Informal Learning

Informal learning

Informal learning is a business imperative

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In Part 2 of Social Learning doesn’t mean what you think it does, my colleague Jane Hart  uses a very helpful diagram created by a previous colleague of mine, Tom Gram:

Tom Gram’s diagram [reproduced below] shows that “most work requires a combination of knowledge work and routine work. These characteristics of jobs and work environments call for different approaches to training and development.” [see  Mapping informal and formal learning strategies to real work], so the work of the L&D department will be very different in different organisations, depending on the type of workers and work done.

I connected this to the whole notion of simpler work getting automated and outsourced usingTom’s framework.

I then created my own graphic and looked at what happens to work if this is true.

Supporting informal learning and helping connect tacit knowledge in the enterprise are now business imperatives, not just something extra. The valued work in the enterprise is increasing in variety and decreasing in standardization. It is moving to the edge. Organizations that do not optimize informal learning may themselves get automated and outsourced.

Training departments will shrink

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The Epic social learning debate for Summer 2011 states:

“This house believes that as social learning grows, so the requirement for traditional training departments shrinks.”

Let’s examine why they grew in the first place. Training on a massive scale was a requirement for preparing citizen soldiers for war and initial methods were tested during the second world war (1939-45). A systems approach did not become standardized until after the war, led by applied research done by Robert Gagné, as noted by Donald Clark:

One of the interesting system development projects discussed in Gagne’s book is building a revised course of instruction for armor crewman training at Fort Knox, Kentucky. The project was code named SHOCKACTION and undertaken during the late 1950s. The course trained tank crewmen to act as a tank commander, driver, gunner, or loader of the Army’s main battle tank. The course was considered important and worthy of considerable investment of research and development funds. It was noted by officers that the present course was not training armor crewmen to a level of proficiency.

The famous ADDIE model did not get adopted until 1975, just as the baby boomers were entering university and the business world. There was a need to train lots of people in North America and later elsewhere as economies grew. Training departments rose to the challenge.

For thousands of years people have developed work skills through apprenticeship. This worked for small numbers and developed into the highly structured guild system in Europe. Industrialization marked the fall of the guild system. The nation state and the industrial economy adopted a new competency development framework, from which we have modern training departments, professional associations, job competency models, etc. But the industrial economy no longer drives the developed world. Even the information economy  is giving way to the creative economy.

 

In Social learning, complexity & the enterprise, I go over many of the factors that are forcing us to change how we think about learning and work, which is what training departments are supposed to focus on. The most significant change is in how we relate to, and deal with, information and knowledge. We no longer have to go to the library to get a book and we have access to a growing network of expertise from people (like bloggers) who are willing to share their knowledge for free. Instructional content is no longer a scarcity. Neither are “instructors”. Expertise is becoming ubiquitous though the likes of Wikipedia and social networks.

The draining of the hierarchical pyramid will change not only training, but also intellectual property and the social contract with workers. In a shifting networked world, every artificial  structure will be affected, so why should the training department be impervious to these effects? Even money will change, as this article about  The Bitcoin Epoch being akin to the Printing Press Revolution shows.

We are in a management revolution, testing out new models such as the social enterprise, democracy in the workplace, chaordic organizations and networked free-agents. Will the rise of social learning be the “cause” of the shrinking training department? Probably not. But it will be one of the effects.

Connecting with Communities of Practice

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This month, The Learning Circuits blog asks how do we break down organizational walls when it comes to learning?

One way to look at this problem is to see what kind of work needs to get done in the organization. For example, if you are trying to balance the need to support complex work with innovation, as many knowledge-intensive companies are, then there are different needs to be simultaneously addressed. Complex work requires strong ties and high levels of trust to enable work teams to function. This often has to be done behind the firewall to protect competitive secrets. On the other hand, innovation needs loose ties and a wide network to get diverse points of view. This means working outside the firewall on the wide open Web.

Communities of Practice, supported by skilled community managers and appropriate knowledge-sharing tools can bridge these two areas. They can provide a lightly structured forum to bring outside ideas inside the organization, to multiple teams, while not detracting from the work being done in individual projects.

 

Vendor-neutral

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Yes, I have called software vendors snake oil sellers. Last year I wrote, “Now social learning is being picked up by software vendors and marketers as the next solution-in-a-box, when it’s more of an approach and a cultural mind-set.” In 2005, social learning online was a fringe activity that we had to test using open source platforms like Drupal. Now everything is “social”. I remember when we ran our informal learning unworkshops in 2006 while the major enterprise software vendors ignored us or privately told us there was no market for this stuff. Now they use our words to sell their products.

Usually I represent the buyers of enterprise software, not the sellers. I have advised vendors on how to improve their products but my aim is not to make an easy market for their sales. I want to help organizations democratize while simultaneously improving their overall performance. As an independent consultant, I maintain a perspective of vendor neutrality. I do not represent any other companies.

While some people have inferred that I may be vendor hostile, let me tell you what I learned today about a software company – Socialcast. They are not my client and I do not have any stake in the company.

During a web presentation today, I saw that Socialcast gets a critical part of workplace performance right. They understand that collaboration has to be embedded in the workflow. Their “secret sauce” is the ability to integrate with a wide variety of other enterprise software applications. These are tools that workers use every day. Socialcast enables conversations around and between these systems. There is no requirement to leave the workflow to collaborate.

I’ve used Socialcast for several months and must say the learning  curve is negligible. It’s simple and effective. You are up and using it very quickly. This is a company that understands online collaboration and reduces silos instead of creating a new one.

So there you have it. If you want the endorsement of a vendor-neutral consultant, just do a good job and you’ll get noticed.

Technologies for collaboration and cooperation

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Whether we’re working or learning, how we communicate is a key part of everything we do. Some web tools hinder communication while others may enable it. Last year, in communication and working together, I looked at a communities & networks model by Lilia Efimova:

One of the things I came up when playing with different ideas was to position teams, communities and networks in respect to the most prevalent forms of communication in each case (in all cases the other forms of communication are there as well, but are not at the core of it).

I find the model useful to look at what kinds of social tools are most suitable for the type of collaboration or cooperation we’re trying to foster. For instance, there is a big difference between Sharepoint and Facebook, though both enable some kind of collaboration. Structured, goal-oriented collaboration is typical of what happens inside the firewall in a controlled access environment. Informal, opportunity-drive (serendipitous) collaboration is more like the free-for-all of an event like #lrnchat. Communities of practice are a mix of both.

My experience is that there is no platform that covers the entire spectrum. Open networking environments lack the tools needed for project work while enterprise collaboration systems lack openness and flexibility. There is an opportunity for platforms like Yammer & Socialcast or Brainpark to bridge the structured with the informal. Three smaller pieces loosely joined seems to be a better approach for collaborative work/learning at this time rather than a unified platform. That may change as collaboration technologies mature but for now any large organization should be looking at all three.

Learning and working effectively

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An effective networked workplace can be viewed as a three-sided framework, with a leadership/management strategy (radical & wirearchical) that supports collaborative work enabled by social learning.

All three are necessary. If there is any degree of complexity in the work, collaboration needs to be supported by a flexible management framework that encourages social learning. This is especially true for creativity and innovation. These cannot be forced, yet many of our organizational practices still reflect cultures that do not trust individuals.

Just read any HR or IT policy of a large firm. Most do not start with, “we trust you to do the right thing …”

Jay Cross and I have been tossing some ideas at each over the past week [as he wines & dines his way through Europe] and this graphic is a result of that collaboration.

The intent of this image is to show that both directed (by the organization to get work done or to meet compliance needs) and undirected (by individuals and self-forming groups) activities make up our work and learning how to do work. We work collaboratively to get things done. We learn socially because we want to. Both are necessary but not everything can be managed. The parts in red should be self-managed (though they need organizational support).

It’s when we try to create (learning) management systems for the red parts that we get into trouble, because we’re using complicated approaches for complex areas. Read more on Cynefin:

Complicated, in which the relationship between cause and effect requires analysis or some other form of investigation and/or the application of expert knowledge, the approach is to Sense – Analyze – Respond and we can apply good practice.

Complex, in which the relationship between cause and effect can only be perceived in retrospect, but not in advance, the approach is to Probe – Sense – Respond and we can sense emergent practice.

My advice is to manage above the line and support below it. However, learning is a jagged, messy process, as the line shows, so don’t expect linear results. Stay flexible; it’s life in perpetual Beta.

Working Smarter, one day at a time

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ITA 2011Yesterday we hosted a conversation on social learning and working smarter, facilitated by the folks at Citrix and the eLearning Guild. We all enjoyed the hour long session and participants will be sent the link to the recording by Citrix. In Jane’s social learning community a few comments arose about the lack of interaction. I responded that with 500 people in the audience and only one hour, we were limited in what we could do. Citrix provided the platform and support staff for one hour (plus several hours of rehearsal). We had already crowd-sourced the questions and also answered dozens of text questions that came in (however, it seems not all were posted back to the audience). It was great the community participated for 30 days before the event and hopefully will continue for many days after.

Yesterday’s event was only one part of many conversations that started several years ago on our blogs and continues on Twitter and other platforms.

I’ve highlighted some of the questions on performance improvement asked yesterday  and expanded on the responses, including links:

Q: Where does performance support as a process integrate into social tools and learning at the time and place of need? Where do you best recommend that HPT/ISD individuals gain the social/collaboration skills? What tools are you using to create the performance/support and learning communities?

Performance support starts as a complement to social learning, but then we move to having the community co-develop the performance support tools. The best way to develop any skill is to practice & get feedback – I suggest you  jump in and start using these tools in order to understand them and then see how they can be used in the workplace. Check Jane’s tool of the day site, but lots of potential solutions: open source, commercial, already out there (e.g. Yammer & Status.net)

Links:

Whither ISD, ADDIE & HPT? (includes definitions of these acronyms)

HPT and ISD

Getting to Working Smarter

Q: What do you opine regarding HPI/HPT practitioners (ASTD/ISPI) and the need for this type of specialized practitioner as a member of organizations’ HR or as a community resource?

I think HPT skills are a good addition to training development skills but we also need to add business skills and social/collaboration skills. I find that HPT doesn’t get “social” very well. Basically, HPT is only one toolset;  good for some things, but not all.

HPT, like many other workplace disciplines, creates silos. Networks require the integration of organizational support. We’re realizing that compartmentalized approaches to supporting work do not work in a highly networked world. Why should HR, IT, Finance, Training, KM, OD, Marketing etc. be separate functions? It’s time to rid our organizations of Taylor’s ghost and use radically different management. Clark Quinn calls it a unified performer-facing environment and I have said for a while that we need to break down the intra-organizational walls. I hear the same discussions in HR, OD, KM, Training and IT. They see their traditional roles and control eroding. Each field is trying to remain relevant but it’s only by working together that they will.

It’s not just about HPT, or L&D, or HR. Systems thinking is necessary.

Q: Did I miss it, or have you not defined the term “social learning”?

No cookie-cutter answers here ;)

Bandura’s Social Learning Theory

Bandura and Social Cognitive Theory

Working Smarter through Social Learning

Learning Socially

Social Learning Handbook

More to follow …

 

Networked Knowledge: out of the ivory tower

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Many of the important issues that face our society are complex and require a good knowledge of science. Yesterday, I explained some of what I’ve been trying to learn about nuclear fission and power generation. Understanding how people learn and how we can integrate learning into work is a prime professional interest of mine.

More and more political and personal decisions have to made on some understanding of science. Of interest to me are: nuclear power; hydro-fracking; climate change and uranium mining. Each requires significant knowledge to understand the issues.

Obviously, the public media are not designed to deal with these kinds of issues. They are in the business of selling advertising and getting readership. Some journalists inform but most, including the good ones, can only shine a lens and let us make up our minds. My post yesterday was intended to show that mainstream media were not very good at informing us on complex subjects. I wanted to explain how I was able to get information and put some things together. The self-correcting nature of a blog would ensure that somebody might set me straight or point me to better sources of information. Comments on Twitter indicated that I might be seriously misinformed. I am still learning and will continue to do so. Learning is work and work is learning; that’s life in perpetual Beta.

Image: Ivory Towers by Colin Smith

I’d like to highlight one aspect of how we treat knowledge in our society. Complex scientific fields are the realm of research institutions, like universities.  It takes a long time to get expertise and competence is conferred through peer review. But peer review has its problems and much of the research is published in the language of specialists that only the select few can decipher. There is also little incentive in the highly competitive (for research funding) fields of scientific research to publish widely or to synthesize research so that it is understandable by the average adult. These same adults who vote for politicians who set research funding policies.

The media aren’t informing and the informed aren’t using media.

Part of my responsibility in using networked knowledge is to give back to the community. I believe it’s our part of the social learning contract. The scientific community has the same responsibility. I was asked, “Please, don’t spread this wrong thinking around.” So in return, I ask the scientific community to step up and spread their knowledge. The whole world is trying to understand these issues.

Update: I’m noticing The Guardian and the CS Monitor are providing good in-depth analysis of the nuclear situation in Japan now. Very good to see. Now we just need this on a regular basis for many other complex scientific issues, especially when there’s no urgent crisis.

Fuelled by Informal learning

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Caveat: It seems I have to put a warning sign on this post. I am not a nuclear physicist and the opinions on this post are personal and are not professional, scientific advice on radiation or its effects.

I’ve had a crash course in nuclear physics this week. I took basic Physics in university, but my major was History, so I never really got into it. This interconnected world sure makes it easy to learn informally though.

From Twitter, I was led to an excellent overview of how the Fukushima Daiichi reactor works at Why I am not worried … which is now being hosted by MIT’s Nuclear Information Hub:

The solid fuel pellet (a ceramic oxide matrix) is the first barrier that retains many of the radioactive fission products produced by the fission process.  The Zircaloy casing is the second barrier to release that separates the radioactive fuel from the rest of the reactor.

The core is then placed in the pressure vessel. The pressure vessel is a thick steel vessel that operates at a pressure of about 7 MPa (~1000 psi), and is designed to withstand the high pressures that may occur during an accident. The pressure vessel is the third barrier to radioactive material release.

The entire primary loop of the nuclear reactor – the pressure vessel, pipes, and pumps that contain the coolant (water) – are housed in the containment structure.  This structure is the fourth barrier to radioactive material release. The containment structure is a hermetically (air tight) sealed, very thick structure made of steel and concrete. This structure is designed, built and tested for one single purpose: To contain, indefinitely, a complete core meltdown. To aid in this purpose, a large, thick concrete structure is poured around the containment structure and is referred to as the secondary containment.

Both the main containment structure and the secondary containment structure are housed in the reactor building. The reactor building is an outer shell that is supposed to keep the weather out, but nothing in. (this is the part that was damaged in the explosions, but more to that later).

Then I read today on the MIT site that, “Radiation levels on the edge of the plant compound briefly spiked at 8217 microsieverts per hour but later fell to about a third that.” What’s a microsievert, I asked myself, and how dangerous are 8217 of them? I was able to find out via Wikipedia that:

1 Sv = 1000 mSv (millisieverts) = 1,000,000 µSv (microsieverts) = 100 rem = 100,000 mrem (millirem)

And I further read that at 250,000 µSv “Some people feel nausea” and at 1,000,000 µSv there is “Mild to severe nausea”. Makes 8,217 µSv look pretty small to me.

The mainstream media reports tell a different story. Here’s one from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation:

Most of the attention in the past three days has been focused on Daiichi units 1 and 3. A complete meltdown — the melting of the radioactive core — could release radioactive contaminants into the environment and pose major, widespread health risks.

There is no mention of radiation levels, or what would happen in the event of a core meltdown [containment], in this story and in many others by the CBC and other mainstream media/entertainment sources.

Update: A more detailed explanation of the factors at play, via Twitter:

There are some characteristics of a nuclear fission reactor that will be common to every nuclear fission reactor. They will always have to contend with decay heat. They will always have to produce heat at high temperatures to generate electricity. But they do not have to use coolant fluids like water that must operate at high pressures in order to achieve high temperatures. Other fluids like fluoride salts can operate at high temperatures yet at the same pressures as the outside. Fluoride salts are impervious to radiation damage, unlike water, and don’t evolve hydrogen gas which can lead to an explosion. Solid nuclear fuel like that used at Fukushima-Daiichi can melt and release radioactive materials if not cooled consistently during shutdown. Fluoride salts can carry fuel in chemically-stable forms that can be passively cooled without pumps driven by emergency power generation. There are solutions to the extreme situation that was encountered at Fukushima-Daiichi, and it may be in our best interest to pursue them.

This is why it’s so important to be a self-directed learner. Who stands to benefit by the stuff that’s being Pushed to you? Advertisers? Whether it’s news or education, we have the networks that can help us figure things out. It just takes a little effort.

It’s not just the media, either. This weekend I came across an article in The Atlantic, Lies, Damn Lies and Medical Science that showed that “as much as 90 percent of the published medical information that doctors rely on is flawed”. We need to think for ourselves.

Update 16 March: The CSMonitor (almost mainstream media!) is providing some good in-depth reporting:

Meltdown 101: What are spent fuels and why are they a threat?

Opinion: Japan’s Nuclear Crisis: 6 reasons why we should – and shouldn’t – worry

Good coverage by The Guardian – Japan Nuclear Crisis Live Updates

I must say that the mainstream press are stepping up on this.

18 March: From a science journalist: Nuclear power won’t kill you

Finding the time for networked learning

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A survey of small and medium sized businesses (SMB) showed workers spend about half their day on unproductive tasks:

Knowledge Workers are among the largest staff component in a typical SMB

SMB Knowledge Workers spend an estimated 36 percent of their time trying to

Contact customers, partners or colleagues

Find information

Schedule a meeting

Approximately 14 percent of SMB Knowledge Workers’ time is spent:

Duplicating information (e.g. forwarding e-mails or phone calls to confirm if fax/e-mail/text message was received

Managing unwanted communications (e.g. spam e-mails or unsolicited time-wasting phone calls)

Note: I registered for access to the complete report but it does not go into survey methodology or indicate the sample size, so I would not consider this scientific, but it’s an interesting data point.

These activities are important but obviously they take too much time. Finding the right information faster can be addressed individually through frameworks like networked learning (personal knowledge mastery). Finding information, plus the remaining four activities can be made more effective and efficient through social networks. For example, the largest stated benefit of organizations using social media is increasing speed of access to knowledge (McKinsey 2010). Simple tools like Doodle can make scheduling a breeze. Social networks like Twitter or LinkedIn let you find the right people faster.

The ROI for social media in business is pretty obvious: reducing wasted time.

In addition, there is a huge performance benefit. Not only is there less wasted time but that time can go into learning.

Since +90% of our learning is not supported by formal instruction, the opportunities for using social media at work are evident — more time for personal learning as well as a medium for networked learning.