Learning – Page 67 – Harold Jarche

Informal, Social, Wirearchical Business

2009-12-15 by Harold Jarche

Our motto is that “six heads are better than one” at the Internet Time Alliance, and I have the pleasure of working with and learning from a great collaborative team, spread across eight time zones.

1. Jon Husband’s working definition of Wirearchy is “a dynamic two-way flow of power and authority, based on knowledge, trust, credibility and a focus on results, enabled by interconnected people and technology”.

I believe the shift in power and authority is showing up in clear ways all around us, for better and for worse. The shift can be seen in daily events and in the ways peoples’ working lives and behaviours are changing, in the ways they are becoming more or less well-informed, and in consumption patterns for much of what they are buying and using.

This is a good description of where our work is focused: enabling organizations to become more “wirearchical”.

2. Wirearchy requires trust, and Charles Jennings explains how trust relationships are powerful allies in getting things done (focus on results) in organizations.

If we’re working in L&D [learning & development] strong trust relationships with senior leaders and middle managers are vital. Without a high level of trust any L&D manager will find it almost impossible to embed a culture of learning in their organisation.

3. The way we think of work and learning has to change in consideration of the dominance of networks (technical & human) in business. I have called this Work 2.0 and here are some suggestions on how to get there:

Think and act at a macro level (what to do) and leave the micro (how to do it) to each worker or team. The little stuff is changing too fast.
Engage with Web media and understand how they work. The Web is too important to be left to IT, communications or outside vendors.
Use social media to make work easier or more effective. Use them to solve problems for you.
Make yourself and your function redundant. Teach people how to fish and move on to the next challenge. If you’re maintaining a steady state then you’ve failed to evolve with the organization and the environment.

4. Business has always been social, especially at the higher levels of management and this is now part of everyone’s work. We are all inter-connected. Jane Hart explains how social media can be used for workplace learning. Instead of just training, there are five types of learning that should be supported by the organization:

1. IOL – Intra-Organisational Learning – keeping the organisation up to date and up to speed on strategic and other internal initiatives and activities
2. FSL – Formal Structured Learning – formal education and training like classes, courses, workshops, etc (both synchronous and asynchronous)
3. GDL – Group Directed Learning – groups of individuals working in teams, projects, study groups, etc Even two people working together in a coaching and mentoring capacity
4. PDL – Personal Directed Learning – individuals organising and managing their own personal or professional learning
5. ASL – Accidental & Serendipitous Learning – individuals learning without consciously realising it (aka incidental or random learning)

5. Social and informal learning are not just feel-good notions, but have a real impact on an increasingly intangible business environment, as Jon Husband & Jay Cross wrote:

In the network era, things you can’t see are more valuable than things you can.

Twenty-five years ago, intangibles accounted for less than a third of the value of the S&P 500. Today, intangibles can make up more than 80 percent of that value.

“Intangible assets — a skilled workforce, patents and know-how, software, strong customer relationships, brands, unique organizational designs and processes, and the like — generate most of corporate growth and shareholder value,” wrote NYU Professor Baruch Lev in Harvard Business Review in June 2004.

Corporate decision makers say their goal is to increase shareholder value. In a networked, information-based environment, shareholders value brand, reputation, ideas, relationships and know-how. These assets don’t appear on the balance sheet [yet], but more and more often they provide a corporation’s competitive edge.

Jay Cross: The social learning revolution has only just begun. Corporations that understand the value of knowledge sharing, teamwork, informal learning and joint problem solving are investing heavily in collaboration technology and are reaping the early rewards.

6. Clark Quinn & Jay Cross have described the new role of Chief Meta Learning Officer required for a wirearchical organization that supports informal, social learning in order to get things done.

Corporate culture is becoming more participatory. Authenticity, transparency, sharing, experimentation, peer power and togetherness are what it takes to succeed in a networked environment. As the tendrils of communications networks slither through silos and corporate boundaries, network values become the default organizational values. Cisco, which lives and breathes networks, is an example of baking network values into a corporate culture.

In Summary

My colleagues and I have thought a lot about workplace learning and we have been involved internally and as consultants with a wide range of organizations. Our thinking comes from experience, critical observation and forward-thinking assumptions based on patterns and trends. We are certain that organizational change is a business imperative and that social and informal learning are important paths to remaining innovative, and staying in business.

Getting Social Learning

2009-12-15 by Harold Jarche

We were discussing social learning yesterday and I think it boils down to this:

We are all inter-connected because

technology has enabled communication networks on a worldwide scale,

so that systemic changes are sensed almost immediately,

which means that reaction times and feedback loops have to be better, therefore

we need to know who to ask for advice right now,

which requires a level of trust, but

that takes time to nurture.

Therefore we turn to our friends and trusted colleagues,

who are those with whom we’ve shared experiences,

which means that we need to share experiences in order to trust each other [get it?].

—

It’s called social learning.

The University Myth

2009-12-14 by Harold Jarche

Forty-seven percent of Canadians have a post-secondary degree of some kind and, according to the CCL:

Even by 1950, less than 6% of Canadian 25- to 44-year-olds had university degrees. Today, secondary schooling is universally available, and the proportion of 25- to 44-year-olds with university degrees is near 20%.

Even going back to the 1970’s, when I started university, it was almost a ticket to a good job. Stay in school, get a degree, get a job, etc. However much there may have been a correlation between having a university degree and getting a good job, this is not a causal relationship. It was a social and cultural norm, based on the fact that for most of the twentieth century, having a degree put you in an elite, minority situation. This was coupled by the fact that HR departments had found an easy criterion to reduce the number of applicants; just require that certain positions require a degree. Many workers (e.g. junior managers) also had the comfort of taking time to learn on the job, so day one job ready skills were not a requirement.

Universities had it easy too. They could say that getting a degree helped you get a good job, because salaries were correlated with education. Enrolment increased, universities expanded and the academic system flourished. If it were so easy today.

The problem is that universities do little to prepare for work. The skills learned are seldom workplace oriented. But then, that is not the nature of the university. We as a society bought into the myth that university education equated to good jobs. From 1950 to 2003, the ratio of current university undergrads to the general population increased five-fold in Canada. As long as there were few university graduates, we had obvious correlation to good jobs, even though universities had not changed their basic operating models, established centuries earlier. Perhaps more science and logic would have prepared parents and students for our current situation.

I’m not advocating for the closure of universities, but we need to expand our horizons on other options for work preparation. We have put a lot of money into universities, less into community colleges and even less into apprenticeship programs. For those not believing the university myth, there are limited choices. Learning professionals need to get out of their boxes and help create some better choices. There is some correlation between learning professionals and learning, isn’t there?

eCollab Blog Carnival: Future of Training

2009-12-12 by Harold Jarche

The first eCollab Blog Carnival has received its submissions on the future of the training department, kicked off by our initial piece:

Will training departments survive to address these issues? The cards are still out. After all, we are in a global economic depression, and training is the perennial first sacrifice.

What would happen if you called for closing your training department in favor of a new function?

Imagine telling senior management that you were shuttering the classrooms in favor of peer-to-peer learning. You’re redeploying training staff as mentors, coaches, and facilitators who work on improving core business processes, strengthening relationships with customers, and cutting costs. You’re going to shift the focus to creativity, innovation, and helping people perform better, faster, cheaper.

You might want to give it a try.

Perhaps the time has come.

A good description of blog carnivals comes from Fadhila Brahimi (in French). Here’s my rough translation of what blog carnivals enable:

A time to share ideas and participate in knowledge co-creation.
An opportunity to focus on a single issue and see it from multiple, critical perspectives.
Development of a network of experts and practitioners around a topic.
An opportunity to highlight expertise and interest in a subject.
A chance to experiment and put forth new ideas and concepts.

Carnival Contributions

Thierry deBaillon on Knowledge, from Productivity Source to Critical Component: English – French

Thierry says that growing importance of informal knowledge in professional development means that companies are forced to get involved with more collaborative activities that go beyond organizational boundaries. The whole notion of what constitutes individual productivity is being questioned. How then can training organizations take into account and help promote implicit knowledge-sharing?

Tom Haskins on Collaborative Training Departments: English

Tom looks at four major innovations that collaborative training departments will likely adapt and adopt. One is what is becoming known as “subject matter networks” as opposed to subject matter networks. It is the growing need to look outside of the organization for expertise and innovation and this includes customers [a related post on eCollab by Mark Tamis discusses social learning & customer engagement]. Next is transparency, especially in evaluating the effectiveness of learning initiatives, such as doing post mortems in public view (scary for “conflicted” training departments). Third is co-creation, or involving more people in the design process, such as the learners themselves. Finally, Tom suggests collaboratively creating a new brand for the training department.

Clark Quinn on The Future of the Training Department: English

Clark takes a network-centric approach and suggest that organizations need to empower individuals to address the chaos they are facing. However, empowered individuals are not effective unless they can also collaborate and get enough guidance to not work at cross purposes. The future training department must take on a more strategic and facilitative role, connecting people through the best use of collaborative technologies.

NetworkProgression_Quinnovation — Network Progression by Clark Quinn

Vincent Berthelot on L’avenir de la formation dans l’entreprise collaborative: French.

[translation] Training is currently hobbled by financial-administrative constraints that prevent it from adapting, other than through cumbersome official channels, and is ill-adapted for new forms of learning.

Virginia Yonkers on the future of the training department: English

Virginia looks at the changing demands of learners and how they are demanding instant feedback and more choices in learning. Choices include more situated (non-standard & individualized) learning and just in time interventions. Virginia also notes that learners want to be tested so that they have proof of their skills and abilities.

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Not directly related to the Blog Carnival, but a good example of the future already being here, is a recent contribution to eCollab by Michael Glazer on Examples of Facilitating Collaborative Work & Learning. One example is of mid-level managers collaboratively developing individualized learning programs and then being mentored by senior managers who they get to choose:

At the pilot’s conclusion, we asked supervisors and participants if they would recommend the program to other colleagues. 91% of supervisors and 100% of participants said they would recommend the program. And at the following promotion cycle, several managers cited participation in the program as a contributing factor in earning promotions.

Charles Jennings also weighed in on the subject previously with What does a 21st Century L&D department look like? Charles identified some new competencies for learning & development professionals:

1. consulting / coaching acumen (as well as learning acumen) that is focused on performance problems and outcomes. The ability to engage with senior (and not-so-senior) line managers to identify the root cause of performance problems, and not simply focus on learning.

2. the ability to ‘speak business’. An understanding of business goals is the ‘so what’ in learning. Everyone in L&D should be able to read and draw conclusions from a balance sheet and P&L account and understand the business drivers that line managers are focused on.

3. a good grasp of technology – across-the-board – but especially emerging technologies, and how they can fit into learning solutions

4. adult learning – an understanding of how adults learn in the workplace, and ‘what works’ in organisational learning.

eCollab Blog Carnival

2009-11-30 by Harold Jarche

The first eCollab Blog Carnival (follow link for details) is set for 12 December 2009 (that’s a Saturday).

If you wish to contribute:

Before:
–   On your blog, via email, twitter or through other means, announce the new carnival ( you create a short post with links, visual, hashtags and short descriptions of Ecollab),
–   feel free to invite others as well.
–   Let us know by registering via the contact form or by sending a tweet to @hjarche with the hashtag #ECOLLAB

The topic to launch our carnival is the future of the training department, and submissions can be made in English or French, in keeping with the bi-cultural focus of Entreprise Collaborative.

During LearnTrends 2009 I noticed several back-channel discussions about the usefulness of the ADDIE model for instructional systems design, with some completely opposed and others thinking it just needs tweaking. With training so closely linked to ADDIE, do we need to reconsider training’s role in the workplace?

Has ADDIE outlived its usefulness?
Can training address complex work?
Has training become a solution looking for a problem?
Does the training department have a future?

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In addition, if you’re at Online Educa this week, be sure to take in The Great Training Robbery, presented by the Internet Time Alliance.

Group-centric work and training

2009-11-18 by Harold Jarche

Individual Training

In the +20 years I spent in the military, much of it was as a student on course. In the military there is a whole system that governs individual training, in our case it was CFITES.

CFITES comprises several volumes of instructions, including all of the ADDIE steps. A lot of resources are put into preparing individuals for duty and the system is designed for large numbers. Much time and effort goes into training a soldier and in peacetime there’s not much other than training to do anyway. If in doubt – train. Military Instructional Systems Design (ISD) has greatly informed and inspired civilian training. Frameworks such as the Systems Approach to Training, developed by the military, have over the years been adopted and adapted by corporations and government agencies.

Collective Training

Groups of soldiers who will work together usually participate in “collective training” and this typically follows some kind of cycle of preparing for operations, performing missions and coming back from missions. During the preparation phase, units work through the types of operations they think they might have to do. These are scenario-based rehearsals of varying intensity. For instance, one group exercise may solely focus on communications systems and processes.

What is interesting is that the collective training system is much less formal. There are guidelines, but not several volumes of guidance. For the most part, the training specialists are only advisors on collective training. The combat operations folks run the show here.

However, the military has a distinct advantage over business when it comes to collective training. The military is not always on operations. Due to the tempo of operational duty, soldiers need to come back and recuperate and this is when training can be conducted. Business, on the other hand, cannot afford to take staff away from their work for long. Business may be lower tempo than combat operations, but it’s always on.

The Military/Industrial Legacy

In corporations and large organizations, the training focus is predominantly on individual skills, usually based on some variant of ISD. However, as Jay Cross and I explained in the future of the training department, training is inadequate in developing the emergent practices necessary to operate in complex networked environments. The military is able to get around this weakness through collective training prior to operations, or pulling troops out of the operational theatre for special training. Also, new operating procedures are constantly updated with information from the Lessons Learned Centre.

Civilian organizations have taken one part of the military training model – Individual Training – and applied it to almost all training. This is part of the problem which could be partially addressed by focusing less on formal individual training and supporting informal learning. But the big challenge for businesses is to conduct collective training while working (being operational) at the same time.

Not Group Think, but Think Groups

The reality of working in networks is that the individual is only one node within multiple relationships of varying strengths and value. How the group works together and to whom it connects becomes very important. How then can networked workers do the equivalent of military collective training while still working effectively?

Something like the Lessons Learned Centre could be a good model for a more operationally-focused training department, communicating the emergent patterns that are observed in day to day work. The official objective of the training department could also shift from supporting individuals to supporting groups. This would be a major shift and we might then see a number of changes:

Training would have to move to the group because you could no longer pull individuals out of the workplace for courses.
Each group has its own work context so it becomes critical to involve each group in the design of tools and interventions.
There would be many groups to serve, so better feedback loops would be needed to ensure a two-way flow of communications.
The training department would be busier serving many masters and may be forced to emphasize do-it-yourself solutions for groups (a good thing).
The training department would learn more about the work being done (a real good thing).
Courses would become an option of last resort.

The new training department would have to be focused on “Connecting & Communicating”, such as lessons learned, and I would bet that the first set of tools they would grab would be some kind of social media to enable better communications and networking.

Social learning is real

2009-11-15 by Harold Jarche

Once again, I’m learning from my colleagues, as yesterday I realized how important self-direction is in enabling social learning. Now I’m picking up on Jay’s post on Social Learning Gets Real and see how it connects to Jane’s observations. Jay has described several aspects of the future of social learning (below) and they map to the matrix (farther down) I created based on Jane’s five types of social learning.

As Jay says:

In the past, we’ve focused on individuals but work is performed by groups. Hence, I expect us to start helping groups learn to perform instead of individuals.

Why is this important? We have structures and systems in place that promote and validate individual training but we leave almost all of the social learning to chance.

For example:

Would it be better to 1) take a generic classroom workshop on information management or 2) spend a few hours serendipitously learning on Twitter.

Is it more effective to a) read prepared case studies or to b) co-create your group’s case study that can be shared with the entire organization?

Jane Hart’s social learning definitions:

IOL – Intra-Organisational Learning – how social media tools can be used to keep employees up to date and up to speed on strategic and other internal initiatives
FSL – Formal Structured Learning – how educators (teachers, trainers, learning designers) as well as students can use social media within education and training – for courses, classes, workshops etc
GDL – Group Directed Learning – how groups of individuals – teams, projects, study groups etc – can use social media to work and learn together (a “group” could just be two people, so coaching and mentoring falls into this category)
PDL – Personal Directed Learning – how individuals can use social media for their own (self-directed) personal or professional learning
ASL – Accidental & Serendipitous Learning – how individuals, by using social media, can learn without consciously realising it (aka incidental or random learning)

Social media and self-directed learning

2009-11-14 by Harold Jarche

I found Jane Hart’s post on social media FOR learning most thought-provoking:

I have decided to categorise the use of social media in the following 5 different ways:

IOL – Intra-Organisational Learning – how social media tools can be used to keep the organisation up to date and up to speed on strategic and other internal initiatives

FSL – Formal Structured Learning – how educators (teachers, trainers, learning designers) as well as students can use social media within education and training – for courses, classes, workshops etc

GDL – Group Directed Learning – how groups of individuals – teams, projects, study groups etc – can use social media to work and learn together (a “group” could just be two people, so coaching and mentoring falls into this category)

PDL – Personal Directed Learning – how individuals can use social media for their own (self-directed) personal or professional learning

ASL – Accidental & Serendipitous Learning – how individuals, by using social media, can learn without consciously realising it (aka incidental or random learning)

This had me thinking about how best to explain these categories to clients and folks not immersed in social media and learning. I started by looking at it as a 2×2 matrix, but of course there are five categories, so that wouldn’t work. However, the axes of the amount of direction versus group size made sense to me, so I created the diagram below. What jumped out at me after the fact, and I’ve highlighted in red, is that social media for learning requires a lot of self-directed learning, either individually or as a participant in a group/organization. Externally directed learning (FSL) is only one of five possibilities. Good food for thought on the future role of the “training” department, isn’t it?

L’avenir de la formation en Entreprise

2009-11-12 by Harold Jarche

Cette année pour notre conférence LearnTrends nous allons offrir une session en français – L’Entreprise Collaborative et l’avenir de la formation en entreprise.

Voici les Participants: Harold Jarche, Jon Husband, Frédéric Domon, Vincent Berthelot et Thierry de Baillon

Nous allons présenter l’Entreprise Collaborative, discuter l’avenir de la formation (discussion autour du theme du prochain ecollab) et vous demander comment on peut mieux servir la communauté francophone.

Détails :

LearnTrends (voir la flèche verte pour le lien vers Elluminate)

mercredi 18 novembre

07:00 h (Pacifique)

PKM Overview

2009-11-08 by Harold Jarche

I will be presenting on personal knowledge management (PKM) for LearnTrends 2009 on Tuesday, 17 November at 12:00 noon Pacific (15:00 EST & 20:00 GMT). In preparation, I’ve created a 5 minute presentation (MP4) of the topic, summarizing many of the posts I’ve written on the subject (click link below to launch video).