social Archives - Page 20 of 39

Carrying forward

13 November 2013 by Clark 1 Comment

During my presentation in Minneapolis on future-looking applications of technology to learning, the usual and completely understandable question came up about how to change an organization to buy-in to this new way of acting in the world: to start focusing on performance outcomes and not courses. I’m sensitive, because I have claimed that the change is needed. So I riffed off a couple of answers that I’ll offer for discussion:

For one, the question was how to start. I suggested making small changes in what was being done now: push back a bit on the immediate request for a course, and start really diving into the real performance problem. Then, of course, designing a solution for the real problem. I also suggested starting to chunk content into finer granularity, and focusing on the ‘least‘ that can be done. I didn’t add, but should’ve, that bootstrapping some community would be good, and I’d also suggest that you have to be ‘in it to win it’ (as the lottery would have it). You have to keep experimenting yourself.

I added that you should simultaneously start some strategic planning. That is, be looking at the larger picture of what can be done and where an organization should be, and then figure out what steps to take towards that in what order. When I run my elearning strategy workshops or for clients, some folks might need to start working on performance support, others might best benefit from initial efforts in social, and some might better start on improving learning design. And that’s all good, it’s what is right for them and where they’re at. But you won’t get there if you don’t start planning.

One of the attendees started asking further, and was already doing some prototyping, which triggered another response from me. Start prototyping different approaches. Web (including mobile web) is a really good way to follow on from choosing the early adopter to work with, finding an area where a small intervention can have a big impact, and get some initial measurable improvements to leverage. Iterate quickly.

As a final suggestion, I added that there likely is a need to ‘manage up’, that is educate your bosses and up about the need for the change. It’s really Org Change 101: you need to create a vision, get buy-in, spread the message (the benefits of change, as as Peter de Jager suggests, make it a choice), support and reward the change, get some early success, and leverage that going forward.

This seems like some sensible top-level approaches, but I welcome additions, revisions, improvements.

Moving forward

22 October 2013 by Clark Leave a Comment

Last week, I talked about what L&D could (and should) look like. In thinking about how to move folks forwards, I’m working on looking at various ways to characterize the different elements, and what various levels of profession should be. One of my first stabs is trying to get at the necessary core principles, and the associated approach to be taken. Here’s the thinking:

We start with the culture of the organization. What the culture should be doing is empowering individuals, providing them with support for learning. And that is not to provide all the answers, but to support people discovering the answer. The goal is to not only address optimal execution, but increasingly to address continual innovation, which comes from cooperation and collaboration. The goal is to augment their existing capabilities with appropriate skills and tools to focus on accomplishing the work to hand. And not reintroducing things that already exist or can be found elsewhere.

That means that formal learning really should be focused on proprietary activities. Don’t design training on commercial tools, that exists. Save the effort to do a real course for those things that are fixed for long enough and specific to your organization. And make it meaningful: contexts that the user gets, skills that the user recognizes are needed, and that will make a real impact on the business. Done properly, with sufficient practice, it will take time and money: formal learning should be expensive, so use those precious resources where and when it really should be applied.

Performance support is more likely to add value in the moment, helping augment our limited memory and working memory capacity. When people need to be focused on the task, designing or curating resources to be used in the moment is a more cost-effective option, though again to be used appropriately. If things are changing too fast, or the situation’s unique, there are better options. And when you are developing or sourcing support, realize that less is more. Look to be minimalist, and your performers (and the bottom line) will thank you.

If things are changing too fast, or the situation’s new and unique (which will be happening more often), the network is likely to be your best resource and likely should be your first. The role here is to make sure that the network is available and vibrant. Facilitation of dialog, and skills, will make this solution the most powerful one in a company that intends to thrive.

The infrastructure, beyond the usual integration of tools, needs to take another level down, and start treating content as an asset that drives outcomes. The steps that matter are to get detailed about the content structures, the model, underneath, and the associated governance. At the end, it requires a focus on semantics, what labels we have and how we define and describe content to move forward into personalization and contextualization.

Finally, we need to measure what we’re doing, and we have to stop doing it on efficiencies. How much it costs us per seat hour doesn’t matter if that time in the seat isn’t achieving anything. We need to be measuring real business effects: are we increasing sales, decreasing costs or errors, solving problems faster, decreasing time to market, increasing customer satisfaction, the list goes on. Then, and only then, should we be worrying about efficiencies. Yes, we should be smart about our investments, but all the efficiency in the world about doing something inane is just kind of silly.

So, does this make sense? Any tuning or clarification needed? Feedback welcome.

What does change(d) look like?

16 October 2013 by Clark 1 Comment

In an post this past spring, I opined that we do have to change. One obvious related question is what that change would look like. What would an effective L&D unit be doing, and what would the employee/manager/exec experience be? This is a longer topic, but here’re some initial thoughts that I really would welcome your thoughts on.

I see employees experiencing less ‘training’. As I’ve said, effective training is expensive when done properly, and should be used only when significant skill shifts are needed. It should only be for proprietary approaches, otherwise you should use others’ materials. And it only is for upskilling new employees (and only when needed), or when a significant change is happening.

I’d expect to see more performance support, easily accessible via user-centric portals and search and delivered when and where needed. Similarly social would play a much more central role, arguably our first recourse. Employees would be tightly coupled to their work teams, and more loosely coupled to their communities of practice. Teams would be diverse and flexible, and group work would be the norm.

Resources would be sometimes created, sometimes crowd-sourced within (or without) the organization, and sometimes curated. Much curation would happen by individual in communities monitoring the larger network, individuals in teams bringing in relevant elements from their communities, and sharing back reflections and outcomes that inform the community while communities would share back to the larger network. This is the vision of the Coherent Organization.

Managers would be playing a leadership and mentoring & coaching role rather than a directive role. They’d be looking to share the vision of goals and rationale, and then supporting performance aligned towards this goal. Executives would be aligning manager visions with organizational goals, monitoring performance, and facilitating infrastructure to support effective communication and cooperation, and well as establishing and maintaining a learning organization culture.

The L&D unit would need to be monitoring the effectiveness of communication and collaboration, management, and leadership, as well as experimenting with new tools to support the work. The L&D unit becomes responsible for the learning to learn skills, the learning and performance tools, and the corporate culture.

If organizations are to successfully couple optimal execution with continual innovation, particularly in times of increasing change and decreasing resources, the mechanisms for success transcend training. Providing support when needed, and leveraging the power of people will be key. Does this make sense? Next step: how do you get there?

#itashare

A personal look at crowd sourcing

8 October 2013 by Clark 6 Comments

The last time I had a beard was right before college graduation. I was off in the wilderness, and when I came back my razor was busted. So, I grew a beard that was largely red, and in terms of being well behaved, well, it made Gabby Hayes look well-groomed. So I’ve been clean shaven since (see to the right).

Well, that’s changed. To make a long story short, I had an extended period of time away from family and razor, and grew it out. When I came back, the reviews went from mixed to positive, not a negative word. Now, of course, you seldom hear from those who don’t like a look (wonder how many people do not like Quinnovation as a company name), but the important people (my immediate family) either initially or grew to prefer the new look. (Maybe the more of my face I cover, the better ;)

Well, this creates a conundrum, because I’ve plenty of promo photos out there for various speaking engagements that now are no longer appropriate. It was time for a new official photo (it was anyways, this is close to a decade old, and I do not want to be the guy who’s photo is decades out of date).

The official way to do this is to hire someone, but I perused the local options, and either they were sidelining portraits on top of weddings, babies, etc, or they used stock backgrounds. The pre-beard shot above was taken by my friend and colleague Jay Cross, chose it out of several candidates, and liked the more natural setting. So I got my wife to take a bunch of shots, and we (with my daughter’s help) went through them. They were all flawed for various reasons (some problems she saw and I didn’t, and there begins the tale; it was a collaborative project and decision). We tried again, and finally found two we liked. How to decide?

So I went out to a small group of colleagues who I could trust would give me straight feedback, and they reliably preferred one. This was a relief. However, there was a problem: my face was kind of dark against the background. And, lo, one of them stepped up and offered to work on the photo.

She kindly took the shadow off my face, and did another lightening up the whole picture. The former was better, but I was concerned that there wasn’t sufficient contrast, so she also created one that had the background muted. Her contribution was so valuable. Now I had two more to choose from: the more natural one or the one with the muted background. How to answer this?

So I went out to four of the groups I have or was going to talk for, and asked them which they would prefer for their brochures or websites. Of the 3 that responded, they all preferred the natural background (my preference). I’d converged on a new headshot.

More importantly, I had avoided my usual blind decisions, and got contributions all along the way that made the outcome better. Throwing out ego and being willing to ask for help isn’t my natural approach, as I hate to impose, but I know I don’t mind helping colleagues and friends, so I stepped out of my comfort zone and I’m so grateful they stepped up.

The take-home lesson for me is the power of communication and collaboration: crowd sourcing works. You may not like the new look, but it’s where I’m at, and it’s a lot better picture than I’d had if I tried to do it alone.

Making Sparks Fly

20 September 2013 by Clark 1 Comment

Last night I did a presentation for the San Diego chapter of ISPI titled ‘making sparks fly’. I used that concept to talk about a couple of my favorite topics: deeper instructional design, and social learning.

In the former, it’s about two things: getting the real cognitive underpinning right, and the emotional content, both integrated in a natural and elegant way. So you start with your objectives (at a high enough level, addressing real business needs). Then you immediately develop deep practice with core decisions embedded in meaningful contexts. You need sufficient practice to not get it wrong, as opposed to just getting it right. Then we elaborate with model-based concepts and story-based examples. All introduced in ways that engage the emotions as well as the mind, and closing that process off similarly addressing the emotional as well as the cognitive. The point being, if you’re going to do formal, do it right.

From there, I segued off to talk about social: the power of the additional processing you get from social learning. This includes sharing ideas, and collaborative work. Then, systematically looking at tools like blogs, wikis, profiles, feeds, and more for both formal and informal learning. The notion is that thinking and working ‘out loud’ are, in the right culture, better than not.

Formal learning (and I didn’t discuss performance support, after all it was ISPI :) addresses the optimal execution that will be just be the cost of entry going forward, while continual innovation requires the creative friction, the interpersonal interaction that generates new ideas. You need to have good learning and good performance support on those processes you can identify, but then you need to create the environment where folks are helping one another solve the new problems that arise, including new ideas. Engaging the learner, and the interaction, are both sparks to take what we do to the next level.

There’s more: culture, mindset, L&D role, and we touched on that, but in the broader picture, you want to start with social and performance support, only doing formal when you absolutely have to (as it’s dear). We need to stop doing formal only, and badly. We need to cover the spread, and do all well. Or else…

World first!

13 August 2013 by Clark 1 Comment

A few weeks ago, I posted that we should think social first. I want to amend my statement (I reserve the right to improve my recommendations :) to say “world first”, and clarify what I mean. Earlier, I posted about working backward and forward, and err on the side of putting information in the world first, and only put things in the head as a last resort (because formal learning is expensive).

What I’d suggested is that you should go to networks first, if the answer is out there. If not, you would try to use performance support (which, though not necessarily cheap, may be less expensive than formal learning in terms of time off task, etc). Formal learning is the recourse of last resort. However, I missed one element, which came up in a conversation.

The conversation had to do with not developing resources at all, except core ones. When someone wanted help with something, the option was to first try to point them to a video or book, or person. The goal is not to reinvent the wheel, reproduce resources, etc. Use the world first, and only pick up a secondary approach if the world doesn’t have it. In some sense that’s the social network, but it might be that the L&D department, in the course of their continual self-learning (hint hint, nudge nudge), would’ve curated a relevant resource, so it could come either from a pointer to a resource, or a question of others.

Then, the core content for an organization would be meta-learning: how to find resources, how to solve problems, etc. Something we were pushing about a decade ago. Ok, so you might also develop the values and mission of the organization as well. And of course proprietary processes, formulas, etc.

The focus, however, is and should be the Least Assistance Principle: what’s the least we can do for someone to get them safely back into their flow. The reality is we can’t meet all the needs in an era of increasing complexity, and we need to be more efficient and effective: giving good support but in the right modality. So, point to it if you can, develop the minimal support to move forward, and only put stuff into people’s heads when it absolutely has to be there. Fair enough?

Supporting Work

18 July 2013 by Clark 2 Comments

A number of years ago, I discussed a useful model that talks about how we solve problems in the world. In the piece, I talked about how when we can’t act, we try to find the answer (and if we do, we go back into action). Then if we can’t find the answer, we have to go into a problem-solving mode: we need to do research, experiment, and generally discover the solution. If we find a solution we should update the resources to help other people find the answer rather than having to rediscover it.

I was thinking about this in terms of the ways in which L&D can support this process, and started noting the ways in which we can help besides courses. I broke it up into two different forms of support: direct, and supporting the associated skills.

When we have an information need, we might need directories to people with various expertise (associated with Communities of Practice, presumably). We might design or curate useful information resources (how-to videos, job aids), and occasionally, when a significant skill shift is needed, we might design courses.

There are associated skills here, so communicating successfully with the experts who have the answer, or information literacy to develop the performer’s ability to find the answers themselves.

If the answer doesn’t already exist, then we might support learner with tools about problem solving, and research and problem-solving skills, as well as communication skills again to deal successfully with collaborators.

Finally, when the answer is found, might have tools to create resources and skills to edit existing resources.

First, this is by no means a complete list, as even in writing this I thought of design to create resources to support problem-solving, and information architecture to go along with information resources, and…you get the idea. The point is two-fold: we need to recognize how people actually act in the world, and we need to then find ways to support all the points of need, not just the ones we can design a course for. There are lots of opportunities!

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