Yesterday, at the QSC opening, I was able to have a much too short discussion with Robert Paterson about organisational change. The gist of our conversation was that since all change happens with the individual, why focus on the organisation for any cultural/organisational change? This has me thinking about my own business, which I have summed up by stating that my consultancy focuses on "Improving organisational performance at the intersection of learning, work and technology". Perhaps a better, and more pragmatic, focus would be on "Improving individual performance …". The lesson being that you should focus your energies on what you can change, and that would be by helping people, one person at a time. It’s pretty well what I am doing, I just haven’t stated it that way.
I think that a focus on individuals could also reduce some of the inherent frustration of consulting. Even if the organisation has not implemented the change, or just parked the report on a shelf, you can walk away from a project knowing that you have helped someone. It’s a parallel activity within a project but could be the most rewarding.
Communities
communities of interest and practice
Queen Street Commons
The Queen Street Commons had its official opening in Charlottetown today and I had the opportunity to meet a lot of enthusiastic people. Robert, Cynthia and Dan were charming and excellent hosts. It’s really a simple idea – make some workspace available in the downtown area for a reasonable price. Then set some basic rules and let the members grow a common space to work, learn and share. So, for $35/month you can have some cool urban office space as well as a lounge, conference room and a kitchen to hang out in. On top of that, you get to talk to some interesting people whom you may not have otherwise met.
I look forward to the day that the next Work Commons is created – maybe in Sackville(?).
Communities and Chaos
Peter Bond has a good article (with explanatory diagrams) that looks at communities of practice (CoP) from a biological perspective. He sees these communities as balancing between chaos and structure. The more chaotic, the more energy and innovation is evident. In chaos little gets done but as structure is added over the life of the community it loses its energy.
This suggests that the process of CoP development be approached as if they were transitory organisational phenomena that may act, but only for a finite period, as the source of the motivation for change and as the vehicles for change.
One inference I can make from Bond’s article is that loosely joined technologes would be more appropriate for CoP’s than single structures, like a CMS or web portal. If the nature of a CoP is temporary then it would be best to have individually-controlled pieces that can form and re-form over time. This ability is currently available from a combination of blogs, RSS, tags and feedreaders.
In my experience working with single structure CoP’s (password controlled access to a single site) I still find the much more open blogosphere is a better (more flexible) environment for community building because the tools are in the hands of the individual. This flexibility, and the absence of a controlling hand, help to maintain the balance between chaos and structure.
Learning About Sharing
Note: This is a re-post from last week due to a system change (Drupal 4.4 to 4.6).
One interesting observation I made this week is that not everyone is as open to sharing their thoughts and opinions in a public way as my fellow bloggers are. Coming from a community of practice that shares ideas and uses sharing mechanisms like Creative Commons, public Furl and Bloglines archives, you sometimes take for granted that everyone has this outlook. I came across some strong opinions that knowledge is power and it must be kept to oneself or a small circle of people. I keep on learning :-)
Seb also referred to this related paper.
Web 2.0
Web 2.0 is the common term used to refer to the new generation of web applications and systems that enable community or many-to-many relationships. BusinessWeek has a recent article that summarizes many of the converging and diverging factors influencing this next phase of the Web:
Indeed, peer production represents a sea change in the economy — at least when it comes to the information products, services, and content that increasingly drive economic growth. More than two centuries ago, James Watt’s steam engine ushered in the Industrial Revolution, centralizing the means of production in huge, powerful corporations that had the capital to achieve economies of scale. Now cheap computers and new social software and services — along with the Internet’s ubiquitous communications that make it easy to pool those capital investments — are starting to give production power back to the people. Says Benkler [Yale professor]: "This departs radically from everything we’ve seen since the Industrial Revolution."
Commerce is changing as a result of this new business platform, with successful examples such as e-Bay and more recently Skype. The graphic provided in the article is a good visual of the change from the Web 1.0 to 2.0, with Web 2.0 described as:
Many-to-Many: File-sharing, blogs and social networking services are connecting masses of people simultaneously. Their collective efforts are spawning new services including online encyclopedia Wikipedia and free netphone network Skype.
For an ongoing discussion of Web 2.0, including its influence on higher education, go to What’s Web 2.0? which is run by Will Pate.
A Culture of Dependence
I’ve referred to Robert Paterson’s posts many times before and I like his approach of looking at the systemic causes of our economic and learning challenges. Rob has recently posted a document that outlines how to build a post-industrial economic model. It makes much use of the work of Rob Cross and Richard Florida. The premise is that we have to change our culture by developing loose networks that can become social spaces and later incubators for change and economic development. Rob gives some case studies in his paper and from a short distance I have watched this happen on PEI and it’s quite exciting. I think that this statement sums up Rob’s perspective:
Adventurous people create sustainable jobs not government. Buildings don’t create sustainable jobs. Creative people create sustainable jobs.
A different perspective comes from Moncton. David Campbell is a new featured blogger on CBC Radio One, where he discusses economic development. My reading of his blog is that we need to get more outside investment into the province so that we can create more jobs. Jobs equal economic development.
When Irving, UPM-Kymmene or any of the other large forestry companies in New Brunswick start closing their plants and laying off thousands of people (like Nackawic), I hope Veniot, Taylor and the NDP lady [CBC Radio political pundits] will be prepared to shoulder some of the blame. They, in effect, help shape public opinion on issues such as this. The forestry industry is a critical economic driver for the province. The industry is sending a very clear message. The government is delaying and the pundits are calling for politicians to "stand up" to the industry. "Fight for the rights of New Brunswickers".
One perspective is to grow our own business (Rob Paterson calls these jobs but many are in fact independent workers) while the other is to find large corporations that provide us with traditional industrial jobs. I think that being a salaried employee within a corporation is a state close to indentured servitude. The larger the corporation, the more dependent you are. You are dependent on someone or something else for your wage and in return you yield to the corporation. A population of salaried workers is in effect a dependent population – dependent on the corporations for jobs, security and economic vision. David’s reference to Nackawic shows how one town became completely dependent on one multinational employer, who left them on short notice. I see these two views as offering the choice of a new vision that will take longer to implement but will be more sustainable while the latter looks to continue the dominance of managerial capitalism. Rob’s view of local networks (of small businesses and free agents) that create local wealth and social security is more robust than David’s model of attracting more external capital to create jobs for indentured servants.
Given the extremely low costs of international communication today, we can connect to almost any market in the world, so our geographical location is no longer a limiting factor to our economic growth. Our culture of dependence is.
Another Information Management Tool
I’ve another link in "External Info Sites" on the navigation bar to the left. It’s called Jots and it’s supposed be a mix of the capabilities of Furl and Del.icio.us. So far I’ve noticed that Jots is fairly easy to use but does not handle long URL’s very well. It also requires that you type in the Tag name. Furl gives you a drop-down menu that is much easier and faster. The "Jotted’ button that you can add to your toolbar tells you if anyone else has already jotted a page – a neat feature. Supposedly you can create groups where bookmarks are only visible to group members, but everytime that I try to create a group, I’m told that it’s an invalid group name. There is no help menu so for now I think I’ll stick with Furl and take a foray into Del.icio.us soon.
Solving Tough Problems
Solving Tough Problems by Adam Kahane is a short book with a powerful message. It is a series of stories about Kahane’s progress from an analytical researcher with a degree in physics to an internationally-recognized facilitator of participatory problem solving. I picked up this book in Montreal last week and later noticed that Kahane is originally from Montreal. He tells the story of his early work with Shell and the likes of Peter Senge and then the eye-opening Mont Fleur sessions in South Africa just prior to the end of apartheid. A major theme in the book is how to overcome ‘apartheid thinking’:
“My analysis also allowed me to recognize a widespread “apartheid syndrome”. By this I mean trying to solve a highly complex problem using a piecemeal, backward-looking, and authoritarian process that is suitable only for solving simple problems. In this syndrome, people at the top of a complex system try to manage its development through a divide-and-conquer strategy: through compartmentalization – the Africaans word apartheid means “apartness” – and command and control. Because the people at the bottom resist these commands, the syndrome either becomes stuck, or ends up becoming unstuck by force.”
At just under 150 pages, this is a short book but one that I will read many times over. The main lesson for me so far is that it is necessary to focus on listening, and that many answers are already there; we just have to relax and let them come to us. I see learning in the same way – when the learner is ready, the teacher will appear. As Kahane says, “If we want to help resolve complex situations, we have to get out of the way of situations that are resolving themselves”.
This way of approaching complex problems has worked, but requires a shift in approach, much like Dan Pink’s A Whole New Mind. This is where we don’t actually let go of our so-called ‘left brain’ analytical processes, but park them in order to open up our ‘right brain’ conceptualization and feeling abilities. Here is some advice from Kahane’s colleague at Shell, Alain Wouters:
There is not “a” problem out there that we can react to and fix. There is a “problem situation” of which each of us is a part, the way an organ is part of a body. We can’t see the situation objectively: we can just appreciate it subjectively. We affect the situation and it affects us. The best we can do is to engage with it from multiple persectives, and try, in action-learning mode, to improve it. It’s more like unfolding a marriage than it is like fixing a car.”
I strongly recommend this book for anyone working in groups, meetings, committees, or any other form of social organisation.
This New Business of Learning
The New Brunswick learning industry is getting together in a couple of weeks to discuss several business opportunities. I won’t be there due to other commitments, but that’s what happens when you’re a free agent – you can’t be in two places at one time. I’m adding my comments before the meeting and I think that Godfrey Parkin’s recent post is a good place to start:
Corporate learning has to follow the Google’s “search & connect” model instead of the General Motors “produce and sell” model. Training purists sneer at “just-in-time” help systems, insisting that people need to know how to do things themselves. They undervalue collaborative learning networks, regarding them as somehow cheating. They fervently believe that adult learners must be led, child-like, through pre-determined learning paths mapped out and controlled by a central authority. They gauge the worth of an employee by his or her ability to survive on a corporate desert island, bereft of books, colleagues, mentors, databases, systems, or communication.
Jon Husband recently sent me a paper that synthesised some of the major forces of change in our digital lives. These include greater Internet access; the two-way web as the operating system; and the influence of open source business and development models. Taken together, they are giving individuals much more control and creating millions of separate markets. We’re all individuals and we all have access to the world’s information and can connect with pretty well anyone we want (think long tail). The basis of all business models has changed. The basis for the training business is changing too.
I have already talked about Google as the best learning platform around. No LMS can compete with it. Open source is also changing business models (witness Google again, or IBM or Novell), including service companies. A learning services firm has to stay ahead of the curve because even services can become rules-based and modular, making them ripe for competition from areas where wages are lower.
Lately, I heard that the current enterprise software development model is fundamentally flawed. I think that the same is true of many business principles that are taken for granted. That’s why everyone is looking for the next big thing. The key, in my opinion, is looking at the world with fresh eyes and listening with fresh ears. I wish good vision and hearing to my colleagues.
Blogs & Wikis for Learning
There was a fair amount of interest in our presentation at the CSTD Symposium on Mancomm’s use of wikis with healthcare professionals. The MASIE Center has recently published this commentary on the impact of blogs and wikis on learning;
- Instructor Blogs to offer a more dynamic and personal perspective on the teacher’s expertise and view of the context.
- Wiki Handouts that are launched by the instructor or instructional designer and then evolved by the various learners in the classroom or on-line programs.
- RSS Feeds from Blogs and Wikis that are linked to Compliance subjects. As the content changes, the learner receives a RSS feed linking them back to the Blog to receive an update and even take a Compliance Re-Check.
- Context Rich Wikis which are used as ways of making the role of SubjectMatter Experts easier and more time efficient.
These examples are for more traditional training models, where you have an instructor and students. In our case (mental health community of practice) the wiki was used for a diverse group of physically separated professionals to post and share common practices that were not available in any published manuals or procedures. So far this group, many of whom had no computer experience, has created +600 wiki pages.
As for blogs, there are many applications for informal learning, such as this post which is a follow-up to our face-to-face presentation in Fredericton on Monday. For instance, blogs can be used to post presentation material so that learners can determine if the material is suitable for their needs and can act as a medium for questions in advance so that the facilitator can customize the scheduled F2F meeting to meet learner needs. I encourage anyone to use this blog as a follow-up to what was presented and let’s see where the conversation and learning goes.
Linking to subject matter experts (SME) is made easier with blogs and wikis, as one Canadian military officer told me at the conference that they are trying to connect the best SME with their soldiers in training. This could mean a synchronous web session between soldiers in New Brunswick and the expert currently serving in Sudan or Afghanistan. Blogs and wikis can be the glue that holds the learning conversation together between time zones.