Learning

Learning

Why the Government of Canada needs PKM

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David Eaves writes in Why the Government of Canada needs Bloggers:

“One theme that came up was that public servants feel they are suffering from information overload. There is simply so much going on around them and it is impossible to keep up with it all. This is especially true of those in the senior ranks.”

I saw this when I was working on the Advanced Leadership Program with the Canada School of Public Service last year. I can’t discuss any specifics of what I observed, but there is no doubt that senior public servants are inundated with information and that their time is not their own, with many days filled with meetings and other time-consuming activities.

However, blogging is not enough because managing information overload is more a question of attitude than skills. We need to understand that we’ve been in a state of information overload since the 15th Century when there were more books than one person could read in a lifetime (watch Clay Shirky’s interview on FastForward). Blogs, or their equivalent, are only one part of the knowledge management equation.

I think that public servants really need PKM (personal knowledge mastery). PKM is a way to help make sense of the information flows that face us and I’ve written about PKM many times. It is basically a process of:

  1. Sorting & Filtering (e.g. Feed Readers & following on Twitter )
  2. Annotating and Filing (e.g. social bookmarks)
  3. Tentative Sense-making (e.g. Blog posts & Twitter Posts)
  4. Engagement and conversations in these venues and others

The bottom line of web-based PKM is to develop a process of sense-making. It’s much like the discipline of maintaining a professional journal, attending lectures or reading good books and does not negate any of these activities.

So I would say that public servants, especially in senior positions, need more than blogs and that they need their own, individual PKM process, incorporating various web social media tools. If the Indonesian Minister of Defence has been able to maintain a blog for the past fours years, our public servants can do that and maybe a bit more, n’est-ce pas?

Soft skills are foundational competencies

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Aaron Chua at Wild Illusions sees financial measurements as no longer able to tell the complete story. He mentions various other areas for measurement, including “talent development” but in a different context from the tired “talent management” perspective we’ve heard for several years:

This means a total redefinition of what talent development means in organisations. The first implication is of course to throw out the idea of having a talent development unit. Instead, we need to think about ways to rebuilt how talent is truly developed via connections to the resources at the edge, connections to different organisational competencies that plugs their gaps, connections that increases cognitive diversity and brings about unexpected learnings et al. All these are rich areas for a new breed of talent development companies to think about and to create new products/services upon.

If you buy into Richard Florida’s concept of the Creative Class (which I mostly do) then it becomes obvious that for organizations to succeed they will have to nurture creativity in their workforce. Creative people are at all levels, including the janitor, and are not ‘human resources’ but individuals who have the capability of  gaining wisdom. From the Creative Class Blog is an article on The Workplace in a Wiki World, with this idea about the changing emphasis for workers:

Therefore, for an individual to succeed in a wiki-corporation or wiki-organization it will increasingly require being more than an engineer, programmer, economist, or accountant. It will also require the “soft skills” to do media relations or “wiki” relations, interacting daily with a range of customers and outside contributors, as well as collaborating with others in the company.

Here’s my speculation on workplace learning in ten years.

Soft skills, especially collaboration and networking, will become more important than hard skills. Smart employers have always focused more on attitude than any specific skill-set because they know they can train for a lack of skills and knowledge. The soft skills require time, mentoring, informal learning and other environmental supports. Once you have the soft skills to perform in a networked workplace, you’ll have foundational competencies.

I think many people will say of course we’ve known this all along, but in a workplace where our networks are as important as our skills, it will be more difficult to hide the fact that you’re a highly skilled jerk.

Workplace learning in ten years

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The LCB Big Question for March is, What will workplace learning look like in 10 years?

I’ll start by going back 10 years to my workplace and see what is different from early 1999:

  • I was still using a paper-based Day Timer, so I can’t quickly see what I was doing at that time. I switched to a Handspring (Palm) in 2001.
  • I had high-speed Internet access at work ( a university) but not at home until 2003.
  • We had digital cameras at work but our camera at home used film.
  • My professional network was the people at work, our clients and partners and a very few people (e.g. Jay Cross) who were blogging and giving me a way to interact with them without having met.
  • To set up a collaborative work space for our clients, Lotus Notes was one of the few options. Most of our clients balked at the idea of online collaborative work and preferred e-mail or the telephone (some things don’t change).
  • We were pushing workplace learning options like EPSS, KM, and CSCW but most of the money was being invested in online courses, LMS, and LCMS.
  • Big conferences, like OnlineLearning, were attracting thousands of attendees.

In the intervening decade I wondered about some of the technological changes. We now have practically unlimited digital storage, increasing bandwidth, almost ubiquitous connectivity, and the ability to digitally capture and share everything we see and hear. I’ve also had the ability to work on my own, from a small town in Atlantic Canada, because of our networked infrastructure. This was not really possible in 1999 but by 2003 it was feasible, though a challenge.

Workplace learning in 2019:

  • Much of the workforce will be distributed in time & space as well as in engagement (part-time, full-time, contract, mix).
  • More learning will be do-it-yourself and gathered from online digital resources available for free and fee. More workers will be used to getting what they need as they change jobs/contracts more frequently but remain connected to their online networks (online/offline won’t matter anymore).
  • Work and learning will continue to blend while stand-up training will be challenged by the ever-present back channel. Successful training programs will involve the learners much more — before, during, and after.
  • Conferences, workshops and on-site training will become more niche and fragmented (smaller,  focused, & connected online) as travel costs increase and workers become more demanding of their time.
  • The notion of PKM will have permeated much of the workplace.
  • These changes will not be evenly distributed.

A Learning Reformation

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In — No more “learners” — Jay Cross uses the preacher-congregation metaphor to show the dysfunction in our educational and training systems. Much as the Reformation, sped by the new technology of the printing press, ushered in an era of believing and thinking for ourselves, we have the makings of our own Learning Reformation.

The removal of overt rules (Jay uses traffic signs as an example) can empower people, while thinking of them as just “learners” is condescending and plays to the power game of teacher-students. Let’s face it, especially in light of how our institutions have screwed up the world, we all have to be learning together.

In The future of the training department, Jay and I put forth the idea that in order to help organizations evolve in a complex environment we have to move away from training delivery and focus on Connecting & Communicating. Workers, provided the right tools and resources, can figure out what they need to learn. Tony Karrer has picked up on this, as has David Wilkins.

Here are some suggestions for people in training organizations as they shift to supporting the networked workplace:

  1. Be an active & continuous learner yourself (e.g. personally manage your knowledge).
  2. Be a lurker (passive participant) & LISTEN
  3. Communicate what you observe.
  4. Continuously collect feedback, not just after formal training (yes there’s still a place for some of this).
  5. Make it easy to share information by Simplifying & Synthesizing.
  6. Use Networks as research tools.
  7. Identify learning skills and develop them in yourself and others [thanks, Clark]

All of these skills are dependent on #1. You can read about being a good learner and then put the book back on the shelf, but learning is a process and leadership by example is needed. Be an example.

Q: What’s the best way to use social media in your organization?

A: Start by using them yourself.

Steve Simons recently wrote:

I read with interest your article “The future of the training department”, particularly the last paragraph. As an IT trainer in the UK (I train on a contract basis for large organisations), I’ve often wondered what uses people will get from their learning. Sometimes my general feeling is “none”. Your phrase “shift the focus to creativity, innovation, and helping people perform better, faster, cheaper” really hit the spot with me.

I recommended the book From Training to Performance Improvement to Steve, as it helps get training departments out of the “solution looking for a problem” approach. As much as books like this are a good start, a shift to performance improvement is not enough. There is no single best approach and we need to bring in other frameworks such as connectivism, wirearchy and social network theory. The era of silos is over.

Here’s some advice for anyone in charge of a training department:

No single, sure-fire, cookie-cutter approach can be implemented in a top-down or consultant-driven manner to create a networked workplace performance model that works for “your” organization. Don’t believe the hype that one technology or one method will save you, because no single method in the past has done that. You have the best knowledge about your organization. You may need some direction, support, data, advice or a sounding board, but you have to create your own inter-dependent network.

From schools to skunk works

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I’m following up on yesterday’s post discussing how established institutions (schools, universities, research facilities) change only after working organizations (businesses, enterprises, social groups) have. Hugh’s cartoon of work as a “loose confederation of skunk works, joined by insanity” aptly describes the modern workplace and the surrounding social and technological environment. I find it more appropriate every day. The big questions is, how can we move from the mindset of schools to skunk works? Now there’s a worthwhile quest.

The future of the training department

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Jay Cross and I have written and posted The future of the training department [link updated] on our togetherLearn blog:

Prior to the 20th Century, training per se did not exist outside the special needs of the church and the military. Now the training department may be at the end of its life cycle. Join us for a brief look back at the pre-training world and some thoughts about what may lay ahead.

I’ve also developed an accompanying slideshow, which will be the basis of my CSTD online presentation on March 4th.

Training 21 C V2

5th Anniversary

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On 19 February 2004, I went down the rabbit hole and started this blog:

This is where I post my thoughts and comments on ideas, events or other writings that are of a professional interest to me. Current areas of interest include social networking applications, like blogs, wikis and the use of RSS feeds, which is one reason why I have this blog; to practise what I preach. I’m also interested in the use of open source software platforms for learning. The development and nurturing of communities of practice online is another area of applied research that interests me.

And so I began blogging in earnest, having set up a few others previously, but this time with my own domain and a bit of a plan. My personal knowledge base is now over 1,400 blog posts with +3,000 comments. Mostly, I write for myself, though I know that others read what I’ve posted and a smaller fraction make comments. Many of these people have become friends and even business colleagues. That’s been the best part, meeting people who share some of my passions.

I’m writing fewer posts than when I started out, with a peak of 58 in May 2004. I can’t imagine doing that many now. I have settled on an average of 15 per month which seems to be enough for personal knowledge management (implicit => explicit) and I don’t feel under pressure to publish. I’ve found a daily commitment a bit much, such as when I helped fill in for Stephen on OLDaily.

I’ve also taken up micro-blogging on Twitter this past year and that is enabling different kinds of conversations. What might have been a few comments here are now many 140-character tweets. This blog is still central to my Web presence but I have other windows on the world now.

Thank you for coming by here during the past five years and helping me make sense of my place in the world.

Change the structure

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Last night CBC’s Cross Country Checkup discussed the reform of our health care system. There is a sense of desperation in the way in which we are trying to save our current health care system (and education system) but in light of the near collapse of our financial systems we should be careful before prescribing any solutions.

Today’s business world is hampered by managerial capitalism, which The Support Economy shows as the primary cause of the disconnect between corporations and markets (people). Managers removed from risk helped cause the current economic fiasco. Another term, the kleptocracy, is perhaps more accurate to describe these actors. This form of capitalism also robs us of our ability for self-determination:

Psychological self-determination is expressed in three different dimensions. In the first dimension people want to live their lives the way they choose to live it. This is the sense of sanctuary. The second way people express their psychological self-determination is in the widespread desire for voice: we want to be heard and we want our voices to matter. The third way we want our psychological self-determination to be expressed is in our desire to be connected: we want to be part of communities.

Under managerial capitalism, people are called consumers or users – low forms of life without any real voice. Systems that treat individuals as replaceable units (human resources?) are part of the underlying structural problem. For instance, health care organisations should be the epitome of learning organisations, but many are stuck in their disciplinary silos and command & control structures. Kim Vicente’s book, The Human Factor, highlights some of these issues and shows how the aviation industry was able to reduce accidents and that a similar, learning-centered approach could be used in health care.

We have created self-perpetuating monopolies in both health and education and now they run us. Ivan Illich had it right over 30 years ago – we have seen the enemy, and it is us. This quote may be from 1970, but is even more pertinent today:

Everywhere the hidden curriculum of schooling initiates the citizen to the myth that bureaucracies guided by scientific knowledge are efficient and benevolent. Everywhere this same curriculum instills in the pupil the myth that increased production will provide a better life. And everywhere it develops the habit of self-defeating consumption of services and alienating production, the tolerance for institutional dependence, and the recognition of institutional rankings. The hidden curriculum of school does all this in spite of contrary efforts undertaken by teachers and no matter what ideology prevails.

Corporatist systems, where managers have benefits but almost no risk, are the root of many problems in business, health care and education. However, the collapse of the financial system may force some changes on the education system first. Many people will no longer have the luxury of borrowing to go to school. For example, finding buyers of US student loans that have been in default is getting more difficult, according to Inside HigherEd. Other sources of savings for education, such as Canada’s Registered Education Savings Plan, have been affected by the market drop with many people losing 20 to 50% of their savings. I’m one of them. Will there be a dip in enrolment in the next few years, as costs continue to increase?

For universities and colleges, now is the time to examine operating models and assumptions, before the full impact of the recession hits. This goes against conventional wisdom which says that demand for education goes up in a recession, but that is only when people have savings or the ability to borrow. As government funding becomes the main source of operating capital, will education be able compete against health care?

Both health care and education are state-funded oligopolies, reliant on the willingness of government (and the electorate) to fund them. As governments become limited in their spending power, with decreased revenues and perhaps devalued currency, these institutions will need to re-evaluate their models. The type of organisational structures that helped to create this financial mess are not the examples that our institutions should use. While we have some time and room to maneuver, now is the time to look at better ways of doing things, but it has to be done from a structural perspective.

Photo: Life_Through_a_Viewfinder

Cappuccino U 2.0

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Jerome Martin has updated Cappuccino U, a good read for anyone not versed in all the informal learning activities available on the Web:

The traditional education system cannot be expected to provide learning for everyone, everywhere, all of the time. Knowledge is growing so quickly in so many fields that educators cannot always remain current in their fields. Furthermore, there are new fields of study developing. Many of us are working in areas and fields which were not developed when we went to university.

Originally published in 2006, the ideas are more relevant today, as Jerome says, “education is not acquired through vaccination or some sort of anointment”. This is a short read and the kind of e-book to pass around (CC-licensed) to folks who say that they could never read or learn via a computer.

Networks

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For several years I called this blog “Conversations at the intersection of learning, work & technology” and still use that tag line from time to time. During the past decade I’ve worked at that intersection, sometimes more focused on one aspect than another. I’ve seen a merging of work and learning as more of our lives are lived in larger and more complex networks. Working in what my friend Jay Cross calls Internet Time, blurs the lines between work and learning. The blurring of lines between the silos of disciplines and knowledge is happening everywhere as we get the ability to quickly jump from one field to another, and it’s reaping the reward of innovation, as Franz Johansson notes in The Medici Effect.

This decade has witnessed an increasing use of social network analysis and value network analysis, while social media are starting to permeate every type of business, especially marketing. In learning theory we now have Connectivism – the integration of principles explored by chaos, network, and complexity and self-organization theories. Understanding networks provides new insights into learning and business.

So what lies at the intersection of learning, work and technology? NETWORKS