At the upcoming DevLearn conference, Jay Cross and I are holding a pre-conference workshop titled: Be the Future of Organizational Learning:  Become a Chief Meta-Learning Officer. We already know we’ve got critical mass in terms of signups, so we’re excited about the possibilities, but we really want to do our best to ensure we   deliver a valuable experience.

Based on the principles from our CLO article on the topic, we’re intending to make it a real hands-on, wrestling with the issues, talking about specifics, and bolstering the discussion with data from close to 200 respondents to the survey that was associated with the article.   We want attendees to not only be informed, but empowered to go back to their organizations and make a meaningful impact.

Though we’ve ideas on what we think is important, we’d really like to hear what you’re expecting, are concerned with, would like to see, etc.

There’s a social networking site for DevLearn, and I’ve created a group for this session. I’d welcome you going there and beginning to talk up things like what you’re seeing, what you’re worried about, and what you’d like to get out of the session.   Of course, you’re welcome to comment here, too.

I’ll be speaking also on the topic in a concurrent session as well, on mobile design with David Metcalf in Judy Brown’s Mobile Learning Jam, and with Richard Clark on pragmatic mobile development, but those are topics for another post.

I’ve always found eLearning Guild events to be worthwhile, and given the lineup I think this one will be as good as ever.   Hope to see you in the workshop, or at least at the conference.

In some client work I’m doing, I’m helping out an effort to establish a Web 2.0, social, informal, [enter your own bizbuzz phrase here] strategy.   Despite the hype, this looks to be a real value proposition for them.   They’ve serious needs in terms of deep knowledge retiring, acquisitions to integrate into a streamlined operation, and more.

As a consequence, I’ve been talking to folks within this large organization who are embarked on various social media efforts.   Some are instituted from different organizations, like under the CIO, and others have emerged from the learning function with the organization.   The interesting thing is how the actions are blurring the notion that there are tight boundaries between formal and informal.

In two separate cases, the solution emerged as a realization that the ability of the learning organization to continue to meet the growing rate of change (both in the rate of changes, and the increasing complexity), is not keeping up with the need.   There’s also a recognition that empowering the users to take control is a real opportunity. In one case, they’re rolling out a wiki that they’re initially populating, but are already in the process of devolving access and the ability to contribute.   In another, they’re making accessible the resources for users to choose what to film or software activity to capture, to make their own little ‘learnlets’ and make available.

Is this performance support? Is this formal learning? Is this social or informal learning?   It doesn’t matter! What matters is that these are areas where the learning function can and should contribute!   However, it’s blurring the line between control of learning design, responsibility for curriculum, and more.   And this isn’t an abrogation of responsibility, but instead a necessary extension of the learning function scope, on principle, and a pragmatic response to a changing world.

There was a separate instance where the KM group was developing a wiki for similar needs, e.g. the growing body of knowledge.   However, there were two reasons why they could benefit from the learning function as well. For one, they’re focusing on developing rich semantic underpinnings that will facilitate smart search and rule-driven complex behaviors (read: opportunistic and customized information).   This is great and important work (I love this stuff, it’s Web 3.0), but they won’t actually be putting in useful information for another year!   There’s an immediate need that needs to be addressed here.   The second one comes from when they are ready to move forward; they’ll benefit from the learning function’s experience in both gathering knowledge and in supporting rolling out access to the learners themselves.

There was also a definite recognition that the proliferation of resources was a problem to make accessible, and to govern the lifecycle of, and to message the updates. These are clearly central roles, and require an understanding of learning. And more. I’ve argued that learning designers need to understand information architecture and information design as well, and this only reinforces that message, but, those fields share much foundational knowledge and the extension isn’t onerous.

The bigger picture is to go beyond the individual initiatives, figure out ways to scale the approaches enterprise-wide, to make the breadth of resources systematically organized, and to remove redundancies and inefficiencies. By coordinating the technical sophistication of the Information Services group with the learning function (and other strategic alliances), this organization has a real opportunity to tap into the collective intelligence of it’s employees, and get a handle on the continuous innovation that will be required in the increasingly competitive market.   But it only happens by some systematic work to streamline the effort, otherwise there will still be bottlenecks to effectiveness and redundancies to hamper efficiency.

There’s still a role for formal at one end, and I haven’t really exposed the alternative mechanisms supporting the far end of collaboration, but here I wanted to focus on the gray area in the middle and the necessity of not trying to artificially create a boundary.

I’ve represented the performance ecosystem in several ways in the past, and that process continues to occur.   In the process of writing up a proposal to do some social learning strategizing for an organization, I started thinking about it from the performer perspective.

Now, personal learning environments (PLE) is not a completely new concept, and quite a number of folks contributed their PLEs here.   However, I wasn’t creating mine so much as a conceptual framework, yet it shares characteristics with many.

I realized there were some relevant dimensions, so I added those in, including whether they tend to be more reflective or active, and whether they’re formal or informal.   Note that I played a little fast and loose in the positioning to hopefully not make the connections too obscured, so it’s not quantitatively accurate so much as conceptually indicative.   Also, I’m trying to catch categories of tools, not specifics.   Still, I (apparently :) thought it was interesting enough to try to get feedback on.

So, what do you think? Am I missing a channel?   A connection?   Feedback solicited.

A: “Ok, you‘ve got me thinking about this social learning guff.   But it sounds expensive as well as difficult.   Suppose I need a whole social media system, some big installation.   Not sure I can sell it up the chain.”

B: “One thing at a time.   First, it doesn‘t have to be expensive.   You likely already have some of the social media infrastructure, and other ways can be darn near free, but of course the rest of it does take time and effort.”

A: “Well, the cost is good news.   But I‘ve got to have payoff numbers.   Intangibles are a hard sell.”

B: “I hear you.   That‘s why it‘s worth it to take some time and do the back of the envelope numbers.   It‘s not like you can pull someone else‘s numbers off the shelf and apply them, though there are examples that can provide guidance, like the customer numbers.”

A: “Customers?   I thought this was internal”

B: “Oh, internal‘s a big opportunity, but so are conversations with customers, supply chain partners, any stakeholders that can be the source of valuable interactions.   Companies have found value crowd-sourcing new products and processes, having customer communities self-help, and even facilitating communities related to their products and services.   And, of course, there have been some spectacular mistakes by ignoring social media!   Have you heard about the cluetrain”

A: “As in ‘get a clue‘?   What is all this, crowdsourcing, cluetrain”

B: “Sorry.   Crowdsourcing is getting a lot of people to contribute ideas.   It‘s the ‘room is smarter than the smartest person in the room‘ (if you manage the process right), carried to the next level.   The Cluetrain manifesto was a marvelously foresightful and insightful recognition that with the power of the network, you no longer can control the information about your company, so you have to start having a dialog with customers.”

A: “So, we need social internal and external, eh”

B: “Yep, that‘s the idea.   And you figure out how much value you can get from your customers by having them provide you feedback, how much by making it easier to help themselves. That‘s on top of the benefits of reducing time to get answers and increasing the quality of internal ideas.”

A: “Sounds hard to quantify.”

B: “Well, it‘s not necessarily easy, but it is doable.   It just takes some time, but during that time you‘ll really be exploring the opportunities to make your company more effective.   There are big wins on the table, and it‘s kind of a shame if you ignore them or walk away.”

A: “Does this mean I can take the cost of the training department away”

B: “No, but changing it.   It‘s not replacing training, though having the social media infrastructure more effective.   Face it, most training is a waste of money not because it‘s not necessary, but because it‘s done so badly.”

A: “I‘ll say.”

B: “So why do you keep doing it”

A: “Because it‘s supposed to be important!”

B: “And it is, but if it‘s important, isn‘t it worth doing well”

A: “I suppose.”

B: “Here‘s the picture: you hire people, but they can‘t know everything they need to, you have proprietary processes, unique products, etc.   So you have some formal learning to get them up to speed, right”

A: “Yes, that‘s why we have it.”

B: “But once they‘re had formal training, they‘re not really productive until they‘ve had a chance to put those skills into play, and refine them. They become practitioners through practice. And then with enough time and guidance, they become your experts.”

A: “It‘s when they get beyond that novice stage that they‘re useful.”

B: “But that‘s when you ignore their needs, and there‘s so much more you can do. Practitioners don‘t need courses, but that‘s about all we do for them, when we should be giving them tools and resources.   Experts should collaborating, but the most we do with them typically is have them offer courses. It‘s broken.”

A: “And social media will hep with those latter two, supporting practitioners and experts.”

B: “Exactly!   And it can assist in making the formal learning better too.   But it requires expanding the responsibility of the training department to be a learning group, not removing the training department.”

A: “Isn‘t this IT?   Or maybe operations or engineering”

B: “Nope, they‘re stakeholders, but you don‘t want IT trying to facilitate conversations!”

A: “Darn right. But trainers aren‘t going to be able to do it either.”

B: “Yep, it‘s a shift, but they or at least the instructional designers should have the grounding in learning to make the shift.   It‘s a new world, and some shifts have to occur.”

A: “I‘ll say, it‘s changes for managers too.”

B: “Yep, new skills for all in learning, new roles, new ways of working. To cope with the new world in which we have to work in: faster, more agile. Eh”

A: “Got it.   Guess I‘d better get me some guff!” Grins.