Social Tools: Organizational Learning's Uber

I had my first Uber service recently in Austin, TX.  It was nothing short of remarkable.  A few glitches (mostly self caused) but a far better experience than I have ever had in a cab. It was during this ride, and conversation with my driver William, that I made a few connections between business, learning and needs. It's got me to thinking that if content, context and connection is king, queen or some other type of royalty, then the Platform is God.

Uber, a platform, connects wants with resources. Nothing new.  But it is probably the most understandable idea of a platform for people who don't understand or think about platforms all that much. A service that connects a driver and their car with a passenger and a need. Simple.  The success of Uber (and other share platforms) is all predicated on the idea that 1. resources are plentiful (cars and drivers) 2. demand is greater than the current model of supply can support and 3. convenience and simplicity reigns supreme. It is also a great example of a modern paradigm shift for people who don't understand or think about paradigm shifts. For the better part of a century city dwellers couldn't see it any other way. This monopoly, like all monopolies, had some stress, like:

• If you needed a ride, you had to hail a cab
• hoping the driver speaks your language,
• hoping the vehicle doesn't stink 
• hoping you get to your destination safely,
• hoping you get to your destination quickly,
• hoping the cost was fair.

Sound familiar? Just swap out the word taxi for L&D or HR. 

These same criticisms have been levied against each for years but never so loudly as today. L&D and HR have long been the organizational learning taxi service, monopolizing organizational learning for far too long and supported by organizational leaders themselves like cities support taxi services; establishing a Learning Department has been default.  For the better part of a century employees couldn't see it any other way. This monopoly, like all monopolies, had some stress, like:

• If you needed to learn something, you had to hail L&D.
• hoping they speak your (business) language,
• hoping the (learning) vehicle doesn't stink, 
• hoping you get to your (learning) destination,
• hoping you get to your learning destination quickly,
• hoping the cost (your time and attention?) was fair.

But technology, and specifically the same technology concept (sharing) that launched Uber and others is changing this paradigm of the learning taxi service. People in organizations, through technology, are not waiting for the next course to be developed, instead they are using social platforms to building networks upon and connect with people and content regularly, and just-in-time as both are plentiful. Employees are not standing by waiting for the next resource to appear hoping it will meet their needs, they are actively seeking them out - rating them and their content as easily they do an Uber ride experience (for the benefit of others). The learning vehicles, like Uber's cars, vary in size and type. The drivers of the content, like Uber drivers, are not specialized but are knowledgeable and can offer quick value.

People are discovering the power of social tools to get just the information they need at the moment they need it. The power is in their hands to build strong networks and choose their own hassle free vehicle. In a recent Washington Post article about how Taxi services were uniting against Uber and other ride sharing services was this statement: "[Uber] threatens a taxi industry that critics say has been slow to modernize and keep up in a technology-driven era." 

Sounds familiar? So when people question the power of social technology to change the paradigm of learning, just ask them to look at Uber and the paradigm of transportation. 

Lead Social By Leading With Social

A colleague and friend who I regularly chat with, where we bounce ideas and thoughts off each other, is at the cusp of where many folks leading the social charge in organizations are; helping key leaders and stakeholder to build awareness and better understanding of the value of being more social themselves.

Meetings are being set, slides developed, activities, agendas, use cases identified and industry examples to share. This is the expectation. And that is a problem. It's the same old story, employee comes to executive's office or board room for a scheduled meeting, agenda set in advance, pitch is made and the executive takes it in, asks a few questions and applauds the effort. Maybe there is change, likely not, and it's back to business as usual.

This isn't a new sales approach or marketing campaign. And if it's also social supported by technology it is also not a new CMS or bug tracking tool. Yes, software it needs electricity and it is built on code but that's where the similarities end. Social is different. Social tools work to surface and amplify ideas, answers, and content but mostly they serve to extend and expand conversations, allowing the normally invisible interactions to be visible and this is exponentially more powerful for an organization. Conversation is the undercurrent of all business interaction. It's omnipresent and eternal. It is also the least understood or nurtured of business elements. 

We have essentially buried conversation, the epitome of humanity, under layers of politics, hierarchy, processes, protocols, and technology and my colleague is in the unfortunate position of having to encourage social in the most unsocial situation. How ironic. 

Not only is social about transparency and openness it also needs this openness and transparency in order to step out from underneath the weight of traditional business mindsets and gain a foothold. 

After initially falling into the trap of business as usual, I collected myself and suggest we lead with social. The alternative, the antithesis of social, is like planting a seed in concrete!  This is not traditional business, it's social business. So rearrange locations with the executive and meet in a neutral settings, a cafe perhaps. Set no calendar defaulted time limit, this is far too important for artificial restraint. Hell, wear jeans and ask that they dress comfortably too, social is casual. Scrap the agenda and see that they leave their title at the door, it will certainly be there when the conversation ends. And that's really the point of it - Have a conversation, everything else is pomp. You each know why you are there, it's no mystery. Set aside your presumptions, your status or lack of it and be humans engaging in the most fundamental, historical part of being human; a conversation... and see where it goes. 

Embraceable Me

Yesterday Tracy Parish challenged me to do a #Blimage. If you are unfamiliar, this is an interesting and fun approach to inspiring a blog post. It was introduced by Steve Wheeler and friends and the original post can be found here. Tracy wrote an excellent post based on an image of a cemetery titled Learning While Wandering. I enjoyed that she looked at learning very personally versus professionally and focused on the importance of reflection. Like all #Blimage challenges the object is to relate the image to learning and so she provided me this Star Wars snap from Flickr. 

First, let me begin by saying I am not a big Star Wars guy and fortunately I was able to immediately move past that part and look a bit deeper into the image (as if Star Wars Lego people can really be looked at deeply). Maybe the intent of the image is a Father-Son relationship or maybe it is to portray the comfort of hugging of a doll? For me, with the challenge of "learning" in mind, I see the "importance of the smaller self".

The world around us seems to be all about The Big. Big announcements (watch how products are rolled out), Big technology (The LMS and Enterprise Social Network platforms to name a few), and Big data (analytics, measurement). Yet at an individual level we long to get smaller. Our personal lives merge with our professional ones as humility and being real is how we make sincere connections. Social technology puts the the large planet in our pocket. We find personal satisfaction in tighter, more focused networks where the work gets done. And real power is in being a node in these networks not in being the know it all. 

This picture reminds me that our smaller, less imposing persona is what breaks down barriers between people and putting our smaller selves front and center is what matters most today.

Losing the Soul of Social

Technology can extend the human condition but it can also work to dehumanize, transforming the sincere ideals of community and relationships into exploitable resources. The vendor marketing machines have lots of money and content marketing is their new effort to turn spin doctors into gurus as they work to convince you they are not selling but educating. Let the buyer beware. Some "though leaders" in this space are really after mind control and in many ways I think it's working. For example I sat in a conference session recently which was a bit alarming. The discussion was centered on community building but was framed around tools. No discussion of trust and time and shared values or support. Rather it was a conversation about things like how to use gamification to get people to share! Or this recent post titled How to Master Social Marketing Quickly and Effectively which is chock full of advice like Automate It, Know Your Numbers, Get Followers. More likely than not some of the approaches in this article work in the short-term but are quite devoid of anything resembling sincerity or human relationship building.

Technology is seductive. I underestimated its power at my previous organization. I had leadership on board that improving transparency and collaboration would help in reducing redundancy and increase innovation; a huge win. Within days a team formed to assess social technology options! I was dismayed but also being new I figured it was best to tentatively support this as I naively believed that I could simultaneously explore technology solutions and also assess how we were currently collaborating and communicating throughout the organization. I carried on looking for where the pockets of healthy teams, departments and interactions were. I sought out conversations that informed me of barriers as well identified ambassadors or nodes in our already existing networks. I deepened my understanding of the business and culture. While I looked at business problems the tech train was gaining strength. My slow roll out was ultimately compromised by a need to justify the expense of a chosen solution. How ridiculous of me to a think we would leave a Porsche parked in the garage when it looked so sunny outside. The platform was on the table too soon and too many were letting tech take the wheel.  In the end the technology rolled out before the needs of the organization were really defined. Not quite a failure but definitely a struggle that was unnecessary as adoption became the goal not adaptation where real business value was.

"Money is in technology focus, but effect is in people focus." - James Tyer

Human history is littered with examples of where technology temporarily blinded us with devastating results to body and mind. The Industrial Revolution made people mere appendages of the machines and child labor was a widely accepted practice.  More recently (and far less cruel) Learning Management System spin has misled people into believing a formal course is how and where learning takes place and that access, completions and scores equate to learning - wasting time, money and reducing morale. The former was ultimately defeated through the birth of labor unions and progressive legislation and today, the LMS is under attack by progressive minds using data to help people see where learning is actually happening and change mindsets.  Eventually, as history shows, we do come to our senses. However, if we sit passively allowing the voices of deception to coexist with the sincere, the longer it will take us to realize the true benefits of social - benefits gained as we move through the machine not within it

Conversation Brings Change, Naturally

I've been thinking about Media Naturalness theory for some time. Well, more often it just pops up because it's not like I've invested all than much effort into it. In short, if you're not familiar, Media Naturalness Theory is the idea that human beings were built for face-to-face communication over thousands of years of evolution. Our gestures, voice inflection, eye movement, body language all contribute to giving and receiving information. Therefore anything that shifts away from this "medium" impacts our ability to effectively communicate. There was a lot of study around this with the introduction of email. To learn more I found this Wikipedia article a pretty good place to start.

Being more into the media rich New Social Learning (i.e. learning through social technology), I haven't put much stock into Media Naturalness theory but I had a bit of an epiphany at a recent meet-up here in Syracuse. I'm a member of a local Bloggers Facebook group. We comment and exchange posts as well as ask for advice, etc. I was wanting to meet some of these fine people in person and pick their brains about blogging and why they do it, how they do it, tools, approaches, etc. I think I'm somewhat of an outlier in this space as I don't blog for money, I do it for myself (although if the occasional speaking gig arises I usually don't say no), my topic is a bit fringe, and I'm a bit of a purist in that I focus exclusively on my writing/reflecting and do nothing in regard to researching tags, SEO and monetization.

Meeting virtual friends face to face is always pleasant and since we didn't engage much in long discussions in our Facebook group the opportunity was there to sit, have a beer and just hear each others voices if nothing else. Upon my arrival I moseyed up to a trio and introduced myself. After exchanging pleasantries I was asked by one, Joe I believe, "So what is it you write about exactly?" Without missing a beat I rattled off something like "I write about organizational social. How increasing transparency and openness can improve performance. You know, how social tools can be used inside an organization for sharing and collaboration."  As I sputtered out my final words I realized, but didn't feel compelled to add it in, that I said nothing about learning. I hadn't even whispered the term that has defined my career for over 20 years now. No ID. No elearning. No L&D. No training. Nothing.

Blogging has a unique pressure that really only strikes you when you hit "publish." Even as comments to your posts come in, you can pause almost indefinitely and ponder a reply. But in the heat of a face-to-face conversation, with real human eyes cast upon you and ears finely tuned, your response is unrehearsed, visceral and probably the most honest you can give. I write so much on my interest, beliefs, observations, efforts, etc that I really haven't even given conscious thought to the transformation I have been undertaking. In reflecting on this moment over the past week I started looking back at my conversations online, my blog posts over the past few months and years and the pattern was obvious; I have slowly shifted away from being L&D-centric and have been seeing the whole organization's role in impacting individual performance. Learning is a part of the work not apart from it. And thus learning is mostly indistinguishable from the other activities that make up the work we do, it is an unconscious underpinning. No longer does learning, in the formal sense, dominate my thinking and practice any more than communication, human interaction, culture, leadership, and trust.

Change happens one conversation at a time or in this case, change is made obvious through conversation. And why not - we've been learning about others and ourselves this way for thousands of years.

Big Social Isn't Always Best

I've been thinking more about how Social has become SO big, so fast. Maybe it's having been in Texas recently (where everything is bigger!) for mLearnCon last week or it's because I've been reading a lot of Stowe Boyd's reviews and research tied into his ideas on "sets vs. scenes." Social is not necessarily getting bigger in the sense of popularity but in the sense that enterprise social, to be deemed successful today, has to involve the entire organization - the scene as Stowe would call it.

My observations and conversations have led me to believe that technology is ruling the day and leading the narrative. And having a vibrant ESN is the golden calf (or is that hippo?). Successful social is not however in the depth and number of connections but in the meaningfulness of the social activity. Often, unfortunately, the larger the networks, the more superficial the relationships can be. Whereas In organizations, our closest, most impactful relationships are those that are around the work we do. A simple principle to grasp is that Social forms around objects, and the object in organizations is the work. The farther one is removed from the work we do, the farther they are from our interests and that is quite natural.

By PJ KAPDostie CC BY-SA 3.0 

In my work promoting "social" in my various organizations, I found another principle to be true; the smaller the better. Specific groups, already with a clear "object", be it shared work (department, project, program) shared experience (on-boarding, training), or shared problem (solutioning, crisis) were most successful. Larger roll-outs, not so much. Social technology success was achieved when it was used as a tool to solve small specific problems. From here it could scale, but please don't call it a community. People sharing, collaborating, and conversing should not instantly be seen as a community. A feature in a tool called a "community" is not a community, it is marketing spin by ESN vendors. True communities form when their is trust, common purpose and mutual support. This takes time, not tools. Can these gatherings in virtual places become communities? Absolutely. They can also scale but that takes nurturing and attention, support and communication. If your organization is not ready for this, it's OK. Organizations as community is not always the end goal or often immediately realistic. If groups come in and out of interactions using social tools to solve business problems then this should be seen as successful social too.

Maybe the message is as simple as the one I tell my kids; don't let others define what success is. Celebrate the small wins, they add up.

The Open Office: Right Idea, Wrong Approach

In a not so recent article (Dec 2014) criticizing the open office idea as getting it wrong and ruining the workplace, the author ranted about how negatively disruptive this disruptive approach has been in her own circumstance. To that I say exactly- it's not for everyone. Organizations are as unique as fingerprints and if companies don't first understand the nature of the work being performed and just blindly follow a trend, well damned they should be.

Lafayette Studios photographs: 1930s decade

The real problem for me with this trend though is that when people think of an open office, they think of the traditional 20th century workplace but with low or no walls separating people. That's it. Remove physical barriers and viola! Innovation! Really?

This is just simply getting a good idea all wrong.

Daniel Pink, among others, makes the claim in his book Free Agent Nation, that 50% of U.S. workers will be free agents by 2020. And an Intuit 2020 report predicted a while back that traditional employment will no longer be the norm. It will be replaced by contingent workers; free-agents, part-timers, contractual.  If accurate, then 2020 is only 5 years away and although those numbers seem aggressive it appears things are moving this direction. With more short-term contractual workers, employers definitely need an open office... but not the physical kind, that's just silly. Open is practice not a space. For a person it's an internal choice, for an organization, a group of people, being open is a cultural underpinning. Openness is sharing, open to collaborate, open to criticism and to criticize, open to contribution... from wherever you are seated. Openness, supported by collaborative technology, turns the physical office into a concept. The "office" becomes an artificial structure, no walls inside or out. 

Removing cubicle walls may allow others to see the machinery but real openness, between connected people anywhere, invites them to move the levers. The open office idea today is missing the point. It's similar to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, business as usual in an increasingly unusual world. 

We Don't Do Social Here

Implement, Do, Start, Launch, are all terms that indicate a program or project is underway. It's the language of the business initiative. But when these words precede the action of "Social", it's a bit perplexing.  

We don't "do" social, we are social. 

Being social is just connecting, communicating, and sharing usually with the key action of conversing. Don't let anyone tell you different. We should know too that being social is not purely positive. People can connect for the wrong reasons, communicate inappropriately, or share way, way too much. Therefore being social is neither something exclusively good or bad, it is just the essence of being human. To say things like "we are going to start doing social in our organization" is like saying "we are going to start doing breathing." This comparison is equally similar and different. Similar in that both actions, social and breathing are naturally occurring and required (in an organization or otherwise), and different in that breathing is not something that can ever be consciously done poorly or insincerely.

You can encourage people to increase their social connections, expand their networks, start more meaningful conversations and share ideas. But make no mistake, your organization is already social, it just may not be healthy enough to transform the work that's being done or make the environment less toxic, or draw people to connect with your service or products.

So if you're still thinking about "doing" social in your organization, maybe start by "being" a better organization, leader, employee, peer. Somethings you just can't project manage. 

Network Navigating

I've written recently about the futility of organizational internal social efforts. Their efforts to corral conversations into an ESN is ineffective and short sighted. Wirearchy is here. It exists with or without ones conscious effort as our networks extend in multiple directions and multiple "places."  We will go to where our people are and if our people overlap, all the better, but the reality is they rarely will. For example my running community members have zero interest in my social learning and social business discussions. 

So it is that we must learn to move in and out of various channels of conversations and relationships, adjusting as we need to to make it all work. However in the networked age this seems as overwhelming as the amount of information that comes at us.

Do choices have to be made? Of course. It's really no different than our behaviors prior to the advent of social technology. We made room and found balance then in things like our physical meeting spaces, telephone conversations, email, etc. We made choices then of how and where we would spend time. We (often unconsciously) seek out the people who matter most and in that seeking we inadvertently learn to navigate the places that keep us connected.

My networking "places" are as fragmented and unique as my relationships. Here are a few of my places I visit daily which I'm sure look much like yours.

• Twitter for amazing global relationships and conversations
• 2 Facebook groups for specific professional development and a book club
• LinkedIn for local ATD conversations and sharing
• iMessage groups (smaller, family & friends)
• Skype group for larger L&D discussions, tips, needs
• Evernote chat for project collaboration
• Yammer for organization cooperative and collaborative activities
• Slack for idea sharing in L&D topics for various activities

This is our reality. I doubt highly that as social tools evolve there will be one tool to rule them all or a way to link them. This reality may be inconvenient to many but social networking has always been inconvenient to some extent. Waving the white flag is not an option. We will learn these new network navigation skills through experimentation, increased exposure and they will strengthen with deeper experiences in the context of connecting. With modeling and guidance by those in the know, the learning curve can be reduced more quickly but even without the experts, we will learn to navigate, it's what we are built to do.

The "Working" Culture and the Struggles of Social Business

Tim Kastelle recently shared his excellent post about flat management efforts at Zappos and how they paid about 210 people to leave if they didn't like the direction of the organization. He went on to point out that in the past 12 days over 15,000 people were laid off in various industries (which can be seen on a site that tracks daily layoffs) as an exclamation point about the ridiculous attention Zappos is receiving. What happens next is anyone's guess. Hopefully the 15,000 land quickly on their feet, hopefully they left on good terms. But I doubt it. Many may had been blindsided, many will struggle, many will be bitter. And when they do return to the world of work they will carry this memory with them. It will taint their perspective, attitudes and sense of trust.

Today much of the Future of Work conversation refers to organizational culture, the idea that in the confines of a single business people behave a certain way. Although this is true, I do think it overlooks a significantly larger culture, the Working Culture - a culture of workers ironically created by cumulative actions of all business.

Culture is an emergent property of the many practices that happen every day. Change the practices and a new culture will emerge. - Harold Jarche

Each worker's experience contributes to the present Working Culture's understanding, beliefs and practices. The Working Culture permeates organizations but isn't easily diffused by an individual organization's culture. So no matter what an organization's efforts at "engagement" are, most employees are skeptical and will remain so.

This skepticism has developed over the past 25 years or so due to factors such as globalization, a focus on short-term results, systematic turnover (as noted in Tim's post), contractual and temporary work, the demise of unions, automation, and outsourcing, etc.  Due to these factors loyalty is non-existent on both sides; employer and employees have disconnected from that part of the working relationship. A good lagging indicator of today's Working Culture can be seen in the less than stellar adoption rates of enterprise social network platforms (ESN) and their failed promise of corporate-wide collaboration and cooperation. In an interview style post, Sahana Chattopadhyay elaborated on the nature of collaboration in work environments saying:

"In many instances, [collaboration] takes place only at the team and project levels and does not radiate or percolate to other divisions." 

I agree but would argue that this lack of adoption is found in MOST instances not just many.

When the work doesn't "percolate", it's less about the tools that make the invisible visible and more about people just not caring enough about the work happening outside of their own areas. Care and trust are very intertwined and is happening at the point of work and not easily advancing beyond. Lack of leadership involvement and leadership style can be a barrier for sure, but so too is a workforce with an expectation of intentionally short tenures. Grow and go attitudes seem to dominate the Working Culture resulting in employees staying a mere 18-24 months (a far cry from the 20+ in generations past). Can that really be enough time to build trust and a level of community beyond the point of the work? The trust issue therefore is bigger than within an individual organizations, this is about trust of business as a whole and it is our social tools helping us to see this condition more clearly, not necessarily improving it.

Change happens one conversation at at time and those conversations can change organizations. But until a critical mass of organizations changes, the Working Culture will generally remain one that is jaded, suspicious and distant. "Change the practices and a new culture will emerge..."

Social Inconvenience is Important

Social networking is not always convenient. Our networks can be large, small, and many are in niche areas of interest but in all we've historically driven for miles, run in groups, flown to new cities, met in questionable venues and navigated personality differences to connect with the people that matter. 

The inconvenience of connecting with our network is never so great to dismiss them, we work at what brings us value.  Social tools are our new places. We comment "in" and post "on" no differently than when we meet "at" or go "to".  Our new places for social interaction are equally numerous, unique, and sometimes as difficult to traverse. Yet after clearing the initial hurdle of a new social technology, we happily find our people and learn to move within and between new tools no different than we do new physical locations.

Organizations though, forever looking to catch lightening in a bottle and corral an advantage, provide their employees approved "places" to use for this activity, often a single place like an ESN. This of course is typical of business as usual and is equally unnatural, as are most organizational decisions which aim to control and guide human behavior. Hierarchy though is no match for Wirearchy. Technology affords us the opportunity to extend our relationships and conversations further and expand farther than ever before. These actions should be encouraged by employers not discouraged, as today an employee's value is in the quality and diversity of their connections. 

Real knowledge doesn't exist within us but between us, in our conversations

No doubt some enterprise social tools are used successfully for sharing and learning on the inside, but much of what influences this sharing and learning came from the outside and this is where organizational leaders miss the mark. By trying to drive people to a single location and expecting community to flourish and innovation to follow is a mistake. The organization needs their "place" to be in the mix of places but not sit above them all. Encouraging relationships to form with diverse people, ideas, groups and in different places presents the greatest opportunity for organizations and individuals today.

Hook 'em When They're Young

In the late 1980's the R.J. Reynold's tobacco company used a cartoon Joe Camel character to market it's cigarettes. The company received heavy criticism for what was seen as an insidious effort to get children to start smoking early> create a habit> get addicted >stay a smokers for life... a life which we know would be greatly shortened. Well, if it was an intentional effort, it was highly unethical but made business sense. However in a not so a devious way I think a similar pattern is best with extending, not shortening the life of a company - by making "Social" an organizational habit. The key too is to start when the organization is young.

Big Ships Turn Slowly, If At All

Like adults who are not as easily hooked on cigarettes, larger, established organizations are not easily swayed by new ideas and approaches. Many, locked in command and control structures (and successful by it) will never fully transform into an open and transparent organization; the utopian promise of social. They may see pockets of success but those will ebb and flow with inevitable turnover and org restructures tied to short-term market losses that typically plague bigger, private organizations. However I do think that most of these businesses will ultimately be transformed, not by internal social tools but by external social pressures. 

Just the opposite, when supported early in an organization's life, social tools can be used to actually promote the attitude of "that's not what we do here", especially when what is not done here are things like establishing rigid hierarchies, petty politics, hoarding knowledge, and imposing strangling policies. An organization that starts and remains connected is at a great advantage to stave off the unnecessary and demoralizing. Social tools, which make the invisible visible, serve as a buffer to preserve the norms that existed when the organization was founded. Forever within social tools can be found the conversations and living constitution that will guide the organization going forward and the history that pulls it back to center when pressure arises.

When picked up early a social addiction is a hard monkey to shake. Openness and transparency become a powerful habit maintained into adulthood. 

Money Talks, Bullsh*t Walks

Ah the tentative marriage of Democracy and Capitalism. When times are financially good, incumbents win. When times are tough, the public moves to "throw the bums out!" In many organizations L&D is the long serving incumbent and as we know when organizational times get tough, L&D seems to be the first "bum" to get the boot. But what if the organization is profitable and division, departments and individuals can choose L&D services or not because they are a real cost (or investment)? 

In my organization we have charge codes for all activities. Simply put, if we don't charge our time on a customer project, we don't get paid (the org that is). To ensure that time and money is accurately recorded we have also had specific charge codes for non-project related activities, things like travel, training, and internal events. However this changed in 2015. Employees (about 80% of our workforce) are now required to charge any training event time directly to their project (vs. a single universal corporate code). 

Hold the phone! So any training taking 15 minutes or more outside of ones work will be charged against the profitability of the project? We may see managers and employees alike scrutinizing every offering and analyzing the impact of every attended event! Requests to L&D to build elearning, host a webinar, deliver a face-to-face event will plummet! Employees will now be cautious when selecting a training class over say a job aid or an informal coaching opportunity! Many employees will even forego an event altogether, instead promoting the idea to their peers that those in the know need to share openly and frequently!  

I couldn't be happier!

This can only make our organization stronger in my opinion. Better connected, thoughtful, continuously learning, and with everyone focused on the finances. Pragmatism can take it's rightful place on the learning throne! Unnecessary training and time away from doing the work will be on the decline. The question of "how can we get this information/skill without taking time out of work?" will be murmured throughout the organization. Now we may have a real opportunity to help people embrace workflow learning. More social approaches to knowledge sharing can thrive in these environments not because of some stale executive mandates to use an ESN, unconvincing presentations on loosely related industry comparable statistics re: social and informal learning, lukewarm peer encouragement efforts, or god forbid gamification tactics. No, now it's in using the model of business, it's economics, supply and demand, it's because people get hit in the wallet that behavior changes! 

At the end of the day, the bottom line is what matters and the fatter that bottom line is, the better.  Caveat Emptor! 

L&Ds Business Is Not In Driving Social Business

I'm becoming more convinced that organizational efforts to help people build social networks and personal knowledge management skills should not involve L&D any more than the Accounting department. And it appears it not just me. Sam Burrough and Martin Couzins recently co-led a MOOC on Social Learning and asked the question in a final Tweetchat: "What role should L&D play in Social Learning?" which for me is a small one. Additionally, in a recent Tweet, JD Dillon made the point that in organizations, many are really doing similar things:

However, I think James Tyer put it best in his blog post titled "Who Owns Organizational Learning? You." and I encourage you to read it.

My take? As social tools become more commonplace many people today are already (unconsciously) building networks and have developed processes (undocumented) to manage fluid knowledge without much assistance. These people may not be as effective as they could be, or will be, but the way to learn this is not through training which arguably L&D still looks to as the first choice. What people need is to be more conscious of their behavior and then they need encouragement to make their tacit knowledge (processes) explicit for others. This should not really be exclusively L&Ds charge, which organizational leaders tend to default to because when the word "learning" is uttered all eyes tend to turn to L&D. 

Social learning is structureless, the opposite of formal learning. Social transcends the traditional organizational boundaries of departments and divisions. It knows no hierarchy or roles. To help social tools and behaviors to be more a part of worker's activity, it must simply become more a part of the worker's work. Learning the work is done by doing the work and this happens best within the work itself not outside of it where L&D typically sits. 

My thoughts on this were further cemented by Dion Hinchcliffe's recent article in ZD Net "The Growing Evidence for Social Business Maturity". This article highlighted the move of organizations from social adoption to adaptation (of open, collaborative work). It spoke of the importance of organizational culture, the significance of executive commitment, business partnerships with operations and IT, goals and KPIs as keys to progression. It was all about the business, the business leaders, the use cases, ambassadors, CoPs, and community management. There was no direct mention of L&D... but for an implied mention when speaking of training - but it was more specifically termed "viral training"; Helping people use the platform's features and functions peer-to-peer. This would be a significantly minor role for L&D, especially if the tools are intuitive as the should be and even then, motivated folks figure the complex out.

Today there is much focus on trying to convert learning professionals to new understandings and practices using social tools and encouraging social behaviors. This is a mistake in my opinion. Many learning professionals don't engage or understand the practices any more than any other organizational roles - why assume they will be best suited? Connecting, communicating, curating, etc are not exclusive to a single department. The learning of effective social practices and tools is best done socially; through observation, experimenting, feedback and conversation. This will take time and mistakes will be made of course but I think less control is the best path to longterm success. It's a higher up decision that patience and trust are to replace command and control. So render unto L&D that which is formal and render unto the entire organization the social efforts that truly surround business execution. 

The Efficacy of Social

Recently it was reported that the Ebola epidemic is not getting the financial support it needs as the donations from wealthy countries is not coming in as hoped. This is surprising due to how horrific and enormous the problem is, and it being coupled with traditional media fear mongering. 

Or is it surprising?

According to Shankar Vedantam @Hiddenbrain, a social researcher with NPR, reporting in Why Your Brain Wants To Help One Child In Need - But Not Millions "as people feel more hopeless about a problem it greatly undermines their desire to do something about it."  There is an emotional conflict where "people decline to do what they can do because they feel bad about what they can't do."

AIDS, Cancer, Global Warming, Ebola all appear hopeless to correct or cure and the reason efforts fade over time is that we can respond to an individual need but as the numbers grow we lose the emotional connection. 

I find this research interesting and wonder at what point does the balance tip towards hopelessness and disconnection? If logic (the data) was tempered, would the emotional connection remain? It's the stories behind the data that maintains our attention.  Social tools are story tools. They support community, collaboration and sharing. They can make and sustain emotional connections. Social tools are personal tools, what you encounter with them always have a name and a face, are personal and can be emotional. Using social media you can directly connect with key people in a cause or even those afflicted. Social tools make the invisible visible and you can easily see the activities of others, maybe unknowingly, chipping away at big problems and the value it brings to them personally - emotional connections amplified. To some extent the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is a good example. Although the problem seems hopeless as we appear far from a cure, social media helped people maintain a personal connection to the cause with unbelievable results.

Organizations too face large problems. Fixing revenue stream issues, customer satisfaction, or employee turnover are not insurmountable but can appear very daunting when looking at the data. Social allows you to cut through data and see the people and behaviors behind it. Social tools in organizations can surface individual stories and through open and inclusive conversation, solutions can be more quicker generated and imparted. 

Take the turnover issue for example. We know it's not just monetary rewards that entice people to stay. It's more about feeling connected, finding success, it's about recognition and growth opportunities. Each person has a story, a unique need, and social tools can bring that story to life and allow other individuals to see and to help. The assistance could be in the form of building a stronger relationship; it could be in offering a tip or some coaching; it could be a through a virtual pat on the back.  This is the efficacy of social. The engagement is completely transparent; in solving a small, seemingly personal issue, others vicariously experience the interaction. Maybe it addresses their own need or provides insights on how they can do the same. Think how the manager, who sees another manager offering encouragement or advice, can take on that behavior too and extend the practice in their own area. Social media extend and expand humanity, scaling support, making the big much smaller and seemingly more manageable. It can turn hopeless situations into hopeful ones.

The Space Between Us

In a recent webinar by Luis Suarez (@elsua) he asked the question of the attendees of what the biggest problem was in organizations today.  He stated that it was employee disengagement.  I do agree that it's a problem but I believe this disengagement is more a symptom of a greater problem. That problem being space; the space between us.

Space is created naturally or deliberately. It's also physical and psychological. We have space when organizations expand; space exists in time, geography, and culture. We have space when a workforce is geographically dispersed, no longer can we see the many we work and interact with. Space exists when hierarchy places people in rank and file as an artificial pecking order is created and this space between us defines who we are and how we interact.  Finally, our departmentalized functions create silos of work where space exists between them. And those functions of course are controlled by people who decide on how much space. 

When space exists we can choose to fill it constructively or like a vacuum, it just gets filled like silt settling after a heavy rain. Regardless, it never stays empty for long. Hierarchies fill the space with the written and unwritten. Policies serve to reinforce space between people by having somewhere to point to rather than someone to have conversation with. Unwritten protocol is that which maintains space by authority and creates a false respect based on fear. 

Disengagement then doesn't create space, space creates disengagement. 

What can be done? The opposite of disengage is to engage and to engage is an action of people and their work being drawn together. If we want to eliminate disengagement, we must first create the opportunities to engage, to fill the space.

Social media is that opportunity in organizations that bridges the geographic divides, opens up silos of work and can level hierarchy so meritocracy can flourish. There is no question it can do the job - but it can also be an empty vessel if not strengthened by the substance of meaningful conversation, dialog and debate. If social channels swell only with courtesies to avoid conflict, content that reinforces positions, or sharing to show off, then the space not only remains but becomes more permanent.

There are far more pressing questions to be answer in organizations than "how do we measure this?" Or "how do we get people to use this?" when considering social media in an organization.  We need to first be able to answer "Who are we?" And "who do we want to become?"