In my past two posts, I first looked at cognitions (situated, distributed, social) by contexts (think, work, and learn), and then the reverse. And, having filled out the matrixes anew, they weren’t quite the same. And that, I think, is the benefit of the exercise, a chance to think anew. So what emerged? Here’s the result of reconciling cognitions and contexts.

So, taking each cell back in the original pass of cognitions by contexts, what results? I took the Think row to, indeed, be Harold Jarche’s Seek > Sense > Share model (ok, my interpretation). We have in Situated, the feeds you’ve set up to see, and then the particular searches you need in the current context. Then, of course, you experiment and represent as ways to externalize thinking for Distributed. Finally, you share Socially.

For Work, not practices but principles (and the associated practices therefrom) as well as facilitation to support Situated Work. Performance support is, indeed, the Distributed support for Work. And Socially, you need to collaborate on specific tasks and cooperate in general.

Finally, for Learning, for a Situated world you need (spread) contextualized practice to support appropriate abstraction of the principles. You want models and examples to support performance in the practice, as Distributed resources. And, finally, for Social Learning, you need to communicate (e.g. discussions) and collaborate (group projects).

What’s changed is that I added search and feeds, and moved experiment, in the Think row. I went to principles from practices to support performance in ambiguity, left performance support untouched, and stayed with collaborations and cooperation instead of just shared representations (they’re part of collaborate). And, finally, I made practice about contexts, went from blended learning to support materials for learning, and interpreted social assignments as communicating and collaborating.

The question is, what does this mean? Does it give us any traction? I’m thinking it does, as it shifts the focus in what we’re doing to support folks. So I think it was interesting and valuable (to my thinking, at least ;) to consider reconciling cognitions and contexts.

So, in my last post, I talked about exploring the links between cognitions on the one hand (situated, distributed, social), and contexts (aligning with how we think, work, & learn).  I did it one way, but then I thought to do it another, to instead consider Contexts by Cognitions, to see if I came to the same elements. And they weren’t quite identical!  So I thought I should share that thinking, and then come to a reconciliation. Thinking out loud, as it were.

So in this one, I swapped the headings, emptied the matrix, and took a second stab at filling them out, with a relatively clear mind. (I generated the first diagram several days ago and had been iterating on it, but not today. Today I was writing it up and was early in the process, so I came to it relatively free of contamination. And of course, not completely, but this is ‘business significance’, not ‘statistical significance’ ;). The resulting diagram appears similar, but also some differences.

When we consider Thinking by Situated, we’re talking about coping with emergent situations. I thought being guided by best principles would be the way to cope, abstracted models. I thought representation was key for distributing one’s thinking, and sharing of course for social.

Working Situatedly suggested having in-house practices and facilitation. Of course, Distributed support for Work is performance support. And working socially suggests shared representations.

Finally, learning situated suggests the need for much practice (across contexts, I now think). Distributed support for learning are models and examples. And social learning suggests communicating (e.g. discussions) and collaboration (group projects).

Interestingly, these results differ from my previous post. So, I think I’ll have to reconcile them. The fact that I did get different results, and it sparked some additional thinking, is good. The outcome of considering contexts by cognitions improved the outcomes, I think. And that’s worth thinking about!

I have, in the past, talked about the three cognitions: situated, distributed, and social. Similarly, I talk about aligning with the contexts: how we think, work, and learn. I then wondered about how they interacted. Naturally, I diagrammed it (surprise, right?). I created the 3 x 3 matrix, and then tried to fill the boxes.  So here’s some preliminary thoughts (ok, they’ve already been processed a few times) on considering cognitions by contexts.

The intersections do point to some implications.  Cutting through the contexts by cognitions, we can make some prescriptions. When we think of Situated by Think, I suggested experimentation as a mechanism to help resolve unclear outcomes. Situated by Work suggested the ambiguity inherent in new situations, and suggested supporting addressing that. Finally, Situated for Learning suggests the need for meaningful practice.

Similarly, when we look at Distributed by Thinking, I considered the need to represent understanding concretely. For Work, it’s about using external tools to support effective performance, e.g. performance support. For Learning, it’s about blending learning across a variety of elements: technologies, interaction methodologies, etc, to support successful outcomes.

Social is a bit of a conflict, because I often mean that as a reflection of ‘work’. Here, however, I’m considering Work as ‘getting stuff done’. (Note to self: reconcile this!). So Social and Think is the notion of sharing the results (hmm, pondering in next paragraph). Social and Work is collaboration & cooperation, working together specifically on projects and also more broadly a willingness to contribute when/where/ever. Finally, Social for learning is social assignments.

Which makes me think that the whole ‘Think’ line could be Harold Jarche’s Seek > Sense > Share model, and then we’re talking about the Situated Thinking would be continually seeking new information to help settle ambiguity. Which is a nice idea I might put in, but then I have to consider where I put experiment. That may have to go in with ‘represent’ in Distributed and Think.

I also, as an experiment, decided to swap the labels (horizontal for vertical), and see if I came up with the same inputs. And, no, I didn’t. That’s my next post, the swapped version. It won’t be ’til the beginning of July, because next week I’m speaking at the Realities 360 conference, and will be posting mindmaps of the keynotes, if all things go per usual. And there’ll be a reconciliation after that, as the above paragraph suggests. Stay tuned! But here you see me ‘think out loud’ as I try to consider Cognitions By Contexts. I welcome any thoughts of yours!

You’ve seen my takedowns of various posts by now, and the flurry of fluff continues. It seems like there’s some baseline social media marketing course that everyone takes.  And the very first thing is a series of steps that yields annoyance and embarrassment (or should).  For the sake of all of us who suffer from this, we need to stop! We need better posts for our industry. Even if they’re for promotion (I get it), we need more sensible marketing posts.

So, the steps seem to be:

1. Write a post (more below)
2. Do a search with a keyword from the post to find related posts
3. Write to every blog author you find and offer them to link to your post

And, as one of the people who blogs (e.g. here), please stop!  I have a canned response that includes the line:

I deliberately ignore what comes unsolicited, and instead am triggered by what comes through my network: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Skype, etc.

Now, one of the problems is that many posts I see seem to follow a similar algorithm:

1. Search for articles on a hot buzzword
2. Pull together some points from the articles you find
3. Mash it up as a post

The articles appear to be written by someone who doesn’t really know the industry. How do you explain the fact that they seem to be idiosyncratic collections of buzzwords and elements? Maybe newbie social media marketing hires are writing them? I don’t know. What I do know is that they’re worthy of evisceration.

If you don’t know what you’re talking about, please don’t write. Get someone who does! There are a number of folks you could find to write for you who can do a decent job.  I write for a couple of organizations that are willing to invest in quality. And there are some folks in the industry who work and write for their orgs that know what they’re talking about. And, of course, the blog posts and articles from people with a good reputation are places to look. But just because someone’s written something doesn’t mean it’s good.

The same rules for debunking apply here: is this someone with a known reputation? Or is there some independent validation of what they say? Otherwise, you either dismiss it, or track it back and analyze it in reference to what’s known. And that, of course, means knowing it yourself.

I’ll continue to eviscerate the marketing posts that come my way, and try to point the way to better thoughts in the area. I invite you to do the same! And I’m open to ideas about how to cut down on the number of wrong (if not actively misleading, and certainly self-serving) posts. Your thoughts?

Ok, so I’m being provocative with the title, since I’m not advocating the overthrow of training. The main idea is that a new area for L&D is facilitation. However, this concept also updates training. It’s part of what I was arguing when I suggested that the new term for L&D should be P&D, Performance & Development. So let’s start with that. We need to facilitate in several directions!

The driver behind the suggested nomenclature change is that the focus of L&D needs a shift. The revolutionary point of view is that organizations need both optimal execution and continual innovation (read: learning). In this increasingly chaotic time, the former is only the cost of entry, but it can’t be ignored. The latter is also becoming more and more critical!

A performance focus is the key to execution. You want to ensure people are doing what’s known about what’s need to be done. That’s the role of instruction and performance support. Performance consulting is the way to work backwards from the problem and determine the best interventions to do that optimization.

However, learning science is pushing us to recognize that we can do better. Information dump and knowledge test isn’t going to lead to any change in behavior. If you want people to be able to do, you have to have them do in practice. Which means the focus is on the practice and the feedback. That latter is facilitation. The clichéd switch from sage on the stage to guide on the side does capture it. So even here we see the need for facilitation.

It’s in the latter, however, where facilitation really comes to the fore. When we talk about development, we’re going beyond developing the individual. We are addressing the organization’s learning. And, as I’ve said, innovation is learning, just a different sort. What’s needed is informal learning.

And informal learning, while natural, isn’t always optimal. Habits, misconceptions, culture, and more can intrude. This is why facilitation may be even more key to success for organizations.

And, again, L&D should be the most knowledge about learning, because learning underpins both performance and development.  Thus, if L&D is going to adapt, learning how to facilitate learning will be core. Facilitate really will be the new ‘train’.