Recreating The Corporate University

When I joined my current organization there was much talk of the need for a corporate university to support the growing workforce. As I grew to understand our workforce I believed the model typically envisioned was not a good fit but rather than fight city hall and banter about with semantics I worked to massage the concept. In a previous life I did the same and took the approach of working within the system to change it. This idea surfaced again in an enlightening Skype recently with +Sam Burrough. Sam shared a similar sentiment regarding the "course" and how, although many call it such, he is using Curatr to change the innards if you will and make the traditional course design/delivery one that is more social and responsive to rapidly changing information.

In an open letter to my organization (sparing you org specific features as that would mean little) I shared the following about the direction I'm taking with organizational learning and the idea of a corporate university.

Most corporate universities have been built to mirror an academic university structure, one that emphasizes a “learn then apply” model. Academic institutions typically consist of these three elements, in order of importance, to support this model:

The university you likely attended was built on the idea that you entered knowing little and exited knowing more. Your success was measured in grades and degrees. This is not the ideal model for an agile organization? Employees are practitioners and experts, not novice students.

In a recent webinar attended by over 50 employees, I asked the following question (one Charles Jennings has asked many times):

“When you think about one great learning experience you've had, can you remember where it occurred - In a classroom, workshop or while completing a task?”

Over 80 percent of respondents said that the greater learning occurred while completing a task.

It's fair to say that the majority of our real learning happens in the activities we undertake; through trial and error and in our interactions with peers and experts. Likewise, significantly less learning happens in formal settings such as classes, workshops and elearning. Yet corporations spend much of their money and employee’s time on structured learning approaches.

In organizations, the primary focus is working not formal learning. And rather than grades, employees strive to achieve business results. To support this we need to transform the traditional model from a structure designed for students and learning to one that supports employees and performing. In this shift the elements remain but the emphasis is reversed.

1. The Commons - Innovation happens when people connect and collaborate.In the flow of work, employees turn to each other for answers, advice, tips and resources to get the job done. Therefore social networks and the ability to connect within them, in communities of practice and communities of interest, are necessities for today's workforce. Soon we will be opening up our collaborative network powered by Jive and supporting your efforts to work in an open environment. 

2. The Library - Organizational resources cannot be static like those found in university libraries. The ability to capture and incorporate new ideas and practices into explicit resources ensures agility in a rapidly changing world of information. User-generated content can move quickly through a repeating cycle of improvement to remain current and easily accessed. Our internal Knowledge Management system and SharePoint libraries will house more explicit resources and information you can pull from to aid you in the work you do. We will continue to partner with our people to constantly refine and improve materials and their delivery.

3. The Classes - Although necessary at times, especially for novice employees, formal learning needs to be done in a way that is most advantageous for employees and the organization; by not adding friction to one’s productivity. Formal courses should be parsed into small pieces for easy access and application in workflow, where new knowledge and skills can be more immediately applied. Lynda.com is a perfect example of a rich catalog of courses, accessible from any device, for just-in-time, just enough, structured learning.

Times have changed and so has organizational learning. Corporate universities today can best be structured as a framework for continuous learning. As such they need to serve the agile needs of an organization looking to innovate and thrive. The core structure of a corporate university today should be one that will continue to respect current levels of knowledge, support accessibility of quality information, and use collaborative platforms as pathways to connect people to their peers and the information needed to perform and succeed.

Short on details I know but we are well underway using several current tools and a few new ones to meet the needs of our extended workforce. I look to share more examples and progress here as we press on. Stay tuned, 2014 looks very exciting.

It's the little things

"Hey! What are you doing?!"

That was my reaction after seeing my kids and their cousins poking at a spider web.

The children, all under age 8, were intrigued by a very large and fierce looking spider on a web among flower garden daisies. The gut reaction by one of the kids on this oddly humid fall evening was of course to squash it. All the kids, creeped out or in awe, were in silent agreement until I said let's look it up.

In a matter of seconds I pulled out my smartphone, snapped pic, studied it (as the spider itself was getting a bit antsy by the continual poking). As the desire to smash it grew, I quickly "Googled" it's general description and VIOLA!

If there is one thing these kids hated more than ugly bugs it was stinging and biting ones.  This Common Garden spider was quickly determined to be our friend. A steady diet of wasps, mosquitoes and bees made him an ugly ally in the war on those who ruin outdoor fun.  The spider had a stay of execution! Furthermore the "eeews" turned to "ahhs" when it was noted that each night the spider eats its web and builds a new one! How efficient.

I couldn't help but think of all the big campaigns, films, and curriculum aimed today at educating our youth on helping slow the destruction of ecosystems. Frankly I'm not sure how successful it all has been but I do know a lot of time, money and resources has been spent on all of these efforts. 

But this is the real power of our technology today. In a matter of seconds a small group learned something valuable about their world while in their world. A myth dispelled, an answer know, maybe a broader lesson learned for future application of this new knowledge. A smartphone, a camera, a browser (and a level head). All combined, these increasingly common tools just might make a difference for a world at risk.

In my last post I touched on how social tools have the ability to make the big smaller. It's hard to really to measure the impact of these small spontaneous events, rife with emotion. But if little actions like these (Trojan mice) are released frequently, everywhere maybe a real difference will be seen in our ecosystems.

"Unleash Trojan Mice. Don't do big things or spend loads of money. Set small, nimble things running and see where they head." - Euan Semple (see full post here)

                                                                                                           

If this spider lives and reproduces > thousands of offspring are born > the mosquito population in check > pesticide spraying is reduced, etc, etc. Hard to trace back to 5 kids in a Syracuse, New York flower garden but who knows.

In our organizations we have the same social and informal learning opportunities on an equally small scale.  In the littler moments, not in the classroom or through a curriculum, we can reach for performance support within our peers and in our tools. We no longer have the excuse "I didn't know" for most information. At our fingertips we have what can help us make better decisions and our reactive nature can put in check. 

And yet even with all the tools available to connect us and our knowledge, someone still needs to ask...

 "Hey what are you doing!?"

Think of the Doer and doing, not the Learner and learning

I'm sure you've heard the cliche that is the self-described non-techie confessing that "My VCR still blinks 12:00." (OK I know...VCR? What's that? Humor me here).  I think this statement however speaks more to who we all are rather than just a segment of the not-so-tech-savvy among us. Furthermore I believe the statement transcends technology and to who we are as human-beings.

With that example as a point of reference about human nature lets look at why your VCR likely still blinks 12:00.

• It blinks 12:00 because you didn't bother to read the instructions. 
• You didn't bother to read the instructions because quite frankly your goal was to watch a movie not have yet another timepiece in the room. 
• You didn't bother to read the instructions because the user guide was enormous and thus appeared as another layer of work just adding to your time on task. 
• You didn't bother to read the instructions because the first thing you instinctively do IS "do."

Maybe it's an all to common human failing or maybe it's just part of how we are wired to learn. I prefer the latter. I mean isn't it our first instinct to just try? To play around and make a go of it? It's not typical for anyone to immediately reach for assistance. We don't want help until we want help. And when we want help we want just the right amount of help for our very specific need.

We are not stupid creatures in that we would ever take this approach if in a bomb detonation, surgery, or flying an aircraft situation. We turn towards "do" first when we believe there is a pretty good chance we will be successful (past experience?). It's in this doing; the struggle and ultimate success, that we gain confidence and make long-term connections for future application. We are mostly practical creatures too. The VCR blinks 12:00 because we don't let perfect be the enemy of good, i.e. an inaccurate clock doesn't bring us to our knees. So when, and only when, we need/want to go a bit further along we'll seek assistance.

What's the lesson here for L&D?  I think it's playing a bit more to human nature and not confounding it with more than is required to get the job done. L&D should work first to help improve the environment for better performance rather than create stuff to augment learning for better performance. Maybe that's enabling more time and places for reflection, maybe its pushing for better system/tool interface design, maybe its making searching for information easier or access to expertise seamless. But it should not first be creating another layer of work.

Cycle Learning: Acceleration and Power

This morning I got out for my first ride of the spring.  Its been a long winter and so some of my mechanics and cadence were off and I forgot my riding glasses but it didn't take too long to comeback (it's like riding a bike...heh).

If you do cycling at all then your probably familiar with clip-less pedals; ones where you use special shoes to lock yourself onto the bike pedal and with a quick jerk you can release.  The obvious advantage is that you are locked into your machine, you have double the power; pushing down on the pedal and pulling up as it cycles around. Pushing is the desired action for acceleration on downhills and flat road. Pulling is advantageous for the tough hills, where you need power. Pulling takes thought however, its not as inherently obvious to novice cyclists as it is to push.

Of course a ride in the quite morning allowed my thoughts to wander and in this case make connections. Cycling is work. And like our work, when we look to ramp up our performance, (especially during the less demanding crunch times) we can afford to engage in "push" or formal learning. These deeper learning dives; classes, courses, seminars, workshops, etc (when appropriate and well designed) can accelerate our knowledge and skill development. However we can't afford to turn to "push" during our work. In our task driven days when milestones loom like mountains we must turn to a different action; our ability to "pull" or leverage informal and social learning. No harder than push and not necessarily more important, pull learning is a key to success at a different time; during the metaphoric inclines. Pull is having focused networks to tap into coupled with Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) to draw upon ideas and resources that help us muscle through the tough spells. Pull is also our being cognizant of the work and learning through our mistakes.

Inclines, welcomed or not, (in cycling and in our work) come in a variety of gradations and frequencies. Those who work smarter, maximizes all opportunities for power and acceleration and turn mountains into mole hills.

Cognitive Dissonance and the Denial of Social/Informal Learning

In a previous post I explored the idea that a form of learned helplessness is to blame for executives and L&D's inability to accept and embrace social & informal learning in their organizations.  Simply put, my argument was that after years of "control" by formal learning (public education, higher education and training organizations) there may be a well entrenched  belief that the only path to learning is via push methods.

I believe that another related issue may be at play - Cognitive Dissonance. If you're unfamiliar, this is the mental stress that results from having conflicting cognitions such as when a cigarette smoker reacts to dramatic data on lung cancer rates with a "eh, gotta die someday." Or a person, having the belief that abortion is an abomination, can justify voting for the pro-death penalty candidates. Or the religious zealot who exclaims that when doomsday didn't arrive as planned, it must have been due to their strong beliefs.

Simply put - the more one invests in an idea/ belief, the stronger one works to justify their position on that issue.

When you think about the amount of money, time and staffing that's pumped into formal learning in the face of more and more research showing how ineffective it can be, it's no wonder only the most progressive are able to break their shackles to traditional training and L&D approaches. Those with more conflicted cognitions engage in the simple act of dismissing the evidence. Do they eliminate or discount the other argument because they are justifying the investment?

If there is something to this then simply throwing more data at them isn't the solution as it may only serve to solidify their entrenched position.

I stumbled upon this short research on AIDS prevention summary which was challenging the notion of education alone to curb dangerous sexual behavior. In the study the evidence showed that educational efforts that induced fear were not enough to change young people's behavior. The youth agreed that AIDS was a problem, just not that it was their problem. The approach then was to make a departure from the fear campaign and instead to create a form of cognitive dissonance by exposing their own hypocrisy to get them to practice what they preach.  

The results indicated that those who were put in a position where they had to address their own contradictions were more likely to take corrective/positive action to rectify it. 

When it comes to a lack of support for social and informal learning, the fact is most leaders (corporate and L&D alike) do not engage in formal learning themselves yet they support its use as the default, and often only, means to improve worker performance - Hypocrisy?   

I agree that in many cases, when given the opportunity, small proof of concept informal/social learning pilots can produce good data and should not be abandoned as an approach. However, maybe the AIDS behavior modification approach holds an opportunity for changing organizational learning strategy and investment. If yes, then the question is: How do we help our leaders to do more self-reflection to expose their hypocrisy?

My PKM approach: People, Simplicity, and Discipline

What I've learned about Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) I have learned socially, informally and "non-formally" too (See Harold Jarche's @hjarche PKM Workshop opportunity in @C4LPT's Social Media Centre). Mostly I've pulled my understanding from a knowledgeable network of people of my choosing. Recommendations of people have been presented but not in a traditional formal method. My network has grown through the unconscious actions of those I've deemed as influencers. They, by their acknowledgement of others as providing value, have surfaced new voices and I then welcome them into my Personal Learning Network (PLN). 


People
PKM to me is about  having a plurality of voices and ideas; driving the knowledge, pushing it ever forward through additions, subtractions, and modifications. Knowledge is fluid. The personal decisions we make by selecting those we listen to and interact with have the potential to change our understanding constantly, as it should, for today change happens more quickly than ever; we are on Internet time now and have been for some time.


Simplicity
The tools we use must align to our own comforts and match the flexibility of our very human processes of connecting, collecting, and sharing of this information. For me, they must be simple so as to not siphon much needed mental energy away from what is most important, the new ideas that impact my work. Some tools offer more robust capabilities but do they add value?


Discipline
PKM must happen constantly... it should become subconscious, an involuntary action. Today there are no longer barriers to when and where your PKM efforts happen. Mobile devices,  access to a PLN on which the sun never sets, and a plethora of tools allow knowledge management efforts to be continuous. There are no excuses. 


As powerful as PKM is, it can also quickly become overwhelming. The keys to success are, in my opinion, simple and internal (as Harold reminds - personal) -  Identify what you want to know, find and connect with those who will help you know it and stay diligent.

Real Learning is in the Real Work

Many discussions about learning lead to the very accurate point that we have been learning socially (and informally) for thousands of years. Images of early people gathering around fires, writing on walls or in the sand with a stick have been used to help people better understand social learning and that like then it is happening today in our lives, classrooms and in our organizations.

However, sitting around the fire, early people shared, discussed, and processed but around the fire wasn't the only place that this would have happened or for that matter was it arguably the most impactful "place" of learning.

I believe learning is most powerful when done in the doing; the 70 of 70-20-10.  In this doing, in the past, they also communicated; on hunts, while tanning animal skins, preparing meat, and forging for berries ... they likely used different mediums too; song and rhythm, other audible sounds (clicks, grunts?), they watched each other, they mimicked each other; the 20 of the 70-20-10. Simply put, they learned socially in the work flow where mind and body were engaged and the context was dripping with emotion.  I imagine the hunts were exciting, dangerous and exhausting. Tanning and forging were equally emotion rich as socialization was omnipresent when new techniques were employed, observed, analyzed, and tweaked by the group creating "ah-ha" moments as well as "ha-ha" moments where peers bonded and ideas were promoted in a very communal, casual, comfortable, yet equally important for survival environment.

This emotion is a key component to deeper learning. Classrooms, course ware and virtual worlds today try to simulate emotional responses but they rarely match the personal connections to content and context that is at the heart of deeper learning because they are just that... "simulated." The human brain knows that the formally designed "learning" activities, be it simple drag-n-drop flash animations or simulated environments with character interactions are not really do or die events. These products do the best they can to "reward" the user with kudos, scores and a check mark but its only when we are truly immersed in a real situation with real needs, real business impact, real problems, real opportunity, real rewards, and of course real people that we become more emotionally charged. Similar was early man's real need to find food, water and shelter. These needs must have made them more receptive to observe, mimic, listen to and connect with peers...in their work flows.

Therefore our ability to learn is not and cannot be confined to a place, an approved platform, device  or application, elearning module, or a face-to-face course; the 10 of 70-20-10. Look and learn from our past; I suppose early man didn't carry fire, paints, sand and a stick with them on the hunts any more than we should expect to wait to login to a "social intranet" or LMS to solve problems with peers, learn the best principles, or collaborate. Deeper learning happens in our emotion rich contexts with interactions with real people, facing real problems.

So it was then, is today, and ever shall be.

Learned (Learning) Helplessness

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.”
- William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell


If you’re like me you see the future of learning as being social in a connected world, and the mindset of “empowering” people and not one of “allowing” them should be the norm and the first thought. And yet others, you’re executives, peers and the workers you support, just don't seem to see it …or maybe it’s that they can't.

Even in the face of compelling case studies and increased attention to the 70-20-10 model, we are not only presented with dismissive reactions but often overt resistance to enterprise social and informal learning efforts. There is an inability of many to move beyond the current paradigm that learning only happens when there is training.

Current reasons for this inability to see value in enhancing social and informal learning such as fears about security and loss of productivity seem a bit lacking to me, over stated and under supported. These fears may actually be symptoms rather than the disease itself.

What I believe is being left out of the mix is the true power of formal learning and I don't mean power in terms of it being a comprehensive solution but rather power in its pervasiveness.

Quite possibly, because of this pervasiveness, social and informal just can’t be seen by many as “real” learning.

Formal approaches in the US and elsewhere have been present in our lives since our primary school years. Public education and higher education experiences drove into many a brain that we learn only when others teach. We associated school with learning. A break from school (vacation, summers, and weekends) was perceived as a break from academic work and thus a break from learning. We were led to believe that learning was compartmentalized, it happens only in certain environments with specific elements present. We began to see learning as an externally controlled activity.

Today the ideas of enhancing and extending informal and social learning struggle to gain a foothold in organizations due in part I think to these years of formal reinforcement. “We teach as we were taught” was a common reference to educators who could not break free from old models of instruction ...can it be then that executives and many workers alike don’t take seriously social and informal learning because they believe “we can only learn the way we learned”?

Situation after situation for the better part of 20 years forced many into a submissive state; all under the constant control of formal learning. And as we left the world of education and entered the workforce, the training-industrial complex stepped in ready to fill the impending formal void.
One theory that may explain this best is known as "Learned Helplessness"

Learned Helplessness is (defined as):

a phenomenon in which individuals gradually, usually as a result of repeated failure or control by others, become less willing to attempt tasks. (D.D. Smith, 2001)

The key phrase here is "...as a result of repeated failure or control by others..." For workers, repeated failure is experienced through the compartmentalization of learning created in the 20th century models. Workers are often directly (by supervisors, IT firewalls) prohibited or discouraged (by the culture) from seeking answers outside the system (T&D), producing their own materials or using personal devices. Furthermore, managers and executives alike maintain control through the constant need for metrics: completion rates, evaluations, and scores serve as the primary measures of learning; a continuation of the formal education models they themselves are accustom to and comfortable with.

Workers, like the students they once were, “learn” to be patient and compliant ultimately to the detriment of their organizations. They learn to be helpless in the face of repeated failure and systems of control.

In studies by Martin E.P. Seligman, Ph.D. and noted in his book Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life he stated...

When faced with situations where they were powerless to change an annoying element, two out of three (both animals and humans) would cease trying to affect the situation. Further, when placed in a new situation with a different annoying element, they would make no attempt from the beginning. One in 10 would make no attempt to change an annoying element, even though they had not been exposed to an uncontrollable situation to cause them to learn helplessness.

Does this help explain that, although surrounded by informal and social opportunities and technologies at the ready, many still only acknowledge and await the formal, making no attempt to change this reality. Mandatory classes, elearning modules, firewalls, LMSs, Intranets ... all annoying elements are met with little more than a sigh.

Here’s a bit more on the effects of this control on adults from a 1976 study of nursing home residents at Arden House. The staff in this Arden house example, when only providing limited choice/involvement, is eerily similar to T&D controlling content and the flow of information. And although the results are not premature death as in the Arden house example, it can result in the death of productivity, morale, and innovation. So if the problem is actually a type of learned helplessness how can it be corrected? Here are a few things to consider outlined in Learned Helplessness and School Failure we must:

1. Acknowledge and understand the components of learned helplessness to remediate it. If it's about control, our employees must be encouraged and maybe incentivized to seek their own answers and not wait to be fed at the training trough. Think of the viral story of the small company whose owner gave a no strings attached 50K to each employee who stayed 5 years. Training is expensive. Trust is much cheaper. Hire motivated employees, create channels for information to flow, and promote personal development.

2. We must help [employees] discover the root beliefs and the distorted perceptions they create that cause their self defeating deficits. The well entrenched perception is that only formal = learning. To help dispel this myth we must reward results gained through collaboration and not through competition . We must acknowledge and promote sharing and community building as the means to greater learning not courses and completion rates. We must show employees & executives that these social and informal activities are occurring constantly (with and without technology); acknowledging and expanding them is productive time and can lead to positive personal and business results.

3. We must give [employees] the tools to change and refute their distorted beliefs and thereby reduce the deficits. The tools are technological and cognitive. We need to sponsor communities for collective intelligence to flourish through the free flow of ideas. We must work to enable enterprise social media and better yet, welcome the use of their own devices and tools. A shift must happen where learning professionals become "social" learning professionals acting in roles as community facilitators not content creators. Cognitive tools need to be sharpened and new skills sets developed. For example Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) and the Seek, Sense, Share model promoted by Harold Jarche are critical mindsets for workers in the 21st Century. Seeing is believing.

If the pervasiveness of formal learning is contributing to a learned helplessness when trying to adopt and expand social and informal learning, then a three pronged approach that aims to cure the disease and not just treat the symptoms may be the best way to help people cleanse their doors of perception.

Willingness vs. Ability to Change

Dave Kelly @LnDDave wrote an interesting post comparing Blockbuster's demise to the changes facing Learning Professionals due to technology advancements. I think he’s right, there are learning professionals resistant to change …but the lack of change is not always due to internal denial as it can be a result of ...girth. So, in the case of Blockbuster Video I’m think girth more than denial was the cause and don't completely agree that they failed to accept that the market was changing. (Although, in all honestly, I don't have any data to support my beliefs, so humor me). Can we consider then that their downfall was less about a conscious choice of denial and maybe a bit more about an inability to be agile?

It seems to me that Blockbuster was like a big, lumbering Brontosaurus that thrived in an era with few predators (competition), an abundant food supply (limitless market), and a warm earth (strong economy). The need for speed and flexibility was not even a consideration. In the end it's not that poor old Brontosaurus (Blockbusterosaurus?) didn't hear the asteroid hit...it's not that she didn't feel the weather getting colder ...being so big and entrenched in their model and in their world she just couldn't evolve fast enough. She was built for an era that was suddenly & quickly ending.

Likewise I think that this happens in many L&D departments too; entrenched in formal, top-down models being THE solution - approaches that may have worked well in “warm earth days." This belief is built upon years of indoctrination by the "Training-Industrial Complex", snake oil solutions, Industrial Age mindsets, and archaic internal processes, hierarchies and politics abound.

I think that another kind of asteroid has struck the L&D world ...it's called a global financial crisis. The weather is getting colder but the good news is that we are not Brontosaurus. We are not our Organizations ...we are not our Departments, we are individuals within who are built to anticipate change, accept change, and be agile of mind. We can work within our systems to change them.

Evolve or die.

What's in a name?

Recently I received a promotion and my title of ISD has been changed to Manager of Learning Solutions.

Prior to approval, one senior person stated – “that sounds pretty progressive.” And although the tone of the response was initially that of reluctance based on confusion over its meaning - the name was affirmed and is now official.

Yes, I am excited to officially take on the responsibility and pleased with the advancement but more so I am encouraged by what’s in the name; a shift from exclusive emphasis on the external (formal) to improve performance to an increased effort on enabling and encouraging the internal as well (informal, social).

The title change is recognition of my successful initiatives thus far but more than this, I see it as a big step for my organization and our employees going forward.

The decision to enact the title change is also quite symbolic in that the initial confusion and reluctance surrounding social and informal learning is likewise slowly giving way to affirmation... THAT sounds pretty progressive.

The Microwave as a Metaphor for Organizational Learning

The oven is the cornerstone of the kitchen, been around forever. Sure it’s changed its look and fuel over the centuries but the bottom line is the oven is big; it’s designed to cook large amounts, and over a longer period time. Think holiday dinners. It’s really an event kind of appliance.

Me, I’m a free standing microwave guy.

Microwaves aren’t ideal for me to cook say a pot roast but for smaller meals and tid-bits that give you just what you need, when you need it – the microwave is perfect!

Microwave ovens heat food quickly, leaving me more time to do what I need to do – like the honey-do list the “boss” gives me.

I have a free standing microwave- When we were remodeling our kitchen last year we had to keep ours in the living room. Place it anywhere in the house and it does the job – why limit yourself to the kitchen for cooking; it’s mobile!

A microwave is not a threat to replace the oven. We still need the oven for the big stuff like a Thanksgiving dinner. You must have an oven for that event…Turkey, pies, rolls, etc. But the microwave (often used during these events but typically given little credit) is used to defrost food in preparation for the event and also used to cook the gravy, green bean casserole, and the pumpkin soup - critical for a successful meal. Then it is called upon after to reheat many of these items in short order while you watch the Detroit Lions attempt to play football.

I like metaphors and the "microwave" is a useful one for me to use when explaining my beliefs about organizational learning.

Organizational learning must:

• be small (nibbles not full courses)
• be delivered quickly so workers can have more time to do what they are paid to do (minutes not hours)
• happen more where and when needed, not limited to the kitchen ….err I mean training room (on the move not at the table)
• take place before and after an event (defrost and reheat)

I think there is something Social and Informal here too...

A New Age of Reason

As a former HS History teacher, the Age of Reason (17th-18th Cent.) was one of my favorite areas to teach.

I was always in awe of some of the great minds in human history that seemed to all live within about a 200 year period. Locke, Rousseau, Voltaire, Franklin, Hume, Kant just to name a few. These folks and their peers in science and technology all lived at an incredible time in history when an awakening of inquiry took place. Although real time collaboration rarely happened, these folks influenced each other over time and space (sound familiar?). This era was chock full of revolutions in technology, politics, science, economics, and society.

As I personally question my own professional understandings and am constantly influenced by thinkers over time and space, I am wondering if we are entering a New Age of Reason. In particular in the area of organizational learning? The parallels seem pretty close in my opinion.

To start, here's my quick-n-dirty on the Age of Reason (purposefully simple & non-exhaustive!) to set the stage for some small comparisons.

One can argue that the era began with the Renaissance, a “rebirth” of ancient beliefs from Greece and Rome. This in turn led to new scientific “discoveries” about our solar system, gravity and physics. This “Scientific” revolution spurred on a questioning of the physical world. The new scientific questioning began to challenge and threaten the Catholic Church in Europe (supreme authority). New technologies (e.g. the printing press) hastened the transformation and new ideas were quickly and economically shared with the masses. Questions of faith and questions of government authority led to New Protestant faiths emerging. Capitalism and Democracy grew as colonialism and industrialization challenged agrarian social traditions. Discontented and empowered people rebelled and self-determinism led to political change internally and overseas…

Simply put, this was a time when the mysticism, religion, and superstition of the Middle Ages was challenged.

What do you see happening today in organizational learning?

Today, Thought Leaders are questioning the mysticism of formal learning being the end-all-be-all, they are disputing the religious doctrine of L&D departments and “learning” organizations, and they are contesting the authority of today’s “Cathedrals of Knowledge” – the LMS.

Are we in, or on the cusp of, a New Age of Reason in organizational learning?

The ideas of Democracy challenged traditional political organization (Absolute Monarchy) much as Connectivism and Wirearchy stakes their legitimacy among traditional theories and ideas of knowledge and organizational learning structures.

• Representative government displaced Feudal Kingdoms much like we see the long standing Training and Development Departments giving way to empowered learners making their own decisions about what to learn, when to learn and how to learn.

Web 2.0 is our time’s Printing Press…Twitter, Blogger and Amplify spread ideas quicker than if they were posted on a Church door.

This is a time of Enlightenment for many. And like German philosopher, Immanuel Kant described it; enlightenment is the “freedom to use one's own intelligence.”

Kant, further defined enlightenment this way: “Enlightenment is the liberation of man from his self-caused state of minority. Minority is the incapacity of using one’s understanding without the direction of another. This state of minority is self-caused when its source lies not in a lack of understanding but in a lack of determination to use it without the assistance of another.”
http://bit.ly/6dsHm All About History - Age of Reason-Open Society

So today, in organizational learning, it is not that many do not know what to learn, what to use to learn or how to drive their own learning that prevents real knowledge and stellar performance... it may partially be our blind obedience to the institutional structures & traditions in the places we work. It may be our "state of minority" that causes us to unquestionably follow the "learning experts" within organizations; many of whom shackle workers to archaic systems and worse, archaic thinking about what and how best to learn.

In the Age of Reason, political discourse in local coffee houses inspired revolutions. Today, we can find Thinkers like those of the ITA challenging conventional wisdom in the modern coffee houses of the Internet; Blogs and Twitter chats are today’s Penny Universities.

Spurred on by obvious logic, Learning professionals and workers at all levels are fighting the good fight in their organizations- expanding their opportunities to learn through social and informal channels.

The perception of the Enlightenment during its time, and the new ideas that were presented, were often seen as radical, and even dangerous. Today though these ideas of inquiry, democracy, self-determinism, and rationality are taken as unquestionable truths... Some day too, and I suspect quite soon, these truths in the New Age of Reason will be self-evident in that we have the right and responsibility to to learn anytime, anywhere, and by any means.

You can position yourself for serendipity

Last Friday I attended my wife's staff holiday party for the Everson Museum of Art. At one point there was a brief lull in the conversation and a staff member I hardly knew asked me casually for some advice on buying a Christmas present for a family member.

She is perplexed and the pressure is mounting since Christmas is one week away. She asked me for an idea...she asked if I knew of an "it" gift. She went on to explain that it is her family's tradition that everyone buy a single gift that any member of the family would enjoy and/or appreciate. Then, in White Elephant style, they open and trade until all are left with something nice.

Of course my nature as a learning professional was to avoid generating a solution until I understood the details of the problem (in my profession this is a blessing...at a Christmas party ...its a curse). I immediately began a litany of questions...a needs analysis to determine who the family members were, how many, ages, gender, past history of gift types, etc...

In that moment though I had a flash. I recently joined Jane Bozarth's sponsored book club on HootCourse; #lrnbkpull, where we are reading The Power of Pull by John Seely Brown. We have been talking much about serendipity and serendipitous learning as of late.

In the book, Brown speaks of serendipity as "the chance encounter with someone or something that we did not even now existed, much less had value, but that proves to be extraordinarily relevant and helpful once we find out about it."

I though about this and I thought about my own approach to gift buying. You see I'm not all that calculated. I can't just sit down and ponder the person, their wants, needs, likes, etc and rationalize a great gift. No, my approach has always been haphazard. Instead of surrounding myself with thoughts of the person ...I surround myself with potential gifts; I go to a particular type of store, like Marshalls or TJ Maxx. If you haven't been to one of these department stores, you've been somewhere like it. It's basically the Island of Misfit Toys. A collection of overstock from larger band name stores, clothing with minor flaws, knick-knacks, toys, shoes, and home appliances and decor all packed into a rectangular warehouse like building.

It may not be organized, upscale or pretty, but it is rich with ideas. I choose to wander among the different isles completely immersed in the material. It probably sounds inefficient or frustrating to some, but what it does for me is inspire. My mind races as I scan various items - each having something to offer. I watch and overhear people talking about purchases and who they are for and why. I ask questions of the staff, and with each answer more ideas and potential are revealed... until Boom! it hits me...and the idea is there.

In The Power of Pull, the authors write that meeting new people and finding new ideas can be fun but attraction and the serendipity that arises from it takes on increasing value as we look to the edges of our interest areas and increase the probability of serendipitous encounters at the most relevant times.

So I told the stressed staff member of my approach and that she should head to Marshalls tomorrow and wander. Even if she didn't purchase there, she may find inspiration. She was surprised and yet seemed relieved to have a new direction. For her this was the relevant time, it was the 11th hour for holiday shopping...Marshalls to someone of her status was definitely the edge; an area she hadn't really explored. But she made herself open that night and experienced the serendipitous. She had a chance encounter with me, a performance specialist, a person/profession definitely on the edges of her interest areas. This encounter led to an idea/approach that never crossed her mind previously.

#lrnbkpull member, Bill Cush (@billcush) tweeted it best recently: "Serendipity requires being "out there" constantly, in search of new ideas w/ no immediate results..then boom!"

So, are you constantly out there? moving away from your center, your safer area, to meet the people, ideas on the edges? If not, do you really expect innovation and inspiration? For as Brown states, "You can position yourself for serendipity."

Informal Learning Is Negative Space

Take a pen and a piece of paper out. Look around your desk and identify an item; a stapler, your phone, maybe your monitor. Now begin drawing it.

If you’re like me, you immediately focused on the item you chose; its shape, depth, and size. This is known as the Positive Space and is pretty much what a non-artist focuses on; the object.

What we typically don’t do, that the artist can, is look at the Negative Space. Wikipedia has a pretty succinct description of this, Negative Space in art:

“is the space around and between the subject(s) of an image. Negative space may be most evident when the space around a subject, and not the subject itself, forms an interesting or artistically relevant shape, and such space is occasionally used to artistic effect as the "real" subject of an image.”

In the workplace learning arena Positive and Negative space exist as well – however it is better known as Formal and Informal Learning.


Formal Learning, like Positive Space, is easy to recognize. Things like courses, curriculum and training are called upon to solve a wide range of performance issues. Organizational leaders are usually well entrenched in a world that places training at the center of all initiatives used to build skills and knowledge – its hard to consider other opportunities or the opposite of what they are comfortable with when all they know and see is tangible.



All around the Formal is Informal Learning. And like the Negative Space, it has always existed but is rarely given attention. This is the pull learning, the serendipitous, and often the social networks formed out of needs unmet. It is also obscure, fluid, unstable, and uncontrolled…easy to take for granted.

Like the contrast in the Positive/Negative drawing description, Informal can be what is most interesting, relevant, and ultimately what is the most real subject to the worker.


The Wikipedia description continues by adding:

“It can be a difficult concept to grasp. One tool used by art teachers in teaching about positive and negative space was popularized in the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. In the exercise, students copy from an upside-down drawing or photograph. Because the picture is upside-down, students don't readily recognize the objects in the picture. They are able to give equal attention to the positive and negative shapes. The result is often a much more accurate drawing.”

Likewise, Informal Learning is a difficult concept to grasp and efforts to bring attention to and enhance it can be a tough sell. However, maybe we just need to change the perspective rather than push the argument.

Getting organizational leaders to flip the picture upside-down themselves and take the entire Workscape into account is key. If they see the whole picture more like an artist does, one who respects both the positive and negative space equally, they may be less inclined to gravitate towards the single object solution. Balance is what's needed and the opportunities lie not only in the formal, but in the spaces in and around it.

The journey of a thousand ideas can begin with one Tweet

Last Friday I met with a colleague (a trainer) who had, several weeks ago, asked me to observe her training and help her improve its effectiveness. Prior to the observation I asked her what the goal was, I asked: “What is it the participant should be able to do after your training?”

After observing and taking detailed notes of her session with the participants, we met for an hour to discuss the activities and revisit the goal.

I asked her one question: "Does this content warrant training?" After a bit of discussion we agreed that the solution that was needed was a simple system enhancements with IT and more authentic practice. In the end we cut out the lecture, the memorization and regurgitation. We reduced the time down by at least 2 hours which provides more opportunities for practice, collaboration, and reflection.

Simply put, training was not needed to enable performance.

It probably doesn’t seem to be that big of a deal to you but if it were not for the action I took over two years prior, on May 9, 2008 at 8:51pm, I would most likely have had been helping her rewrite her learning objectives, creating worksheets and developing a leaders guide.

That May evening in 2008 is when I opened my Twitter account. And like so many I lurked for a while before jumping in on June 10th with this ironic statement:

Since that date I have read numerous books and articles and blogs on social media, social & informal learning, and the importance of both the learnscape and workscape.

I'm better at steering stakeholders away from the creation of large info dumping courses and have helped design and deliver JIT performance supporting resources.

I have shared ideas with, and been supported directly by, the likes of Jay Cross, Jane Hart, Harold Jarche, Charles Jennings, Cammy Bean, Janet Clarey, and Clark Quinn. I have become quite addicted to Thursday night #lrnchats where I get a chance to interact with many of these fine thinkers.

I founded the Social and Informal Learning Special Interest Group (SIL-SIG) in my local chapter of ASTD. Today, I’m promoting our chapter’s first Pacha Kucha or unconference.

I have embarked on a successful crusade to use Wiki’s as collaborative learning tools to enhance formal training; leveraged SharePoint blogs to build community between geographically dispersed newly hired employees; I started my own blog; and I brought Yammer into the enterprise for organizational PLN’s.

I am currently directing the transition of my organization's classroom on-boarding program to one with virtual support in a workplace context.

Finally, I have designed the framework for a Learning Portal that will house learning assets and connect experts to novices, which is all aligned to the key business metrics.

My current title is an ISD, which now seems too limiting since designing formal training is not at all …all that I do. I work to improve performance throughout the organization; informally and formally.

Prior to that Tweet I pretty much saw the answer to performance problems as formal, top down training only. That Tweet led me to creative thinkers and their great books, blogs, articles & webinars. I found a community of like-minded professionals who challenged my core beliefs. They shared and I shared, we collaborated...I saw the benefits personally and I brought it to my organization.

What's next, I don't know... but Twitter continues as the catalyst in advancing my professional evolution.

So are you still wondering what’s so great about Twitter? Not me.

A 21st Century Workplace Vending Machine

Has there ever been a tool more loved or hated than the company vending machine?

It's simple right? Transparent box, centrally located, displaying a variety of convenience foods for those in need. Yet, it is often seen as a scourge; mocked as a tool of the devil ...leading people away from a healthy lifestyle.

Regardless of ridicule, the vending machine exists and no level of management even utters the idea of its removal. Heck, its much like email as its pretty much a given with no thought to its value.

Maybe execs see it as a perk for the employees or maybe there is actual revenue being generated? Maybe they see it as mutually beneficial - a short trip to an easily accessible sources of food results in keeping employees at their seats longer, in meetings longer; keeps them productive.

Well I say -Bravo management! They even had the forethought to make it centrally located. They recognized that it's not only important to get a snack, but to get a snack quickly; at the moment of need. When a formal sit down lunch is next to impossible, your choices are vending machine fare or a dried out donut around 6hrs old... I choose to vend.

People rail against the vending machine …but it doesn’t go away. Ours is visited often and it actually has much more than junk food. In my last visit I noticed granola, dry fruit, and seeds. mmmmm, healthy.

The great features are 1. that we have choice, it's updated weekly and 2. the contents are purely driven by supply and demand; i.e. if people are dropping quarters in for M&M's, the Vending Fairy's restock M&M's. But if folks selected healthier choices, the fairy's would respond in kind and slowly but surely the sweets would vanish.

Can you truly measure the value of the company vending machine? Do most organizations even bother?

If you were to determine ROI you'd be measuring the behavior changes that were exhibited by the employees who purchased, right? ... But what about the purchasers who then shared a bite or handful with a co-worker, thus increasing that person's stamina, happiness, productivity...etc?

Come to think of it, this simple, convenient, sustenance dispensing tool is no different than having informal knowledge dispensing systems in an organization. i.e. Social Media.

Yet many executives are not even considering SM for learning in the organization. Yet they likely placed a vending machine in unconsciously.

Oh sure some of what will be made available in a SM platform will be useless (think Twinkies for the mind). But if more and more demand the value adding material, more value adding material will appear (supply and demand right?).

The vending machine has healthy and unhealthy choices for sure…but choice none-the-less which really is employee-centric as they are trusted to make the best choices for themselves in fueling their bodies...why not extend this to what fuels their performance?