platforms for learning. The development and nurturing of communities of practice online is another area of applied research that interests me.

And so I began blogging in earnest, having set up a few others previously, but this time with my own domain and a bit of a plan. My personal knowledge base is now over 1,400 blog posts with +3,000 comments. Mostly, I write for myself, though I know that others read what I’ve posted and a smaller fraction make comments. Many of these people have become friends and even business colleagues. That’s been the best part, meeting people who share some of my passions.

I’m writing fewer posts than when I started out, with a peak of 58 in May 2004. I can’t imagine doing that many now. I have settled on an average of 15 per month which seems to be enough for personal knowledge management (implicit => explicit) and I don’t feel under pressure to publish. I’ve found a daily commitment a bit much, such as when I helped fill in for Stephen on OLDaily.

I’ve also taken up micro-blogging on Twitter this past year and that is enabling different kinds of conversations. What might have been a few comments here are now many 140-character tweets. This blog is still central to my Web presence but I have other windows on the world now.

Thank you for coming by here during the past five years and helping me make sense of my place in the world.

Can social media bring about real change?

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Nicola Avery commented on my last post on changing the structure:

How do you bring everyone together though – we do it in learning through various networks and initiatives but don’t know with this – who would be interested, how to connect them up ? It would be great to start an economic education initiative – but who to involve – as well as individuals – would it be organizations like World Economic Forum as well as the alternative World Social Forum – just some thoughts.

So is it possible to use “frivolous” social media for real change?

Vinay Gupta thinks so and has written a visionary essay on The Future of Poverty. Vinay sees social network development, coupled with the billions of people who have cell phones, as the necessary change infrastructure for the developing world.

“By the time I retire in 20 years, I believe that poverty that people die of will be a thing of the past. If you do not think that is possible, I ask you to think on this question: if the Linux nerds had needed to learn to grow food and build wells, do you think they could have cooperated to figure it out and implement it everywhere it had to happen?”

From tweets, to blog posts to pictures and videos; statistics can become real people. Events like Charity Water can make a difference. Take the time to read the entire article or at least go to the bottom and find out what you can do.

Change the structure

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Last night CBC’s Cross Country Checkup discussed the reform of our health care system. There is a sense of desperation in the way in which we are trying to save our current health care system (and education system) but in light of the near collapse of our financial systems we should be careful before prescribing any solutions.

Today’s business world is hampered by managerial capitalism, which The Support Economy shows as the primary cause of the disconnect between corporations and markets (people). Managers removed from risk helped cause the current economic fiasco. Another term, the kleptocracy, is perhaps more accurate to describe these actors. This form of capitalism also robs us of our ability for self-determination:

Psychological self-determination is expressed in three different dimensions. In the first dimension people want to live their lives the way they choose to live it. This is the sense of sanctuary. The second way people express their psychological self-determination is in the widespread desire for voice: we want to be heard and we want our voices to matter. The third way we want our psychological self-determination to be expressed is in our desire to be connected: we want to be part of communities.

Under managerial capitalism, people are called consumers or users – low forms of life without any real voice. Systems that treat individuals as replaceable units (human resources?) are part of the underlying structural problem. For instance, health care organisations should be the epitome of learning organisations, but many are stuck in their disciplinary silos and command & control structures. Kim Vicente’s book, The Human Factor, highlights some of these issues and shows how the aviation industry was able to reduce accidents and that a similar, learning-centered approach could be used in health care.

We have created self-perpetuating monopolies in both health and education and now they run us. Ivan Illich had it right over 30 years ago – we have seen the enemy, and it is us. This quote may be from 1970, but is even more pertinent today:

Everywhere the hidden curriculum of schooling initiates the citizen to the myth that bureaucracies guided by scientific knowledge are efficient and benevolent. Everywhere this same curriculum instills in the pupil the myth that increased production will provide a better life. And everywhere it develops the habit of self-defeating consumption of services and alienating production, the tolerance for institutional dependence, and the recognition of institutional rankings. The hidden curriculum of school does all this in spite of contrary efforts undertaken by teachers and no matter what ideology prevails.

Corporatist systems, where managers have benefits but almost no risk, are the root of many problems in business, health care and education. However, the collapse of the financial system may force some changes on the education system first. Many people will no longer have the luxury of borrowing to go to school. For example, finding buyers of US student loans that have been in default is getting more difficult, according to Inside HigherEd. Other sources of savings for education, such as Canada’s Registered Education Savings Plan, have been affected by the market drop with many people losing 20 to 50% of their savings. I’m one of them. Will there be a dip in enrolment in the next few years, as costs continue to increase?

For universities and colleges, now is the time to examine operating models and assumptions, before the full impact of the recession hits. This goes against conventional wisdom which says that demand for education goes up in a recession, but that is only when people have savings or the ability to borrow. As government funding becomes the main source of operating capital, will education be able compete against health care?

Both health care and education are state-funded oligopolies, reliant on the willingness of government (and the electorate) to fund them. As governments become limited in their spending power, with decreased revenues and perhaps devalued currency, these institutions will need to re-evaluate their models. The type of organisational structures that helped to create this financial mess are not the examples that our institutions should use. While we have some time and room to maneuver, now is the time to look at better ways of doing things, but it has to be done from a structural perspective.

Photo: Life_Through_a_Viewfinder

Natural entrepreneurship

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When you come to a fork in the road, take it. – Yogi Berra

As I look at what I’ve learned about business, information technology and learning over the past decade I see two major influences, perhaps not mutually exclusive, that will change how we work and learn. One is the pending major shift in energy consumption and the other is our increasing connection through the Internet.

My observations and readings tell me that when we change how we work, our education systems follow suit. There is no doubt that many of us will be changing how we work in the near future. That will mean changes in how we educate ourselves.

Peak oil has already passed and we will have to come to terms with using more costly sources of energy and using less of it. That will change how we get to work, how we go to school, and especially how we make and move goods. Scenarios such as Jim Kunstler’s are one possibility, but there are many others. Change does not happen in a straight line. However, there is no doubt that the shift away from the cheap oil economy will have repercussions at all levels.

The Internet has also changed how we work and communicate and this will continue unless something like the long emergency happens. In the meantime, the Net is changing how we do business and how we perceive learning (e.g. connectivism). For example, command & control, supply chain management and performance management are all being turned on their heads as hyperlinks subvert hierarchies. The same is happening in schools as what is taught inside has less relevance with the outside. Here in New Brunswick debates rage on singing O Canada and wearing sweats in school while critical thinking and basic digital literacy are ignored. Meanwhile, kids are having conversations with friends around the world, getting involved in international causes or creating media that is watched by over 150,000 people. Not your typical day at school.

Can we simultaneously prepare for these two possibilities- a connected world and a long emergency? I believe there is a viable option in natural enterprises, as put forth in Dave Pollard’s Finding the Sweet Spot, which I reviewed last year. Natural entrepreneurship will work in either an electric or a non-electric future, making it more resilient than most industrial models. For instance, Dave found that successful entrepreneurs had several things in common.

They built strong, collaborative relationships and networks, and operated their enterprises “on principle”. They understood that powerful social relationships are the underpinning to all human enterprise, and that collaboration succeeds better than competition. And by sticking to principles of responsibility and sustainability they ensured that these relationships were deep, trusting, and reciprocal.

Principles for natural enterprises can work whether the network of relationships is local or global. Since business models drive education models I would suggest that our business schools take a serious look at new business models and do so soon. Meanwhile, our educators have to engage in discussions on what our education system can do to build the skills for natural entrepreneurship. Time is running out.

First we shape our structures and then our structures shape us – Winston Churchill

Cappuccino U 2.0

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Jerome Martin has updated Cappuccino U, a good read for anyone not versed in all the informal learning activities available on the Web:

The traditional education system cannot be expected to provide learning for everyone, everywhere, all of the time. Knowledge is growing so quickly in so many fields that educators cannot always remain current in their fields. Furthermore, there are new fields of study developing. Many of us are working in areas and fields which were not developed when we went to university.

Originally published in 2006, the ideas are more relevant today, as Jerome says, “education is not acquired through vaccination or some sort of anointment”. This is a short read and the kind of e-book to pass around (CC-licensed) to folks who say that they could never read or learn via a computer.

Moving down-scale

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Jim Kunstler spoke to a packed audience at Mount Allison University last night, covering much of the material in his book The Long Emergency with updated data. You can watch his 2004 TED Talk on The Tragedy of Suburbia.

Kunstler opened with a most informative graph developed by C H Smith:

Yes, that’s right; sometime in the near future, oil will trade for $1,000 per barrel. In this post-peak oil period, Kunstler’s basic conclusion is that the age of continual growth (2-7%) is over. He showed how the US economy was based almost entirely on suburban development and that has now come to a crashing halt. He also predicted the collapse of the aviation industry in the next 48 months. Dwindling oil supplies and higher costs will affect every sector of society, and we will see major changes in:

  • how we inhabit the landscape as our cities & towns adapt
  • how we grow food as we are forced to be more local and use animal power once again
  • how we do business after the collapse of the industrial retail model (e.g. farmers markets vs Wal*Mart)
  • how we will make things on a more local level
  • how collector schools premised on cheap transportation will disappear

There will soon be a major down-scaling of everything we do because we will no longer have the energy to continue with our current system. Kunstler’s suggestion for a pragmatic North American project to get society motivated to tackle these huge issues is to restore our passenger rail service. It’s feasible, much-needed, requires no new technology and will employ many people. Cars (and suburbia) are dead, no matter how many hybrids we buy.