Over at the TogetherLearn blog, I’ve posted an article about another way to think about the benefits of social learning. I’ve been concerned that the talk about chaos and emergent practice may seem too ephemeral to hard-nosed business decision makers, so I tried to make the goal concrete, or at least visual.
Then, of course, the important thing is the path to get there. Check it out!
Why is the world getting more complex? Certainly, we’re getting more information, and technology is increasing the rate at which we can sense, and respond (reducing product cycle times, for instance, as someone can replicate what you’ve developed very quickly). There’s a lot more pressure, as a consequence. But is it something fundamental?
I was pondering Dave Snowden’s Cynefin framework (wonderful 4 minute video explaining it), particularly the chaotic domain and it’s prescription (roughly “do something, and hope to move it to one of the other quadrants”). It’s kind of a deep concept, but basically there are: simple topics where there’s one right answer (which we ought to automate, in my opinion); complicated issues, where we need expertise; complex issues, which we can only explain in retrospect but can adapt in, and the chaotic space.
It’s the latter that concerns me, it seems to be a case of “abandon hope, all ye who enter here”. Ok, seriously, it’s a place where the approach has to be much more experimental. I reckon it’s a place that most managers and even executives want to ignore. And yet, I believe that the world is going more and more in that direction. In fact, I’m beginning to believe we’re at a inflection point where we suddenly need to realize that ‘management’ just won’t cut it. Sure, for legacy industries, for a while. But why? Why is this fundamentally different?
I think that things moved slow moved enough that while they really were chaotic, the general patterns were good enough most of the time. But things have increasingly gotten faster, accelerating, to the point where those seemingly random shifts are happening so fast that they undermine staid process.
It’s not the information overload, and I began thinking that it is, instead, how quickly ideas can take hold. It’s not things that are the dominant factor here, it’s people. People’s reactions to marketing campaigns, messages, etc are largely unpredictable, and the likelihood and consequences of something going ‘awry’ are increased. The so-called ‘viral’ message is increasingly a disruptive factor. And why is that?
I started thinking about how long it took for ideas to spread. In the past, they could spread in a community by word of mouth over hours or days, depending on the ‘salience’ of the idea. However, a community was sort of 150 people, if you take a Dunbar’s number approach. Propagating outside of that was a critical juncture, and used to be quite hard. Someone had to travel between communities, believe, and be a good transmitter. Print as a major shift, and so too was the printing press. Suddenly it became easier to transmit a powerful meme powerfully. And it’s gotten easier with the telegraph, and the phone, and email, and…
If new ideas that are powerful can take hold quickly with minimal friction, their disruptive influence is magnified. Rightly or wrongly, a fun or powerful idea can catch fire and be a game-changer. If there’s the possibility for almost instantaneous spread, we’re truly past the point of no return in terms of chaos.
Which brings me to Twitter. Even the latest web page had to be emailed and there wasn’t a quick way to get the message around in a broadcast style except if the mainstream media picked it up, or you had an established network. Spreading beyond your network was difficult.
Enter Twitter. For the first time, a viral meme can spread almost instantaneously, reaching critical mass in the amount of time required for a few retweets. It’s a network of one to many, and 140 chars is about perfect for ‘meme’ length. It’s just a twitch to pass a message on. I’m not saying Twitter itself is the force of change, I’m saying it’s emblematic of the change.
If someone’s thought captures a new thought, or plays with an existing idea in an intriguing new way, it can spread almost instantaneously. Much more so than before. That’s a power that can be used for good or bad. Companies should be mindful that a misstep can reach many really quickly (time to get on the ClueTrain!). And breaking news can spread before the media reach the masses (cf flight 1549 landing in the Hudson).
I doubt this idea is new, and you’re free to point out where I’m wrong or who said it before, but it struck me that this is indicative of the changes we, our communities, our organizations, and our society face. Which leads me to think it’s time to take this phenomena seriously. So I’ll venture a meme, an oldie but a goodie, “World Peace, NOW!”. Here’s hoping…
Last night we held the first #lrnchat, a Twitter learning chat. As mentioned before, it was an idea from Marcia Conner based upon her previous experience with other chats and enthusiasm for Twitter. It was an interesting experience, with it’s plusses and minuses. There were great topics, and some interesting technical issues. The latter first:
I finally ‘graduated’ from TwitterFox (a plugin for Firefox, and a great way to start Twittering) to TweetDeck, an AIR application. It’s more sophisticated, but then it’s another application I’m running in parallel (what with iChat, Adium, and Skype all running, and now TweetDeck, Mail, and Firefox, before I’m working in any apps, I’ve got a lot of RAM and CPU cycles being sucked up. However, I went to TweetChat, a website that provides an interface just for such chats, because it only follows your hashtag, and automatically puts it in your tweets. That worked well.
However, what my colleague Sky (Jim Schuyler) noticed was that all those tweets were flooding the twitterverse. In fact, he found out about #lrnchat by a sudden flurry of tweets from some people he knew, including me and Marcia Conner (why he hadn’t seen the earlier tweets about it is a curiosity :). That’s the downside: that all those tweets go out to your followers, who may not know what’s going on. Harold Jarche also opined that maybe Twitter wasn’t the right tool for chatting. It’s an interesting issue, but it’s really all about tradeoffs. For example, Meebo is more dedicated to chat, but there’s more overhead to get hooked up (it connects all IM channels, but you’d have to be on IM). If you’re on twitter, you saw the message and could participate. However, I admit I felt bad if anyone who watches my tweets felt inundated (let me know; valuable feedback).
I previously found it the situation that if you have new channels, new people can find ways to express themselves. I think chat has some great affordances, as you don’t have to take turns, there can be parallel conversations going, and it doesn’t take a lot of bandwidth. You couldn’t do it in video or audio. There might’ve been times I wanted to draw a picture (as I did in a small TogetherLearn chat with Harold and Jay the other day). Still, a potentially powerful channel (as I find when serving as a backchannel for a presentation).
Interestingly, the amount of activity on Twitter with #lrnchat suddenly peaking triggered some automatic signification that #lrnchat was a trend, and we got some auto-pings to fill out a definition of what #lrnchat was at What The Hashtag! Which of course brought in some people looking for ‘action’ and to flog their personal issues. Even in the discussion, the mention of Yammer brought in the Yammer team mentioning some of their case studies, which got a bit annoying. The risks of popularity, I guess.
Another issue, besides tool, was whether 2 hours were too much. While we expect some to have to drop out, or drop in late, is it useful or valuable to go that long, or would shorter be better?
However, I really liked the chat format. As Marcia reminded us, when it gets fast, there may be too much to follow, but that you should just take the value you found. There were some sparkling gems in the conversation, and valuable information. It was very worthwhile. While it may be only one channel, it certainly seems a valuable one for some (maybe those, like me, who read and/or type fast).
The topics ranged from organizational barriers to Twitter (hence the mention of Yammer as a solution maybe more appropriate for a company with more than a few people, as it has some knowledge management capabilities as well), to the value (or not) of Twitter. We covered case studies (and the lack thereof), the nature of the necessary culture, the role of informal learning in the organization, and more. Apparently some were able to view the archive and catch up quickly, so it’s not only a ‘you had to be there’, though I don’t know if it’s easily accessible post-hoc (going back now to both TweetChat and WTHashtag weren’t particularly useful just now).
Overall, I think the notion of having a regularly scheduled chat on learning is very valuable. What mechanisms are the right ones, is, to me, still an open question. So there you go: what do you think?
Blame it on Marcia Conner (@marciamarcia), who’d been participating in Twitter chats for journalists and editors. She found them educational, and prodded a couple of us that maybe we should create the same sort of thing to talk about learning. We visited a few other chats, and it seemed worth experimenting with (it’s our duty, after all!). One thing led to another, and here we are:
The first learn chat happens *this* Thursday, 5PM – 7PM PT, 8-10 PM ET. What do you have to do?
To participate, you need a Twitter account, and then at the annointed time you can:
a) go to TweetChat where you use your Twitter account information to login, and when prompted for the room name, say lrnchat,
b) use Twitter search for the hashtag #lrnchat and put that in all your posts if you want your tweets to be part of the chat, or
c) use Twitter apps like Tweetdeck or Tweetgrid to seek out comments from other chatters.
Make sense?
I expect for this first chat we’ll talk about twitter itself and the tweet chat process, as well as identifying possible topics for subsequent chats. The success of previous tweet chats has depended on a regularly scheduled time, so that time on Thursdays will be a regular gig. It’s like a chatroom, but using Twitter (low overhead). There’ll be a moderator for each chat to toss out questions and keep us sort of on point.
Hope to see you there! Please feel free to spread the word to other learning, development, performance professionals who are on Twitter.
Clark Quinn (@quinnovator)
Mark Oehlert (@moehlert)
Marcia Conner (@marciamarcia)*
*Who tidied my prose
I’ve been reading John Taylor Gatto lately, and one of his points is interesting to me from the perspective of social media. His claim about schools is that they’re dehumanizing (deliberately). He claims that many of our institutions (and he means more than schools, but groups, organizations, etc) are really networks, not communities, and can’t provide the nurture we need from others: “Networks do great harm by appearing enough like real communities to create expectations that they can manage human social and psychological needs.”
This got me thinking about social media, and how often we call them online communities, but the question is: are they really? At the same time, Marcia Conner was asking for examples of how someone’s Twitter/Facebook (T/FB) comments have changed your opinion of them. Personally, I have to say that, in general, the extra ‘human’ bits that show through in T/FB have fleshed out some people I haven’t met and now want to.
Blogs tend to be more formal (tends, mind you), while Twitter and Facebook cross the boundary into informal. LinkedIn and Ning networks that I’ve participated in professionally are just that, professional. And maybe then not worthy of being called communities? What’s critical in making the transition from network to community? Certainly people will help one another out (Tony Karrer talks about how he uses networks to ask questions), but you might not ask for help on a personal issue there. Or would you?
Your mileage may vary, of course. So two questions: is there a difference between a community and a network, and is it important? And, if so (and I’m not certain, but leaning to the answers being yes and yes), should we keep them separate, have different ones for either, and can we have real community virtually? I’m inclined to believe that you can have real community online, but it’s not the same as a network, and that may not be a bad thing. You have to work with lots of people, but only with some of them will you want to share your problems, beliefs, and values. It’s the latter that’s a community. And while networks are valuable, communities are precious.
I spent yesterday touring the Web 2.0 expo (part of the time with fellow miscreant Jay Cross), and it led me to think a bit more about social media tools and approaches. After touring the floor, having lunch, and touring the floor some more before the keynotes, my reflections have to do with hybrids and implementation.
We were prompted to visit Blue Kiwi, which is probably the leading European social media platform. Talking to them, and the others there (Vignette & Lithium) has me reflecting more broadly. Mzinga is clearly targeted at the learning space, being integrated with an LMS. Vignette, on the other hand, started as a CMS for KM, but then added social media around it. Drupal is an open source CMS that’s been used for social media, and Elgg similarly started as an open source portfolio tool but has expanded.
It’s an interesting question about whether to keep your social media separate from your other tools, or to couple them with some other core functionality. Vignette’s story about building on their core content management system supporting knowledge management makes sense from the point of view of mining value out of the discussions. Yet, for a learning group, Mzinga’s integration of formal and informal learning is also plausible. And, of course, there’s now Sharepoint’s integration of social tools around resources.
On the other hand, a pure focus on social networking may be the more natural framework, but how do you get power to leverage the content generated? Coupling them makes sense if you’re coming from one direction or another, but I’m trying to integrate formal, content management, knowledge management and more into a seamless ecosystem. Do you integrate, or do you have APIs to couple capabilities? On one hand, an integrated solution is less work than an integration exercise, but on the other hand, I don’t expect there to be one all-singing-all-dancing solution. Tony Karrer, riffing off of BJ Schone’s post which emphasizes making things work and play well together, looks to LMS vendors partnering more, and I reckon that loose coupling makes sense. However, I don’t know if having a separate app for blogs, wikis, and all works, as you want profiles and discussions to be integrated, so reckon you do want a social media environment, or you’ll have to use a lot of glue. I’m still wrestling with this.
What definitely makes sense is having an implementation strategy for success. Lithium was advertising ‘successful’ communities, and so I naturally inquired about their approach. They said that they don’t start small, because to succeed you need critical mass. I asked about incenting the connectors and content producers, and they indicated that was part of their strategy as well. They indicated that there was a VIP room exclusively for big contributors where they could hobnob with the C-suite. Getting the C-suite to actually play struck me as a success factor, but hard to guarantee a priori. They almost seemed more a services firm though they did claim to have a solution as well. (I have to admit that their firm’s title, however, makes me think of chemical psychotherapy, not a great mental image.)
As a contrasting approach to success, Blue Kiwi’s pricing model is based around the activity in the system: if you’re not using it, you’re not getting value, and consequently you shouldn’t pay. Their threshold seems low: 2 accesses a month constitutes chargeable activity, whereas I would say 2 a week would be more indicative, but the cost for that activity is relatively low. What excites me, however, is the notion of measuring and trying to charge for the activity as an indirect measure of value. A more direct measure, the knowledge grown, seems to be a really exciting opportunity.
I’m realizing that what’s really important is the knowledge shared, and grown. I reckon that optimizing performance is going to be just the cost of entry, and the competitive advantage will be the generation of new opportunities. The key, then, is accelerating the growth of accessible actionable knowledge. So that’s what I’m focusing on. How about you?
The controversy surrounding the formal/informal roles has suddenly created a flurry of excitement around a post on eLearn Mag. However, I’ve addressed it over at the TogetherLearn site, as it seemed somewhat appropriate to respond from the perspective of a champion of social and informal learning.
In short, I point to the issues covered in the Broken ID series, and say that formal instruction isn’t the greatest thing to champion in it’s current form. It may persist, but hopefully in a far better state than most formal we see today. No one’s championing the demise of formal, but certainly improvement, and in conjunction with informal, not as a single solution.
In my last post, I referenced John Seely Brown’s mention of dispositions, and I think it’s worthwhile to try to represent and discuss his point here, as it’s relevant to social learning, organizational culture, and success, topics I’ve mentioned in the past.
In The Power of Dispositions, JSB & Douglas Thomas (Ubiquity) argue that we need more than skills for 21st century education. They suggest that there exists an innate disposition of productive inquiry, an inclination (in particular contexts) to engage in a continual cycle of questioning and answering that leads the individual through a process of ongoing learning. It’s about knowing, not about knowledge. They suggest: “more basic than a skill; it is an embodied element of how we understand and perceive the world”.
They argue that by placing questions of meaning, and focusing on contexts and inquiry rather than content and results, we make environments conducive to these dispositions. Naturally, some of their observations are based in computer games, where I’ve argued contextualized challenge creates the most meaningful exploration and, consequently, learning.
I believe there’s something fundamental here, but am also left a bit dissatisfied, as there’s no obvious prescription, and I’m impatient to change the world. However, I have to agree that what I see in the schooling my children face, specifically in the transition to middle school, is that the teachers are not providing any context about why it’s important, nor working to make it meaningful, and focusing on product and not process. (This is true of too much of our learning, organizational as well.)
I do believe that if we put up interesting challenges and support the process of exploration we can make more meaningful learning, and if that leads to a development of disposition, we’ve had a good outcome. I certainly know that we need to make our learning more meaningful, even when the outcome is known, if we want it to stick. That we could create a culture of productive and continual inquiry, however, is the bigger opportunity on the table, for schools, organizations, and society. And that’s worth shooting for.
I’ve been a wee bit busy this week, engaged on two different initiatives involved in improving what the organizations are doing. The interesting bit was that there were two widely different cultures, and yet each was successful. How could that be?
Normally, we look at the elements of successful learning cultures as providing safety and reward for contributing, acceptance of diversity, and other dimensions. It’s easy to imagine that this results in a relatively homogeneous outcome, which, while certainly desirable, might seem bland. However, the two juxtaposed experiences demonstrated that this is definitely not the case.
In one, there’s definitely a feeling of responsible progress, but it’s a very supportive environment, and while there’s gentle teasing, it’s a very warm and fuzzy place, self-described by the leader. This leader has some clear ideas, but is very collaborative in getting input in what goals to choose and more so in how to get there. It’s necessary in the community in which they play, but it works. People are clear about where they’re going, and feel supported in getting there in reasonable steps.
The other culture is similarly committed to quality, but the leader has a much different personality. Instead of warm and fuzzy, there’s much more attitude and edge. The comments are more pointed, but it’s even more self-directed than other directed, and is taken as well as given. It’s more lively, probably not quite as ‘safe’, but also probably a bit more fun. It’s probably more suited to the entrepreneurial nature of the organization than the previous more institutional approach.
Yet both are in continual processes of improvement; in both cases my role was to add the outside knowledge of learning and technology in their self-evaluation. It’s a pleasure to work with organizations that are serious about improvement, and eager to include the necessary input to get there.
My take-home is that there are lots of different ways organizations can be functional, as well as dysfunctional. It doesn’t take much more than commitment to move from the latter to the former, and the leader’s style can be different, as long as it’s consistent, appropriate, and successful. Definitely a nice thing to learn.
This month’s Learning Circuit’s blog Big Question is “What will workplace learning look like in 10 years”. Triggered by Jay & Harold’s post and reactions (and ignoring my two related posts on Revisiting and Learning Design), it’s asking what the training department might look like in 10 years. I certainly have my desired answer.
Ideally, in 10 years the ‘training department’ will be an ‘organizational learning’ group, that’s looking across expertise levels and learning needs, and responsible for equipping people not only to come up to speed, but to work optimally, and collaborate to innovate. That is, will be responsible for the full performance ecosystem.
So, there may still be ‘courses’, though they’ll be more interactive, more distributed across time, space, and context. There’ll be flexible customized learning paths, that will not only skill you, but introduce you into the community of practice.
However, the community of practice will be responsible for collaboratively developing the content and resources, and the training department will have morphed into learning facilitators: refining the learning, information, and experience design around the community-established content, and also facilitating the learning skills of the community and it’s members. The learning facilitators will be monitoring the ongoing dialog and discussions, on the lookout for opportunities to help capture some outcomes, and watching the learners to look for opportunities to develop their abilities to contribute. They’ll also be looking for opportunities to introduce new tools that can augment the community capabilities, and create new learning, communication, and collaboration channels.
Their metrics will be different, not courses or smile sheets, but value added to the community and it’s individuals, and impact on the ability of the community to be effective. The skill sets will be different too: understanding not just instructional but information and experience design, continually experimenting with tools to look for new augmentation possibilities, and having a good ability to identify and facilitate the process of knowledge or concept work, not just the product.
10 years from now the tools will have changed, so it may be that some of the tasks can be automated, e.g. mining the nuggets from the informal channels, but design & facilitation will still be key. We’ll distribute the roles to the tools, leaving the important pattern matching to the facilitators.
At least, that’s what I hope.