The Entreprise Collaborative has a new question, asking whether we can formalize informal learning.   I have to say, I don’t get the question.   That is, I understand what they’re asking, and like the response they give, but I really think it’s the wrong question.

To me, it’s not about formalizing informal learning so much as explicitly supporting it versus ignoring it.   Like the proverbial ‘stuff’, informal learning happens.   Period.   To me, it is more a matter of providing infrastructure to support informal learning, and facilitating informal learning as well.

When I talk about providing infrastructure, I’m talking about putting in place tools that can be used for informal learning.   That means ways to share media (whether text, audio, or video), to comment, to edit and improve, to collaborate, etc.   Part of that supporting is looking at new tools, and seeing if they provide new ways to work.   Wikis are a major advance on top of emailing documents around in many ways, and similarly microblogs have provided new capabilities.

Then there is the facilitation of that informal learning.   I see two roles. One is optimizing the tool use, and the other is facilitating the associated skills.   For the former, tools can be used poorly or well. For example, it’s no good having portals if they’re multiple, organized around institutional silos instead of tasks, roles, or interests.   There’s a role for integrating tools into a coherent user experience.

The second role is to develop individual ability to use the tools for learning, both independently and socially.   To repeat a regular refrain, don’t assume the ability of learners to be effective self- and social-learners.   There are specific meta-cognitive skills that should be made explicit, promoted, and supported.

This, to me, is how you optimize an organization’s ability to learn: by making the environment conducive to informal learning.   In the process of facilitating, you may find opportunities to add value by taking some information and formalizing it, e.g. building a job aid around some information generated by users, or providing some guidelines about capturing videos, but I don’t think of that as wrapping structure around informal learning so much as transferring information.   Are you formalizing informal learning?   I don’t really care what you want to call it, to be honest. What I care about is empowering organizations to change in productive ways.   And that’s an important goal no matter what you want to call it.

There is a lot of concern about incorporating social learning into organizations centering on the organizational and culture issues.   I gave my “Blowing up the training department” presentation last nite for Massachusetts ISPI chapter, and a number of the questions were on getting the executives to buy in to the need, and then changing the culture. My recent post on problem-solving similarly raised such questions.

As Kevin suggested, if you asked executives “Do you support problem-solving, sharing and reflection, reward diverse participation, and encourage individual initiative?”, they would answer in the affirmative.   However, if you asked below that level, you might find a different viewpoint.

This reminded me of an earlier post on attitudinal change, where the first step was to make folks aware of their own attitudes.   I think it might be similarly necessary to help make executives aware of the reality, not what they believe.   An audit might be a good tool to invoke, assessing the realities of the possibilities to contribute, the rewards, as well as the actual behaviors and beliefs of the individuals in the organization.   Eventually, you have to characterize the organization on dimensions of being a learning organization, including supportive learning environment, leadership, and processes and practice.

If you can present individuals with the reality, as the attitude change model suggests, you then have the opportunity to present alternatives, and evaluate the tradeoffs involved. For instance, changing cutlure is hard. However, the consequences of not changing may be worse!   Then, if you can get commitment to change, you have the necessary buy-in to start organizational change processes.

It seems clear to me that change can’t happen without an awareness of the real situation and it’s consequences.   Org change requires leaders to proselytize and walk the walk.   That only happens when they’re really committed, and that requires them to acknowledge the gap and the need.

I’m continually exploring the needs and solutions possible, but it’s clear we can’t avoid the tough issues and have to come up with approaches to address them.   These tactics are, I’m sure, not new, but you need the tools to move forward.   Learning culture audit anyone?

I love talking with my Internet Time Alliance colleagues, they’re always sparking me to new thoughts.   In our chat, we were talking about learning, and I riffed off Charles’ comment about defining learning to opine that I see learning as a persistent behavior change (in the same context).   It’s very behaviorist-influenced (given that I’m a cognitive/connectionist/constructivist type), but the point is that it needs to manifest.   Otherwise, you get what we cog types call ‘inert knowledge’, you can recite it back on a test, but when it’s relevant in the world it never gets activated!

However, it got me to thinking about individual versus group behavior.   And I realize that there were some key points I take as foundational:

• that orgs will need innovation
• that innovation isn’t solitary
• thus, that improving collective innovation requires collaboration
• and that collaboration requires culture & infrastructure

I’ve argued before about how the increasing rate of change, capability, and more mean that executing against a total customer experience is only the cost of entry, and that continual innovation will be necessary. Competitors can reproduce a product or service quickly.   Technology advances provide new opportunities to improve products, processes, and services. So, you need continual innovation (which I think of as continual learning, as problem-solving, new {process|product|service} development, creativity, research, etc are all learning).

Now, Keith Sawyer has made the point that, in general, innovation isn’t individual.   In reality, individuals build upon one another’s work continually.   Sure, one person may be responsible for an innovation, but that’s not the way to bet.   Collective intelligence is the way to get the highest and continual output.

As a consequence, collaboration is needed.   The right people need to get together in the right way to address the right problem at the right time.   If you’re not collaborating, you’re suboptimal and therefore vulnerable.   Recognize the attendant issues: you have to be willing to tolerate failure, share mistakes as well as successes, and provide time for reflection!

To do that requires the double context of a supportive culture, and a facilitative infrastructure. There have to be ways to find the right collaborators, to understand the context, to share solutions, to test and evaluate, and to impact the way things are done.   And there have to be rewards for doing so.

That’s both the opportunity and the challenge on the table, and that’s why I hang w/ my posse.   We’d love to talk with you about it.

Entreprise Collaborative, a cross-cultural endeavor bridging English and French to provide a jumping off point on organizational collective intelligence (and co-led by my Internet Time Alliance colleague Harold Jarche), is launching a blog carnival.   The first topic is: the future of the training department in the Collaborative Enterprise.

I’ve written before about the changes I see coming for organizations (e.g. here), and they’re driven by the changes I am seeing in business and in society.   Things are moving faster, and this has all sorts of consequences: it means that change is occurring more frequently, information is doubling, our competition is more aggressive, and more.   Really, we’re unmasking the chaos that we’ve been able to cover with observed patterns, and explain away the excepti0ns. Well, now the patterns are changing fast enough that we can’t expect to be able to plan, prepare and execute to succeed. We have to be more nimble, more agile.   In short, we have to move away from depending on formal learning to be able to cope, and we need a new solution.

The solution is to empower individuals so that they’re pulling together.   No longer can a few do the thinking for everyone, as we see in a hierarchical organization. Instead, we need to make sure everyone understands what the overall goal is, and have them work together to achieve it.   We need to tap into the collective intelligence of the entire organization. This is a redefinition of learning as performance, incorporating problem-solving, innovation, creativity, design, research, and more.

That means a number of things: we need to be explicit about goals, transparent about processes, supportive about collaborative skills, and proactive in creating a culture that fosters and nurtures the necessary approaches.   This doesn’t come for free.   Who is responsible for ensuring this works?

In some organizations it’s the information services group, or the knowledge management group.   And they certainly should be on board; ideally you don’t want a hodgepodge of different systems to do the same thing, you want a coordinated environment that supports lessons learned in one area to be easily shareable elsewhere in the organization.   At core, however, I believe that folks who understand learning have to be part of the picture.   They may not own it, but they need to be actively facilitating across the organization.

And this, to me, defines the future of   the training department.   It can no longer be just about courses.   It’s got to include performance support, and informal learning. It’s got to be about culture, and learning together skills, and facilitating productive information interchange and productive interactions. We have technologies now to empower user-generated content, collaboration and more, but the associated skills are being assumed, which is a mistake.   The ability to use these tools will continually need updating and support.

This should not be threatening or anxiety-inducing!   Training used to be important, as skilled workers were critical.   As we’ve automated more work and started developing training for more knowledge work without adapting our methods (and, consequently, making generally dreadful learning experiences), the training role is less and less seen as worthwhile. The opportunity to reestablish a strategic role in the organization should be viewed with excitement, and taken up as the gift it is!

So, I see the future of the training department being as learning facilitators, and the path there to be to take on more and more of that role.   In the future, I reckon, learning facilitators will be partners with the technology infrastructure units in providing an innovation infrastructure, a performance ecosystem.   These facilitators will be (virtually) distributed across the enterprise just as the technology infrastructure is.   Yes, there’s likely some re-skilling involved, but it beats irrelevancy, or worse.   Here’s to redefinition!