Learning

Learning

Work environment design for learning

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Catherine Lombardozzi writes, in Time for an Evolution:

To those of you who feel like you just stepped into the middle of a conversation, a learning environment (to my mind) is a collect of resources and activities for learning. The resources may be inanimate or human; the activities may be formal or informal. A well designed learning environment is curated with a specific need in mind. It may be curated by an individual (as in a personal learning environment), by a group (such as a community of practice), or by a designer who is supporting a specific complex need that can’t be met by training or other formal programs alone.

I’ve been promoting learning environment design as a way of thinking about what we used to call blended learning, and as a way of capitalizing on informal learning resources by curating the best materials (in your judgment) and making them easily accessible by your learners.

I have taken her image and added a 70:20:10 overlay. This could serve as a decision support tool for allocating time and resources for organizational learning and development.

70 20 10

You are not the only bee in the hive

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Joachim Stroh adds some perspective to my post on tools and competencies for the social enterprise: “It’s about you, but you’re not the only bee in the hive; the further you expand the more you grow.”

honeycomb stroh

I think this image gives a good view of the various facets people have in the workplace: My Content, My Presence, My Networks, My Tasks, My Reputation, My Goals. It also shows that workers are not mere human resources that fill job positions. They are all multi-faceted and each of these facets touches the facets of others. It is social and it is complex.

In the digitally connected workplace, systemic changes are sensed almost immediately. Therefore reaction times and feedback loops have to get faster and be more effective. We need to know who to ask for advice right now, and this requires a level of trust. But trusted relationships take time to nurture. This is evident from Joachim’s image, showing many facets that each take time to develop. Since our default action at work is usually to turn to our friends and known colleagues for help, we need to share more of our experiences with others in order to grow our trusted networks. The more colleagues we can depend upon, the better we can get work done. The time to start is now.

“We learned that individual expertise did not distinguish people as high performers. What distinguished high performers were larger and more diversified personal networks.” – Rob Cross, The Hidden Power of Social Networks

Social learning is critical for organizational effectiveness today. Workers need to connect with others in order to co-solve problems. Sharing tacit knowledge through conversations is an essential component of knowledge work. Social media enable adaptation, and the development of emergent practices, through conversations. Ensuring our facets are interconnected is one way to become a more social business. For example:

  • Am I creating content that can easily be curated and shared?
  • Am I connecting my physical and virtual presences optimally?
  • Am I finding learning opportunities through my networks?

I create these tools and presentations in order to ask better questions while trying to solve client problems. If these provide some new insight, then they are useful. I am glad that others, like Joachim, share what they are doing so we can work on these together, without ever meeting (yet).

Tools and competencies for the social enterprise

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This past year I have worked on several projects that have extended my thinking on how we can use social media to promote cooperation and collaboration within and outside the enterprise. I explained some of this in a previous post on enterprise social network dimensions, which is based on the work of several others.

Ian McCarthy’s honeycomb of social media was an initial inspiration, showing how one could quickly and graphically portray differences between social media platforms. The Altimeter Group’s recent report on making the business case for enterprise social networks provided more detail on what happens inside organizations. Finally, Oscar Berg’s digital workplace concretized gave a good picture of what people-centric, service-oriented businesses should look like.

I would like to expand on this, highlighting some additions to that previous post in November. It seems that the seven facets identified by Oscar Berg align with some general digital competencies that are necessary for connected knowledge workers everywhere. These also align with the PKM framework that can support the flow of cooperative and collaborative work in a coherent organization. I have also shown examples of how one can look at various enterprise social network tools, such as the ubiquitous Sharepoint. I am not a Sharepoint fan, but almost all large organizations have it and it is usually a key part of their social network framework. Finally, I provide a few words of advice that I have learned from many projects. This presentation is a visual summary of a significant part of my work in 2012. I hope it is useful and I always appreciate discussions on how it can be improved.

rp_7-facets-ESN-520x3651-520x365.png

Some thoughts from 2012

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Here is a review of the five most popular posts here this past year, with a short synopsis of each. One year, distilled into a few paragraphs.

Informal Learning: The 95% Solution

Informal learning is not better than formal training; there is just a whole lot more of it. It’s 95% of workplace learning, according to the research reviewed by Gary Wise.

To create real learning organizations, there is a choice. We can keep bolting on bits of informal learning to the formal training structure, or we can take a systemic approach and figure out how learning can be integrated into the workflow – 95% of the time.

You simply cannot train people to be social

Effective organizational collaboration comes about when workers regularly narrate their work within a structure that encourages transparency and shares power & decision-making.

Creating a supportive social environment is management’s responsibility.

My experience is that changing to more collaborative, networked ways of work requires coordinated change activities from both the top and the bottom. It has to be a two-pronged approach and it will take some time and effort.

Three Principles for Net Work

Narration of Work – Transparency – Shared Power

The high-value work today is in facing complexity, not in addressing problems that have already been solved and for which a formulaic or standardized response has been developed. One challenge for organizations is getting people to realize that what they already know has increasingly diminishing value. How to learn and solve problems together is becoming the real business advantage.

The Learning Organization

  1. Learning is not something to “get”.
  2. The only knowledge that can be managed is our own.
  3. Learning in the workplace is much more than formal training.
  4. When we remove artificial barriers, we enable innovation.
  5. Learning and working are interconnected.

Cooperation trumps Collaboration

In networks, cooperation trumps collaboration. Collaboration happens around some kind of plan or structure, while cooperation presumes the freedom of individuals to join and participate. Cooperation is a driver of creativity.

Shifting our emphasis from collaboration, which still is required to get some work done, to cooperation, in order to thrive in a networked enterprise, means reassessing some of our assumptions and work practices.

Collaboration is only part of working in networks. Cooperation is also necessary, but it’s much less controllable than our institutions, hierarchies and HR practices would like to admit.

enhancing innovation

cooperative competencies

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Last month I wrote a post that included a presentation on enterprise social dimensions. It was based on three different perspectives I had come across. I recognized certain patterns and put these together to create a lens that could be used to determine if a selection of enterprise social network tools covered the spectrum of performance/learning needs in a networked workplace. The presentation has been well-received and so far I have not seen a similar approach.

In working with the framework, I realized that not only do the seven facets address tool requirements, but they can also be used to look at workplace competencies in the digital workplace. I am not a fan of competency models but these facets might be handy in creating professional development plans. The seven facets align with several parts of Jane Hart’s Smart Worker model, specifically – encouraging employee generated content; learning and sharing with others; and developing trusted networks of colleagues.

smart worker

Both collaborative behaviours (working together for a common goal) and cooperative behaviours (sharing freely without any quid pro quo) are needed in the network era. Most organizations focus on shorter term collaborative behaviours, but networks thrive on cooperative behaviours, where people share without any direct benefit. This is the major shift we need in creating Enterprise 2.0 or social businesses. Being “social” means being human, and humans are much more than economic units. We like to be helpful and we like to get recognition. We need more than extrinsic compensation and our behaviour on Wikipedia and online social networks proves this. For the most part, we like to help others. This is cooperation, and it makes for more resilient networks. Better networks are better for business.

The image below shows an initial set of competencies that focus not just on collaboration, but also cooperation.

digital competencies ITA

hyper-connected pattern seeking

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Here is more confirmation that work is learning, and learning is the work. From a recent post by the BBC:

Crucial in surviving all of these unpredictable variables is the use of network design tools – software suites that can simulate what happens at the point of disaster.

“This helps when decisions need to be made in the next couple of days – maybe even the next couple of hours,” explains Tim Payne, research director for Gartner analysts.

“The processing speed at which they can run through a plan or simulation can take seconds — rather than having to run it over night.”

It means companies can take a highly-educated guess at how their decisions will immediately impact their supply chains – and their ability to meet their customer’s demands.

As feedback loops get faster with increased connectivity, the ability to learn and ‘spin on a dime’ becomes paramount. The BBC article discusses the use of technology to analyze data and spot potential risks and trends. But what about people? Technology is only a small part of creating more nimble companies. Workers have to be able to recognize patterns in complexity and chaos and be empowered to do something with their observations and insights.

The Principles of Networked Unmanagement provide an initial framework.

It is only through innovative and contextual methods, the self-selection of the most appropriate tools and work conditions, and willing cooperation that more productive work can be assured. The duty of being transparent in our work and sharing our knowledge rests with all workers.

Innovative and contextual methods mean that standard processes do not work for exception-handling or identifying new patterns. Self-selection of tools puts workers in control of what they use, like knowledge artisans whose distinguishing characteristic is seeking and sharing information to complete tasks. Equipped with, and augmented by, technology, they cooperate through their networks to solve complex problems and test new ideas. This only works in transparent environments.

If learning, and unlearning, are not integrated with the daily work flow then opportunities, such as the Duchess’s dress cited in the BBC article, will be missed. Organizations and their ecosystems that can learn and adapt quickly will be able to capitalize on the myriad opportunities that are constantly presented in a hyper-connected economy. This is nothing new, but it is becoming much more crucial for business survival.

 

networked unlearning

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Our nature – our bias towards an inward focus based on tradition and the past, or an external focus on what we’re seeing around us – cuts across age. Those of us who are willing to question our assumptions will find that we can unlearn (and relearn) at any age. Those who put more weight on what they already know will struggle to change at any age. Today’s digital native will be tomorrow’s digital dinosaur if they are unable to unlearn. That bleeding edge agile practitioner who dogmatically insists that they won’t work with unless you follow these four (in their view) essential agile practices has more in common with their older colleagues still clinging to waterfall methodologies than they are comfortable admitting. —Peter Evans-Greenwood

How can we avoid becoming dogmatic? I think social media can help a lot. Today, we can easily connect to networks that offer diverse views. Inge de Waard uses the example of research tribes: “When joining forces with people that have a common language – but different viewing angles – everyone learns as there is some kind of zone of proximal development there, or it can be created based on mutual conversation and dialogue.” Social media are tools that can help us develop emergent practices. They enable conversations between people separated by distance or time. Social media can facilitate the sharing of tacit knowledge through conversations to inform the collaborative development of emergent work practices. Conversations that push our limits enable critical thinking, which boils down to questioning assumptions, including our own.

One way to build a cognitive web toolbox would be to start with each of the four critical thinking categories shown in the image above. Each sub-category is just an example, and includes many different tools. One can start unlearning by finding and mastering tools that allow you to critically observe and study your field, participate in conversations that  push your understanding, challenge your assumptions, evaluate others’ arguments, and make tentative opinions that in turn will be challenged.

Unlearning takes practice. Living in a state of perpetual Beta can also be uncomfortable. The key is to be engaged in your learning. It requires strong opinions, loosely held. That means going out on a limb knowing you may be criticized. It also means putting forth half-baked ideas, which over time and exposure may develop into something more solid.

But finding and weaving our knowledge networks is getting easier with over two billion of us connected by the Internet. This scale and diversity is an advantage, not something to be concerned about. There is no such thing as information overload. I have yet to see someone completely filled with information. The real challenge is finding the right information. The more I learn, the more I realize I have to learn even more.

As Peter says in the article quoted above, “… it’s not learning that is the challenge, it’s our ability to unlearn that’s holding many of us back.” But we don’t need to unlearn alone. Our networks can help us unlearn; if they are are open, transparent, and most importantly, diverse. A more descriptive term for Personal Knowledge Mastery might just be Networked Unlearning or connected critical thinking.

The right information is not enough

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There is quite a bit of research on the significant value of making the right information available to the right person at the right time – and quite a bit of research shows clearly that Enterprise Search has a direct impact on the success of organizations. So enterprise search platforms must include social capabilities to tap into powerful ways to find the information that employees need more quickly and accurately. This calls for integration into a single platform that continuously evolves as the workplace changes.

This is the conclusion made by Julie Hunt in a comprehensive post on enterprise search. I would like to contrast this with a statement made by Dave Snowden that I noted in negotiating between chaos and project management.

Fallacy: If you give the right information, to the right people, at the right time, they will act accordingly. As “pattern-seekers” we may not even “see” the data when it is presented.

This is a problem with technology-centric solutions to business problems. Business is about people and how they interact. No single technology has ever addressed an entire area of business. No technology will resolve our search issues because we don’t have search issues. Our business issues are more like understanding disparate data; finding information to support or refute what we think we know; and getting information that helps us take appropriate action. There is a danger that a single social search platform could be seen as replacing the need for personal reflection and providing time for individual sense-making and sharing it. It has happened before with knowledge management and learning management systems.

I am a strong proponent of manual, not automatic, sense-making frameworks. Each person is the indivisible unit of knowledge work. If the aim is to improve organizational knowledge, then people have to take time to make sense of it. If not, it remains merely information, whether in a unified search tool or elsewhere.

While Julie Hunt provides a good overview of how social re-connects enterprise search, we should not let search tools, or any other tools, override the social (human) aspects of business. As Jay Cross says, business is VERY personal. Sense-making, or learning while we work, is too important to be managed by a single technology platform.

Become your own upstart

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Upstarts & Incumbents

In Clayton Christensen’s book, Seeing What’s Next the authors discuss how new business entrants (upstarts) can target non-core customers of industry incumbents. These come in three categories (overshot, undershot and non-customers) and by targeting these customers, entrants can avoid direct confrontation, while developing skills and expertise in areas outside the core business of the incumbents. Once the entrants have grown “under the radar”, they can grow to directly confront the incumbents. They can develop “asymmetrical skills” based on “asymmetrical motivations”. Basically, they are motivated to do new things that do not have the revenue streams of the existing products and services of incumbents.

According to this model, new entrants to a market should identify potential customers based upon the markets of established incumbent(s):

  1. Undershot – willing to pay more for more functions/services
  2. Overshot – find current offering more than adequate
  3. Non-consumers – lack ability or the wealth for current service / products

For a new entrant, the best market is the non-consumer (also the least demanding) who is under the radar of the incumbents. The second best target group is the Overshot Customer (specialist displacement for mainstream) who is willing to accept a more specialized product/service than the broader offering of the incumbent, or one who is looking for something cheaper and “good enough” (low end).

In business, there are always upstarts with different motivations and new skills looking for new opportunities and disruptive innovations. Some of the key questions to ask when looking for signals of change in any industry or market are:

  • What jobs are customers trying to get done?
  • Are customers not served, undershot or overshot by current offerings?
  • Where are new business models emerging?
  • What role do regulatory agencies play?
  • Has a recent technology changed how work gets done?

Internal Upstarts

You could look at your current organization as an incumbent and yourself as an upstart and ask similar questions to those above. What is the organization focused on and who are the overshot and undershot customers? Who are the non-consumers? You can do this individually, as a team, or even a department. Perhaps you realize that your organization is not dealing well with networked customers and has poor knowledge-sharing and collaboration skills. With asymmetrical motivation, you can start learning and developing these yourself. Over time this will give you asymmetrical skills, like online community management or mastery of social media tools. None of this would be at odds with the organization or your current work.

If you think that your organization may not survive the next onslaught from an external upstart, then perhaps it’s time to realize that with the right motivation, you and your colleagues could develop the skills needed to take the upstarts on when the time comes. So start doing something the organization does not want to do and few have the skills to do. If you think that successful organizations in the near future will practice networked unmanagement, then you can start developing asymmetrical skills for the networked workplace now by:

Organizational, institutional, technological, and market changes are certainly coming as the network era gets into full swing. Watch for the signals of change as existing industries fall to the upstarts and be ready yourself.

The training world is changing

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From the Citrix GoTo Blog:

Open online courses, talent management, social collaboration: The training world is changing. Traditional training structures, based on institutions, programs, courses and classes, are under pressure. One of the biggest changes we are seeing in online training is that the content-delivery model is being replaced by social and collaborative frameworks.

Here are just some of things happening now that trainers should be prepared to tackle in the new year:

Increasing Complexity

Helping people be more creative and solve complex problems is now a priority. While workers still need to be trained and educated, that alone will not prepare them for a networked workplace that requires continuous learning on the job. Training departments need to add more thought and resources to enable people to learn socially, share cooperatively and work collaboratively …

An Expanded Role for Training and Development

Training professionals will need to help create and support social learning networks, moving out of the classroom to where the work is being done. They will also need to promote continuous knowledge sharing by modeling how it is done and setting the example. Trainers will have to become expert learners …

Learning as a Business Imperative

As work becomes more networked and complex, the social aspects of knowledge sharing and collaboration are becoming more important. Learning amongst ourselves is getting to be the real work in many organizations. Training development professionals should be part of that change.

For a more in-depth list of near-term trends that should be taken into consideration during the next year, download [read] the white paper: https://www.slideshare.net/GoToTraining/whats-working-and-whats-not-in-online-training