A recent article caused me to think. Always a great thing!  It led to some reflections that I want to share. The article is about a (hypothetical) learning journey, and talks about how learning objects are part of that learning process. My issue is with the locus of the curation of those objects; should it be the organization, an AI, or the community?  I think it’s worth exploring.

The first sentence that stood out for me made a strong statement. “Choice is most productive when it is scaffolded by an organizationally-curated framework.” Curation of resources for quality and relevance is a good thing, but is the organization is the best arbiter? I’ve argued that the community of practice should determine the curriculum to be a member of that community. Similarly, the resources to support progression in the community should come from the community, both within and outside the organization.

Relatedly, the sentence before this one states “learner choice can be a dangerous thing if left unchecked”.  And this really strikes me as the wrong model.  It’s inherently saying we don’t trust our learners to be good at learning.  I don’t expect learners (or SMEs for that matter) to know learning. But then, we shouldn’t leave that to chance. We should be facilitating the development of learning to learn skills explicitly, having L&D model and guide it, and more.  It’s rather an old school approach to think that the org (through the agency of L&D) needs to control the learning.

A second line that caught my eye was that the protagonist “and his colleagues create and share additional AI-curated briefings with each other.”  Is that AI curation, or community curation? And note that there’s ‘creation’, not just sharing.  I’m thinking that the human agency is more critical than the AI curation. AI curation has gotten good, but when a community is working, the collective intelligence is better. Or, if we’re talking IA (and we should be), we should explicitly looking to couple AI and community curation.

Another line is also curious.  “However, learning leaders must balance the popularity of informal learning with the formal, centralized needs of the organization. This can be achieved using AI-curated real-time briefings.” Count me skeptical. I believe that if you address the important issues – purpose via meaningful work and autonomy to pursue, communities of practice, and learning to learn skills – you can trust informal learning more than AI or a central view of what learning can and should be.

Most of the article was quite good, even if things like “psychological safety” are being attributed to McKenzie instead of Amy Edmondson.  I like folks looking to the future, and I understand that aligning with the status quo is a good business move. It’s just that when you get disconnects such as these, it’s an opportunity to reflect.  And wondering about the locus of responsibility for learning is a valuable exercise.  Can the locus be the individual and community, not the org or AI? Of course, better yet if we get the synergy between them.  But let’s think seriously about how to empower learners and community, ok?

Some days, it feels like I’m playing whack-a-mole. I got an email blast from an org (need to unsubscribe) that included a link that just reeked of being a myth-ridden piece of hype.  So I clicked, and sure enough!  And, as part of my commitment to showing my thinking, I’m taking it down. I reckon it’s important to take these myths apart, to show the type of thinking we should avoid if not actively attack.  Let me know if you don’t think this is helpful.

The article starts by talking about millennials. That’s a problem right away, as millennials is an arbitrary grouping by birthdate, and therefore is inherently discriminatory. The boundaries are blurry, and most of the differences can be attributed to age, not generation. And that’s a continuum, not a group. As the data shows.  Millennials is a myth.

Ok, so they go on to say: “Changing the approach from adapting to Millennials to leveraging Millennials is the key…”  Ouch!  Maybe it’s just me, but while I like to leverage assets, I think saying that about people seems a bit rude.  Look, people are people!  You work with them, develop them, etc. Leverage them?  That sounds like you’re using them (in the derogatory sense).

They go on to talk about Learning Organizations, which I’m obviously a fan of.  And so the ability to continue to learn is important.  No argument. But why would that be specific to ‘millennials’?  Er…

Here’s another winner: “They natively understand the imperative of change and their clockspeed is already set for the accelerated learning this requires.”  This smacks of the ‘digital native’ myth.  Young people’s wetware isn’t any different than anyone else’s. They may be more comfortable with the technology, but making assumptions such as this undermines the fact that any one individual may not fit the group mean. And it’s demonstrable that their information skills aren’t any better because of their age.

We move on to 3 ways to leverage millennials:

1. Create Cross-pollination through greater teamwork. Yeah, this is a good strategy.  FOR EVERYONE. Why attribute it just to millennials?  Making diverse teams is just good strategy, period. Including diversity by age? Sure. By generation?  Hype. You see this  also with the ‘use games for learning’ argument for millennials. No, they’re just better learning designs! (Ok, with the caveat: if done well.)
2. Establish a Feedback-Driven Culture to Learn and Grow Together. That’s a fabulous idea; we’re finding that moving to a coaching culture with meaningful assignments and quick feedback (not the quarterly or yearly) is valuable. We can correct course earlier, and people feel more enagaged. Again, for everyone.
3. Embrace a Trial-and-Error Approach to Learning to Drive Innovation. Ok, now here I think it’s going off the rails. I’m a fan of experimentation, but trial and error can be smart or random. Only one of those two makes sense. And, to be fair, they do argue for good experimentation in terms of rigor in capturing data and sharing lessons learned. It’s valuable, but again, why is this unique to millennials? It’s just a good practice for innovation.

They let us know there are 3 more ways they’ll share in their next post.  You can imagine my anticipation.  Hey, we can read two posts with myths, instead of just one.  Happy days!

Yes, do the right things (please), but for the right reasons. You could be generous and suggest that they’re using millennials as a stealth tactic to sneak in messages about modern workplace learning.  I’m not, as they seem to suggest doing this largely with millennials. This sounds like hype written by a marketing person. And so, while I advocate the policies, I eschew the motivation, and therefore advise you to find better sources for your innovation practices. Let me know if this is helpful (or not ;).

I was talking with my friend and colleague Harold Jarche about how he’s expanding his valuable Personal Knowledge Mastery to teams and at the organizational level. Walking through his diagram, what is critical, what is being exchanged, are mental models. And I thought this an interesting insight.

I’ve talked before about mental models, and they’re important for learning. What they do is provide a causal basis for understanding what happened, and predicting what will happen.  And that’s important. From such models, we can therefore evaluate different options, and choose the one that has the best outcome.  They may not help in new areas, but they give us a basis for new and unique combinations of circumstances.

So, individually, we make decisions based upon models. In fact, our brains build models to explain the world. (Important for instruction to provide good ones.)  And so when we experiment and reflect we may try to capture these models. Senge, in The Learning Organization talked about mental models as one of his 5 disciplines.

When we’re brought in on a team as a complementary set of knowledge and skills to solve a problem, we’re coming in with our models. In the ‘coherent organization‘ model, these have been developed through our community of practice, and are brought to bear on challenges we’re addressing. Results are shared back, particularly new insights. Similarly, our communities should be tracking others for models to appropriate and adapt.

Thus, the mental tools we use in this new age of information and innovation are conceptual causal models. We need tools to capture, represent, and share these models. And most importantly, I reckon, we need to understand the nature of these models to facilitate us taking the best advantage of them.

Our models may be exchanged, but they’re not transactional. Like a smile, we can give the away and still have them. But we can, and should, continue to acquire and develop them. Models are our value to our field and organizations.

I recently wrote on the ethics of L&D, and I note that I didn’t address one issue. Yet, it’s very clear that it’s still a problem. In short, I’m talking about plagiarism and attribution.  And it needs to be said.

In that article, I did say:

That means we practice ethically, and responsibly. We want to collectively determine what that means, and act accordingly. And we must call out bad practices or beliefs.

So let me talk about one bad practice: taking or using other people’s stuff without attribution.  Most of the speakers I know can cite instances when they’ve seen their ideas (diagrams, quotes, etc) put up by others without pointing back to them.  There’s a distinction between citing something many people are talking about (innovation, microlearning, what have you) with your own interpretation, and literally taking someone’s ideas and selling them as your own.

One of our colleagues recently let me know his tools had been used by folks to earn money without any reimbursement to him (or even attribution).  Others have had their diagrams purloined and used in presentations.  One colleague found pretty much his entire presentation used by someone else!  I myself have seen my writing appear elsewhere without a link back to me, and I’m not the only one.

Many folks bother to put copyright signs on their images, but I’ve stopped because it’s too easy to edit out if you’re halfway proficient with a decent graphics package.  And you can do all sorts of things to try to protect your decks, writing, etc, but ultimately it’s very hard to protect, let alone discover that it’s happening. Who knows how many copies of someone’s images have ended up in a business presentation inside a firm!  People have asked, from time to time, and I have pretty much always agreed (and I’m grateful when they do ask). Others, I’m sure, are doing it anyway.

This isn’t the same as asking someone to work for free, which is also pretty rude. There are folks who will work for ‘exposure’, because they’re building a brand, but it’s somewhat unfair. The worst are those who charge for things, like attendance or membership, or organizations who make money, yet expect free presentations!  “Oh, you could get some business from this.”  The operative word is ‘could’.  Yet they are!

Attribution isn’t ‘name dropping‘. It’s showing you are paying attention, and know the giants whose shoulders you stand on.  Taking other people’s work and claiming it as your own, particularly if you profit by it, is theft. Pure and simple.  It happens, but we need to call it out. Calling it out can even be valuable; I once complained and ended up with a good connection (and an apology).

Please, please, ask for permission, call out folks who you see are plagiarizing, and generally act in proper ways. I’m sure you are, but overall some awareness raising still needs to happen.  Heck, I know we see amazing instances in people’s resumes and speeches of it, but it’s still not right.  The people in L&D I’ve found to be generally warm and helpful (not surprisingly). A few bad apples isn’t surprising, but we can do better. All I can do is ask you to do the right thing yourself, and call out bad behavior when you do see it.  Thanks!