In the course of answering a question in an interview, I realized a third quip to complement two recent ones. The earliest one (not including my earlier ‘Quips‘) was “curation trumps creation”, about how you shouldn’t spend the effort to create new resources if you’ve already got them.  The second one was “from the network, not your work”, about how if your network can have the answer, you should let it.  So what’s this new one?

While I’ve previously argued that good learning design shouldn’t take longer, that was assuming good design in the first place: that you did an analysis, and concept and example design and presentation, and practice, not just dumping a quiz on top of content.  However, doing real design, good or bad,  should take time.  And if it’s about knowledge, not skills, a course doesn’t make sense. In short, doing courses should be reserved for when they are  really needed.

Too often, we’re making courses  trying to get knowledge into people’s heads, which usually isn’t a good idea, since our brains aren’t good at remembering rote information.  There are times when it’s necessary, rarely  (e.g. medical vocabulary), but we resort to that solution too often as course tools are our only hammer.  And it’s wrong.

We  should be trying to put information in the world, and reserve the hard work of course building when it’s proprietary skills sets we’re developing. If someone else has done it, don’t feel like you have to use your resources to do it  again, use your resources to go meet other needs: more performance support, or facilitating cooperation and communication.

So, for both principled and pragmatic reasons, you should be looking to resources as a solution before you turn to courses. On principle, they meet different needs, and you shouldn’t use the course when (most) needs can be met with resources. Pragmatically, it’s a more effective use of  your  resources: staff, time, and money.

#itashare

I’ve been a fan of Jane Hart since I met her through Jay Cross and we joined together in the ITA (along with colleagues Harold Jarche and Charles Jennings). And I’d looked at the previous edition of her Social Learning Handbook, so it was on faith that I endorsed the new edition. So I took a deeper look recently, and my faith is justified; this is a great resource!

Jane has an admirable ability to cut through complex concepts and make them clear. She cites the best work out there when it is available, and comes with her own characterizations when necessary. The concepts are clear, illustrated, and comprehensible.

This isn’t a theoretical treatment, however. Jane has pragmatic checklists littered throughout as well as great suggestions. Jane is focused on having you succeed. Practical guidance underpins all the frameworks.

I’m all the more glad I recommended this valuable compendium. If you want to tap into the power of social learning, there is no better guide.

Too often, Learning & Development (L&D) is looking to provide  all the answers.  They work to get the information from SMEs, and create courses around it.  They may also create performance support resources as well. And yet there are principled and pragmatic reasons why this doesn’t make sense.  Here’s what I’m thinking.

On principle, the people working closest to the task are likely to be the most knowledgeable about it.  The traditional role of information from the SME has been to support producing quality outputs, but increasingly there are tools that let the users create their own resources easily.  The answer can come in the moment from people connected by networks, not having to go through an explicit process.  And, as things are becoming more ambiguous and unique, this makes the accuracy to the context more likely as workers share their contexts and get targeted responses.

This doesn’t happen without facilitation. It takes a culture where sharing is valued, where people are connected, and have the skills to work well together.  Those are roles L&D can, and should, play.  Don’t assume that the network will be viable to begin with, or that people know how to work and play well together. Also don’t assume that they know how to find information on their own. The evidence is that these are skills that need to be developed.

The pragmatic reasons are those about how L&D has to meet more needs without resources.  If people  can self-help, L&D can invest resources elsewhere.  I suggest that curation trumps creation, in that finding the answer is better than creating it, if possible.

When I talk about these possibilities, one of the reliable responses is “but what if they say the wrong thing?”  And my response is that the network becomes self-correcting.  Sure, networks require nurturing until they reach that stage, but again it’s a role for L&D.  Initially, someone may need to be scrutinizing what comes through, and extolling experts to keep it correct, but eventually the network, with the right culture, support, and infrastructure, becomes a self-correcting and sustaining resource.

Work so that performers get their answers from the network, not from your work.  When possible, of course.

#itashare

I was reflecting on the two books I recently wrote about, Scaling Up and Changing the Game,  versus the cultural approach of the Learning Organization I wrote about years ago (and refer to regularly).  The thing is that both of the new books are about choosing either a very specific needed change, whether  determined by fiat  or based upon something already working well, whereas the earlier work identified general characteristics that make sense. And my thought was when does each make sense?  More importantly,  what is the role of Learning & Development (L&D; which really should be P&D or Performance & Development) in each?

If an organization is in need of a shakeup, so that a particular unit is underperforming, or a significant shift in the game has been signaled by new competition or a technology/policy/social change, the targeted change makes sense. As I suggested, some of the required elements from the more general approach are implicit or explicit, such as facilitating communication.  The  role here for L&D, then, is to support the training required for executives leading the shift in terms of communicating and behaving, as well as ongoing coaching.  Similarly for the behaviors of employees, and watching for signs of resistance, in general facilitating the shift.  However, the locus of responsibility is the executive team in charge of the needed change.

On the other hand, if the organization is being moderately successful, but isn’t optimized in terms of learning, there’s a case for a more general shift.  If the culture doesn’t have the elements of a real  learning organization – safe to share, valuing diversity, openness to new ideas, time for reflection – then there’s a case to be made for L&D to lead the charge on the change. Let’s be clear, it cannot be done without executive buy-in and leadership, but L&D can be the instigator in this case.  L&D here sells the benefits of the change, supports leadership in execution both by training if necessary and coaching, and again coaches the change.

Regardless, L&D  should be instigating this change within their own unit.  It’s going to lead to a more effective L&D unit, and there’re the benefits of walking the walk as a predecessor to talking the talk.

Ultimately, L&D needs to understand effective culture and the mechanisms to culture change, as well as facilitating social learning, performance consulting, information architecture,  resource design, and of course formal learning design.  There’re new roles and new skillsets to be mastered on the path to being an effective and strategic contributor to the organization, but the alternative is extinction, eh?

Like others, I have been seduced by the “what X are you” quizzes on FaceBook. I certainly understand why they’re compelling, but I’ve begun to worry about just why they’re so prevalent.  And I’m a wee bit concerned.

People like to know things about themselves. Years ago, when we built an adaptive learning system (it would profile you versus me, and then even if we took the same course we’d be likely to have a different experience), we realized we’d need to profile learning  a priori.  That is, we’d ask an initial suite of questions, and that’d prime the system. (And we  intended this profiling to be a game, not a set of quiz questions). Ultimately that initial model built by the questions would get refined by learner behavior  in  the system (and we also intended a suite of interventions ‘layered’ on top that would help improve learner characteristics that were malleable).

The underlying mission given us by my CEO was to help learners understand themselves  as learners, and use that to their advantage.  So, in addition to asking the questions, we’d share with them what we’d learned about them as learners.  The notion was what we irreverently termed the ‘Cosmo quiz’, those quizzes that appeared in Cosmopolitan magazine about “how good a Y” you are, where one  takes quizzes and then adds up the score.

Fast forward to now, and I began to wonder about these quizzes. They seem cute and harmless, but without seeing all the possible outcomes, it certainly seemed like it might not take that many questions to determine which one you’d qualify as.  Yes, in good test design, you ask a question a number of times to disambiguate.  But it occurred to me that you could use fewer questions (and the outcomes are always written intriguingly so you don’t necessarily mind which you become), and then wonder what are the other questions being used for.  And the outcomes here don’t really matter!

So, it’d be real easy to insert demographic questions and use that information (presumably en masse) to start profiling markets.  If you know other information about these people, you can start aggregating data and mining for information.  One question  I saw, for instance, asked you to pick which setting (desert, jungle, mountain, city), etc.  Could that help recommend vacations to you?

When I researched these quizzes, rather than finding concerns about the question data, instead I found that much more detailed information about your account  was allowed to be passed from Facebook  to  the quiz hoster.  Which is worse!  Even if not, I begin to worry that while they’re fun, what’s the motivation to keep creating new ones?  What’s the business relationship?  And I think it’s data.

Now, getting better data means you might get more targeted advertising.  And that might be preferable than random (I’ve seen some pretty funny complaints about “what made them think this was for me”).  But I don’t feel like giving them that much insight. So I’m not doing any more of those.  I don’t think they really know what animal/movie character/color/fruit/power tool  I am.  If you want to know, ask me.

I was in a recent conversation about a company facing strong growth and worried about the impact on culture.  Companies with a positive culture, a valuable offering, and a good business model are liable to face growth issues, and maintaining or starting a good culture becomes a critical issue to maintaining the organization’s success.

This company had a positive culture, in that people were diverse, friendly, upbeat, and committed to contributing. These are all positive elements that had led to the early success. Growth, both through hiring and acquisitions, was leading to concerns about the ability for those factors to continue.

One of the things that wasn’t obvious from the initial portrayal of the company was whether folks there were capturing and sharing what they were doing, how they were working, what challenges they were facing, and what results they were seeing. In a small company, this happens naturally through conversation, but face to face communication isn’t scalable.

One obvious possibility is to implement or more systematically leverage an enterprise social network (ESN; essentially    using social media in the org).  Working out loud, as it’s known, has many benefits.  As people share their work, others can comment and improve it.  People can ask for help and get collaboration on those new problems and innovation needs that are increasingly arising.  Mistakes can be made and the lessons learned can be shared so no others have to make the same mistakes.

One of the offshoot benefits of such sharing is that it takes the positive cultural attributes already being shown and makes them visible (if implicitly) as well.  It’s not guaranteed, but with an awareness of the behaviors and manifestations of culture through the network, a systematic process could lead to that positive culture scaling  and yield those additional benefits that accompany working out loud.

It takes all the elements of a learning culture and organizational change, of course. You need to continue to welcome diversity, be open to new ideas, and have it safe to contribute.  You also need to develop a vision, message it, have the leadership model it, facilitate it, anticipate problems and be prepared to address them, and ultimately reward the desired outcomes.  But this is doable.

The benefits of a positive culture are becoming known, and the value of social networks are also emerging. Linking them together is not only necessary, but the benefits are more than the sum of the parts.

#itashare