A recent post by my colleague in the Internet Time Alliance, Jane Hart, has created quite the stir. In it, she talks about two worlds: an old world and a new world of workplace learning.  And another colleague from the Serious eLearning Manifesto, Will Thalheimer, wrote a rather ‘spirited’ response.  I know, respect, and like both these folks, so I’m wrestling with trying to reconcile these seemingly opposite viewpoints.  I tried  to point out why I think the new perspective makes sense, but I want to go deeper.

Jane was talking about how there’s a split emerging between old-school L&D and new directions.  This is essentially the premise of the Revolution, so I’m sympathetic. She characterized each, admittedly in somewhat stark contrast, representing the past with a straw man portrait  of an industrial era, and a similar  version of a new and modern approach much more flexible and focused on outcomes, not on the learning event.  And I’ve experienced much of the former, and recognize the value of the latter.  It’s of course not quite as cut-and-dried, but Jane was making the case for change and using a stark contrast as a motivator.

Will responded to Jane with some pretty strong language.  He  acknowledged her points in a section where he talks about points of agreement, but then after accusing her of being too broad brush, he commits the same in his section on  Oversimplifications.  Here he  points out extreme views that he implies are the views being painted, but are overly stated as “always” and “never”.

Look, Will fights for the right things when he talks about how formal learning could be better. And Jane does too, when she looks to a more enlightened approach.  So let’s state some more reasonable claims that I hope both can agree with. Here I’m using Will’s ‘oversimplifications’  and infusing them with the viewpoints  I believe in:

1. Learners increasingly need to take responsibility for their learning,  and we should facilitate and develop it instead of leaving it to chance
2. Learning can frequently be trimmed (and more frequently needs to change the content/practice ratio), and we should substitute performance support for learning when possible
3. Much of  training and elearning is boring and we can and should do better making it meaningful
4. That people can be a great source  of content, but they sometimes  need facilitation
5. That using some sort of enterprise social platform can be a powerful source for learning, with facilitation and the right culture, but isn’t necessarily a substitute when formal learning is required
6. That on-the-job learning isn’t necessarily easy to leverage but should be a focus for better outcomes in many cases
7. Crowds of people  have more wisdom than single individuals,  when you  facilitate the process appropriately
8. Traditional learning professionals have  an opportunity to contribute to an information age approach, with an awareness of the bigger picture

I do like that Will, at the end, argues that we need to be less divisive and I agree. I think Jane was trying to point in new directions, and I think the evidence is clear that L&D needs to change. I think healthy debate helps, we need to have opinions, even strong ones, hopefully without rancor or aspersions.  I don’t know quite why Jane’s post triggered such a backlash, but I hope we can come together to advance the field.

Charles, in an engaging story, set the changes in work and the world as a basis for the 70:20:10 framework as a way to think about supporting learning going forward.  He elaborated the elements and the value to be uncovered via examples.

Abhijit used an unusual presentation deck of 2 sketch notes to present his very interesting thoughts and examples of living in perpetual beta, concluding that if L&D changes, it could be a catalyst for change.  A message very synergistic with the Revolution ;).

As I read more about how to create organizations that are resilient and adaptable, there’s an interesting emergent characteristic. What I’m seeing is a particular pattern of structure that has arisen out of totally disparate areas, yet keeps repeating.  While I haven’t had a chance to think about it at scale, like how it would manifest in a large organization, it certainly bears some strengths.

Dave Grey, in his recent book The Connected Company  that I reviewed, has argued for a ‘podular’ structure, where small groups of people are connected in larger aggregations, but work largely independently.  He argues that each pod is a small business within the larger business, which gives flexibility and adaptiveness. Innovation, which tends to get stifled in a hierarchical structure, can flourish in this more flexible structure.

More recently, on Harold Jarche‘s recommendation, I read Niels Pflaeging’s  Organize for Complexity, a book also on how to create organizations that are high performance.  While I think the argument was a bit sketchy  (to be fair, it’s deliberately graphic and lean), I was sold on the outcomes, and one of them is ‘cells’ composed of a small group of diverse individuals accomplishing a business outcome.  He makes clear that this is not departments in a hierarchy, but  flat communication between cross-functional teams.

And, finally, Stan McChrystal has a book out called Team of Teams,  that builds upon the concepts he presented as a keynote I mindmapped previously. This emerged from  how the military had to learn to cope with rapid changes in tactics.  Here again, the same concept of small groups working with a clear mission and freedom to pursue emerges.

This also aligns  well with the results implied by Dan Pink’s Drive, where he suggests that the three critical elements for performance are to provide people with important goals, the freedom to pursue them, and support to succeed. Small teams fit well within what’s known about the best in getting the best ideas and solutions out of people, such as brainstorming.

These are nuances on top of Jon Husband’s Wirearchy, where we have some proposed structure around the connections.  It’s clear that to become adaptive, we need to strengthen connections and decrease structure (interestingly, this also reflects the organizational equivalents of nature’s extremophiles).  It’s about trust and purpose and collaboration and more.  And, of course, to create a culture where learning is truly welcomed.

Interesting that out of responding to societal changes, organizational work, and military needs, we see a repeated pattern.  As such, I think it’s worth taking notice.   And there are clear L&D implications, I reckon. What say you?

#itashare

In an insightful article, Ken Majer (full disclosure, a boss of mine many years ago) has written about the need to have the right culture before executing strategy.  And this strikes me as a valuable contribution to thinking about effective change in the transformation of L&D in the Revolution.

I have argued that you can get some benefits from the Revolution without having an optimized culture, but you’re not going to tap into the full potential. Revising formal learning to be truly effective by aligning to how we learn, adding in performance support in ways that augment our cognitive limitations, etc, are all going to offer useful outcomes. I think the optimal execution stuff will benefit, but  the ability to truly tap into the network for the continual innovation requires making it safe and meaningful to share. If it’s not safe to Show Your Work, you can’t capitalize on the benefits.

What Ken is talking about here is ensuring you have values and culture in alignment with the vision and mission.  And I’ll go further and say that in the long term, those values have to be about valuing people and the culture has to be about working and learning together effectively.  I think that’s the ultimate goal when you really want to succeed:  we know that people perform best when given meaningful work and are empowered to pursue it.

It’s not easy, for sure.  You need to get explicit about your values and how those manifest in how you work. You’ll likely find that some of the implicit values are a barrier, and they’ll require conscious work to address. The change in approach on the part of management and executives and the organizational restructuring that can accompany this new way of working isn’t going to happen overnight, and change is hard.  But  it is increasingly, and will  be, a business necessity.

So too for the move to a new L&D. You can start working in these ways within your organization, and grow it.  And you should. It’s part of the path, the roadmap, to the revolution.  I’m working on more bits of it, trying to pull it together more concretely, but it’s clear to me that one thread (and as already indicated in the diagrams that accompany the book) is indeed a path to a more enabling culture. In the long term, it will be uplifting, and it’s worth getting started on now.