Learning's Battle Against Tradition

What if you presented a tool or process to the c-suite, something that would (not could) increase revenue, improve morale and increase efficiency? No doubt they would leap at the opportunity right?

Not quite...

I recently heard a story (Axe Bat Wins Converts, But Has To Overcome Baseball Traditionalists) that immediately made me see parallels to innovations in organizational learning and performance. The story was about a modern innovation applied to the baseball bat, which has remained in its basic form for around 150 years.

 Felling Axe by タクナワン 
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

Drawing upon the even older design of axe handles, the Axe Bat is more oval than the current cylinder style, similar if not identical to axes use in chopping wood, an efficient design used since neolithic times. The reporter explained that technology now allows us to easily craft a bat handle in any shape where in the past, using a lathe, round was the only option.  The proponents of the Axe Bat claim, like its wood chopping forefather, that it's more efficient, effective, and reduces injuries caused by the unnatural ergonomics of traditional bat handles. 

In essence the Axe Bat would help players and help the game.

Yet in face of this information and a readily available alternative, there are few takers. 

Sound vaguely familiar?  Read on...

Age old technique (social learning) made more apparent with advent of new technology (Web 2.0) can transform accepted practice (organizational learning) and challenge long held conventions (learning via formal only). 

In essence social media for learning would help employees and help the organization.

Ironically though, the same resistance the hinders an innovation for baseball exists for organizational learning. This resistance is of course 'Tradition'. The age old subconscious cry of "but this is how we've always done it." People want to stick with what is comfortable even in the face of new or better. With the Axe Bat, teams would try it in practice situations but come game time they returned to the traditional bat.  With social media, people readily use and support it in their personal lives but are resistant to it's use or promote it for learning in their professional ones.

Further reading of the story reveals the Axe Bat manufacturers are approaching increased adoption by doing the following:

1.  Focusing on the newest to the game. 
"just let them pick one, they'll pick [the Axe Bat] because it feels the best. It feels natural to you."
2.  Doing a lot of demos.
3.  Getting high profile endorsers.
"...get more high-profile endorsers as some of those college players turn pro."
4.  Believing. 
"we know we're going to overcome this (tradition)."

Sound vaguely familiar?  

If its social learning or innovative baseball bats, it's a slow road to change when faced with well entrenched tradition. 

In Pursuit of Athens Inc.

On the recent anniversary of the Gettysburg address by Abraham Lincoln I serendipitously was re-introduced to an ancient text by the Greek leader Pericles which has uncanny similarity to Lincoln's famous speech in a similar context. Both wrote of their current struggles and the glory that was the nations they fought to preserve.

"We throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing, although the eyes of an enemy may occasionally profit by our liberality; trusting less in system and policy than to the native spirit of our citizens."

- Funeral Oration of Pericles

These are the some of the words of Pericles (Leader of Athens 444BC to 430BC.) where he gave historians a vivid picture of Athens and all it's practices that helped lead it to be a model for much of Western civilization.

Being a former History teacher, I have always been fascinated by eras of great advancements in humanity and the human condition which often are a result of cultural diffusion and removal of barriers. I see parallels to current events and the past and feel too that with the advancements in collaborative technology we are diffusing on a massive scale and entering a new and probably the most significant of Golden Age's ...and organizations can also be transformed.  

For example during the Golden Age of Athens, fearless and without hindrance, Athenians placed greater attention on creative and innovative pursuits. Furthermore Athens, being a seafaring power, ventured out to the edges of known civilization uninhibited. Through trade, Athenians brought more than merchant goods to all of Athens but idea from other worlds that would fuel its innovation and lead to advances in Arts, Literature, Architecture, Governance, etc permeate all of Western civilization today.

What lessons can organizations today, which can be compared to nation-states, take away from the Golden Age of Athens? 

Geographically Athens was surrounded by a rugged landscape. Fertile farmland was scarce and thus an agrarian society was not a choice. Athenians had to turn to the sea. Likewise organizations today cannot survive isolated; resting solely on its internal workforce and leadership will not result in a sustainable enterprise. The successful organization must reach out from its borders not to seek and acquire talent but to enable its people to connect with talent everywhere and through these connections grow, innovate and create. 

Athenian merchants, driven by self-interest, served themselves but unconsciously served to grow Athenian influence and power. Athenians were proud and loyal because theirs was a nation that placed the individual above the state. Together they rose. Today organizations who aim to contain and control their people in their pursuits limit themselves and ultimately create distrust and disenchantment; not the loyalty they so greatly expect and desire.

As Pericles eludes to in the excerpt above, Athens subscribed to both transparency and openness. They revealed their innovations to the world and invited others in knowing full well their strength was not in their systems and products but in their people. Their enemies might profit occasionally but the long-term gains of openness far outweighed the short-term losses. 

Organizations too, who choose to invest in their people and their happiness, drop their fruitless efforts at security and reap the rewards of individual freedom of the people. People, free to connect and create with passion and zeal, benefit their organization. And although organizations will encounter periodical challenges from competitors. This trust can only lead to greater gains.

Arguably the greatest reason for Athens success was [Direct] Democracy. The belief that the people, collectively, determined and directed policy. Debate was encouraged and contribution to Athenian politics was not a request but a duty. Hierarchy existed to execute the laws but not create them. Each, regardless of position, had a voice and was encouraged to use it.

Today, through collaborative tools, Democracy can be reborn in our modern [organizational] nation-states. We have an technology enabled ability in our organizations to hear all voices, to debate, to encourage contribution, and to influence hierarchy. These same tools can extend us beyond our borders, seek fertile environments and bring back to the enterprise innovative ideas and solutions. This is about trust; trust in our organizations, trust in the systems, trust in each other. 

Leaders today have an opportunity then to embrace the principles of openness, transparency, and democracy as Athens subscribed, resulting in great work and prosperity or continue down the path of exclusion, deception, control.

Won't you open up your eyes?

Beatles songs have always given me pause. Some of my favorites include "Yesterday", "Hey Jude", "Across the Universe" and "Let it Be." The Beatles were ahead of their time musically and lyrically.

Recently, yet unfortunately, while running up a pretty steep hill the song "Dear Prudence" began playing on my iPhone. I say unfortunately because when you're climbing a hill you need Metallica or something.

Outside of the hills, running is meditative for me. My mind, wanders between work, life, calf pain, back to work, life ...etc and at the moment the song began, I was pondering the difficulties of convincing others of the changing nature of work and learning I see around me everyday. Most struggle to see what I view as obvious; the need for a connected workforce that shares and collaborates openly in networks enhanced through technology.

Dear Prudence hit me like lightening (probably the only thing worse than running up a steep hill). A warm song immediately took on new meaning, a bit if divergent thinking if you will, and one that will now serve as an anthem, playing in my mind when I engage those who just don't see it... yet. 

My new look at select lines in the song follows each verse.

Dear Prudence, won't you come out to play?

Dear Prudence, greet the brand new day

The sun is up, the sky is blue

It's beautiful and so are you

Dear Prudence, won't you come out to play?

Start with "Prudence." Sure, as the story goes, John and the boys were teasing Mia Farrow's sister, Prudence, who was held up in a tent working hard on meditation and missing out on the fun. But for my lucid, endorphin filled, running moment it is more the dictionary definition for those who show caution with regard to practical matters; discretion. What's more prudent than connecting people to communicate and share - it's what people do! In my experience those who show caution see only the status quo, stuck in old laws and paradigms of learning. These are the workers and leaders resting on ideas that led to "success" in the 20th century.  They hold back, or move slowly while the world changes rapidly around them.

"won't you come out to play?" "greet the brand new day" - The ideas and tools "breaching the hull" our organizations are worth exploring, trying, feeling. We have entered a new era of connection that is transforming society, business and learning; it is a brand new day.

Dear Prudence, open up your eyes 

Dear Prudence, see the sunny skies 

The wind is low, the birds will sing 

That you are part of everything 

Dear Prudence, won't you open up your eyes? 

"The wind is low, the birds will sing" "That you are part of everything" -The barriers, the headwind that slows down innovation, can be reduced when we encourage social learning, encourage networks which level the hierarchies that lock progress in political chains. People are truly at the center of this communication, knowledge, innovation, and technology, even the naysayers are "part of everything" and can greatly improve and contribute once they accept this reality. 

Look around round, Look around round round, Look around

"Look around" - See what is naturally happening already, what has been happening. Look at the technology but more importantly how that technology is being used. Mere tools, yes but pause and re-think their immediate applications. Look how community has changed, how networking has changed, how knowledge flows within these networks. See how hierarchies hold surface strength only and the nodes really do rule the day.

Dear Prudence, let me see you smile

Dear Prudence, like a little child

The clouds will be a daisy chain

So let me see you smile again

"Dear Prudence, let me see you smile." - Smile, the universal human symbol of happiness. "Happiness is the precursor to success—not really the result of it" says Shawn Anchor in his book The Happiness Advantage (see brief article/video here).   He goes on to explain the three main predictors of happiness are:

1. having an optimistic mindset, 

2. having the ability to see stress as a challenge and not a threat, and 

3. social support.  

The first two organizations can hire for but the third is what your organization's culture presents and encourages. Good social support systems enable community. Within community people share and collaborate. When employees share and collaborate they improve processes and products; they get work done. When employees get work done (socially) they are rewarded intrinsically and extrinsically. When employees are rewarded, they are happy. When happy, Shawn argues, employees are smarter, more energetic, and more creative.

"The clouds will be a daisy chain" - Wow, really?? was Lennon so deep into meditation that he had an out of body, time travel experience and saw Cloud Computing?? OK, a stretch but "daisy chain" today is a term that most can understand beyond the counter-culture reference (which I have to assume was a Flower Power ideal). As the definition in the link explains, a Daisy Chain is: 

"an interconnection of computer devices, peripherals, or network nodes in series, one after another. It is the computer equivalent of a series electrical circuit."  

The keyword here; interconnection.  Networks are made up of nodes and people are the knowledge nodes. Through these connections they are learning, collaborating, and sharing ...improving.

Dear Prudence, won't you let me see you smile?

Dear Prudence, won't you come out to play?

Dear Prudence, greet the brand new day

The sun is up, the sky is blue

It's beautiful and so are you

Dear Prudence, won't you come out to play?

"It's beautiful and so are you" - Next time you are presented with resistance or outright mocking reaction to building the connected work force rather than spout off about 70-20-10, Social Learning Theory, Collaborative tools, etc.... speak to the reluctant ones of their own value, skills, knowledge and motivations and how this "beauty" works perfectly within the "new systems." 

Whistle or hum Dear Prudence...it may be all you need to give yourself that pause. 

Dear Prudence - Composed by The Beatles. Author: Lennon; Lead vocals: Lennon, McCartney

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.