Work

business & working

People, Events and Ideas

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“Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

I don’t completely agree with this statement but it puts into perspective where our greatest effort should be. The discussion of ideas and finding ways to take action on those ideas is the great work that has fallen on the laps (laptops?) of the billions of people who now make up the “middle class”, a term with its own baggage, according to John Robb:

It’s hard to imagine a more derogatory and less descriptive label than “middle class consumers” for the group of people that created most of the world’s massive wealth, rich technologies, and societal complexity.

The comments to John’s post have some name suggestions for the group of people who have the education and the communications tools to change society. Social media provide a way for this new “Yeoman” class to act individually and collectively for change and self-determination. An example in my network is Rob Paterson with his work in mobilizing communities on PEI and in public broadcasting. There are many other free thinkers working at the local level with a mind to the global situation. Using Eleanor Roosevelt’s quote, I think that events and people are important in helping us come up with new ideas but they are merely grist for our cognitive mills.

The ideas of others, events that we watch or are involved with, and the people we meet and interact with; all provide the context for our own ideas. I believe that Ms. Roosevelt’s point was that we cannot narrow our focus to only people and events and that the true work for our minds is to develop our own ideas. Social media give us the opportunity to put forth ideas in progress and to evaluate and challenge ideas. Now that we finally have these tools, it is our duty as global citizens to use them wisely.

The feeds at the top of this diagram are mostly inputs, with varying levels of interactivity. At the bottom are outputs of knowledge work. This diagram is an evolution of my web tools for critical thinking post.

New year, new challenges

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I’m not sure what the next year will bring but I’m certain that it will be as full of changes as 2008. Change is accelerating. Blogging, which wasn’t even in the dictionary when I started this one, is getting competitive:

With all of this new competition, the future could be very interesting:

Happy New Year!

New organisational DNA

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I’m going to take some time off work and writing over the holidays, with perhaps a post if the mood strikes me. What really interests me at this time is how The Great Disruption may be opening up possibilities for change that did not exist even six months ago. I have come to the realisation that for training, education, learning and development initiatives to work we need real organisational change, meaning a change in the way we create and run our organisations. I have some opportunities to write on the subject as well as ideas that may develop into projects. These may be difficult times but they can also be exciting times.

Jon Husband sums up the real work to be done in developing the post-industrial workplace:

If I am not mistaken, the issue of centralised control remains one of the core issues in play … when it comes to considering whether and how to engage with or commit to a path towards Enterprise 2.0 architecture, applications and dynamics.

How can we have effective businesses without centralized control? Wirearchy is one potential framework but we need to seriously discuss this because our environment is far too complex for mechanistic models. Instead of tweaking the existing ineffective organisational models that many labour under I want to focus on the root causes of our challenges. Workers feel disconnected and disempowered especially when layoffs are the first corporate reaction in any economic downturn. We need more resilient organisations that can in turn foster a more resilient economy. There is much inspiration from the natural sciences:

In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed – Charles Darwin

On-job support is critical

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I don’t usually get information about training and performance improvement in the Wall Street Journal but this article clearly spells out the benefits of linking training directly to the workplace. In Lessons Learned, Harry Martin describes two cases and provides several links for further reading. Basically, formal training is more effective if followed up with specific objectives for change in the workplace. I think most of us know this, but many organisations don’t practice it. What I found most interesting was the effectiveness of engaging peer support in the workplace, as shown in this figure:

This reinforces the influence of peers, which parents of teenagers already know, and shows the potential for informal structures that encourage peer interaction at work. If you’re looking for better ROI for your training initiatives, the best place to put your effort may be AFTER the training.

Need for collaboration continues to grow

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We’re starting to see some interest in our TogetherLearn initiative and one of the main drivers seems to be cost-reduction. I came across this future-looking ZDNet article via Bertrand Duperrin and it sums up the situation nicely:

However, for business-driven internal enterprise Web 2.0 collaboration projects, I see growth. Why?  Because the business will find their collaboration needs to grow in 2009, while they see IT providing them with fewer services. Collaboration needs grow as a result of layoffs, mergers, and deepening external partnerships (requiring new infrastructure to collaborate outside the firewall with trusted, external partners).  And this happens while IT’s services shrink as a result of layoffs, a focus on streamlining operational costs, while not taking on new projects.

The need for online collaboration is growing as organisations make cost-cutting decisions in travel and training. The recession is just the catalyst that shows the redundancies of industrial, command and control systems in the hyperlinked economy. The need for online collaboration and the integration of work and learning will continue as long as we have the Internet.

Our value proposition for TogetherLearn is fairly simple. We set up a collaborative space outside the firewall and work with clients in their particular business context. We provide support, coaching and access to a network of resources. Clients pay for what they need and no more. The aim is to help online community managers learn and practice their role. We use open source technologies so clients can decide how and where they grow their communities, with no strings attached. Everything is transparent and senior consultants are involved in every step of the process.

Last year at this time I noticed that Big Consulting Firms are Jumping on Bandwagon 2.0. “As I’ve said before, Free-agents and natural enterprises are better. The upstart independents and small consultancies have Clayton Christensen’s disruptive Sword & Shield which the incumbents (large consultants) don’t have. With early motivation to enter this emerging field (Shield) and now with with years of experience and skills (Sword), we the “upstarts” should be able to hold our own.”

The current economic situation has just made the business case for a nimble, low overhead, web-enabled consultancy that much easier.

Going Solo

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Pawel Szczesny has decided to give up on his attempt to be a freelance scientist. Here are some of the hard lessons that this PhD candidate from Poland has learned:

  • The consultant’s dilemma: when you’re working you’re not generating new ideas or business, and vice versa.
  • It’s tough to launch a freelancing career outside the major urban centres.
  • You will need more cash in the bank than you expected.

On a more positive note, Pawel found out that you learn a lot on your own; more than you ever would inside an organisation. That’s because you have to do a heck of a lot more. Pawel also learned that he was not alone, “Many times I was blown away by the help I had not expected.”

I’ve discussed similar issues in So you want to be an e-learning consultant? and want to underline a critical factor in going on your own. Having a good skill set as well as contacts is not enough to keep a solo business going. It’s possible to be a long-term contractor, which is what Pawel actually wound up doing, but it’s much more difficult to sustain all the components of a business just by doing contract work. Contracting will pay the bills but won’t grow the business. For that, you need a sustainable business model.

After five years, I’m still not certain about my business model but generally it includes:

  1. Integrating my professional development with marketing and connecting with my peers; AKA Blogging.
  2. Raising my professional profile and enlarging my network by writing articles, doing product/book reviews,  facilitating online communities, etc. – mostly for free.
  3. Consulting on a wide range of services in order keep the cash flow positive

The first two activities, though enjoyable, are a cost of doing business and I view them as replacements for marketing & advertising, which I don’t spend any money on. All of my consulting projects come through my network and luckily I had existing contacts when I went solo.

Most of my revenue is generated through consulting. Some projects are interesting and challenging but some are just work. My plan is to continue to publish through various media and discuss what I learn through my consulting and other activities. The aim is to do fewer and more interesting projects and increase the writing and speaking aspect. I know that I won’t get rich on this model but as long as I can have a sustainable business and an enjoyable lifestyle, then I’m fine with that.

To get to this point, I have kept my costs very low, spending only when necessary and taking advantage of every free or cheap option for my work. It’s a simple business model but it seems to be working. It’s also not a quick and easy way to success, however you measure it.

I think that Pawel had a great idea as the freelancing scientist and that this is a model very much enabled by the Internet, as is my own. However, it’s still not easy to go solo in any field.

Short, medium and long-term views about the Internet

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Is the Internet a new technology that we have to integrate into our ways of working and learning or is it a transformational way of communicating that will change our society forever? The approach from existing software vendors and established organisations is that Internet technologies can help you become more effective and efficient in your current business model through systems for collaborative work (e.g. Sharepoint) or online education (e.g. Blackboard).

Another view is that we are going through a transformation similar to what happened 100 years ago and that the Internet is like the industrial system and will significantly change how we spend our discretionary time (9 hours each day). Here are the predicted shifts from NineShift:

  1. People work from home.
  2. Intranets replace offices.
  3. Networks replace pyramids
  4. Trains replace cars
  5. Dense neighborhoods replace suburbs
  6. New social infrastructures evolve.
  7. Cheating becomes collaboration.
  8. Half of all learning is online.
  9. Education becomes web-based.

These are major changes and it’s hard to argue with most of these predictions, as in the last two years they’re pretty well all coming about. But is the Internet going to have an even greater impact on society? Mark Federman thinks so.

Federman sees the Internet and related electric media as the biggest change since the 16th century and describes it as epochal. According to his research, we are 150 years into a 300 year change into the electric age and the Internet is the point of acceleration of our shift from print-based communications to electric ones. The launch of the Netscape IPO occurred during the “break-boundary” between epochs.

All three perspectives have validity and can be useful. Yes, we can get efficiencies from these new technologies but they are having an impact on how we work and live that will be obvious in the next decade. We should also keep in perspective that life will be significantly different for our children and grand children, which is difficult for many of us to imagine. How could scribes imagine an age of literacy or an oral society watch as the written word extended power and control?

Combining the short, medium and long views may give us a better picture and a framework to help with the decisions we have to make today.

Photo by SMigol

T&D Learning in 2020

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ASTD interviewed several people in our field and asked what things will look like in 10 years. In Learning in 2020, trends in Tools, Technology, Workforce, Talent Management and Future Leaders are discussed. There’s lots here, some you may agree with and some you may not. Given what has happened to the economy in the last 6 months, many of these predictions may be a bit mild.

Here’s my 2 cents worth:

Invert the Pyramid

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In Advice for the Training Department I recommended that those in the training function should concentrate on Communicating & Connecting. Later I suggested that the training department should wake up and smell the coffee or be rendered obsolete. All of this is premised on the fact that our organisational structures need to change in order to deal with complexity and one framework we can start with is wirearchy.

However, the training department can at best manage incremental change unless the organisation itself changes. In It’s Time to Invert the Management Pyramid, Vineet Nayer says:

It is not a stationary relic I’m talking about. I’m talking about the brand new dinosaur on the block – the classical management pyramid. Time has come to dismantle it and adapt to a new evolutionary and unstructured model that leverages the team effect to ensure that companies can lead change rather play catch up or be left behind.

The training department and the CLO can help in this effort, but inverting the pyramid is the big work that needs to be done by the entire organisation.

I believe that structural change is coming sooner than many expect, with the WorldBlu list as an example of the hunger for change. The inability of our prominent command and control organisations to deal with growing complexity highlights our structural problems. The largest military force in the world cannot defeat a loosely knit group of terrorists; the US/Cdn automotive sector has been incapable of changing its business model and our elect & forget political representatives are increasingly hamstrung by an electorate that no longer provides majorities or landslides.

It is time to invert the pyramid and integrate learning into all that we do. Are you ready?

Proficiency-based training

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According to Clark Quinn in this eLearn Article:

There is one role for pre-tests, and that is in the realm of allowing students to test out of a course. Learners should be allowed to skip the content they already know if they can demonstrate competency. This is to the great benefit of the learner. But when pre-testing is used to demonstrate mastery for this purpose, it should be an option, not a requirement. So please, don’t abuse your learners. Give pre-tests only to allow the learner to test-out of specific material. And don’t give in to de facto standards that dictate every course start with a pre-test. Use assessment properly, to demonstrate mastery.

I agree that pre-testing is not of much value unless it triggers some action. This reminds me of the proficiency-based training we used for training military helicopter pilots. Learning how to fly an aircraft is an expensive endeavour and each flight costs several thousand dollars. Minimizing training time, without compromising standards, was one of our objectives.

Flight training was divided into about 35 “air lesson plans” and each one was about 1.5 hours. At the end of certain lessons, students had to have achieved mastery of specific skills, such as hovering or completing a circuit. Additional time in the aircraft could be provided, with counseling, but after a certain number of hours students were expected to achieve the performance requirement. Conversely, if a student achieved the performance requirement in fewer lessons, he or she could skip one or more lessons and move on to the next stage. In this way, a student could complete the course days or weeks earlier than scheduled and at a lower cost for the training establishment. For pilots who were already spending a lot of time away from home, this was a positive incentive.

As Clark mentions in his article, if you can demonstrate mastery then training is not necessary. For learning professionals, it is important to design tests that can validate competency. This is an overlooked area of instructional design as too much effort is spent on delivering content, in my opinion. Another rule that we had in military training, though not always followed, was to design the proficiency test before developing any training. The proficiency test had to correlate with the job performance area that was being addressed. In this way, the direct link between training and job performance was obvious. Considering my last post, this could be a good thing for the training department.