Work

business & working

From Classroom to Boardroom

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Jay Bahlis, President of BNH Expert Software in Montreal, has produced a free, online booklet, From Classroom to Boardroom, that will be a good job aid for performance improvement professionals. It covers step-by-step actions and six strategies for aligning training with business goals. Though not new in its concepts, this booklet is an additional resource that may be helpful, especially for internal initiatives. Some of Jay’s cited references may be of use as well:

  • Ford and Weissbein estimated that less than 10% of training expenditures actually result in transfer
    to the job. By focusing on the most important initiatives, you can reduce waste and maximize the
    impact of training.
  • Broad and Newstrom observed that most of the knowledge and skills gained in training (well over
    80% by some estimates) is not fully applied by employees on the job. And more recently, Robinson
    reported that on average, less than 30% of what people learn (in training) actually gets used on the
    job. By focusing on solutions that resolve clearly identified performance deficiencies you can
    minimize waste and maximize performance.
  • Lance Dublin observed that over 90% of training is conducted through informal means such as web
    searches, chats, reference materials and mentoring. Providing the right information to the right
    individuals at the right time “learning at the speed of work” can significantly increase the competitive
    advantage of the organization – allowing individuals to do things they have not been able to before.

Many thanks to Jay for making this available to the community.

ChangeThis

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ChangeThis has been created as a distribution medium of rational, logical "manifestos" that encourage thought and debate. The ChangeThis Manifesto is in the same vein as The Cluetrain Manifesto, but the former reads less like a rant.

We?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢re betting that a significant portion of the population wants to hear thoughtful, rational, constructive
arguments about important issues. We?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢re certain that the best of these manifestos will
spread, hand to hand, person to person, until these manifestos have reached a critical mass and
actually changed the tone and substance of our debate.

The site includes a blog and there are a number of manifestos in the mill from authors like Malcolm Gladwell, Tom Peters and Seth Godin. It seems that the new medium is "retrieving" the pamphleteer of old, and I look forward to reading, and commenting on, future manifestos.

Cycling and KM

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Denham Grey has the perfect presentation for my tastes, but I won’t be able to get to Cincinnati to see it. Denham is using cycling as the metaphor for knowledge management (The only sport I love more than cycling is cross-country skiing) .

Having cycled across France & Belgium, as well as climbing three passes in the Alps in the same day, I must admit that cycling is a passion, and Denham is going to link it to my business – great!

Ever had that sinking feeling you are being dropped from the peleton as new technology decends?, looking for new ways to collaborate on a strategy or coordinating to chase down a break-away?, is your team self-organizing or do you rely on command and control?, do you have the agility and the shared mindset to react to a sudden event?

I hope he posts his notes. Allez-y!

Dummies Guide to Change

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In the Dummies Guide to Change … Rob Paterson synthesizes concepts like “tipping points” and the “law of the few”. In a recent paper from HP, Wu and Huberman indicate that their data confirms the law of the few:

Our theory further predicts that a relatively small number of individuals with high social ranks can have a larger effect on opinion formation than individuals with low rank. By high rank we mean people with a large number of social connections. [Connectors?]

but does not support the concept of a tipping point:

Our findings also cast doubt on the applicability of tipping models to a number of consumer behaviors.

The math in this paper is beyond me, but I am assuming that it is valid.

Below is an image that shows my interpretation of these concepts. I was wondering about the parallels between Rogers and Gladwell, and created this image to organise my thoughts. What I’m thinking is that if you want to create an epidemic, then would you first

  1. connect the right Mavens with the potential innovators,
  2. target the early adopters via the Connectors and then
  3. find the salespeople who will influence the Early Majority?

This gives you a potential 50% of the population, which should get you to the tipping point. As you move along the process, you constantly try to increase stickiness.

Might be too simple, or a good start. Not sure yet.
diffusion.jpg

Professional Development – Cheap

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As a free agent, I’m always on the lookout for professional development oppotunities, especially low or no cost ones.

  • Learning Economics Group – Free membership is available to this non-profit focused on the business metrics of learning in larger organisations. The telephone/ppt presentations are quite informative, and you get to link to some smart and innovative people. Sign up for information about monthly meetings, discussion boards and shared resources.
  • Business Process Trends – this website and the accompanying newsletter links many business process methodologies together.
  • Synchronous Web Events on e-learning, by Horizon Live
  • The e-Learning Guild has some free and some fee-based resources and events
  • ISPI‘s Performance Xpress has many good, free articles on performance improvement.
  • The Knowledge@Wharton Newsletter is a free service of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. It covers knowledge management and business issues.
  • LearningTimes.org is an open community for education and training professionals. There are various learning events offered.
  • Work-Learning Research makes its publications and other research-based information available through its website at.
  • Jay’s Emergent Learning Forum, online or onsite.

Go ahead and add your own recommendations.

Blogs and the Laws of Media

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According to McLuhan’s Laws of Media, every technology (in the broad sense of the word) that we use has precisely four effects on us – to extend, to retrieve, to obsolesce and to reverse. According to Federman and deKerckhove, the retrieves quadrant can be the most revealling. It can provide us with some insight on possible effect of new technologies. Jon Husband makes this observation about what weblogs retrieve:

Much in the same way that email revived the lost art of letter writing, Blogs are reviving the lost art of civilized civic dialogue – of argument, of well reasoned thought and response.

As Federman and deKerckhove state in their book, “McLuhan for Managers“:

For a manager who is considering how the next innovation will affect his or her staff or target market, studying the precedent can be particularly revealing. The RETRIEVES quadrant directly furnishes the lessons and experiences of history.

McLuhan’s laws of media can be used as a lens that can help us to make business and organisational decisions regarding new technologies.

Small Business Trends

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Here’s a website that focuses on "the forces driving small & midsize business". I like their recent article on small businesses going virtual:

The future is likely to be the age of virtual businesses. The newly opened two-person office will be able to look big, established, and successful. Build a really good website, toss in some color printers, fast computers, and cell phones, and you’re halfway there. After that, it’s a question of leveraging your creativity and ability to partner with other entrepreneurs.

It is a bit of what I envisioned when I started the Sackville SOHO Society, but apathy led to its early demise. Maybe there’s hope for a renewed small business (or Natural Enterprise) network in the region.

Learning …

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I’ve been on my own for just over a year, and as I had a couple of days off over the holiday weekend, I thought I’d reflect on what I’ve learned, or confirmed, this past year:

  • Learning: is a process, not a product — subject-based teaching is a mistake — we have to focus on process skills like metacognition, problem solving and collaborating, because the subjects will change. I first realized this through Kieran Egan’s writing, and it has been reconfirmed many times.
  • Work: Markets are conversations — it’s only through conversation that we begin to understand each other — success comes when producers and users understand each other, and help each other.
  • Technology: It’s a world of ends, and innovation happens on the edges — look at the edges to find opportunities (but not traditional financing).
  • All Three: Marshall McLuhan was right, especially regarding the Laws of Media.

These are the messages that are staying with me.

Natural Enterprises

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There’s something happening in Atlantic Canada. It’s still below the surface, but I started to notice it when I got off the corporate train and had more time to read, listen and watch. At the last local cybersocial, I was asked to talk about Open Source, and suddenly many others connected to the event. I have been finding more and more people in the region doing interesting work at an international level. People like Steve Mallett, with his work for O’Reilly, and Hal Richman who has worked on international projects with the UN. This week I was on PEI and met the folks at SilverOrange who are contributing to the Mozilla project, and have five years of solid business success.

I am also helping Rob Paterson teach a course at UPEI on the New Economy. Rob and I discussed the need for new business models that are based on trust and cooperation, such as Dave Pollard’s Natural Enterprise [I helped to coin this term – my very small contribution so far]:

Natural Enterprise (NE): "A form of self-organized, self-managed, community-based business partnership in which two or more people agree to make a living together as collaborators and peers, to strive to attain what each member needs to achieve for his or her personal well-being, to accept substantial responsibility for each other, and to respect and help the community or communities in which the enterprise operates."

Natural Enterpises exist already, and the more I look around the region, the more I see. Maybe this is because we are on the edge, away from the bustling core. Canada is on the edge of the USA, and Atlantic Canada is on the edge of Canada. In networks, much of the value comes from the edges. Perhaps our perspectives from outside the mainstream enable us to see the larger patterns.

I’m optimistic that our region is going to be a hotbed of collaboration between NE’s. There are a lot of creative, intelligent and innovative small companies collaborating on some big projects. What I have noticed is that most of these people are already giving back to their communities, and they want to make this a better place to live and work. They also understand the hard lessons of business and know how to deliver projects on-time and on-budget. Every time I meet another NE, I feel better for our collective future.