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Clark Quinn’s Learnings about Learning

A bit more detail

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In the Coherent Organization model that we (the ITA) came up with, it talks about how work teams are fed by and feed up to communities as they too feed up to and are fed from social networks.  And while this is all good, it may not be completely clear.  So I tried to take a pass at representing it another way.

OrgStructureSo, at the center are people, the individuals who constitute the organization.  They are the ones who form teams. Ideally, for the most powerful outcomes, they come with different backgrounds, as we know diversity helps.  And they’ll work together in those teams, for short term needs or on an ongoing basis.

Those background are tied into the Communities of Improvement  that they are members of.  A good team member will bring  their community expertise into the team, and likewise feedback their learning from their team work.  Note that most folks are usually members of several communities.

Those communities span both internal to the organization (if it is big enough), but also across the firewall out to other practitioners that are in other organizations.  There are obviously things you can, and can’t, share across the boundaries, but the communities should be continuing to evolve across boundaries.  Proprietary approaches may not, but general learning should be.

And the individuals are, or should be, learning on their own as well, tapping into personal searches inside and outside the organization for immediate needs and ongoing development. Similarly, communities should be looking for ideas and practices from other communities that can be absorbed, and sharing out to other communities as well.

The main change here is showing how people are members of different teams and diverse communities, and how the links are to communities  and to one’s own development.  Not enough, I know (should I show links between people as well), and certainly I’ve got a sparse representation of interconnections here to be indicative, not representative.  Does this help?

 

Performance Detective

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I was on a case. I’m a performance detective, and that’s what I do.  Someone wasn’t performing they way they were supposed to, and it was my job to figure out why. My client thought he knew. They always do.  But I had to figure it out myself.  Like always.

Before I hit the bricks, I hit the books. Look, there’s no point watching anyone if you don’t  know what you’re looking for.  What’s this mug supposed to be doing?  So I read up. What’s the job?  What’s the goal?  How do you know when it’s going well? These are questions, and I need answers. So I check it out.  Even better, if I can find numbers.  Can’t always, as some folks don’t really get the value.  Suckers.

Then I had to get a move on.  You need what you find from the background, but you can’t trust it.  There could be  many reasons why this palooka isn’t  up to scratch. Everyone wants to throw a course at it.  And that may not the problem.  If it isn’t a skill problem, it’s not likely a course is going to help.  You’re wasting money.

The mug might  not believe it’s important. Or not want to do it a particular way. There’re lots of reasons not do it the way someone wants. It could be harder, with no obvious benefit.  If you don’t make it clear, why would they?  People aren’t always dumb, it just seems that way.

Or they might not have what they need.  Too often, some well-intentioned but under-aware designers wants to put some arbitrary information in their heads.  Which is hard. And usually worthless.  Put in the world. Have it to hand.  They may need a tool, not a knowledge dump.

Or, indeed, they may not be capable. A course could be the answer. Not just a course, of course. It needs more. Coaching, and practice. Lots of practice.  They may really be out of their depth, and dumping knowledge on them is only going to keep them drowning.

It’s not always easy. It may not be a simple answer. There can be multiple problems. It can be all of the above.  Or any combination. And that’s why they bring me in. To get the right answer, not the easy answer. And certainly not the wrong answer.

So I had to go find out what was really going on.  That’s what detectives do. They watch. They investigate. They study.  That’s what I do. I want the straight dope. If you can’t do the hard yards, you’re in the wrong job.  I love the job. And I’m good at it.

So I watched. And sure enough, there it was. Obvious, really. In retrospect. But you wouldn’t have figured it out if you hadn’t looked.  It’s not my job to fix it.  I told the client what I found.  That’s it.  Not my circus, not my monkeys. Get an architect to come up with a solution. I find the problem, and report. That’s what I do.

This quite literally came from a dream I  had, and my subsequent thoughts when I woke up.  And when I first conceived it, I wasn’t thinking about the role that Charles Jennings, Jos Arets, and Vivian Heijnen have as one of  five in their new 70:20:10 book, but  there is a nice resonance.  Hopefully my ‘hard boiled’ prose isn’t too ‘on the nose’!  More importantly, what did I miss? I welcome  your thoughts and feedback.

10 years!?!?

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A comment on my earliest blog post (thanks, Henrik), made me realize that this post will mark 10 years of blogging. Yes, my first post came out on January 14th, 2006.  This will be my  1,200th  post (I forced one in yesterday to be the 1199th so I could say that ;),  yow!  That’s 120 a year, or just under every 3rd day.  And, I am happy to add,  2,542 comments (just  more than 2 per post), so thanks to you for weighing in.

It’s funny, when I started I can’t really say it was more than an experiment.  I had no idea where it would lead, or how.  It’s  had some challenges, to continue to find topics, but it’s been helpful.  It’s forced me to deliberately consider things I otherwise might not have, just to try to keep up the momentum.

I confess I originally had a goal of 5 a week (one per business day), but even then I was happy if I got 2-3. I’m gobsmacked at my colleague  Harold  who seems to put out a post every day.  I can’t quite do that. My goal has moderated to be 2 a week (very occasionally I live with 1 per week, but other weeks like when I’m at conferences I might have 3 if there are lots of keynotes to mind map).  Typically it’s Tuesday and Wednesday, for no good reason.

I also try to have something new to say every time. It’s hard, but forcing myself to find something to talk about has led to me thinking about lots of things and therefore ready to bring them to bear on behalf of clients.   I think out loud relatively freely (particularly with the popularity of Work and Learn Out Loud and Show Your Work).  And it’s a way to share my diagrams, another way to ‘think out loud’.  And I admit that I don’t share some things that are either proprietary (until I can anonymize them) or something I’m planning on doing something with.

And I’ve also resisted commercializing this.  Obviously I’ve avoided the offers to exchange links or blog posts that include links for SEO stuff, but I’ve even, rightly or wrongly, not allowed ads.  While it  is the official Quinnovation blog, it’s been my belief that sharing my thinking is the best way to help me get interest in what I have to offer (extensive experience  mapping a wide variety of concepts onto specific client contexts to yield  innovative yet practical and successful solutions).  I haven’t (yet) followed a formula to drive business traffic, and only occasionally mention my upcoming events (though hopefully that’s a public service :).  There’re other places to track that.

I’m also pretty lax about looking at the metrics. I do weekly pop by Google Analytics to see what sort of traffic I get (pretty steady), but I haven’t tried to see what might improve it.  This is, largely, for me.  And for you if your interests run this way. So welcome, and here’s to another 10 years!  Who knows what there will be to talk about then…or even next week!

70:20:10 furor

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I have to admit that I’m continually flummoxed by those who rail against the 70:20:10 model. Recent posts by Mark Britz and Ryan Tracey both take this on, Ryan’s in particular pointing to a poll where more than half  of the respondents said it wasn’t relevant.  And there’s been quite some vehement opposition.  Really?  Really.

There’s a chapter in a book about myths by a few academics who claim that it’s not bolstered by academic research!  Similarly in a complaint linked off of Ryan’s post.  And I’ve already riffed on how I don’t get people who are flummoxed by the numbers.  If you created a study that tried to simulate the workplace and test to see where the numbers fell, your data would be hard to claim to be valid in a real workplace. And extracting the data from the real workplace will come (I think we can use xAPI for this), but here’s the real kicker: the exact numbers don’t matter!  There’s plenty of data showing the numbers are roughly this, and  that is the point.

Or, rather,  using the numbers as a way to think differently about your interventions in the workplace is the point.  It’s easy to think that your courses are the answer. It’s certainly what I see way too often.  Instead, you need to recognize that you need to follow up on a course with coaching and mentoring, and continuing practice through real assignments.  And, yes, formal learning  does suggest this (read the elements of the Serious eLearning Manifesto), but it doesn’t seem to happen.

And, of course, if you  start with the 70, as my colleague Charles Jennings suggests, you end up more likely to consider the full spectrum of solutions, including performance support (similar to my suggesting designing backwards).  It’s a way to incorporate performance consulting and job aids and a richer solution to performance problems than just courses.

The validity of the 70:20:10 framework (and it’s deliberately labeled that to deemphasize a focus on the numbers) comes from the utility it offers, and it’s offered plenty. Organizations are using it (and not just L&D) to take more appropriate solutions.  It’s even been documented down to the nth degree in a newly released book.

So, I’ll leave academic ‘angels dancing on the head of a pin’ arguments to others. I’m going to go out and drive real solutions as part of the necessary revolution L&D needs to have. 70:20:10 is a great way to think more broadly about learning, as part of the bigger picture of facilitating performance and development. I’m not yet convinced that it helps on the ‘continual innovation’ side, but it is a very useful  tool to help get the ‘optimal execution’ side of the picture nailed down.

Working wiser?

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Noodling:   I’ve been thinking about Working Smarter, a topic I took up over four years ago.  And while I still think there’s too little talk about it, I wondered also about pushing it further.  I also talked in the past about an interest in wisdom, and what that would mean for learning.  So what happens when they come together?

Working smarter, of course, means recognizing how we  really think, work, and learn, and aligning our processes and tools accordingly. That includes recognizing that we  do use external representations, and ensuring that the ones we want in the world are there, and we also support people being able to create their own. It means tapping into the power of people, and creating ways for them to get together and support one another through both communication and collaboration.  And, of course, it means using Serious learning design.

But what, then, does working  ‘wiser’ mean?  I like Sternberg’s model of wisdom, as it’s actionable (other models are not quite specific enough).  It talks about taking into account several levels of  caring about others, several time scales, several levels of action, and all influenced by an awareness of values.  So how do we work that into practices and tools?

Well, pragmatically, we can provide rubrics for evaluation of ideas that include considerations of others inside and outside your circles of your acquaintances, and in short- and long-term timeframes, and the impacts on existing states of affairs, ultimately focusing on the common good. So we can have job aids that provide guidance,  or bake it into our templates.  These, too, can be shown in collaboration tools, so the outputs will reflect these values.  But there’s another approach.

But, at core, it’s really about what you value, and that becomes about culture.  What values does the organization care about?  Do employees know about the organization’s ultimate goal and role?  Is it about short-term shareholder return, or some contribution to society?  I’m reminded about the old statements about whether you’re about selling candles or providing light.  And do employees know how what they do fits in?

It’s pretty clear that the values implicit in  steps to make workplaces more effective are really about making workplaces more humane, that is: respecting our inherent nature.  And movements like this, that provide real meaning, ongoing support, freedom of approach, and time for reflection, are to me about working not just smarter but also wiser.

We can work smarter with tools and practices, but I think we can work better, wiser, with an enlightened approach to who we are working with and how we work to deliver real value to not only customers but to society.  And, moreover, I think that doing so would yield better organizational  outcomes.

Ok, so have I gone off the edge of the hazy cosmic jive?  I am a native Californian, after all, but I’m thinking that this makes real business sense.  I think we can do this, and that the outputs will be better too, in all respects.  No one says it’d be easy, but my suspicion is it’d be worthwhile.

Model power!

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So, last  night I was talking with my lass, and happened to show her one of my diagrams. I keep a batch of  them around, and it happened to resonate. And (to use a horrible social media ploy): you’ll never believe what happened next!

So, we were talking about her school things, and among the topics was the strategy for studying.  She’s seen a friend who basically studies the night before an exam, and does well.  Of course, she’s forgotten it all within a week. Whereas my lass works hard, doesn’t do quite as well on the test (she has a wee bit of test anxiety, but not much), but will remember it later.  She’s (fortunately) interested in learning for intrinsic interest, rather than to meet the hurdles (but capable and willing to do those too).

Which, as I explained to her, is exactly predicted by the research. Spacing out studying means you don’t have it quite as accessible right afterward, but it’s there much later.  It’s a known phenomena of our cognitive architecture (and not neuroscience, citing my colleague Will who pointed me to the original research).  So, if you want to do well on the test, massed practice is just fine. If you want people to retain it, well, space it out!

Now, I have argued the power of models before, and that’s why I keep a suite of diagrams (essentially a quiver of models) on my devices (the qPhone and the qPad).  I can share them at relevant times as a tool for explanation or prediction, and together we can figure out what it  means. And that’s what I was doing, connecting her experience to frameworks that make sense.

What I heard today is that she’s gone and mapped out her study schedule for her finals, spacing it out to get the best results.  She’s applying the model to her own life!  So she’s comprehended the model and the implications. And I’m not touting this to show off my daughter (yes, I’m proud of her, but that’s between me and her), but to show how models serve as the guidance for making important decisions.

Models are powerful guides to making decisions. So are you baking models into your learning, personally and for others?

 

Meta-Learning Manifestations

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I recently mentioned that one of my reflections on the past year was that learning to learn, aka meta-learning, is emerging.  And this has come about in several ways recently, and I think it’s a relatively ‘meta’ thing to do ;) to look at the principles across these areas.

So, yesterday I was talking with a colleague about libraries. And one of the things that I noted was that in talking about the future of libraries, I hadn’t discussed a particular role they could and should play.  The reflection was that even in the future role, librarians are more than just the conduits to the information (or people or equipment), but also demonstrating  how they served that role. That is, don’t just show me the results of the search, show me how you thought about the search, and why you chose the search tool you used, and how you created your query, and…

And he assured me that indeed librarians were being taught this. Moreover,  at San Francisco Public Libraries they actually had dual monitors where the staff member could look, but the patron could  also view the activity, and the staff member could work ‘out loud‘.

And this is important.  Because until our schools start doing a better job of this, we’re not going to  be able to assume that our employees and citizens are actually good at learning.  You can only teach meta-learning on top of real goals, and we (should) have those in schools, so it’s the ideal place and arguably the best contribution schools can provide in this rapidly changing environment.

And it’s not like the investments in learning technology are addressing this either.  As I mentioned when I talked about AI for learning, we’re not really seeing the extra layer that will address that (though it’s doable).  As it is, we’re creating adaptive systems that replicate the existing curricula, which would be ok  if our curricula were defensible (hint: it isn’t). Advanced pedagogy can be great, but it is wasted on the existing curricula.

So, there’re are opportunities for learning to learn (which have real benefits) to be enabled across organizational work, library work, schools, and systems.  And we’re really not seeing anywhere near the uptake that would benefit our efforts.

However, we  are seeing more discussion. And I’m imploring you to start thinking about it, talking about it, and beginning to  do it! It’s doable, and  arguably the best investment we could and should be making.  Are you ready?

2015 Reflections

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It’s the end of the year, and given that I’m an advocate for the benefits of reflection, I suppose I better practice what I preach. So what am I thinking I learned as a consequence of this past year?  Several things come to mind (and I reserve the right for more things to percolate out, but those will be my 2016 posts, right? :):

  1. The Revolution  is real: the evidence mounts that there is a need for change in L&D, and when those steps are taken, good things happen. The latest  Towards Maturity report shows that the steps taken by their top-performing organizations are very much about aligning with business,  focusing on performance, and more.  Similarly, Chief Learning Officer‘s Learning Elite Survey similarly point out to making links across the organization and measuring outcomes.  The data supports the principled observation.
  2. The barriers are real: there is continuing resistance to the most obvious changes. 70:20:10, for instance, continues to get challenged on nonsensical issues like the exactness of the numbers!?!?  The fact that a Learning Management System is not a strategy still doesn’t seem to have penetrated.  And so we’re similarly seeing that other business units are taking on the needs for performance support, social media, and ongoing learning. Which is bad news for L&D, I reckon.
  3. Learning design is  rocket science: (or should be). The perpetration of so much bad elearning continues to be demonstrated at exhibition halls around the globe.  It’s demonstrably true that tarted up information presentation and knowledge test isn’t going to lead to meaningful behavior change, but we still are thrusting people into positions without background and giving them tools that are oriented at content presentation.  Somehow we need to do better. Still pushing the Serious eLearning Manifesto.
  4. Mobile is well on it’s way: we’re seeing mobile becoming mainstream, and this is a good thing. While we still hear the drum beating to put courses on a phone, we’re also seeing that call being ignored. We’re instead seeing real needs being met, and new opportunities being explored.  There’s still a ways to go, but here’s to a continuing awareness of good mobile design.
  5. Gamification is still being confounded: people aren’t really making clear conceptual differences around games. We’re still seeing linear scenarios confounded with branching, we’re seeing gamification confounded with serious games, and more.  Some of these are because the concepts are complex, and some because of vested interests.
  6. Games  seem to be reemerging: while the interest in games became mainstream circa 2010 or so, there hasn’t been a real sea change in their use.  However, it’s quietly feeling like folks are beginning to get their minds around Immersive Learning Simulations, aka Serious Games.   There’s still ways to go in really understanding the critical design elements, but the tools are getting better and making them more accessible in at least some formats.
  7. Design is becoming a ‘thing’: all the hype around Design Thinking is leading to a greater concern about design, and this is a good thing. Unfortunately there will probably be some hype and clarity to be discerned, but at least the overall awareness raising is a good step.
  8. Learning to learn seems to have emerged: years ago the late great Jay Cross and I and some colleagues put together the Meta-Learning Lab, and it was way too early (like so much I touch :p). However, his passing has raised the term again, and there’s much more resonance. I don’t think it’s necessarily a  thing yet, but it’s far greater resonance than we had at the time.
  9. Systems are coming: I’ve been arguing for the underpinnings, e.g. content systems.  And I’m (finally) beginning to see more interest in that, and other components are advancing as well: data  (e.g. the great work Ellen Wagner and team have  been doing on Predictive Analytics), algorithms (all the new adaptive learning systems), etc. I’m keen to think what tags are necessary to support the ability to leverage open educational resources as part of such systems.
  10. Greater inputs into learning: we’ve seen learning folks get interested in behavior change, habits, and more.  I’m thinking we’re going to go further. Areas I’m interested in include myth and ritual, powerful shapers of culture and behavior. And we’re drawing on greater inputs into the processes as well (see 7, above).  I hope this continues, as part of learning to learn is to look to related areas and models.

Obviously, these are things I care about.  I’m fortunate to be able to work in a field that I enjoy and believe has real potential to contribute.  And just fair warning, I’m working on a few areas  in several ways.  You’ll see more about learning design and the future of work sometime in the near future. And rather than generally agitate, I’m putting together two specific programs – one on (e)learning quality and one on L&D strategy – that are intended to be comprehensive approaches.  Stay tuned.

That’s my short list, I’m sure more will emerge.  In the meantime, I hope you had a great 2015, and that your 2016 is your best year yet.

Work with purpose

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As another component of the Future of Work thinking I’ve been doing, one thing that strikes me is the question of what helps people  want to work, which I think pretty clearly will be important.  And I was reminded by my ITA colleague Jane Hart of the work of Dan Pink in his book Drive, where he isolates three components of what makes people engaged: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.  And I think this is a good list.

The idea is fairly straightforward: people want work that actually does something important, they want to be free to pursue that work, and they want to be developed in their ability to accomplish that work.   What work is appropriate for different people is part of the task of deciding who to hire, and who to assign to what.

And while I think autonomy and mastery are part of the picture, for sure, I want to focus on making work  meaningful.  OK, freeing up people from micromanaging is going to be a necessity going forward, but that’s part of the necessary move to agile organizations, and while that’s challenging, it has to happen for organizations to survive. And supporting people by giving them assignments that stretch their abilities, and coaching them through it is absolutely important, but flows out of the 70:20:10 model. Jane, in her valuable book  Modern Workplace Learning, gives very specific  guidance  about managers developing individual potential as part of the larger picture.  But the area that strikes me as something I haven’t developed my thoughts  about before is finding ways to characterize work so that it connects to people.

I think work has to be meaningful (just as I argue learning has to be meaningful). Here I mean something specific, in that people see the connection between what they’re doing and the impact on the world.  And that’s not always done, and certainly not systematically or well.  And yet I think it’s a service to the employees and part of a thriving organization.  Heck, it probably even leads to better employee engagement ;).

Seriously, it first takes an organization that has a clear focus on what it’s doing. There’re the old stories about ice companies losing out when refrigerators came in, and I think that’s part of it: a very clear focus on what purpose they serve. And this is important to align an organization, and make the strategy easier to focus on.  A secondary desirable component, to me, is to understand what contribution the organization is making to the world. I think the ‘b corp‘ notion is a great one here. (I may be an idealist, but that’s the world I  want to live in. ;).

Then, there needs to be a clear alignment between what the employee is doing and the overall organizational goal. I think that if there’s a clear purpose for the work, you have a greater likelihood for employees to be engaged.  No one likes busywork, after all, but even some drudge work that’s part of a bigger picture can be shouldered. And it also means that rote work, work that can be automated,  should be automated, leaving people free to do the important work.   Very much like learning needs to see how the learning connects to their work and the bigger picture, so too should their work connect to the bigger picture, within and outside the org.

Not to say this is easy. It requires clear communication (queue the Coherent Org), and a clear vision, but these are steps organizations need to do.  The recognition that this alignment, coupled with a ‘safe’ culture (i.e. not the Miranda Organization), is the necessity for going beyond survival to ‘thrival’ I think is the catalyst for change in meaningful work. And that’s a good place to go.

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Starting a revolution?

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In thinking a bit about the Future of Work, one of the issues is where to start.  If we take the implications of the Coherent Organization to heart, we realize that the components include the work teams, the communities of practice (increasingly I think of it as a community of improvement), and the broader network.  But where to begin?

A couple of principles fall into place for me.  The first is the notion of  ‘trojan mice’, e.g. small steps rather than a epic change. That, coupled with the notion of scaling up from the small, leads me to believe that the best place to start is to start small. This follows on the advice about change in general  that changes should be strategic and leveraged.

So, a natural place to start small is the team itself.  The goal would be to draw upon a diverse team meeting a real need, but facilitating their tool use. I remember an engagement with a Scandinavian oil company that I was brought in on, where they started out establishing teams for new projects that crossed geographies (and, implicitly, cultures), scaffolded them using collaboration and communication tools, and then released them back to other projects. The goal was to skill up teams and have the team members become viral influences.

Another approach, as there are already likely communities in existence, would be to migrate and facilitate communities online. I recall that the Defense Acquisition University took this approach.  However, I might like to get some project teams going with tools and then migrate out to the communities, where those team members that had participated were familiar with the tools and could be drawn upon by the community.

In fact, after the initial team work, I might facilitate a team not only working together, but working out  loud back to their respective communities.  And while it makes practical sense to be sequential, at some point it might make sense to go parallel, and be having the working out loud from the teams being worked on at the same time as the community development. But for resource reasons, I might make it sequential.  Ultimately, you want to be facilitating the communities participating in  and outside  the organizations, and looking to other communities both inside and outside for inspiration.

The point is to be finding a small way to begin, and maybe take several tries until you work out how to do it well, then start scaling up and out.  You want to build need, awareness, and ability steadily.  It can effect a change in culture too, if the principles that make this work in teams and communities begins to be made aware as well.

And this is not independent of work on going to more performance consulting and performance support in the organization, but instead is a complement.  In previous exercises, different organizations have prioritized different elements, where you begin will be dependent on your context.

So, in the social space,  this is my instinct and experience, but welcome hearing alternate viewpoints.

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