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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

What is the Important Work?

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When you look at the changes going on in society, and the implications for business, you realize that there are some significant changes going on.   This isn’t news: things are moving faster, we’re having less resources available, our competition is more agile, the amount of relevant information is increasing, customers are more aware, the list goes on.   Does this mean something fundamental, however?

I want to argue that it does. Not surprisingly for regular readers, I think that the nature of work is changing.   The success factor for businesses will be, increasingly, the ability to:

  • continually innovate
  • conduct useful research
  • experiment
  • learn from mistakes
  • create new processes
  • solve problems
  • create new products/services/offerings/markets/businesses

In essence, to do the important work faster.   Call it knowledge work, call it concept work, the point is that execution will only   be the cost of entry, innovation will be the necessary differentiator.   The fact is, our brains are really good at pattern matching, and bad at rote work. Training people to do rote work is a dying enterprise. We should be reserving our brains for making decisions, dealing with ambiguity, and working together to create new understandings. That, increasingly, is the important work. And facilitating that work is job number one.

Now, I recognize that there’s a lot of work and businesses out there that are doing just fine as they are.   But that’s not the way to bet.   That’s likely to change in a relatively small window.   Some have postulated it on the order of 5 years.   No matter how cool your innovation is (c.f. the iPad), look how fast competitors come out (within months). That’s not a sufficient barrier to entry. And the work that’s not the important work?   Well, that could and should be outsourced or automated. Rote work isn’t how you add value, and create margins.

So, the important question becomes, how do we get the ability to do the important work?   And that, my friends, is why the ITA is on a crusade about wirearchy, personal knowledge management, social media, informal learning, and new L&D skills.   Because the only way to do the important work is to enable the power of your people. You need to get out of the old hierarchical ‘one thinks for many’ world, and start recognizing the importance of organization culture, of facilitating communication and collaboration, of enabling the necessary elements.

We believe that recognizing the inherent value of individual and collective capability, and honoring it with meaningful work and the best support, makes for more enjoyable and successful organizations.   We’re seeing the possibilities, tracking and developing the methods and tools, and helping organizations make the transition.   Are you ready to do the important work?

10 Social Media Rebuttals

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Jane Hart posted a tongue-in-cheek video by Ron Desi of 10 reasons why you should not have social media in the organization, and is collecting rebuttals.   I figured I should weigh in, so as not to be left out ;), but I’ll go on and list 10 reasons why you should want social media in your organization that aren’t aligned with the reasons not to! But first, the rebuttal:

10. Social media is a fad.

Communication has been at the core of being human since before the campfire.   Augmenting our capabilities with technology, using tools, yeah, that’s not new.   So using tools to facilitate communication is just natural evolution.   Was the computer a fad? The internet a fad?   Busted.

9. It’s about controlling the message.

You can’t control the message, and social media isn’t going to change that.   They   have phones, email, hallway conversations, parking lot conversations, and the social media cigarette break.     I won’t even go into why you’d want to control the message, because that comes up later in the list.

8. Employees will goof off.

This is redundant with the previous one. They’ll still have phones, email, paper, etc, e.g. lots of ways to goof off.   They’ll goof off regardless if you haven’t given them meaning in the work, but social media won’t affect it, yay or nay.

7. Social Media is a time waster.

They already have social media (email, phones, etc).   Are they wasting time with them, or using them to work?   Same argument as before: they’ll waste time or not, depending on the work environment, not the tool.   You have to make the environment meaningful and valuable, regardless of the technology!

6. Social media has no business purpose.

Again, they already have email. Do you use email for business?   What might they do with the ability to ask questions, provide hints, suggestions, and pointers?   To work together on a problem?   Business is communication.

5. Employees can’t be trusted.

See previous responses.   The tool doesn’t matter.   Either they can be trusted, or they can’t (and if they can’t, you’ve failed, not them).

4. Don’t cave into the demands of the millennials.

The generational differences myth has already been busted.   The evidence is that what the different generations want out of work really isn’t that different. What workers want are ways to achieve meaningful goals, and they want whatever tools will help them.   If there are new tools, get those tools into their hands!

3. Your teams already share knowledge effectively.

They may share as effectively as they   have been able to, but why would you limit them to what has been possible?   Why not empower them with what is now possible?

2. You’ll get viruses.

That’s a risk with all IT, and your IT department should block that at the firewall.   You don’t block other IT, you still have email, and ERPs, and other software.   Why would you treat this any differently?

1. Your competition isn’t using it, so why should you?

Aren’t you looking for every competitive advantage you can?   Why would you even think of not considering a possible advantage?

So let’s now turn this around, what is the advantage we’re talking about?

  1. You can do more work.   The tools provided are magnifiers of effort.   Tools in general are augments of our ability, and new tools mean either new abilities or more abilities.
  2. You can do more work independent of distance. Social media provides new tools to work together, independent of geographic location, so you can get contributions from the right people regardless of where they work and live.
  3. You can do more work independent of time. Social media tools are asynchronous as well as synchronous, so work can continue as needed.
  4. You can work faster.   The barrier to working quickly, the time for communications to percolate, is dropping. We can put richer media through faster.
  5. You can communicate better.   The richer media mean you can more effectively transit the message.
  6. You can collaborate better. The tools support not only communication, but also shared efforts on a single output.
  7. You can learn* faster. Learning’s critical, and by sharing that learning more seamlessly, the organization makes fewer mistakes, and fewer repeated mistakes.
  8. You can learn deeper. Your learning now is more richly connected through information resources, people and shared representations.   The dialog can go to a whole new level of understanding.
  9. You can innovate better. Learning faster and deeper means more problems-solved and more ideas generated, improved, and developed into solutions.
  10. You can succeed faster. The only sustainable edge will be the ability to out-learn your competitors.

Why wouldn’t you want to get more power in the hands of your people, to not just survive, but thrive?!?!

*Note that I do not mean formal learning here, I mean the broad definition of learning, and very specifically the type of learning that means exploring the unknown and creating new understandings: problem-solving, research, experimentation, creativity, innovation, new products, new services, new markets, new businesses.   That’s the type of learning needed, and needing facilitation.

The LMS Debate rides again

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Well, Saba called me out in an semi-anonymous (there’s a picture, but I don’t know who of, and there’s no name – in social media?) blog post on the LMS debate (a bit late to join the fray, no?).   I was surprised by the way they referred to me, but there you go(ng).   I made a comment which is awaiting moderation, but I’ll give it to you here in the interim:

I don’t know who to thank for this post, but glad to see it.   I would like to point you to a subsequent post:   When to LMS about why I don’t have a problem with the functionality, I have a problem with the philosophical stance.

Formal learning is necessary, and tracking it can be required, but it’s a small picture. When you look at the larger picture, as you talk about: user-generated content, etc, the notion that you can *manage* this activity becomes somewhat ludicrous.   And you don’t want to manage it so much as support it.   It’s the move from being an ‘instructor’ to a mentor, a facilitator.

I look at your list of capabilities, and I see support, and facilitation. Hear hear!   Great stuff.   It’s not management.   If you’re doing it task-centric, and community-centric, you’re doing it right, but then it’s not course-centric, and really you’re no longer coming from the perspective of where LMS emerged from.

Yes, Dave Wilkins of Learn.com and Tom Stone of Element K have already argued that the label is still needed in the marketplace, but I’m really trying to shift the way people think about what their role is, and to me using the label LMS is a major barrier to shifting out of the comfort zone.   And to me, that’s not just a game of semantics, it’s a fundamental perspective shift that’s necessary and desirable.

Yes, kudos to your customers who are getting much broader leverage from it than I‘m worried about. But despite your claim that my concerns are ‘old news‘, the results my colleagues saw at a recent elearning event in the UK, Allison Rossett‘s recent survey results, and my own client experience suggest that way too many organizations are still seeing things in the old way.

So, what do you think?

Collaborative co-design

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In my previous post, I mentioned that we needed to start thinking about designing not just formal learning content, or formal learning experiences, but learning experiences in the context of the informal learning resources (job aids, social tools), and moreover, learning in the context of a workflow.   I’d sold myself on this, when I realized just where my ITA colleagues would draw me up short: it’s still the thinking that we can design solutions a priori!

Things are moving so fast, and increasingly the work will be solving new problems, designing new solutions/products/services, etc, that we won’t be able to anticipate the actual work needs.   What we will need to do, instead, is ensure that a full suite of tools are available, and provide individuals with the ability to work together to create worthwhile working/learning environments.

In short, tying back to my post on collaboratively designing job aids, I think we need to be collaboratively designing workflows. What I mean is that the learning function role will move to facilitating individuals tailoring content and tools to achieve their learning goals.   (And not, I should add, to ‘accreditation‘!)

And that’s where I tie back to Explorability and Incremental Advantage: we need easy to use tools that let us build not just pages, but environments.   The ‘pods’ that you can drag around and reconfigure interfaces are a part, but there’s a semantic level behind it as well. No one wants to get tied to a) learning a complex system that’s separate from their goals, or b) depending on some department to do it when and where convenient for the department.

Obviously, providing a good default is the starting point, but if people can invest as much as they want to get the power they want to configure the system to work the way they want, with minimal assistance, we’re making progress.

So that, to me, facilitating the development of personal (and group) learning environments is a valuable role for the learning function, and a necessary tool will be an easily configurable environment.

Co-design of workflow

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I’ve talked before about how our design task will need to accommodate both the formal learning and the informal job resources, but as I’ve been thinking about (and working on) this model, it occurs to me that there is another way to think about learning design that we have to consider.

The first notion is that we should not design our formal learning solutions without thinking about what the performance support aspects are as well.   We need to co-design our performance support solutions along with our preparation for performance so that they mutually reflect (and reference) each other. Our goal has to be to look at the total development and execution of the task.

The other way I’ve now been thinking of it, however, is to think about designing the workflow and the learning ‘flow’ together.   Visualize the formal and informal learning flows as components within an overall workflow.   You want the performer focusing on the task, and learning tools ‘to hand’ within the task flow.   Ideally, the person is able to find the answers, or even learn some new things, while still in the work context. (Context is so important in learning that we spend large amounts to recreate context away from our existing work context!)

The point being, not only is formal learning and informal learning co-designed, but they’re both co-designed in the context of understanding the flow of performance, so you’re designing the work/learning context.   Which means we’re incorporating user-interface and user-experience design, as well as resource design (e.g. technical communications) on top of our learning design.   And probably more.

Now, are you ready to buy this?   Because I’d talked myself to this point and then realized: “but wait, there’s more. If you call now, we’ll throw in” an obvious extension. To be covered in the next and last post of this series (tying it back to the context of explorability and incremental advantage I started with in my last post.

Catching up…

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It’s been quite a while since I’ve blogged, and it’s not that there haven’t been learnings, it’s just that my dance card was too too full.   What with conferences, a week of radical fever, the mobile book manuscript coming due, and a week off in the woods, not to mention a full load of client work, it’s just been crazy here around the Quinnstitute.   I intend to get more organized, but let me toss off a c0uple of quick thoughts that may get elaborated more soon:

Mobile

The eLearning Guild‘s mLearnCon event was fabulous (as their events always are).   It was small and intimate, but with a palpable sense of excitement.   As I’ve mentioned before, I really think mobile is poised to be a revolution that will fundamentally affect how we use technology to support organizational performance. The conference reinforced that viewpoint significantly, with capabilities being expanded seemingly daily.

The key affordances mean you have computational power to augment your ability to do wherever and whenever you are, and that’s a big win.   Being able to do Personal Knowledge Management at the time of inspiration or need, or even of convenience, is huge.   Having your social network on tap on demand really augments your ability to work more effectively.

In short, doing mobile right means you’re more capable than without, and that’s a clear opportunity.   How do you make yourself smarter with your mobile device?

Social

The ongoing debates around social media for learning flummox me.   How can you not see that social augments formal learning (Jane Bozarth has a whole new book on the topic) as well as provides new opportunities for informal learning and performance support? Maybe you have to be ‘in it’ to get it, but then, get in it.

This is not to say that formal learning needs social learning, but rather that it supports it in many meaningful ways.   It’s also not to say it’s the only tool for meaningful performance support, but it’s a powerful one.   It’s certainly the necessary backbone for collaboration, inherently, but there’s also the somewhat ephemeral but valuable interpersonal contact, not just the information.

For example, Twitter has been a great source of information through the links people provide to interesting material, and in the ability to get questions answered. However, you can go further, as we have with #lrnchat.   There’re people I’ve met there that I’m eager to meet in person now that I know them on twitter, but even prior to that it’s valuable to have got to know them.

If you’re not already using chat (w/ or w/o video, e.g Skype), Twitter or equivalent, Facebook and/or LinkedIn, Google Docs, etc, you really do need to get that experience going to really understand the opportunities.

Business changes

It becomes ever clearer that the old way of doing business, even enlightened versions, are just not going to cut it.   The evidence mounts.   A compelling article I was pointed to today points out how and why incentives and management are contrary to optimal performance.   What the article doesn’t do, of course, is help you figure out how to make the switch.

In talking with my Internet Time Alliance colleagues, we see that you need to provide infrastructure, develop skills, modify culture, and scaffold transition.   This isn’t easy, but it’s doable.   The article cites a number of examples.   However, incrementalism doesn’t cut it, it takes a serious commitment to change.

It’s early days, but I reckon it’s time to get a jump on it. Those companies that have made the switch are seeing benefits, and I reckon that the increasing pressures will make it simply the only viable survival strategy.

Escape

I can speak first hand to the value of time away.   There is the conscious reflection, like the thoughts I want to solve that I key up before a shower or a jog, and then there’s just ‘off’ time to let things ferment on their own (I prefer fermentation to percolation or incubation since I like the outcome more).   And, if you do it right, there are side benefits.

Serendipitously, after putting the manuscript to bed for the mobile book, we were scheduled with some wilderness time. I’d booked two days of ‘meals only’ at Yosemite’s Glen Aulin High Sierra Camp, and a night at Tuolomne Meadows Lodge two nights before.   My intention was to spend one night in the wilderness on the way to the HSC, giving the lad and lass their experience of actually having to pump water and cook your own food in the wilderness.   This is part of a strategy to get them into the wilderness experience with a maximum amount of experience and an appropriate amount of effort (previously we’d twice done the 1 mile hike into May Lake HSC for meals-only, with them carrying their clothes and our superlight down bags).

Despite a hiccup that turned serendipitous (we had to take a longer route in, but it turned out to be a much less mosquito-laden trail), we had a great time. The kids had to push through a mental barrier or two each at times, but both succeeded and commented on the view and the experience positively.   The Grand Canyon of the Tuolomne is truly a spectacular spot, and Waterwheel Falls turned out as stunning as I had recalled.

The nice thing for me was being completely off the grid for 4 days. While I had my iPhone (used the GPS function a couple of time), I couldn’t get a signal and check email or twitter.   I put work essentially out of my mind and focused on family.   I came back feeling quite refreshed!   Actually, it’s hard to get back into work, but that’s ok too, as I’ll get back in gradually.

The take-home, of course, is to take some time with those significant in your life and get away from work completely.   Recharge your batteries, reflect, and have some fun!   Here’s hoping you are getting some ‘me’ time this summer.

The Social Media Cigarette Break

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In the course of my interviews for the mobile learning book, Robert Gadd (OnPoint Digital) made a comment that’s stuck with me.   He opined that the new ‘cigarette’ break was the social media break where employees will stand outside with their mobile phone and check in on their social networks.   The reason, of course, being that their companies block social media access via their IT infrastructure.

As a grad student, I took a summer consulting job with a defense contractor looking at their education policies.   At the time (and this was circa early 80’s), the company was investing in a new IT system (we’d now call it an ERP system).   I remember this because the company asked that the vendor turn off the email system as they didn’t want folks frittering away time being social.   These employees had phones, but the company didn’t trust them with email for some reason!

Now, of course, we would be hard-pressed to conduct business without email. I know many of my cutting-edge colleagues are talking about life beyond email these days, but it’s still a mainstream tool, for better or worse.   We wouldn’t think of not allowing it, in fact we’re expected to provide it for employees.   Yet that same mentality of not trusting employees to use resources responsibly comes in with social networks.   We’ll trust employees not to steal office supplies, and use phones and email responsibly, but we won’t trust them with “the web”!   Instead, we block access to certain sites.

The lack of trust in employees is sad.   I believe in education over censorship, coupled with careful observance to ensure that there are no abuses. It says a lot if you feel you have to restrict your employees instead of letting them know what the expectations are and ensure that they can follow the guidelines.

The worst part, to me, however, comes from the recognition that it’s no longer about ‘know how’ but about ‘know who’.   With my ITA colleagues helping me recognize that increasingly “work is learning and learning is work”, and that conversation is the best learning technology, cutting off folks from their networks is like cutting off part of their brain and still expecting them to be productive!

I always joke about how we cut off the flow of blood to the brain before we expect men to conduct business (my take on the business ‘tie’), but this is really a serious impediment to successful problem-solving in the coming workplace where continual problem-solving and innovation is necessary. Innovation isn’t solitary, and your best colleagues are not necessarily in your workplace.   You may need some discretion, but that’s already covered by policies about communication, and mediated interaction isn’t any different.

I reckon connecting to your colleagues is as important to work, going forward, as is your schooling and experience.   It’s the network, baby, so enable connections, don’t stifle them!

Wizardly Collaboration and HyperCard

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I was talking to my colleague Harold Jarche the other day about the changes in work needs and it triggered a thought. Normally, when we talk about performance support and collaboration, we think of creating job aids. Yet I believe that, increasingly, interactive performance support will be more valuable in generating meaningful outcomes. It occurred to me that there was a missed opportunity: editable wizards.

Now, when I talk about wizards, I mean software tools that interact with us to ask some questions and then can use that information to do complex things for us like filling out our taxes or configure our email. This is fine for things that are static, but increasingly, things are dynamic. The question then becomes how we make more flexible, less brittle, tools.

In content, we are using wikis as tools that are open for collaborative updating. Wikipedia of course being the best known example. These are powerful ways for a community to keep a body of knowledge up to date. Can we have an intersection?

The idea that occurred to me was to have collaborative wizards; wizards written in a simple but reasonably powerful language that are open for editing. Rather than Wikzard, I thought I’d call it a Wizki (pronounced “whisky”, of course :).

Admittedly, having a simple but powerful language is non-trivial, but then I was reminded of HyperCard (which several of us reminisced about fondly just a short while ago). HyperCard was a simple environment to build applications in, with the property of ‘incremental advantage‘ that Andi diSessa touted years ago. Imagine having a collaborative HyperCard! It could be done.

Of course, there are other simple programming environments (Scratch comes to mind), but we really need a simple (and cross-platform!) environment to develop applications again, and moreover a collaborative one is the next logical step in user-generated content.

I reckon it is past time to develop passive content, and start sharing interactions. What do you say?