Learning

Learning

Learning and Working in Complexity Workshop

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Over several online and on-site presentations this past year, I’ve noticed a need for organizations to develop practical tools and contextual processes to manage information, knowledge and learning. I am offering a one-day workshop that encapsulates several years of “learning & working on the Web”.

Learning & Working in Complexity Workshop

One day (on-site or online)

Part 1: Overview of issues and forces that are fundamentally changing workplace learning

Part 2: Discussion & Examples from various fields

Part 3: Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) overview

Part 4: Setting up your own PKM system

References:

Skills 2.0 for learning professionals

PKM

Future of Training

Friday’s finds #2

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I am continuing to learn from Twitter. A real potpourri this past week:

The 140 character limitation of Twitter forced me to reduce the essence of this post to:

When faced with complexity: 1) organize as networks 2) continuously develop emergent practices 3) collaborate around common goals.

Pep rallies and tribalism make little sense in a networked world. via XKCD

“Quote du jour from Umair Haque: Record labels are caught in a prisoners dilemma, and the jailer is the RIAA.” via @dsearls

via @johnt – Enterprise 2.0 Knowledge Management – A Revolution of Knowledge in Three parts

via @statsgirl “poverty is the #1 risk factor for mental illness”

via @denniscallahan 3 reasons to try FriendFeed (I like reasons 2 & 3)

ATMC – Providing Excellent Training in a Tough Economy

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The Automotive Training Managers Council (ATMC) annual conference is online and open to members and guests this year. ATMC is focused on the “exchange of training ideas and strategies helpful to both technical and sales/marketing training professionals”. The theme for the conference, to be held on Thursday, 28 May 2009, is Providing Excellent Training in a Tough Economy.

Here’s the schedule (Eastern Time Zone GMT -4):

12:30 PM: Welcome and Brief ATMC Update
12:45 PM: “Training and the Networked Workplace” by Harold Jarche – Workplace Learning Strategist, jarche.com
1:45 PM: “Service Training at Daimler Trucks North America” by Brian Stowe – Manager, Training Development, Daimler Trucks North America
2:45 PM: A topic related to delivering video on the Web by Paul Louwers – President & CEO, AVI (Automotive Video, Inc.).
3:15 PM: A topic related to finding grant funding for training by Jeff Miller – Partner, Incentis Group
3:45 PM: Rapid Networking.

Free conference registration is now available.

Friday’s Finds #1

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In an attempt to make my finds on Twitter more explicit, this may be the start of regular posts on some of the things I learned this past week (weekly seems better than monthly).

Numbers & Measurement

From Charles Green at The Trusted Advisor:

If you can measure it, you can manage it; if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it; if you can’t manage it, it’s because you can’t measure it; and if you managed it, it’s because you measured it.

Every one of those statements is wrong. But business eats it up. And it’s easy to see why.

…

The ubiquity of measurement inexorably leads people to mistake the measures themselves for the things they were intended to measure.

More on meaningless numbers used to measure things, from Dave Snowden.

We face the challenge of meeting increasing legitimate demands for social services with decreasing real time resources. That brings with it questions of rationing, control and measurement which, however well intentioned, conspire to make the problem worse rather than better. For me this all comes back to one fundamental error, namely we are treating all the processes of government as if they were tasks for engineers rather than a complex problem of co-evolution at multiple levels (individuals, the community, the environment etc.).

Open Source

David Eaves discusses how being open, like embracing open source software, is becoming important for economic development:

Vancouver is not broken – but it could always be improved, and  twitter confirms a suspicion I have: that programmers and creative workers in all industries are attracted to places that are open because it allows them to participate in improving where they live. Having a city that is attractive to great software programmers is a strategic imperative for Vancouver. Where there are great software programmers there will be big software companies and start ups.

Via @SoulSoup is the story of DimDim (free, open source, web conferencing platform) [dead link] making CNET’s Webware Top 100 for 2009 [dead link]. Open source is moving up the software stack, first with operating systems, then general applications and now richer applications. Software vendors have to be continuously moving into higher value applications to remain relevant. This is a natural industry evolution that few purchasers, especially in government, understand.

Learning & Working

Rob Paterson:

In 1996, aged 45, I was on a train with Fraser Mustard. We were returning from a trip to Queens University in Kingston,  where he had been giving a master class to  a group of senior people in the Canadian Government service. I had been working for him as an adviser for about a year. Working with him was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. I asked him if he would consider taking me on full time.

“You are an adult now Rob. Time to go out on your own.” He paused and then added. “I am tired. You cannot rely on me for your life.”

The greatest advice I have ever had given by the greatest man I have ever encountered.

Via @changedotorg –  “In fact, if you look at what’s really happening right now in the nonprofit sector, you’ll find several reasons NOT to go back to school and focus on what organizations are really looking for in potential candidates.” When a Degree isn’t enough [dead link]

Charles Jennings:

There’s enough evidence now to show that Instructor-Led Training is not effective as an approach for the majority of employee development. ILT may be helpful for some change management and big-picture ‘concept’ development, but it is demonstrably the least effective and certainly the least efficient approach for most learning that’s required.

On curriculum

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I noticed today something that reinfornced my opinion of education curriculum. As you can see from my last post, there’s a production of My Fair Lady at the high school for the next three nights, plus an in-school presentation this morning. Our son came home from the session today and after an extended long weekend of practices he’s exhausted, but happy. He took a nap and is now preparing for this evening’s performance. He has a lot of lines plus many songs, dances and stage movements to memorize and perform.

There is an English assignment due for tomorrow that requires a re-write of an ending to a book. This is similar to the re-writes of several plays he has done and is something he can do and do well. However, he has almost no time to get it done. He will get something completed, but I’m sure it won’t be his best work or a great learning experience. Of course, he is presented with no options other than doing the prescribed task. There is no flexibility in the system for anything like prior learning assessment or objective based learning where achievement lets you move on to other things. This is the bully of curriculum.

As I was thinking about this in relation to my work I thought of the best way that I could describe curriculum to someone who had never heard of the term:

Curriculum: an outdated broadcast model for knowledge-sharing, based on the presumption of a shortage of information, limited social connections and finite knowledge boundaries.

Managing emergent practice

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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.

This is how Jay Cross and I finished our article on The Future of the Training Department. We showed that in complex environments, which more of us face each day, only emergent practices are effective, as backward-looking “good practices” are inadequate. Training is a method based on good practices and best practices. We establish our performance objectives based on an understanding of what we want to achieve, usually engaging subject matter experts to help us. But what if nobody knows how to do or even describe our future roles and tasks? That is the challenge for training managers in preparing workers to face complex problems.

According to Dave Snowden’s Cynefin framework, sense can be made in complex environments by 1) first probing through some action and then 2) sensing to understand what is happening and 3) finally responding based on what you have learned. Think of it as launching a new Web service. First it goes up as a Beta site and people join and use the services. Through their actions they give feedback; implicit and explicit. An effective strategy is to tap the feedback and actions of users and revise the service. Sometimes it is a radical change that is needed, such as when Flickr (now owned by Yahoo!) changed its early business focus from online gaming to photo sharing. In other cases it is a minor change, like accepting the use of the “@” symbol as a way of sending replies in Twitter. On the Web, and in complexity, it’s – Ready, Fire, Aim, Re-aim. I call it Life in Perpetual Beta.

A key understanding about complex environments is that they cannot be planned for. Certain skills can be developed in preparation for dealing with complexity but it is just as important to have systems in place that support workers in dealing with complexity. Shifting the main effort of the training department from content delivery to connecting and communicating is needed. That means pushing learning development tools to all workers. Everyone is now a subject matter expert at some point in time. Workers need to develop practices so that they can easily capture, find and share emerging practices. Web tools like social bookmarks, feed readers, blogs, and wikis can help (See Jane Hart’s 25 Tools for Learning Professionals).

The training department not only needs to teach how to use these tools but has to mine current practices as they evolve. Sense-making and pattern recognition become core skills for training specialists as they continuously develop new tools and processes based on emerging practices. Working in complex environments requires constant recalibration of methods and practices. There is no status quo.

In complex work environments we may need more coaches and facilitators but they will have to be as close to the work as possible. Standing back with a non-practitioner’s perspective will not help those doing the work. New roles such as ‘coach-as-co-worker’ or ‘facilitator-peer’ may emerge in this environment. As has already happened in this late industrial age, mid-level managers will become more redundant unless they can can do more than just manage. Who wants to hire a knowledge worker, as more of us are becoming, who still needs to be managed?

The Learning Age

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This isn’t the Information Age, it’s the Learning Age; and the quicker people get their heads around that, the better – Prof Stephen Heppell

This is a quote from a short video on the future of learning which asks the key question, What do we want to do? (with all of this networked information technology).

There is little doubt that we need systemic change to prepare for the Learning Age, the signals are everywhere and the conversations are getting louder. Here’s an example: I recently met with some people in a large organization who are working on some new learning network initiatives. I mentioned that I was connected on Twitter to a person working on similar things and that I could connect them. On checking the name, we discovered that all of these people worked in the same organization but didn’t know what the others were doing. One limiting factor was the iron fist of the IT department, which doesn’t allow access to a wide variety of web sites and platforms. People cannot easily connect and therefore they cannot learn from each other. The silence between the silos is deafening.

Starting in the early years, schools need to shift to individualized learning. With 2GB of information being added every second, no one can “master content” any more. Jobs and roles are fragmenting so quickly (what’s a social media expert?) that a single, 12-year curriculum is laughable.

Business models and work practices are becoming networked and global, speeding the rate of time to implementation. The lines between work and leisure are blurring, as with work and learning. Today, about 16% of us can be described as hyperconnected but that is expected to grow to 40%, and I would say those people will be the main drivers of our economies and societies.

Every person in an organization can, and should, begin a journey to be active in the Learning Age:

Accept life in Beta and give up some control by trusting people to do their work.

Help people by enabling connections (outsourcing the IT department would be a good start) and assisting with methods like PKM.

Examine better ways to organize and structure but start the change at the individual and personal level.

Work at becoming better teachers, because when we teach, we learn best.

Learning as a Network

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Mohamed Amine Chatti extends the framework on personal knowledge networks with his post on Learning as a Network (follow link for graphic):

The Learning as a Network (LaaN) perspective draws together some of the concepts behind double-loop learning and connectivism. It starts from the learner and views learning as the continuous creation of a personal knowledge network (PKN). For each learner, a PKN is a unique adaptive repertoire of:
– One’s theories-in-use. This includes norms for individual performance, strategies for achieving values, and assumptions that bind strategies and values together (conceptual/internal level) Tacit and explicit knowledge nodes (i.e. people and information) (external level

Here is Chris Argyris’ double-loop learning theory in a nutshell:

“There are four basic steps in the action theory learning process: (1) discovery of espoused and theory-in-use, (2) invention of new meanings, (3) production of new actions, and (4) generalization of results. Double loop learning involves applying each of these steps to itself. In double loop learning, assumptions underlying current views are questioned and hypotheses about behavior tested publically. The end result of double loop learning should be increased effectiveness in decision-making and better acceptance of failures and mistakes.”
double-loop

And here is George Siemens’ Connectivism theory:

Connectivism is the integration of principles explored by chaos, network, and complexity and self-organization theories. Learning is a process that occurs within nebulous environments of shifting core elements – not entirely under the control of the individual. Learning (defined as actionable knowledge) can reside outside of ourselves (within an organization or a database), is focused on connecting specialized information sets, and the connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing.

Finally, you can get a quick overview of the Cynefin model and complexity with this video from Anecdote.

So that’s: double-loop learning – connectivism – complexity; three concepts, each requiring some depth of understanding . No wonder this is a hard sell in the boardroom. Many people think of learning as school, training as something that is delivered, and complexity as problems that can be solved with effort and resources.

Like Mohamed, I am interested in these theories but my true passion is in implementing frameworks for the workplace.  I too think that merging learning and knowledge management into our work is a good way to help organizations deal with complexity.

Here’s a possible elevator pitch for learning as a network, or PKM:

Is your work becoming more complex? How much complexity is there in the markets or the environment? Can anyone predict what’s going to happen next? Obviously many of the world’s economists have been wrong about most things. Looking backwards hasn’t helped us much.

In a complex world we cannot predict outcomes but we can engage our environment and learn by doing. That makes constant learning a critical business skill. But how do we help people develop that skill?

Giving tools and teaching by example is a good way to start. People need to make connections and see patterns and then reflect, criticize and detect errors. Only in a trusting, collaborative workplace can this happen.

Want to know more? Well let me you tell a story …

Work is learning, learning work

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As host of this month’s  Working / Learning Blog Carnival, David Wilkins challenged participants to think about the intersections between working and learning:

  • When does work become learning?
  • When does learning become work?

The integration of work and learning is a key part of my professional practice. Why?

Networks — Our workplaces, economies and societies are becoming highly networked. That means the transmission of ideas can be instantaneous. There is no time to pause, go into the back room and develop something to address our challenges. The problem will have changed by then.

Life in perpetual Beta — Not just rapid change, but continual change, requires practices that evolve as they’re developed. In programming, this has meant a move from waterfall to agile methods. Beta releases are the norm for Web applications and as we do more on the Web, other practices are sure to follow.

Complexity — The Cynefin framework shows that established practices work when the environment or the challenge is simple or complicated. For complex problems there are no established answers and we need to engage the problem and learn by probing. This requires a completely different mindset from training for defined problems and measurable outcomes. The integration of learning and work is not some ideal, it is a necessity in a complex world.

My current interest in Web social media is that these tools and platforms give us a better way to engage in collaborative work and help us integrate learning into our daily practice, such as personal knowledge mastery. There is no excuse that we cannot address the huge amounts of information and the complexity in our workplaces, as we already have the tools and much practice to inform us. All we need is the will.

“Work is learning, learning work” – that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

(apologies to Keats)

• Did you like this post? Check out the perpetual beta series

Nine Shift in Saint John

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I’ve written fairly often about Nine Shift, both the blog and the book, since 2005. Tomorrow evening, Bill Draves, Nine Shift author, will be speaking at the Faces of Fusion networking dinner in Saint John and I have the privilege of attending.

Nine Shift
Nine Shift

The basis of the book is that in the next decade what we do during 75% of our waking day (nine hours) will drastically change. In Chapter One the nine shifts, described several years ago and taking place at this time, are [my comments]:

Shift One. People work at home. [like most of my colleagues]

Shift Two. Intranets replace offices. [and maybe cafés replace offices too]

Shift Three. Networks replace pyramids. [same for the training department or the leaking organizational pyramid]

Shift Four. Trains replace cars. [ I already enjoy train service as often as possible]

Shift Five. Dense neighborhoods replace suburbs. [on the changing suburbs, from The Atlantic March 2009]

Shift Six. New social infrastructures evolve. [new forms of structures are already being developed]

Shift Seven. Cheating becomes collaboration. [collaboration is a required skill for the networked workplace]

Shift Eight. Half of all learning is online. [in spite of New Brunswick’s drastic reduction to its distance learning budget]

Shift Nine. Education becomes web-based. [is there any doubt?]

I’m looking forward to finally meeting Bill and hope to have more to add to this theme.