Frictionless learning

Gary Wise, in Close to the Edge: The Radicalization of Training, suggests that workers need an environment with:

seamless, frictionless and ubiquitous access to/from the right learning assets – at their moment(s) of learning need – in work context-friendly amounts – in compelling, readily-consumable formats – to/from the right devices.

This is definitely part of the solution and goes a long way in addressing the training department’s predominantly event-based, fire & forget, mindset. However, it’s also content-centric and appears to assume that if you have the right content, learning will happen.

But more of our work is in exception-handling or is increasingly complex and requires the sharing of highly contextual tacit knowledge. That means we also need to be connected to the right people at the right time. Professional social networks enable these connections. I would add to Gary’s description, “seamless, frictionless and ubiquitous access to/from the right learning assets as well as a dynamic network of colleagues/co-workers …”. Once again, this sounds like wirearchy:

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