Work

business & working

The Learning Layer – Review

by

learning layer cover

The Learning Layer : Building the next level of intellect in your organization, begins with some solid insights on how learning is the key to performing in the networked workplace. Learning has been the traditional realm of HR while most systems are supported by IT. This means that HR supports the people who produce the tacit knowledge while IT supports the systems that store the explicit knowledge. Steve Flinn, the author, uses the analogy of knowledge as stock and learning as flow. An organization’s intellectual capital is a factor of both, which “makes it really clear just how inseparable the management of a business’s knowledge is from the learning processes”.

The proliferation of current web technologies now presents us with two major opportunities:

“The knowledge and insights within the heads of people can be leveraged without overtly taking actions to make it so. And that systems can actually learn, and more specifically, learn from latent intellectual capital.”

Previous legacy IT systems used hierarchical structures, making them unsuitable for real learning applications, so “if we want an integrated organization of people and systems that effectively learns, we should start with a focus on a network-based architecture that has the capacity to reshape itself over time and that is layered over what came before, because that’s how the brain works.”

Flinn goes on to explain that Web 2.0 technologies have created “socially aware” systems that can identify some behaviour patterns between systems and users, giving us various levels of adaptation. Amazon.com is the best known commercial application of this, with its product recommendations. Very soon, adaptive recommendations in work systems will become ubiquitous, providing some extent of contextual and personalized learning on demand. The learning layer is an amalgamation of socially aware, adaptive systems with social networks [uniting KM and SoMe]. The social network is the larger network of connected people with smaller workflow processes inside:

“Because the workflow is woven right into the learning layer itself, it also offers the opportunity for ‘recombinant’ processes, where process sections can be cleaved off and recombined to form new, synthetic processes. This is the ultimate in flexibility and efficiency, and can serve to make the benefits of processes realizable in even the most complex and fluid of work settings. Think of it as basically the mass customization of business processes.”

Flinn also shows how learning value is created, can be measured and then assessed against project value, providing a clearer picture of the value of intellectual capital. He further recommends changes in how we develop ideas for innovation and suggests reversing the traditional idea funnel. Then Flinn takes these ideas and compares them against the three business archetypes: Product Innovator, Relationship Owner & Supply Network Architect.

The first three parts of the book are full of good ideas, insight, and analysis, but Part 4 is a bit of a letdown. Implementing the Learning Layer, a mere six pages, doesn’t tell you much. However, there is a lot in the previous sections for guidance if you already understand processes and technologies from IT, HR, OD and  social media. If not, you could engage ManyWorlds for consulting and then implement on their Epiture platform.

In looking at the specifications for Epiture (aka “the learning layer”) the company describes it as a Web 3.0 system that includes enterprise level web site management; document management;  social networking and tagging & ontologies. Even without a full product comparison, I would say that several other platforms, including open source, like Drupal can do much of this.

The key difficulty I see in the implementation of a learning layer is getting people to use it. As a layer, it is not integrated into the work tools. Even if socially aware systems collect and analyze data and feed these into the learning layer, the layer has to be used by people. Perhaps it can be effective if only a portion of the work force is involved in the active sharing of tacit knowledge through social networking. While I agree in principle with the learning layer, I’d have to see it in action and understand how the organization got there. I have little doubt in the potential of the learning layer but I’m not sure if it will revolutionize organizational learning.

In spite of my comments in the paragraph above, I would strongly recommend this book. Just the analysis on learning in networks is worth it. Much of what is recommended here reinforces 1) the wirearchy framework and 2) PKM development. Some form of learning layer could become the means by which wirearchies work and also use the cumulative results of individuals and their personal – knowledge/learning – management/sharing – systems/environments.

Other Related Posts:

Knowledge Stock & Flows

BRP & ERP

Practice to be best

by

We may think we should adopt best practices, but to be really effective and innovative we need to practice to be best.

First, we have to do the hard thinking  about how to do things better. Jay Deragon talks about how important it is to think about what we do and not just emulate others:

Social Doo Doo’s are those that practice and copy, what others do expecting to get the same or better results. Social Doo Doo’s are a dime a dozen and the market seems to think hiring the Doo Doo’s will help their business do something different. Doing something different and getting more than you’ve gotten in the past  requires you to know how to think which isn’t what others are doing.

Gaining  new knowledge or creating new knowledge and knowing what to do with it is more productive than doing what others do. To gain or create new knowledge requires thinking which is a lot deeper than doing.

Another example of advancing practice in a field is provided in The New Yorker’s The Bell Curve: What happens when patients find out how good their doctors really are? In this article, a doctor explains how radically new thinking saved the life of a fire fighter but his mates refused to try something different and they perished.

As Berwick explained, the organization had unravelled. The men had lost their ability to think coherently, to act together, to recognize that a lifesaving idea might be possible. This is what happens to all flawed organizations in a disaster, and, he argued, that’s what is happening in modern health care. To fix medicine, Berwick maintained, we need to do two things: measure ourselves and be more open about what we are doing. This meant routinely comparing the performance of doctors and hospitals, looking at everything from complication rates to how often a drug ordered for a patient is delivered correctly and on time. And, he insisted, hospitals should give patients total access to the information. “ ‘No secrets’ is the new rule in my escape fire,” he said. He argued that openness would drive improvement, if simply through embarrassment. It would make it clear that the well-being and convenience of patients, not doctors, were paramount. It would also serve a fundamental moral good, because people should be able to learn about anything that affects their lives.

Imitating what others do is not the way to make progress, or as Marshall McLuhan said,  “We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.” Individuals and organizations need to chart their own courses but “Best Practice” thinking is still widespread.  I have found that decision-makers in organizations can be too lazy to extrapolate and figure out how to apply practices in their own context. They want easy, clear answers and hence have the tendency to hire cookie-cutter solutions from big name consultancies. But there are no easy answers. As my colleague Jon Husband says of his wirearchy framework, it enables the mass customization of business, and that is what we need to replace best practices. Individuals and organizations continuously practicing to be best, on a large scale.

No technology or process improvement will save an unraveling industry or organization. What is needed is better thinking and learning while practicing to be the best. This starts with transparency in sharing our knowledge and doing our work.

Radical simplicity

by

Even though we have witnessed significant changes in the work we do, F.W. Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management (1911) still informs much of our business practice.

It is only through enforced standardization of methods, enforced adoption of the best implements and working conditions, and enforced cooperation that this faster work can be assured. And the duty of enforcing the adoption of standards and enforcing this cooperation rests with management alone.

Best practices are published in most business journals and management books, because the aim of an industrial business is to simplify processes as much as possible in order to replicate them at scale. Design once and repeat many times is also the foundation of our education and training systems. Maybe that’s why organizations are breaking down all over the place. Whether it’s oil companies, financial institutions, or military commands, they all have one thing in common – the command & control organizational chart. We engineered our organizations to get efficiencies of scale and then addressed problems as they arose by layering on support functions. What came first, the business or the human resource function? For organizations to function in complexity, they need to simplify:

“When you choose radical simplicity, the great industrial age systems of power and control begin to buckle and break. So simplify.” ~ Umair Haque

Taylor’s model needs to be reversed because our work has been reversed. From mostly simple tasks and a few complicated ones a century ago, we now have many complicated tasks and growing complex ones. There isn’t much simple work that anybody is willing to pay for any more. Much of it has been outsourced to the end-user, in forms such as automatic tellers or online ordering.

Radical simplicity or a more natural management framework for complex work environments could be described as follows:

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.

With simplicity, significantly fewer control methods and processes are required.

Knowledge sharing, one at a time

by

“Every amateur epistemologist knows that knowledge cannot be managed. Education has always assumed that knowledge can be transferred and that we can carefully control the process through education. That is a grand illusion.” David Jonassen

While knowledge cannot be managed [at an organizational level*], we can work at managing our own knowledge. That’s what PKM is all about. Individually we can manage information flows, make sense of them and share with others, especially people with similar interests or common goals. Enterprise “knowledge management” initiatives have not been proven to work very well and may even be irredeemably corrupted. Dave Pollard’s experience with knowledge management shows how important it is to personalize our sense-making and how futile standardized methods and practices can be:

So my conclusion this time around was that the centralized stuff we spent so much time and money maintaining was simply not very useful to most practitioners. The practitioners I talked to about PPI [Personal Productivity Improvement] said they would love to participate in PPI coaching, provided it was focused on the content on their own desktops and hard drives, and not the stuff in the central repositories.

Luis Suarez prefers the term knowledge sharing to knowledge management. If this helps us move away from central digital information repositories (Knowledge Management, Document Management, Learning Content Management Systems, Content Management Systems, etc.) then I’m all for it.  I’m not advocating tearing down any existing IT infrastructure (yet); but we need to enable a parallel system that can handle the distributed nature of work in addressing complex problems, namely weaker central control and better distributed communications and decision-making.

The best first step in getting work done is to help each worker develop a PKM process, with an emphasis on personal. As each person seeks information, makes sense of it through reflection and articulation, and then shares it through conversation, a distributed knowledge base is created. It’s messier and looser than traditional KM, but it’s also more robust. This is what many of us already do. If you take all the published resources of my colleagues at the Internet Time Alliance you will see a loosely connected knowledge base of thousands of assets. They can be found, sometimes by searching and frequently by asking the person who created them. We each use different systems and connect with the open protocols of the web, like RSS, hyperlinks, OPML, etc.

The way to implement organizational knowledge sharing is already visible on the edges of the workplace. Many bloggers are doing it and have been for years. All it takes is getting everyone to do some form of PKM, on their own terms. Once most everyone is seeking, sensing and especially sharing, it’s a relatively easy task to start harvesting and analyzing our collective knowledge. For instance, take what Tony Karrer has done with eLearningLearning and expand this to include social bookmarks and synthesized micro-sharing, like my weekly Friday’s Finds on Twitter.

The real value of PKM is when enough people in an organization do it and create a critical mass of diverse conversations. PKM is our part of a social learning contract that makes us better off individually and collectively. For workers to be engaged over the long term, PKM must remain personal, and the organization must use a gentle hand at all times.

Using open Web systems ensures that not only will the organization get access to valuable information flows, but workers will be able take their piece of it if they leave. A little give and take will go a long way. Allowing the tools to be portable will ensure commitment and engagement without any coercive action on the part of the organization.

The collective sharing of PKM in the enterprise has the potential to create a dynamic knowledge base for idea management that can drive innovation.

* added to give clarification, in case of any confusion

It’s about work, not learning

by

Is social media added to a learning platform the answer to promoting informal and social learning in the enterprise?

To address these trends and take advantage of the new capabilities that social computing and social networks can bring to learning, SkillSoft’s Books24×7 division introduced inGenius. It enables social learning by extending the value of expert information and infusing it with the knowledge and expertise of an organization’s own employees. Unlike many stand-alone social networking applications, inGenius is built on SkillSoft’s Books24×7 on demand content collections containing more than 25,000 titles — digital books from leading publishers, analyst research reports, and white papers — as well as 1,300 videos of thought leaders and practitioners.

SkillSoft says they realize that learning has become more social and the interest in peer learning has increased. This is the right decision, within the constraints of SkillSoft’s technology platform and current business model. We can’t expect incumbents to just cast away their cash cows. The question is whether it is enough to give a significant organizational performance advantage. The model of having conversations around social objects, such as books, can work well in an organization that values and encourages reading and discussions. This model worked in the past with Company Command.

In A Framework for Social Learning in Enterprise I wrote:

Our workplaces are becoming interconnected because technology has enabled communication networks on a worldwide scale. This means that systemic changes are sensed almost immediately. Reaction times and feedback loops have to get faster and more effective. We need to know who to ask for advice right now but that requires a level of trust and trusted relationships take time to nurture. Our default action is to turn to our friends and trusted colleagues; those people with whom we’ve shared experiences. Therefore, we need to share more of our work experiences in order to grow those trusted networks. This is social learning and it is critical for networked organizational effectiveness.

While social media additions to legacy systems are an advancement, I think they are not enough. Learning and working must be embedded in the work flow. The SkillSoft example, one of the bettter ones in the industry that I have seen, encourages conversations, but these conversations are still divorced from the necessary daily work of collaboration. Knowledge has to be applied, so we have to stop this industrial separation of learning and working. We need systems that help get the work done. As our work environments become more complex, we need to:

  • make sense of constantly changing and growing information flows;
  • share tacit knowledge and use it to …
  • develop emergent practices together (especially barely repeatable processes).

PKM: Working Smarter

by

In PKM in a Nutshell, I linked my various posts on personal knowledge management to make the framework more coherent. My ITA colleague, Jane Hart has just released an extensive resource that correlates nicely with the PKM framework. It is called A WORKING SMARTER RESOURCE: A Practical Guide to using Social Media in Your Job and includes seven sections (my annotations on how they connect to PKM):

1. Finding things out on the Web (SEEK)
2. Keeping up to date with new Web content (SEEK)
3. Building a trusted network of colleagues (SEEK & SHARE)
4. Communicating with your colleagues (SHARE)
5. Sharing resources, ideas and experiences with your colleagues (SHARE)
6. Collaborating with your colleagues (SHARE & USE)
7. Improving your personal productivity (SENSE & USE)

Here’s the a description and rationale for adopting PKM, individually and within organizations:

  • PKM is a way to deal with ever-increasing amounts of digital information.
  • It requires an open attitude toward learning and finding new things (I Seek).
  • PKM methods can help to develop processes of filing, classifying and annotating for later retrieval.
  • PKM leverages  open web-based systems that facilitate sharing.
  • A PKM mindset aids in observing, thinking and using information & knowledge better (I Sense).
  • Transparent PKM helps to share ideas with others (We Share).
  • After a while, you begin to realize you’re in a community of practice when your practice changes (We Use).
  • PKM prepares the mind to be open to new ideas (enhanced serendipity, or chance favours the prepared mind).

Managing in Complexity

by

Formal training just won’t cut it any more as the primary means by which we prepare and adapt in order to get work done. Training isn’t dead, it’s just not enough, and cannot be the only tool in the box.

—

As Jay Cross stated in a recent interview:

Formal learning can be somewhat effective when things don’t change much and the world is predictable …

Today’s world is the opposite in every way imaginable …

Things are changing amazingly fast …

There’s so much to learn …

Today’s work is all about dealing with novel situations …

This image, from Cynthia Kurtz’s post, Confluence, clearly shows the challenge we face in our networked organizations competing and collaborating in complex adaptive systems.

The challenge is getting organizations that are used to dealing with the Known & Knowable to be able to manage in Complex environments and even Chaotic ones from time to time. As can be seen in Kurtz’s graphic, that means weaker central control which is, of course, scary for traditional management. This is not a training problem but rather a management issue. How can you be less directive and enable distributed work, and therefore distributed (and undirected) learning? Actually there are historical examples, including guerrilla groups; religious movements; and social organizations. We need to look back as well as into the future. There are lessons and examples that can help us once we cast off some of our industrial management assumptions.

Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management (1911) inform many of our current practices but there are other models and frameworks available. The first step is seeing that we have a problem and our current models are inadequate. This is a conversation that all business managers and organizational leaders need to have. We should be ready to have many informed conversations about managing in complexity and put forward some plausible options. For further reading:

General framework: Wirearchy

Background & Models: Gary Hamel: Future of Management; Thomas Malone: The Future of Work; Andrew McAfee: Enterprise 2.0

Ideas & Methods: Working Smarter Fieldbook; State of Learning in the Workplace

More conversations: The Smart Work Company; Internet Time Alliance blog;

Working Smarter 2010

by

The Working Smarter Fieldbook (June 2010 version) is now out. This is a collaborative effort by all of us at the Internet Time Alliance and was spearheaded by Jay Cross. Our intention is get the conversation focused on what’s important for business, including the training & learning department – working smarter. Learning is just a means and not the end, but this perspective has somehow been lost along the way in many organizations over the past decades.

A toolbox
Years ago, Stewart Brand published The Whole Earth Catalog to provide “access to tools.” It listed all manner of interesting and oddball stuff, from windmill kits to hiking sox to books like Vibration Cooking. The Catalog didn’t tell readers how to live their lives; it merely described things that might help them to do their own thing. Feedback and articles submitted by readers made each edition better than its predecessor.
The Working Smarter Fieldbook follows the tradition of The Whole Earth Catalog. Harold, Jane, Clark, Charles, Jon, and Jay provide access to the tips, tricks, frameworks, and resources that we’ve used to help organizations work smarter. Our goal is to put together an irresistible package of advice.

Schwerpunkt: Management

by

Survey results from a 2009 Chief Learning Officer survey showed that 77% of respondents felt that people in their organization were not growing fast enough to keep up with the business. And what have the learning and development (L&D) specialists been doing about it? Not much it seems. Donald Clark reports that decision-makers at UK organizations feel that:

  • 55% claim L&D failing to deliver necessary training
  • 46% doubt L&D can deliver
  • less than 18% agree that L&D aligned with business

But let’s not blame just L&D. Human Resources (HR) seem to be out of sync with organizational needs as well, nicely summed up in a recent FastCompany article:

I think successful organizations are very rigorous and creative about getting profitable work from their employees, their managers, and their business units. The problem is, those organizations don’t expect as much from HR, hence HR is usually not overseen, not measured, and not judged for its performance. It’s the department no one wants to be responsible for. It’s the department that is not subjected to outcomes analysis.

But the real culprit is management and that’s what needs to change. Steve Denning blames the Harvard Business School mindset for holding back organizational progress and goes on to explain how senior management kills innovation in many areas, including knowledge management:

So even when an oasis of excellence and innovation is established within an organization being run on traditional management lines, the experience doesn’t take root and replicate throughout the organization because the setting isn’t congenial. The fundamental assumptions, attitudes and values are at odds with those of traditional management.

I’m seeing that all of our initiatives for increased knowledge-sharing, communities of practice, social business,  or networked learning are rather futile unless management itself changes. The real chasm at work is between the executive suite and the knowledge workers. I’m not sure how to change this, but the focus (or in German: schwerpunkt) has to be on three things — management, management, & management. Anything else is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Role Shift

by

The last time I looked at roles in education I was inspired by Anil Mammen to create a table based on his definitions. I think some of the descriptions can be used in a prescriptive way of getting out of our industrial, hierarchical mindset and moving to an enterprise 2.0 or wirearchical culture. In networks, learning is the work, so a critical part of this culture shift is viewing learning as quite different from traditional training. The objective is to become a wirearchy:

a dynamic two-way flow of power and authority based on information, knowledge, trust and credibility, enabled by interconnected people and technology

Though incremental change may not always work, it might be easier for established organizations to move to a transition zone in getting there:

Hierarchical Getting There Wirearchical
Training – Learning & Development – Organizational Development – HR
Representative of the establishment. Guide Peer in learning.
Responsible for imparting approved knowledge. Knows what to teach, when & how. Continuously learn & unlearn.
Omit & modify as necessary.

Collude with the establishment.

 Knowledgeable on a given subject.

Interpreter of information.

 Provocateur

Connector

Workers – Learners – Employees – Associates
Powerless receiver of knowledge. Empowered to find knowledge. Critical Thinker.

Democratization of knowledge.
Studies out of fear of failure, reprisal, or displacement. Closing of teacher-learner divide.
 Decentralization of authority.
Selfish motive to learn – job, money, fame, power, desire to appear smart. Opportunities for self-directed learners. Seeker of truth.

Engaged professional-amateur.

Arete* [via Stephen Downes]

* Arete in ancient Greek culture was courage and strength in the face of adversity and it was to what all people aspired.