Archives for April 2011

On principle (and for pragmatic reasons), I regularly think about how to define what I do, and to look for areas that are related.  As a consequence, I wonder if there’s another area I’m falling into, and more importantly, an interesting intersection that might warrant some exploration.

With my ITA colleagues, I’ve been looking at how to help organizations broaden the scope of the learning function to include informal and social learning, and leverage them to make organizations more successful.  And, given that it’s not about the technology, it ends up being a lot about how to create environments where social media can be used effectively.  This led me to wonder what was the proper category for that work. Is it business information systems?  However, that seems largely to be about databases. Is it industrial/organizational psychology?  That largely seems too focused on the individual, and on psychometrics.  That’s when I looked into organizational development (OD; as our associate, Jon Husband has champions with his wirearchy work).

If you read the definition of OD, you see “effort to increase an organization’s effectiveness and viability”. That’s largely what we’re on about, too.  As the Working Smarter Fieldbook says:  “We foresee a convergence of the ‘people disciplines’ in organizations. As the pieces of companies become densely interconnected, the differences between knowledge management, training, collaborative learning, organization development, internal communication, and social networking fade away.”   However, some of these fields are reasonably technology savvy, while others are more focused effective people processes.

As I look through the suite of approaches that OD takes, it feels very familiar.  Workshops, facilitations, the interventions used resonate very comfortably with what I’ve used and seen work.  The goals are also very similar.  However, I don’t see a lot of awareness or interest in technology.  I’m wondering if I’m missing a huge swath of work in leveraging technology to facilitate organizational development.  Or whether there’s a need and opportunity to start some cross-talk and look at the intersection for opportunities to leverage technology as a tool to increase an organization’s effectiveness and viability.  Kevin Wheeler, who’s organizing the talent event I’m presenting at in Sydney and has background in OD, opted for the latter.  What do you think?

Eileen Clegg from the Future of Talent Institute (and colleague, we co-wrote the Extremophiles chapter for  Creating a Learning Culture)  pinged me the other day and asked about my thoughts on the intersection of:

1. The new role of managers in the results-oriented work environment (ROWE)
2. The  topic of  blending the Talent and Learning functions in the workplace.

She’d been excited about Cognitive Apprenticeship years ago after hearing me talk about it, and wondered if there was a role to play. I see it as two things: orgs need optimal execution just as the cost of entry: that’s where apprenticeship fits in, but they also need continual innovation. That needs collaboration, and we are still exploring that, though there are some really clear components.  Though one of the nice things about cognitive apprenticeship is that it naturally incorporates collaborative learning, and can develop that as it develops understanding of the domain.

I admit I’m a little worried about ROWE from the point of view that Dan Pink picks out in  Drive, about how a maniacal focus on results could lead to people doing anything necessary to achieve results. It’s got to be a little more about taking mutual ownership (producer and whoever is ‘setting’ the result) that the result is meeting the org need in a holistic (even ‘wise’ way).

What has to kick in here is a shared belief in a vision/mission that you can get behind, individuals equipped to solve problems collaboratively (what I call big L learning: research, design, experimentation, etc), and tools to hand for working together. You apprentice both in tasks *and* learning, basically, until you’re an expert in your domain are defining what’s new in conjunction with your collaborators.

Expressed by my colleague was a concern that there was a conflict between”(a) supporting someone’s learning and (b) being invested in the success of their work product”. And I would think that the management is NOT directly invested in the product, only in the producer.  Helping them be the best they can be and all that.  If they’re not producing good output, they either need to develop the person or replace them, which indirectly affects the product.  However, this isn’t new for mentors as well: they want their charges to do well, but the most they can do is influence the performer to the best of their ability.

As a component, learners need to develop their PKM/PLN (personal knowledge management, personal learning network). And 21st century skills aren’t taken for granted but identified and developed. In addition, the performance ecosystem, aka workscape – not only formal learning but also performance support, informal learning, and social learning – is the responsibility of the integrated talent/learning functions (which absolutely should be blended).  And ‘management’ may move more toward mentorship, or be a partner between someone strategizing across tasks and a talent development function in the organization.

As an extension to my ‘slow learning’ model, I think that the distinction between learning and performing from the point of view of support needs to go away. We can and should be concerned with the current performance and the long-term development of the learner at the same time.  Thus, the long term picture is of ongoing apprenticeship towards mutually negotiated and understood goals, both work and personal development.