Over at the TogetherLearn blog, I’ve posted an article about another way to think about the benefits of social learning. I’ve been concerned that the talk about chaos and emergent practice may seem too ephemeral to hard-nosed business decision makers, so I tried to make the goal concrete, or at least visual.
Then, of course, the important thing is the path to get there. Check it out!
I’ve been reading a few books about schools, since my lad’s made the transition from elementary to middle school and it’s been a bit of a battle. When he’s being set assignments like coloring in a poster on math facts, I’m a wee bit concerned. John Taylor Gatto’s Dumbing Us Down was a wakeup call (he won NY teacher of the year for a couple of years, and insightfully (and incitefully) criticizes our current school system. So, when I noticed that Daniel Willingham (who’ve I talked about before) had a book out, I checked it out.
His Why Don’t Students Like School sounded like another tirade against schools, but it’s more positive than that. The subtitle tells you more: “A cognitive scientist answers questions about how the mind works and what it means for your classroom”. It follows a format of:
Fortunately, I could just skim the second part, which is the meat of the book, courtesy of my own PhD in cognitive science, and it was review. But what really struck home was how he (as reviewers repeatedly point out) uses “clear and compelling language” to help the audience really understand what’s important. He’s got great examples, and makes a large chunk of cognitive research comprehensible. Which is not to say it’s a light read, but it’s accessible and clear.
More importantly, the third part of each chapter, his conclusions, are very concrete and actionable. If teachers followed these guidelines, they’d have happier learners and better learning outcomes. What more do you want? (Ok, well, curriculum reform, but this is aimed at teachers.)
He covers a lot of ground. In nine chapters (this isn’t a long book, just deep and relevant), he covers motivation, learning styles, cognitive skills, and more. He answers the core questions and the ancillary questions that emerge. And, no, I don’t agree with him on quite all of it (e.g. on making content meaningful, he’s concerned that too familiar or interesting tasks may overwhelm the intrinsic lesson), but I suspect we’d find if we sat down that we’re agreeing furiously.
I have to say that if all my children’s teachers read this book, their schooling would be a lot better. If all our children’s teachers read this book, schools would be a lot better. So, if you’re a teacher, read this book. If you work with teachers, know teachers, or influence teachers, get them to read this book. And if you design learning experiences, even if you don’t actually teach, you should read this book.
Cognitive science research oriented towards making better learning, in a digestable form. It doesn’t get much better than this. I have no higher praise for a book than “I wish I’d written it”, and I do. Highly recommended.
In a conversation I had yesterday, we were talking about how not enough people were using systems-thinking. I realize schools don’t prepare for it sufficiently, but it also made me think about why it’s so necessary.
Getting back to my riff on chaos, if things are getting more random, as such would predict (e.g. in the complex or chaotic quadrants of the Cynefin model), our existing processes are less likely to work. Off-the-shelf solutions won’t cut it, and you’ll need to be looking for matching patterns that will give you some guidance about how to act. However, the relevant models may come from unexpected places. That’s been the source of much innovation, and a motivation for me in my model collecting and generating.
It comes back to reasoning, and one of the most powerful tools we have is analogical reasoning.That’s a model that taps into our cognitive architecture’s orientation towards pattern-matching, and helping pull up a good match. My Ph.D. was focused on improving analogical reasoning because of the power such reasoning has.
Which is the reason I continue to believe in the power of models. These are frameworks and tools with analytical power that help explain and predict the world. (Increasingly, I’m realizing the power of visual representations of such models as well.)
I believe that an experimental attitude and a rich suite of models are the tools that will prevail in the future, comprehending the problem and looking for matching models to see whether they can help, when things are new. This is the stuff of innovation: it’s blue ocean strategy, it’s when you’re moving into new areas or taking on new responsibilities, it’s the cynefin framework itself.
Some things in the learning field are reasonably well understood (if not widely distributed nor well practiced) such as ID and information architecture. Others are still emergent: certainly for social media, we’re seeing that it takes time and the advantages of some prior experience; mobile is still emergent; and content models are a new area as well. The point being, I think that developing a capability for flexible problem-solving is a necessity going forward, and it may take that flexible problem-solving to get there!
Last night I went to hear Ross Dawson speak on the Future of the Enterprise. His points resonated with a lot of what I and my TogetherLearn colleagues have been saying about the changes we’re seeing. I really do think that some changes are in the air.
Ross reiterated the notion that the current context is a state of increasing change. Things are moving faster, and the chaotic reality underpinning our existence is being brought into highlight more and more. He talked about how commoditization is a driving economic factor, the fact that others can reproduce what you create quickly, so there’s incredible pressure to have to build more on top. I afterward asked him and he supported my contention that optimal execution is only the price of entry, and that continual innovation and delivering a seamless customer experience will be the differentiator.
He asked a series of five questions at the end, and one was how we got people to participate. Verna Allee suggested leadership would be even more critical. Another attendee thought that companies would have to offer compelling experiences for employees as well. I do think that helping individuals comprehend the vision, letting them figure out how to achieve the necessary goal, and creating an empowering environment are critical.
Another question had to do with how organizations would be structured going forward. Ross made a clever reference to how the word ‘corporation’ comes from corpus, or body, and that organizations now were much more a distributed enterprise: networks of employees, suppliers, clients, partners, contractors, etc. “The organization is just a persistent network.”
A point made was that all that matters are relationships and knowledge, particularly when manufacturing can be ‘on demand’, and that mass participation creates value. If the organization is a network, and all these participants generate the value, organizations have to support networking for knowledge work, getting contributions from empowered learners. To cope in this age of increasing disruptive influences, it’s critical.
It’s time for organizations to get serious about providing infrastructure that supports workers networking, communicating, collaborating, problem-solving, innovating, learning. Coupled with a supportive culture and clear vision, it’s the wave of the future. Ross thought that in five years time, the new organizational imperatives would be clear. That doesn’t give you a lot of time to get moving, and you really ought to begin last week if you want to be a leader, not a late adopter.
Get moving, or get help!
During the course of my TrainingMagNetwork presentation on “Blow up the training department, why incrementalism won’t cut it anymore”, I asked the audience whether their ‘group’ (learning function) took separate responsibility for each of the following learning support tasks/roles:
I had them respond with either a ✓ or a red ✘, depending on whether their group was covering it or not. I don’t have the quantitative results, but the overall trend was not surprising, but indicative.
As we went down the list, the proportion of green dropped off, and the proportion of red took over, systematically. Well, right ’til the end. Whether due to some good strategy, or a loose interpretation of content management, we got more green again at the bottom of the list (and that’s a good thing).
And that’s my point. To me, all those elements are part of supporting organizational performance from a learning standpoint. As I’ve argued before, I think innovation, problem-solving, design, and more are part of learning. And I think that best is supported by a learning function, not IT, or KM, let alone marketing or sales. However, it does not come from a training function or mindset. They should all be green!
Which is why I want to blow up the training department. Not only because they’re following broken pedagogies, as I’ve argued before, but because unless they’re part of a larger learning function, they’re not meeting the real need.
Now, I admit I’m being deliberately ‘stirring’ things up by talking about blowing things up, but as I did in the presentation, I ask: do I mean like a bomb or a balloon? And I mean blow up the old formal training pedagogy like a bomb, and blow up the responsibility of the training department like a balloon, to cover the entire performance ecosystem.
So, my answer to my titular question is ‘both’. :)
In trying to get attention for work, a colleague is concerned with the ‘learning’ label being a potential detriment. It’s probably true, and that’s a sad state of affairs. While I joke that we who work in the learning/training/performance/etc field are those who’ve retained their love of learning despite schooling, I do believe that there’s some baggage associated with the term.
If you put on a ‘serious business’ perspective, learning can seem like warm and fuzzy coddling. “What we really need is to hire the talent we need and let them know what to do and have them do it, right? They’ll do it, and like it, or they’re out!” Which, of course, is ridiculous, but who doesn’t believe that view is out there?
What’s really the case is that each organization will have it’s own way of doing things, and that individuals will need to be brought up to speed, then provided resources to support performing, and expected to contribute. And, as I am coming to believe, as things get more complex, we’ll need more from people in terms of adaptation.
Or, as Kevin Wheeler put it:
Today success is in the hands of creative people who have energy and excitement over reaching a business objective. These people are hard to find and hard to keep as their energy and entrepreneurial spirit are not always suited to a controlled environment. They need space, time, and freedom to experiment. They thrive in a networked world where they can exchange ideas, swap experiments, and engage in conversation.
That, to me, is learning. To look at it another way, I lump innovation, problem-solving, creativity, design, and more all as activities of learning. Herb Simon said “to design is human”, and I believe that design is about learning. But maybe it’s about thinking? Doing?
So, to me, it’s a shame that a ‘learning’ label would be a barrier to being perceived as relevant to business, but that seems to be the case. My question is, do we rebrand, or do we reengineer learning’s status in the organization. I don’t have an answer, do you?
Why is the world getting more complex? Certainly, we’re getting more information, and technology is increasing the rate at which we can sense, and respond (reducing product cycle times, for instance, as someone can replicate what you’ve developed very quickly). There’s a lot more pressure, as a consequence. But is it something fundamental?
I was pondering Dave Snowden’s Cynefin framework (wonderful 4 minute video explaining it), particularly the chaotic domain and it’s prescription (roughly “do something, and hope to move it to one of the other quadrants”). It’s kind of a deep concept, but basically there are: simple topics where there’s one right answer (which we ought to automate, in my opinion); complicated issues, where we need expertise; complex issues, which we can only explain in retrospect but can adapt in, and the chaotic space.
It’s the latter that concerns me, it seems to be a case of “abandon hope, all ye who enter here”. Ok, seriously, it’s a place where the approach has to be much more experimental. I reckon it’s a place that most managers and even executives want to ignore. And yet, I believe that the world is going more and more in that direction. In fact, I’m beginning to believe we’re at a inflection point where we suddenly need to realize that ‘management’ just won’t cut it. Sure, for legacy industries, for a while. But why? Why is this fundamentally different?
I think that things moved slow moved enough that while they really were chaotic, the general patterns were good enough most of the time. But things have increasingly gotten faster, accelerating, to the point where those seemingly random shifts are happening so fast that they undermine staid process.
It’s not the information overload, and I began thinking that it is, instead, how quickly ideas can take hold. It’s not things that are the dominant factor here, it’s people. People’s reactions to marketing campaigns, messages, etc are largely unpredictable, and the likelihood and consequences of something going ‘awry’ are increased. The so-called ‘viral’ message is increasingly a disruptive factor. And why is that?
I started thinking about how long it took for ideas to spread. In the past, they could spread in a community by word of mouth over hours or days, depending on the ‘salience’ of the idea. However, a community was sort of 150 people, if you take a Dunbar’s number approach. Propagating outside of that was a critical juncture, and used to be quite hard. Someone had to travel between communities, believe, and be a good transmitter. Print as a major shift, and so too was the printing press. Suddenly it became easier to transmit a powerful meme powerfully. And it’s gotten easier with the telegraph, and the phone, and email, and…
If new ideas that are powerful can take hold quickly with minimal friction, their disruptive influence is magnified. Rightly or wrongly, a fun or powerful idea can catch fire and be a game-changer. If there’s the possibility for almost instantaneous spread, we’re truly past the point of no return in terms of chaos.
Which brings me to Twitter. Even the latest web page had to be emailed and there wasn’t a quick way to get the message around in a broadcast style except if the mainstream media picked it up, or you had an established network. Spreading beyond your network was difficult.
Enter Twitter. For the first time, a viral meme can spread almost instantaneously, reaching critical mass in the amount of time required for a few retweets. It’s a network of one to many, and 140 chars is about perfect for ‘meme’ length. It’s just a twitch to pass a message on. I’m not saying Twitter itself is the force of change, I’m saying it’s emblematic of the change.
If someone’s thought captures a new thought, or plays with an existing idea in an intriguing new way, it can spread almost instantaneously. Much more so than before. That’s a power that can be used for good or bad. Companies should be mindful that a misstep can reach many really quickly (time to get on the ClueTrain!). And breaking news can spread before the media reach the masses (cf flight 1549 landing in the Hudson).
I doubt this idea is new, and you’re free to point out where I’m wrong or who said it before, but it struck me that this is indicative of the changes we, our communities, our organizations, and our society face. Which leads me to think it’s time to take this phenomena seriously. So I’ll venture a meme, an oldie but a goodie, “World Peace, NOW!”. Here’s hoping…
On last week’s #lrnchat, which I missed most of for my lad’s band concert, I tuned in during a break and saw that Marcia Conner (@marciamarcia) had asked a question I wanted to answer (but couldn’t in 140 chars :). She asked: “Would someone explain diff between sims (often used well for ed) and VWs?” She was concerned that some people were using them interchangeably, and I do think it’s important to have some clear definitions.
I stipulate (and would love to get agreement on) a definition that works like this:
So what’s a Virtual World? In the above definition, it’s a simulation with the particular characteristics that it’s 3D, and typically also can host many individuals within it. Now, the infamous World of Warcraft has been turned into a game by a) embedding a bunch of quests (initial states where you try to achieve certain goal states) and b) tuning the experience to be compelling (even addictive).
It gets interesting when we start talking about learning in the context of sims, games, and Virtual Worlds. A simulation, for a motivated and effective self-learner, is a powerful learning environment. They can explore the relationships to their desired level of understanding. The only problem is that motivated and effective self-learners are unfortunately rare. So, we more typically create scenarios.
When you choose an initial state, and properly choose the goal state, you can ensure that they can’t achieve the goal state until they fully have grasped the nuances of the relationships and can act upon them in specific ways. That’s the essence of serious game design! This is, I argue, the best learning practice next to live performance with mentoring. The benefits to scenarios, of course, are that live performance can have costly consequences (e.g. losing money, breaking things, or killing people) and individual mentoring doesn’t scale well.
Are there reasons to tune a scenario into a game? I want to argue that there are. First of all, there are the motivational aspects, keeping the learner’s interests. Second, optimizing the challenge means that the learner is moving through in the minimal amount of time. Finally, we can alter the storyline to make it more meaningful – exaggerating characters or motives or context – which actually brings the practice environment closer to the urgency likely to be felt in the real world, when it matters. Truly, learning can and should be ‘hard fun’!
How about learning in virtual worlds? I’ve talked about this before, but certainly, I believe, if the learning objectives inherently support 3D reasoning, whether industrial plant arrangement and operation, molecular structure, or architecture, absolutely.
However, a virtual world is just a simulation, and if you want learning outcomes, you need either self-directed and motivated learners, or embedded scenarios. Which is what I have been seeing, for example I have seen a very nice demonstration for insurance adjusting.
In addition, when social interaction matters, there are some interesting opportunities. Individuals can represent themselves as they please, and can create the contexts they wish as well. (However, I have also seen what are, essentially, slide presentations in a virtual world, and think that’s ridiculous.)
On the other hand, virtual worlds currently have some overhead issues: learning to be effective in them has a learning curve, and there are technical overheads as well. Consequently, I have been loath to recommend them for many situations where they could be used, if there isn’t an inherently 3D rationale.
However, I do believe that a) the overheads are rapidly being dropped by advancements both UI and technical and b) that there are some ephemeral things that are still fully to be realized. People I trust, including Joe Miller and Claudia L’Amoreaux of Linden Labs, Karl Kapp of Bloomsburg University, and Tony O’Driscoll of Duke University, continue to express not only the available, but also the untapped potential.
Still, I think the definitions are solid, and am comfortable with the current assessment of virtual worlds. I’m willing to be wrong, on the latter :). I welcome your thoughts.
I’m still reeling from the intellectual stimulation of the Corporate Learning Trends Conversations on Learning in Organizations that was held a few days ago. One other big learning for me, in addition to the responsibility of learners, was the issue of corporate learning culture. There were two facets to this.
The first facet has to do with the characteristics of a culture that is conducive to collaboration and communication. From a business point of view, it’s about execution and innovation. Execution works in well-defined domains, but innovation requires a variety of factors that characterize a learning organization, including feeling safe to contribute, tolerance for different ideas, and more. Increasingly, I believe, organizations that can innovate fastest will be those that thrive, so successful organizations will be learning organizations.
One of the participants mentioned organizations where you can’t share mistakes, and that’s emblematic of organizations that hire smart, aggressive people and expect them to go out and succeed. Which leads to some smart choices, but also you see repeats of the same mistakes. You don’t really see the effects of that culture until you put in social media, where it becomes obvious whether people are contributing, sharing, etc.
And that was the point I made: to address culture, you have to be explicit about it, it can’t just be background. An organization should choose it’s culture, with a recognition of where it is now. You’ve got to be realistic, or you won’t be able to sell it, which may include being honest about how it has to change. But if you don’t talk about it, make it explicit, support change, reward changet, etc, it can’t happen. It may not be easy, but it should be done.
The second facet has to do with cross-cultural issues. In the session, Allison Anderson of Intel and Dave Wilkins of Mzinga and I discussed the challenges of trying to cross borders and cultures. I pointed to Hofstede’s cultural dimensions via a web tour, in making a point about how different cultures can have values that are contrary to a sharing culture.
I cited an example where a company in a country with a low gender difference (MAS) value had acquired a company from a country with a high gender difference value. The potential problem is that a male engineer from the high gender difference country might not listen to a female engineer from the low difference country, yet this would not be in the company’s best interest.
There are clearly problems in expecting someone to adopt a company culture different than their national culture, and yet there is clearly some advantage. I idealistically suggest it’s worth the effort, if you buttress it with vision and mission, discusison about organizational success, and provide support for the transition.
Like with responsibility for learning, corporate vision & mission, and accepted ethical standards, organizational cultural values needs to be discussed explicitly: defined, modeled, scaffolded, and even evaluated and rewarded. If it’s not explicit, it’s not fair to assume. This is really about taking responsibility for organizational learning at a larger level, architecting it, and leveraging technology as an infrastructure that supports the architecture. It’s meta-learning, and that’s the paradigm I think organizations need to not just survive, but thrive.
On the fantastic Corporate Learning Trends online conference Conversations on Learning in Organizations, one of the topics that came up was “How can we get learners to take resonsibility for their learning”, and it’s a critical one.
At the end of the day, we can’t create learning, we can only (at best) design environments that are conducive to learning. Learners have to actually take action. Now, in most instances they’re willing (though our current formal learning is often antithetical to ease of learning; e.g. “spray and pray”, “show up and throw-up” sessions), but when we go beyond the formal course (and we should), we largely abandon learners to their own devices.
That’s a mistake, as the empirical evidence is that efficacious self-learners are relatively rare. They get by, but they’re far from optimal. For instance, the first online courses had high dropout rates and relatively low success until they started facilitating the learning process. Similarly, the work literacy movement is specifically to address the need for these skills.
And it’s not only about skills, but also attitude. When I was teaching at a university, I was always dismayed at the number of students who’s attitude was “just tell me what I need to do to get a good grade”, without caring about the inherent interest in the subject. Sure, our current schooling may well extinguish the love of learning, and so may the ‘industrial’ approach to training. However, an intrinsic interest in learning is critical to success, individually, organizationally, and societally.
However, organizationally don’t talk about learning, about learning skills, and we don’t take responsibility for developing those learning skills and making them meaningful.
So my first response was, and is, we need to be explicit about learning skills: about their existence, importance. And we need to do more, we need to measure them, model them, develop them, and reward them.
As many have noted over the past 24 hours of the conference, the role of the organizational learning function is shifting to facilitating learning, not delivering it. While there’s still a role for formal learning, our pedagogies and our responsibilities need to shift to learning facilitation, both formal and informal.
Learners need to be assisted in taking responsibility for their learning, and we need to take responsibility for making it so. In the end, organizations that learn best, will be the ones that survive, and thrive! So be responsible, and support responsibility!