My mindmap of Sunday’s activities at Up To All Of Us.
UTAOU Saturday Mindmap
Here is my mindmap of the group sessions on Saturday from the Up To All Of Us event.
Making it visible and viral
On a recent client engagement, the issue was spreading an important initiative through the organization. The challenges were numerous: getting consistent uptake across management and leadership, aligning across organizational units, and making the initiative seem important and yet also doable in a concrete way. Pockets of success were seen, and these are of interest.
For one, the particular unit had focused on making the initiative viral, and consequently had selected and trained appropriate representatives dispersed through their organization. These individuals were supported and empowered to incite change wherever appropriate. And they were seeing initial signs of success. The lesson here is that top down is not always sufficient, and that benevolent infiltration is a valuable addition.
The other involvement was also social, in that the approach was to make the outcomes of the initiative visible. In addition to mantras, graphs depicting status were placed in prominent places, showing current status. Further, suggestions for improvement were not only solicited, but made visible and their status tracked. Again, indicators were positive on these moves.
The point is that change is hard, and a variety of mechanisms may be appropriate. You need to understand not just what formal mechanisms you have, but also how people actually work. I think that too often, planning fails to anticipate the effects of inertia, ambivalence, and apathy. More emotional emphasis is needed, more direct connection to individual outcomes, and more digestion into manageable chunks. This is true for elearning, learning, and change.
In looking at attitude change, and from experience, I recognize that even if folks are committed to change, it can be easy to fall back into old habits without ongoing support. Confusion in message, lack of emotional appeal, and idiosyncratic leadership only reduce the likelihood. If it’s important, get alignment and sweat the details. If it’s not, why bother?
At the Edge of India
A few months back, courtesy of my colleague Jay Cross, I got into discussions about the EdgeX conference, scheduled for March 12-14 in New Delhi. Titled the “Disruptive Educational Research Conference”, it certainly has intriguing aspects.
I was asked to talk about games, the topic of my first book. Owing to unfortunate circumstances (my friend and co-speaker on games had to change plans), it looks like I’ll also be talking about mobile (books two and three) which is exciting despite the circumstances.
However, what’s really exciting is the lineup of other people speaking. I’ve been a fan of George Siemens and Stephen Downes for years, and an eager but less focused follower of Dave Cormier and Alex Couros. And I’ve only met Stephen once, and am eager to meet the rest. I don’t really know the other speakers, but their positions and descriptions suggest that this is going to be a great event. Meeting new and interesting people is one of the reasons to go to a conference in the first place! And, of course, Jay will be there too.
I’ve been to India before, as one of my partners has it’s origins there, and it’s a fascinating place. Part of the conference is to look at how the latest concepts of learning play out in the Indian context, but given that it’s across K12, higher ed, and corporate, we’ll be talking principles that are across contexts.
Looking at disruptive concepts, with top thinkers, in an intriguing context, makes this an exciting opportunity, I reckon. I realize it may not make sense for many readers, but I’m hoping some will be intrigued enough to check it out, and there will be a steady stream of related materials. Already there are links from many speakers, and resources about the Indian education context. If you do go, please say hi!
Social media budget line item?
Where does social media fit in the organization? In talking with a social media entrepreneur over beers the other day, he mentioned that one of his barriers in dealing with organizations was that they didn’t have a budget line for social media software.
That may sound trivial, but it’s actually a real issue in terms of freeing up the organization. In one instance, it had been the R&D organization that undertook the cost. In another case, the cost was attributed to the overhead incurred in dealing with a merger. These are expedient, but wrong.
It’s increasingly obvious that it’s more than just a ‘nice to have’. As I’ve mentioned previously, innovation is the only true differentiator. If that’s the case, then social media is critical. Why? Because the myth of individual innovation is busted, as clearly told by folks like Keith Sawyer and Steven Berlin Johnson. So, if it’s not individual, it’s social, and that means we need to facilitate conversations.
If we want people to be able to work together to create new innovations, we don’t want to leave it to chance. In addition to useful architectural efforts that facilitate in person interactions, we want to put in place the mechanisms to interact without barriers of time or distance. Which means, we need a social media system.
It’s pretty clear that if you align things appropriately: culture, vision, tools, that you get better outcomes. And, of course, culture isn’t a line item, and vision’s a leadership mandate. But tools, well, they are a product/service, and need resources.
Which brings us to the initial point: where does this responsibility lie? Despite my desire for folks who are most likely to understand facilitating learning (though that’s sadly unlikely in too many L& D departments), it could be IT, operations, or as mentioned above, R&D. The point is, this is arguably one of the most important investments in the organization, and typically not one of the most expensive (making it the best deal going!). Yet there’s not a unified obvious home!
There are worries if it’s IT. They are, or should be, great at maintaining network uptime, but don’t really understand learning. Nor do the other groups, and yet facilitating the discussion in the network is the most important external role. But who funds it?
Let’s be real; no one wants to have to own the cost when there’re other things they’re already doing. But I’d argue that it’s the best investment an L&D organization could make, as it will likely have the biggest impact on the organization. Well, if you really are looking to move needles on key business metrics. So, where do you think it could, and should reside?
Designing the killer experience
I haven’t been put in the place of having ultimate responsibility for driving a complete user experience for over a decade, though I’ve been involved in advising on a lot on many such. But I continue my decades long fascination with design, to the extent that it’s a whole category for my posts! An article on how Apple’s iPhone was designed caused me to reflect.
On one such project, I asked early on: “who owns the vision?” The answer soon became clear that no one had complete ownership. Their model was having a large-scope goal, and then various product managers take pieces of that, and negotiated for budget, with vendors for resources, and with other team members for the capability to implement their features. And this has been a successful approach for many internet businesses, project managers owning their parts.
I compare that to the time I led a team, a decade ago developing a learning system, and I laid out and justified a vision, gave them each parts, and while they took responsibility for their part of the interlocking responsibilities, I was responsible for the overall experience.
Which is not to say by any means was I as visionary as Steve Jobs. In the article, he apparently told his iPhone team to start from a premise “to create the first phone that people would fall in love with”. I like to think that I was working towards that, but I clearly hadn’t taken ownership of such a comprehensive vision, though we were working towards one in our team.
And we were a team. Everyone could offer opinions, and the project was better because of it. I did my best to make it safe for everyone’s voice to be heard. We met together weekly, I had everyone backing up someone else’s area of responsibility, and they worked together as much as they worked with me. In many ways, my role was to protect them from bureaucracy just as my boss’ role was to protect me from interference. And it worked: we got a working prototype up and running before the bubble burst.
(I remember one time, the AI architect and the software engineer came in asking me to resolve an issue. At the end of it I didn’t fully understand the issue, yet they profoundly thanked me even though we all three knew I hadn’t contributed anything but the space for them to articulate their two viewpoints. They left having found a resolution that I didn’t have to understand.)
And I don’t really don’t know what the answer is, but my inclination is that giving folks a vibrant goal and asking them to work together to make it so, rather than giving individuals tasks that can compete to succeed. I can see the virtues of Darwinian selection, but I have to believe, based upon things like Dan Pink’s Drive and my work with my colleagues in the Internet Time Alliance, that giving a team a noble goal, resourcing them, and giving them the freedom to pursue it, is going to lead to a greater outcome. So, what do you think?
Meta-mobile
As a followup to my last post, I was thinking how you would use the different modes of mobile (the Four C’s): Content, Compute, Communicate, & Capture, to support the different layers of learning.
Here I’ve made a first attempt at trying to matrix the 3 layers of learning (performance, learning, meta-learning) by the 4 C’s of mobile. It’s indicative, not exhaustive, but it helps me to try to get concrete about what you might do.
As you can see, there’s some overlap, and one questions is are there continuums between the layers. Is performance support categorically different than formal learning, or are their bridges? Is meta-learning categorically different? (I’m not sure I care too much, as long as I’m considering all!)
So, in the interest of learning and thinking ‘out loud’, I invite your feedback.
Layers of learning
As I think about slow learning and Sage at the Side, I want to think about a continuum of tech-enablement. I want to include performance support, formal learning, and meta-learning. One way to think about it is layering on support across the learning event.
As I talked about in Making Slow Learning Concrete, the idea is to have little bits of information layered on top of what you’re doing. Thus, the first level might be to have performance support, to optimize the outcome of the event.
However, a second layer, potentially wrapped before and after the event, would be to connect the essence of the performance to a learning framework. Perhaps not all events would have it, but it would connect the event: context and goals, to a learning framework. It could be a conceptual model, and certainly could be feedback.
A third layer would be a meta-learning layer. Looking at any resources used (and perhaps a different one this time than the last), some information could be provided that helped the learner understand their own learning. It could be reflection support, a map of the learner’s actions, even connecting to a learning mentor, whatever would help them look at how they learned with the purposes of improving their own learning.
With this approach, we start de-coupling learning from a particular event, and start wrapping learning around our lives. I’ve used the label ‘slow learning’, but I really believe that this will feel slower, but actually will accelerate learners to competence faster than the ineffective methods we currently are using. Lots of tuning to make an experience that feels natural and supportive, as opposed to intrusive, and some real system architecture issues, but I think this is doable, and certainly worth exploring.
Reviewing elearning examples
I recently wrote about elearning garbage, and in case I doubted my assessment, today’s task made my dilemma quite clear. I was asked to be one of the judges for an elearning contest. Seven courses were identified as ‘finalists’, and my task was to review each and assign points in several categories. Only one was worthy of release, and only one other even made a passing grade. This is a problem.
Let me get the good news out of the way first. The winner, (in my mind; the overall findings haven’t been tabulated yet) did a good job of immediately placing the learner in a context with a meaningful task. It was very compelling stuff, with very real examples, and meaningful decisions. The real world resources were to be used to accomplish the task (I cheated; I did it just by the information in the scenarios), and mistakes were guided towards the correct answer. There was enough variety in the situations faced to cover the real range of possibilities. If I were to start putting this information into practice in the real world, it might stick around.
On the other hand, there were the six other projects. When I look at my notes, there were some common problems. Not every problem showed up in every one, but all were seen again and again. Importantly, it could easily be argued that several were appropriately instructionally designed, in that they had clear objectives, and presented information and assessment on that information. Yet they were still unlikely to achieve any meaningfully different abilities. There’s more to instructional design than stipulating objectives and then knowledge dump with immediate test against those objectives.
The first problem is that most of them were information objectives. There was no clear focus on doing anything meaningful, but instead the ability to ‘know’ something. And while in some cases the learner might be able to pass the test (either because they can keep trying ’til they get it right, or the alternatives to the right answer were mind-numbingly dumb; both leading to meaningless assessment), this information wasn’t going to stick. So we’ve really got two initial problems here, bad objectives and bad assessment..
In too many cases, also, there was no context for the information; no reason how it connected to the real world. It was “here’s this information”. And, of course, one pass over a fairly large quantity with some unreasonable and unrealistic expectation that it would stick. Again, two problems: lack of context and lack of chunking. And, of course, tests for random factoids that there was no particular reason to remember.
But wait, there’s more! In no case was there a conceptual model to tie the information to. Instead of an organizing framework, information was presented as essentially random collections. Not a good basis for any ability to regenerate the information. It’s as if they didn’t really care if the information actually stuck around after the learning experience.
Then, a myriad of individual little problems: bad audio in two, dull and dry writing pretty much across the board, even timing that of course meant you were either waiting on the program, or it was not waiting on you. The graphics were largely amateurish.
And these were finalists! Some with important outcomes. We can’t let this continue, as people are frankly throwing money on the ground. This is a big indictment of our field, as it continues to be widespread. What will it take?
Sharing Failure
I’ve earlier talked about the importance of failure in learning, and now it’s revealed that Apple’s leadership development program plays that up in a big way. There are risks in sharing, and rewards. And ways to do it better and worse.
In an article in Macrumors (obviously, an Apple info site), they detail part of Adam Lashinsky’s new Inside Apple book that reports on Apple executive development program. Steve Jobs hired a couple of biz school heavyweights to develop the program, and apparently “Wherever possible the cases shine a light on mishaps…”. They use examples from other companies, and importantly, Apple’s own missteps.
Companies that can’t learn from mistakes, their own and others’, are doomed to repeat them. In organizations where it’s not safe to share failures, where anything you say can and will be held against you, the same mistakes will keep getting made. I’ve worked with firms that have very smart people, but their culture is so aggressive that they can’t admit errors. As a consequence, the company continues to make them, and gets in it’s own way. However, you don’t want to celebrate failure, but you do want to tolerate it. What can you do?
I’ve heard a great solution. Many years ago now, at the event that led to Conner’s & Clawson’s Creating a Learning Culture, one small company shared their approach: they ring a bell not when the mistake is made, but when the lesson’s learned. They’re celebrating – and, importantly, sharing – the learning from the event. This is a beautiful idea, and a powerful opportunity to use social media when the message goes beyond a proximal group.
There’s a lot that goes on behind this, particularly in terms of having a culture where it’s safe to make mistakes Culture eats strategy for breakfast, as the saying goes.. What is a problem is making the same mistake, or dumb mistakes. How do you prevent the latter? By sharing your thinking, or thinking out loud, as you develop your planned steps.
Now, just getting people sharing isn’t necessarily sufficient. Just yesterday (as I write), Jane Bozarth pointed me towards an article in the New Yorker (at least the abstract thereof) that argues why brainstorming doesn’t work. I’ve said many times that the old adage “the room is smarter than the smartest person in the room” needs a caveat: if you manage the process right. There are empirical results that guide what works from what doesn’t, such as: having everyone think on their own first; then share; focus initially on divergence before convergence; make a culture where it’s safe, even encouraged, to have a diversity of viewpoints; etc.
No one says getting a collaborating community is easy, but like anything else, there are ways to do it, and do it right. And here too, you can learn from the mistakes of others…