Slideshare

http://slideshare.net/jaycross/bottom-line-learning/1

‘Berkeley Squirrel’ On Black

Zero tolerance for innovation

Someone please help me out with this dilemma.

How can one balance thinking that pushes the envelope with regulators’ penchant for confusing speculation with corporate policy? How can you speak your mind when a couple of sentences played back in court could destory your reputation?

One email can put you behind bars.

Investment banker Frank Quattrone was indicted and tried twice for obstruction of justice for forwarding an email to subordinates suggesting they clean up their files. He could have gotten 25 years in prison.

The Government’s case was weak. At the end of 2000, an assistant to Quattrone had emailed him, saying in part, “. . . you may want to send around a memo to all corporate finance bankers . . . reminding them of the CSFB document retention policy and suggesting that before they leave for the holidays, they should catch up on file cleanup. Today, it’s administrative housekeeping. In January, it could be improper destruction of evidence.” Three minutes later, Quattrone replied: “You shouldn’t make jokes like that on email!”

The next day, at the urging of another CSFB officer, Quattrone’s assistant emailed the staff on file cleaning. Quattrone sent an email saying the clean-up was important. The government’s case hinged on interpreting Quattrone’s “You shouldn’t make a joke like that” as giving the assistant authorization to send the email.

The prosecutor took an email out of context and literally made a Federal case out of it. Hold that thought.

Communities of Practice are a major source of innovation.

Members of communities of practice converse, share know-how, help one another solve problems, use the corporate grapevine to great advantage, and help new members get up to speed quickly. Sharing solutions with one another averts duplication of effort. Active social networks speed the dissemination of knowledge. Conversations in the community are the seeds of innovation. And work groups improve decision-making because “all of us are smarter than any of us. “Communities of practice are the shop floor of human capital, the place where the stuff gets made,” says Tom Stewart, currently editor of Harvard Business Review.

Most communities are informal, voluntary, natural, and evolutionary. Their members are mates, pals, and buddies. They meet over lunch or in a bar or at the bowling alley. Conversation can become rowdy. Brainstorming for solutions unearths thoughts you’d never take seriously. Outrageous ideas are fuel for change; innovation consists of outrageous ideas made acceptatble. People say things in their communities they would never repeat outside. Many communities develop jargon that makes it difficult for non-members to understand.

Here’s the rub. In our era, community interaction is often recorded. It’s the source of the know-how that populates knowledge repositories. Far-flung communities leave email footprints. Even instant messenger, chat, and phone calls can be recorded. It is easily subject to misinterpretation.

Imagine that, like Frank Quattrone, you work in a heavily regulated industry. How daring are you going to be if a misconstrued sentence or two made public could ruin your reputation and land you in prison? How can you remain open with what you say if that leaves you open to attack?

What advice might you offer (aside from “Kill all the lawyers”) ?

nature of knowledge meme

do we humans wise up by taking a linear dose from the elders or by reading the tea leaves for ourselves.

who are we elders to dictate how the generation to take the reins after us figure things out. growing up with scarcity makes living with abundance seem profligate. my parents were financially conservative because they remembered the hobos stopping by the family house to beg a meal. (our house was a block from the main line of the Missouri Pacific Railroad.) My grandmother bought toilet paper by the gross because World War II rationing taught her what is was like to live without.

so at the moment, i’m listening to some crooner providing background for the miss algerie beauty contest. interlude: the mademoiselles who are clearly made of the DNA of the sahara speak french about this very western (crass) event. lots of make-up. some of the girls have a valley-girl accent, “pour moi, uh, je suis, uh, une….uh, uh, uh.” The music is becoming increasingly Arabic.

this morning i was looking up footnote references for the informal learning book. i flipped through george leonard’s education and ecstacy, seeking but not finding a quote about how our system beats the creativity and learning out of children before the age of ten. human potential. esalen. carl rogers. john lilly. abraham maslow. well-intentioned but heavy-handed and brutal factory school. how much did i learn this morning?

An Adoption Strategy for Social Software in the Enterprise

An Adoption Strategy for Social Software in the Enterprise

Perhaps the greatest competency Socialtext has gained over the past three years is fostering adoption of social software. Adoption matters most for IT to have value. It should be obvious that if only a third of a company uses a portal, then the value proposition of that portal is two thirds less than it’s potential. But for social software, value is almost wholy generated by the contributions of the group and imposed adoption is marked for failure. Suw Charman has been working with Socialtext on site at Dresdner Klienwort Wasserstein and has spearheaded the creation of the following practice documentation. I believe this will be a critical contribution for enterprise practices, so do read on…

An Adoption Strategy for Social Software in the Enterprise

Experience has shown that simply installing a wiki or blog (referred to collectively as ’social software’) and making it available to users is not enough to encourage widespread adoption. Instead, active steps need to be taken to both foster use amongst key members of the community and to provide easily accessible support.

There are two ways to go about encouraging adoption of social software: fostering grassroots behaviours which develop organically from the bottom-up; or via top-down instruction. In general, the former is more desirable, as it will become self-sustaining over time – people become convinced of the tools’ usefulness, demonstrate that to colleagues, and help develop usage in an ad hoc, social way in line with their actual needs.

Top-down instruction may seem more appropriate in some environments, but may not be effective in the long-term as if the team leader stops actively making subordinates use the software, they may naturally give up if they have not become convinced of its usefulness. Bottom-up adoption taps into social incentives for contribution and fosters a culture of working openly that has greater strategic benefits. Inevitably in a successful deployment, top-down and bottom-up align themselves in what Ross Mayfield calls ‘middlespace‘.

Fostering grassroots adoption
This approach centres around identifying users who would clearly benefit from the new software, helping them to understand how it could help, and progressing their usage so that they can realise those benefits. These key users should:

• be open to trying new software
• be influential amongst their peers, thus able to help promulgate usage
• have the support of their managers

Users who are potential evangelists should be identified at every level of management, not just amongst the higher echelons, or amongst the workforce.

1. Identify key user groups
The first step is to identify which potential user groups within the company could most benefit from using social software.

• What needs do these people share?
• What are their day-to-day aims?
• What projects are they working on together?
• What information flows between them, and how?

2. Identify and understand key users
Once you have identified key user groups, you need to know which users within that group are both influential and likely to be enthusiastic. Then consider how social software fits in to the context of their job, their daily working processes and the wider context of their group’s goals.

• What specific problems does social software solve?
• What are the benefits for this person?
• How can the software be simply integrated into their existing working processes?
• How does social software lower their work load, or the cognitive load associated with doing specific tasks?

Ideally, key users will be ’supernodes’ – highly connected, in contact with a lot of people on a daily basis, and heavily involved with the function of their department and the transfer of information within the group and between groups. This may not be the group executive, but could well be his PA or a direct report. Frequently, people’s supernode status is not reflected by official hierarchy.

3. Convert key users into evangelists
Training in the form of short informal sessions (face-to-face or online) and ongoing on-demand support are the basics for encouraging adoption. Too much training or too formal a setting will put users off, and is usually unnecessary.

More important is that the information gathered in steps 1 and 2 are communicated to key users. They need to understand:

• What their own needs are
• How those needs are going to be met by the software
• What the benefits are of using the software
• How they can integrate that software into their daily routines

This requires face-to-face, personalised sessions which can’t happen unless steps 1 and 2 are successfully completed. The aim is to convert key users into evangelists who can then help spread usage through their own team, encouraging the people they work with to take the training and use the tool themselves.

4. Turn evangelists into trainers
Evangelists may find that it is in their own interests, having adopted the social software, to encourage their colleagues to also become competent with it. A minority of evangelists (and it only needs to be a minority), will also find it in their own interests to train their colleagues themselves.

These evangelists should be trained further and given the support and materials they need to become trainers themselves.

The advantages of having evangelist-trainers are immense:

• They understand the day-to-day needs and working processes of their colleagues far better than an external trainer can
• They can communicate with their colleagues more easily, in the same language
• They have the opportunity to provide effective training on a far more informal, ad hoc basis
• Given enough support themselves, they can then support their immediate colleagues

5. Support bottom-up adoption and emergent behaviours
Training and support should not be limited to named groups, and should be made available to all users. ‘Volunteers’, especially, should be encouraged. The most influential people in a wiki or blog community are not those with official status but those who engage most enthusiastically. For example, wikipedia has about 90,000 registered users who have edited at least 10 times since they joined, but the majority of work is done by about 5% (4500) of these users. (Stats approx. for Nov 05.)

If people start to use social software in an unexpected, innovative, or informal manner, this should also be encouraged. If a user begins by putting their team’s coffee rota on the wiki, for example, this will help them understand how the wiki works and what benefits it brings.

Management support
As well as supporting bottom-up adoption, it is beneficial for there to be top-down support, but that support has to be based on openness and transparency. Managers and team leaders must trust their staff to use the tools correctly, but they must also be forgiving if mistakes are made. There is always a learning curve associated with any new software, and some people find social software daunting because they are scared of what they perceive as a high risk of public humiliation.

Managers and team leaders should:

1. Lead by example
By using the tool themselves for team- and department-wide projects, managers can encourage their colleagues to also use social software. By being active, showing subordinates how the new tools can be used, and demonstrating the benefits, manages can play a valuable role in fostering adoption.

In the software industry, this is known as ‘eating your own dogfood’, and it is essential in order to build trust, interest and understanding.

2. Lead by mandate
If the manager makes clear that this new tool is to be used for a specific process or task, it can help foster adoption and encourage reluctant users to learn how to use the tools. For example, managers can mandate that all meetings be documented on a wiki, with agendas written through collaboration and minutes being published as soon as the meeting is over, or that monthly/weekly update reports be made on a blog or a wiki instead of in a Word document or by email.

Key to leading by mandate, however, is that the manager must also lead by example. If one of his team puts a document on the wiki, but the manager comments on it by email, that gives conflicting signals to the team. Managers must be clear about which tool they expect people to use, and must use that tool themselves.

3. Lead by reminding
Managers can also increase usage by reminding colleagues to use new technology instead of old, e.g. when a colleague emails with a document to be proof-read, the manager can reply with a request to put it on the wiki.

4. Ensure there is adequate support
Managers must accept that their staff may require support, and they must be willing to allow staff to take time out to do training. They must also ensure that they have access to ad hoc support, so that problem can be solved quickly – it is important that there is someone tasked with ‘hand holding’ through the initial adoption period.

5. Ensure personal and business benefits reflect each other
Management plays a key role identifying and communicating the business benefits of social software adoption. When users understand these benefits (e.g. reducing email volume, speeding up projects, improving productivity, encouraging innovation), and see that the business benefits are in line with the personal benefits, (everyone likes to get less email) they will have greater confidence that the software is worth their own investment.

Understanding time-scales
In large companies with thousands of users, it is impossible to give everyone face-to-face training, but even with online screencasts* and help documents, it takes a significant amount of time for adoption to take place. Having a clear adoption strategy, and ensuring that the correct key players are identified and ‘converted’, helps to speed up the process, but it remains a fact of human nature that it takes time for people to become comfortable with new technology, new ways of doing things and, most importantly, new cultures.

The cultural aspect of implementing social software in enterprise cannot be underestimated, and it is the hardest aspect to overcome. It requires time, patience and understanding, but given those three, it too is a temporary obstacle.

Remember what your goals really are
Adoption isn’t a goal in and of itself. Lots of people use email an awful lot, but that doesn’t mean that it’s being used well. Think about what your ultimate aims are; make them discrete, measurable and attainable. Go for ‘reducing occupational spam’, for example, rather than ‘improve communications’. Measure your email usage before you start, monitor it whilst you adopt, and report back regularly so that people can see the progress that they are collectively making.

Wikis are a very powerful tool within enterprise, but like any other IT project, it takes thought and planning to ensure successful adoption.

* Screencast: Digital recording of a computer screen output, often with audio instruction.

Too much scenery

Just got back from a long walk. Listened to Jon Udell interviewing first, Ross Mayfield, and second, Louis Rosenfeld. Both awesome and directly related to what I’m currently doing.

Information Architecture is as fresh as a daisy. Rosenfeld is now looking into search. It’s meta-search — Udell says “federated search” and it’s all about using mulitple tools in search strategies.

Rosenfeld is also starting a nontraditional publishing company. pdf and print. Reader feedback. Focus is UX. Perhaps Internet Time Press should do this. Feedback leads to new editions.

From Ross, wiki as central repository. Need to get Seb Pacquet into the loop.

The New Science of Change (CIO)

Pictures don’t (usually) lie, and the pictures of the brain show that our responses to change are predictable and universal. From a neurological perspective, we all respond to change in the same way: We try to avoid it.

Though no conclusive research has yet been done, surveys have shown that people’s primary motivation in the workplace is neither money nor advancement but rather a personal interest in their jobs, a good environment and fulfilling relationships with colleagues. The effects of bonuses, promotions and reprimands, though real and measurable, are all temporary.

The way to get past the prefrontal cortex’s defenses is to help people come to their own resolution regarding the concepts causing their prefrontal cortex to bristle. These moments of resolution or insight—call them epiphanies—appear to be as soothing to the prefrontal cortex as the unfamiliar is threatening.

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The Joy of Repetition

Once people have had that initial insight or epiphany that change is necessary, they need to repeat the experience in order to reinforce it and to experience the potential pleasure that can be derived from it. The complex brain connections that are formed during the epiphany phase need to be supported to begin the process of hard-wiring the basal ganglia.

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The Joy of Repetition

Once people have had that initial insight or epiphany that change is necessary, they need to repeat the experience in order to reinforce it and to experience the potential pleasure that can be derived from it. The complex brain connections that are formed during the epiphany phase need to be supported to begin the process of hard-wiring the basal ganglia.

One of the best ways to bring the skeptics around is through learning. At the New York State Workers’ Compensation Board, a change readiness survey of employees at the beginning of an effort to shift compensation cases from paper folders to electronic files found that employees’ number-one demand was for training. “They wanted reassurance that we weren’t going to ask them to do something new without giving them the support they needed to do it,” says Nancy Mulholland, who is deputy executive director and CIO of the board.

“Learning is the antidote to change resistance,” says Wakefield. “Learning lets you reframe the change from being something bad for you to something that can have value for you.”

The learning environment has to be one in which employees will not be reprimanded or embarrassed for revealing their discomfort with the new way of doing things. “You have to give people the sense that feeling uncomfortable is a normal part of change and address their concerns about losing face because of their lack of confidence and competence,” says Wakefield. One of the ways to do that is to put people together who share a similar status in the organization and are facing a similar change so they can see that they’re not alone—a species of corporate support group. When groups are too threatening, individual coaching can help.

The Hard Edge of the Soft Stuff

Change management is time-consuming and hard to quantify for process-oriented CIOs. But avoiding the challenge leads to failure. “Anybody can stick $2,000 in someone’s face to get them to finish a job, but it’s the people who can inspire others to follow them that are the most successful in the long run,” says PharMerica’s Toole. “The soft stuff is important.”

But inspiring others to change isn’t a matter of charisma or charm, say the experts. It’s finding a way to spark those epiphanies.

Sparks’s latest tactic for engaging his staff’s prefrontal cortexes was to bring in an outside consultant to discuss the ITIL program and to field concerns.

“We had an outstanding instructor, and she was able to address many of the questions people had,” recalls Sparks. “I could begin to see the lights come on in some of the [skeptics]. After a long meeting, one of my people stood up and said, ‘You know, we should have started working on this [automated monitoring] six months ago.’”

 

An Adoption Strategy for Social Software in the Enterprise

An Adoption Strategy for Social Software in the Enterprise

Perhaps the greatest competency Socialtext has gained over the past three years is fostering adoption of social software.  Adoption matters most for IT to have value.  It should be obvious that if only a third of a company uses a portal, then the value proposition of that portal is two thirds less than it’s potential.  But for social software, value is almost wholy generated by the contributions of the group and imposed adoption is marked for failure.  Suw Charman has been working with Socialtext on site at Dresdner Klienwort Wasserstein and has spearheaded the creation of the following practice documentation.  I believe this will be a critical contribution for enterprise practices, so do read on…

An Adoption Strategy for Social Software in the Enterprise

Experience has shown that simply installing a wiki or blog (referred to collectively as ’social software’) and making it available to users is not enough to encourage widespread adoption. Instead, active steps need to be taken to both foster use amongst key members of the community and to provide easily accessible support.

There are two ways to go about encouraging adoption of social software: fostering grassroots behaviours which develop organically from the bottom-up; or via top-down instruction. In general, the former is more desirable, as it will become self-sustaining over time – people become convinced of the tools’ usefulness, demonstrate that to colleagues, and help develop usage in an ad hoc, social way in line with their actual needs.

Top-down instruction may seem more appropriate in some environments, but may not be effective in the long-term as if the team leader stops actively making subordinates use the software, they may naturally give up if they have not become convinced of its usefulness. Bottom-up adoption taps into social incentives for contribution and fosters a culture of working openly that has greater strategic benefits. Inevitably in a successful deployment, top-down and bottom-up align themselves in what Ross Mayfield calls ‘middlespace‘.

Fostering grassroots adoption
This approach centres around identifying users who would clearly benefit from the new software, helping them to understand how it could help, and progressing their usage so that they can realise those benefits. These key users should:

• be open to trying new software
• be influential amongst their peers, thus able to help promulgate usage
• have the support of their managers

Users who are potential evangelists should be identified at every level of management, not just amongst the higher echelons, or amongst the workforce.

1. Identify key user groups
The first step is to identify which potential user groups within the company could most benefit from using social software.

• What needs do these people share?
• What are their day-to-day aims?
• What projects are they working on together?
• What information flows between them, and how?

2. Identify and understand key users
Once you have identified key user groups, you need to know which users within that group are both influential and likely to be enthusiastic. Then consider how social software fits in to the context of their job, their daily working processes and the wider context of their group’s goals.

• What specific problems does social software solve?
• What are the benefits for this person?
• How can the software be simply integrated into their existing working processes?
• How does social software lower their work load, or the cognitive load associated with doing specific tasks?

Ideally, key users will be ’supernodes’ – highly connected, in contact with a lot of people on a daily basis, and heavily involved with the function of their department and the transfer of information within the group and between groups. This may not be the group executive, but could well be his PA or a direct report. Frequently, people’s supernode status is not reflected by official hierarchy.

3. Convert key users into evangelists
Training in the form of short informal sessions (face-to-face or online) and ongoing on-demand support are the basics for encouraging adoption. Too much training or too formal a setting will put users off, and is usually unnecessary.

More important is that the information gathered in steps 1 and 2 are communicated to key users. They need to understand:

• What their own needs are
• How those needs are going to be met by the software
• What the benefits are of using the software
• How they can integrate that software into their daily routines

This requires face-to-face, personalised sessions which can’t happen unless steps 1 and 2 are successfully completed. The aim is to convert key users into evangelists who can then help spread usage through their own team, encouraging the people they work with to take the training and use the tool themselves.

4. Turn evangelists into trainers
Evangelists may find that it is in their own interests, having adopted the social software, to encourage their colleagues to also become competent with it. A minority of evangelists (and it only needs to be a minority), will also find it in their own interests to train their colleagues themselves.

These evangelists should be trained further and given the support and materials they need to become trainers themselves.

The advantages of having evangelist-trainers are immense:

• They understand the day-to-day needs and working processes of their colleagues far better than an external trainer can
• They can communicate with their colleagues more easily, in the same language
• They have the opportunity to provide effective training on a far more informal, ad hoc basis
• Given enough support themselves, they can then support their immediate colleagues

5. Support bottom-up adoption and emergent behaviours
Training and support should not be limited to named groups, and should be made available to all users. ‘Volunteers’, especially, should be encouraged. The most influential people in a wiki or blog community are not those with official status but those who engage most enthusiastically. For example, wikipedia has about 90,000 registered users who have edited at least 10 times since they joined, but the majority of work is done by about 5% (4500) of these users. (Stats approx. for Nov 05.)

If people start to use social software in an unexpected, innovative, or informal manner, this should also be encouraged. If a user begins by putting their team’s coffee rota on the wiki, for example, this will help them understand how the wiki works and what benefits it brings.

Management support
As well as supporting bottom-up adoption, it is beneficial for there to be top-down support, but that support has to be based on openness and transparency. Managers and team leaders must trust their staff to use the tools correctly, but they must also be forgiving if mistakes are made. There is always a learning curve associated with any new software, and some people find social software daunting because they are scared of what they perceive as a high risk of public humiliation.

Managers and team leaders should:

1. Lead by example
By using the tool themselves for team- and department-wide projects, managers can encourage their colleagues to also use social software. By being active, showing subordinates how the new tools can be used, and demonstrating the benefits, manages can play a valuable role in fostering adoption.

In the software industry, this is known as ‘eating your own dogfood’, and it is essential in order to build trust, interest and understanding.

2. Lead by mandate
If the manager makes clear that this new tool is to be used for a specific process or task, it can help foster adoption and encourage reluctant users to learn how to use the tools. For example, managers can mandate that all meetings be documented on a wiki, with agendas written through collaboration and minutes being published as soon as the meeting is over, or that monthly/weekly update reports be made on a blog or a wiki instead of in a Word document or by email.

Key to leading by mandate, however, is that the manager must also lead by example. If one of his team puts a document on the wiki, but the manager comments on it by email, that gives conflicting signals to the team. Managers must be clear about which tool they expect people to use, and must use that tool themselves.

3. Lead by reminding
Managers can also increase usage by reminding colleagues to use new technology instead of old, e.g. when a colleague emails with a document to be proof-read, the manager can reply with a request to put it on the wiki.

4. Ensure there is adequate support
Managers must accept that their staff may require support, and they must be willing to allow staff to take time out to do training. They must also ensure that they have access to ad hoc support, so that problem can be solved quickly – it is important that there is someone tasked with ‘hand holding’ through the initial adoption period.

5. Ensure personal and business benefits reflect each other
Management plays a key role identifying and communicating the business benefits of social software adoption. When users understand these benefits (e.g. reducing email volume, speeding up projects, improving productivity, encouraging innovation), and see that the business benefits are in line with the personal benefits, (everyone likes to get less email) they will have greater confidence that the software is worth their own investment.

Understanding time-scales
In large companies with thousands of users, it is impossible to give everyone face-to-face training, but even with online screencasts* and help documents, it takes a significant amount of time for adoption to take place. Having a clear adoption strategy, and ensuring that the correct key players are identified and ‘converted’, helps to speed up the process, but it remains a fact of human nature that it takes time for people to become comfortable with new technology, new ways of doing things and, most importantly, new cultures.

The cultural aspect of implementing social software in enterprise cannot be underestimated, and it is the hardest aspect to overcome. It requires time, patience and understanding, but given those three, it too is a temporary obstacle.

Remember what your goals really are
Adoption isn’t a goal in and of itself. Lots of people use email an awful lot, but that doesn’t mean that it’s being used well. Think about what your ultimate aims are; make them discrete, measurable and attainable. Go for ‘reducing occupational spam’, for example, rather than ‘improve communications’. Measure your email usage before you start, monitor it whilst you adopt, and report back regularly so that people can see the progress that they are collectively making.

Wikis are a very powerful tool within enterprise, but like any other IT project, it takes thought and planning to ensure successful adoption.

* Screencast: Digital recording of a computer screen output, often with audio instruction.

The two cultures

Philosophically, the world divides into two groups which I’ll call the Blues and the Reds.

Blues believe that some things are true, no matter what. Some things stay fundamentally the same, day in and day out. Blues respect authority, because it is legitimate. You should play to win but play by the rules. Blues have confidence in experts. Blues like a clean, straight-forward, logical argument. Blues are competitive because they feel entitled to their share of the world’s incredible wealth. Blues are loyal.

In the world of learning, this group believes that the most efficient way to learn is by being taught by a great teacher. They feel thqt the basic learning methodology is to distill a topic into its very essence and drink in this elixir of knowledge. Design always trumps less precise approaches.

Reds believe that everything is relative. Truth? It depends on the context, and the context is changing ever faster. Reds question authority, because the old must give way to the new. Reds are forever trying to change the game. Reds are suspicious of experts. Reds know that nothing is as simple as it seems. Reds are cooperative because they feel there’s plenty to go around. Reds follow their passions.

Reds believe that learning is social; you learn from or with others. And that learning is learning by doing. Some topics defy distillation. You’ll never learn to ride a bike by reading about it. Experience is the best teacher, and often evolution provides a more fertile ground for learning than reductionist design. 

How people learn

The other day I decided I wanted to craft an informal learning cookbook. Recipes for common business situations. I began making a list of how people, but something was out of kilter. I’d listed

• learning by watching a master
• by being instructed
• reading
• observing
• look-up
• repeating
• teaching
• learning by doing
• learning by trying and failing
• writing & reflecting
• role play
• debate
• collaborating

But learning wasn’t just one-to-one anymore. It could be individual, pair, trio, small group, or large group. It could be emotional, cognitive, automatic, or physical. The things I advocate in Informal Learning seemed out of place.

The Big Transition
We live in a society in transition from the industrial age to the knowledge era. Yuppies are rooted in the industrial age: their parents lived with the ultimate command-and-control success story, winning World War II, and it takes at least one generation to unlearn one’s parents’ worldview. So by and large, yupiies believe one person can control others. They believe things are manageable. They believe that the future is predictable.

The incoming workforce have grown up in a different reality. They know that intangibles and ideas count for more than physical stuff. They appreciate that control is an illusion and that going with the flow is the way to get ahead. The world is complex, and no one knows what things will be like five years from now. Groups solve problems, not individuals. They don’t put up a facade: they are who they are. Deal with it.

Instructional design is industrial design
Instructional design is an industrial age concept. If you design & develop a program you’ve already defined its curriculum and shaped its delivery perameters. ISD doesn’t think of learners implementing, so that’s out of their hands. Likewise, evaluation is external to the learners. Often, formal programs appear to distrust the learners. Hence, the focus on discipline, testing, and confining learners to a classroom. This is push, push, push, with someone other than the learner taking charge of the process.

Informal learning presumes learners need to prepare to deal with surprises. “Designers” of informal learning don’t focus on programs and content so much as on the learning environment and letting content that’s already in the group manifest itself. They facilitate learning; they don’t lead it. They remove obstacles. They provide challenges, not detailed instructions. They rely on learners’ innate motivation to excel. They trust learners to find their own best ways of learning what it takes. This is pull, pull, pull, with the learners deciding when they’ve had enough.
Just as you wouldn’t use lectures in an informal setting, you wouldn’t use free-flowing diakogue in a formal one. Most of the literature of instruction deals with the traditional, formal side of things. To balance that, we need a taxonomy of ways people learn informally. Only then can we match what’s to be learned with the appropriate technology to support it.

What We’re Used To

First we make our habits; then they make us. Why do courses have such staying power when they are so often the wrong unit for instruction? Not all topics warrant an hour; some warrant more. Training vendors have to have some unit to sell, and buyers understand what a course is. Another reason is that courses simplify the lives of adminstrators, both in school and in corporate life. It’s so easy to say “Take a course.” We think we know what it means.
Instructional design has a similar anachronistic legacy. If you’re a designer, you’ve got to design something. Award someone a masters degree in instructional design, and every problem looks like a need for more instruction. This approach is fighting the last war, for design is no longer the cure-all it was in times of rigidity and certainty. Many learning situations evolve or grow out of a culture or self organize. Often the shortest road to performance is getting out of the learners’ way yet this is not a topic in many ISD curricula.

Pick and Choose
I’m not much for television in the morning. Hell, I don’t watch television more than an hour a week. Yet this morning I began the day watching a very funny clip of Dave Letterman when GE purchased RCA and became Dave’s new boss. (He tried to take the Board of GE a fruit basket but was turned away at the door.) This is the difference between old-style behavior and the new. I no longer have to sit through a hour of boring stuff and commercials to get to the really funny parts. Similarly, no one should have to endure an entire training program in order to learn the few nuggets they came for.

In the old days, we just took it. I sat through twenty years of educational exercises. Coloring outside the lines or thinking creatively was punished. Eat your training; it may taste bad but it’s good for you. Today people are mad as hell and won’t take it anymore. They take the lessons that are useful and fast-forward through the rest. The learners have seized the remote control.

Life Support for Obsolete Practice
When I was advising SmartForce at the dawn of eLearning, the company was purposely automating old-style forms of training. SmartForce offered a library of courses, along with a newsletter, online meetings… There was still expert knowledge delivered by an authority to the learners.We were selling horseless carriages, not automobiles. Collaboration was in there somewhere, but it wasn’t emphasized. Our online community had more than a million theoretical members but sometimes only one or two of them was actually online.

My book contends that most learning is informal.

Workers learn more in the coffee room than in the classroom. They discover how to do their jobs through informal learning – asking the person in the next cubicle, trial-and-error, calling the help desk, working with people in the know, and joining the conversation. This is natural learning: you learn from other people when you feel the need to do so.

Instead of applying technology to manage attendance or decontextualize content, shouldn’t we be looking for ways to make it easier to converse with colleagues in the know, to make sure the help desk is placed where help is needed, social networking for virtual teams, and providing places for conversation to take place?

(I’m going to continue this in a new post)
With this “pull” perspective, we can begin to imagine how technology can be repurposed to support learning. For example, this morning I visited a site call Weblist for the first time. Like Digg or PopURLs, this is a site that lists the top ten stories on other services. The only difference I can see is in the audience the service is targetting.

Imagine what it would be like to have a resource like this inside an organization. Call it Orglist.