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Innovation Thoughts

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So I presented on innovation to the local ATD chapter a few weeks ago, and they did an interesting and nice thing: they got the attendees to document their takeaways. And I promised to write a blog post about it, and I’ve finally received the list of thoughts, so here are my reflections.  As an aside, I’ve written separate articles on L&D innovation recently for both CLO magazine and the Litmos blog  so you can check those out, too.

I started talking about why  innovation was needed, and then what it was.  They recalled that I pointed out that by definition an innovation is not only a new idea, but one that is implemented  and leads to better results.  I made the point that when you’re innovating, designing, researching, trouble-shooting, etc, you don’t know the answer when you start, so they’re  learning situations, though  informal,  not formal.  And they heard me note that agility and adaptation are premised on informal learning of this sort, and that the opportunity is for L&D to take up the mantle to meed the increasing need.

There was interest but some lack of clarity  around meta-learning. I emphasize that learning to learn may be your best investment, but  given that you’re devolving responsibility you shouldn’t assume that individuals are automatically possessed of optimal learning skills. The focus then becomes developing learning to learn skills, which of needs is done  across some other topic. And, of course, it requires the right culture.

There were some terms they heard that they weren’t necessarily clear on, so per the request, here are the terms (from them) and my definition:

  • Innovation by Design: here I mean deliberately creating an environment where innovation can flourish. You can’t plan for innovation, it’s ephemeral, but you can certainly create a felicitous environment.
  • Adjacent Possible: this is a term Steven Johnson used in his book Where Good Ideas Come From, and my take is that it means that lateral inspiration (e.g. ideas from nearby: related fields or technologies) is where innovation happens, but it takes exposure to those ideas.
  • Positive Deviance:  the idea (which I heard of from Jane Bozarth) is that the best way to find good ideas is to find people who are excelling and figure out what they’re doing differently.
  • Hierarchy and Equality: I’m not quite sure what they were referring to hear (I think more along the lines of  Husband’s Wirearchy versus hierarchy) but the point is to reduce the levels and start tapping into the contributions possible from all.
  • Assigned roles and vulnerability: I’m even less certain what’s being referred to here (I can’t be responsible for everything people take away ;), but I could interpret this to mean that it’s hard to be safe to contribute if you’re in a hierarchy and are commenting on someone above  you.  Which again is an issue of safety (which is why I advocate that leaders ‘work out loud’, and it’s a core element of Edmondson’s Teaming; see below).

I used the Learning Organization Dimensions diagram (Garvin, Edmondson & Gino)  to illustrate the components of successful innovation environment, and these were reflected in their comments. A number mentioned  psychological safety in particular as well as  the other elements of the learning environment. They also picked up on the importance of  leadership.

Some other notes that they picked up on included:

  • best principles instead of best practices
  • change is facilitated when the affected individual choose to  change
  • brainstorming needs individual work before collective work
  • that trust is required to devolve responsibility
  • the importance of coping with ambiguity

One that was provided  that I know I didn’t say because I don’t believe it, but is interesting as a comment:

“Belonging trumps diversity, and security trumps grit”

This is an interesting belief, and I think that’s likely the case if it’s  not safe to experiment and make mistakes.

They recalled some of the books I mentioned, so here’s the list:

  • The Invisible Computer  by Don Norman
  • The Design of Everyday Things  by Don Norman
  • My  Revolutionize Learning and Development  (of course ;)
  • XLR8 by John Kotter (with the ‘dual operating system‘ hypothesis)
  • Teaming to Innovate by Amy Edmondson (I reviewed it)
  • Working Out Loud by John Stepper
  • Scaling Up Excellence by Robert I. Sutton and Huggy Rao (blogged)
  • Organize for Complexity by Niels Pflaeging (though they heard this as a concept, not a title)

It was a great evening, and really rewarding to see that many of the messages stuck.  So, what are your thought around innovation?

 

Top 10 Tools for @C4LPT 2017

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Jane Hart is running her annual Top 100 Tools for Learning poll  (you can vote too), and here’s my contribution for this year.  These  are my personal learning tools, and are ordered  according to Harold Jarche’s Seek-Sense-Share models, as ways to find answers, to process them, and to share for feedback:

  1. Google Search is my go-to tool when I come across something I haven’t heard of. I typically will choose the Wikipedia link if there is one, but also will typically open several other links and peruse across them to generate a broader perspective.
  2. I use GoodReader on my iPad to read PDFs and mark up journal submissions.  It’s handy for reading when I travel.
  3. Twitter  is one of several ways I keep track of what people are thinking about and looking at. I need to trim my list again, as it’s gotten pretty long, but I keep reminding myself it’s drinking from the firehose, not full consumption!  Of course, I share things there too.
  4. LinkedIn is another tool I use to see what’s happening (and occasionally engage in). I have a group for the Revolution,  which largely is me posting things but I do try to stir up conversations.  I also see and occasionally comment on posting by others.
  5. Skype  let’s me  stay in touch with my ITA colleagues, hence it’s definitely a learning tool. I also use it occasionally to have conversations with folks.
  6. Slack is another tool I use with some groups  to stay in touch. People share there, which makes it useful.
  7. OmniGraffle is my diagramming tool, and diagramming is a way I play with representing my understandings. I will put down some concepts in shapes, connect them, and tweak until I think I’ve captured what I believe. I also use it to mindmap keynotes.
  8. Word is a tool I use to play with words as another way to explore my thinking. I use outlines heavily and I haven’t found a better way to switch between outlines and prose. This is where things like articles, chapters, and books come from. At least until I find a better tool (haven’t really got my mind around Scrivener’s organization, though I’ve tried).
  9. WordPress is my blogging tool (what I’m using here),  and serves both as a thinking tool (if I write it out, it forces me to process it), but it’s also a share tool (obviously).
  10. Keynote is my presentation tool. It’s where I’ll noodle out ways to share my thinking. My presentations  may get rendered to Powerpoint eventually out of necessity, but it’s my creation and preferred presentation tool.

Those are my tools, now what are yours?  Use the link to let Jane know, her collection and analysis of the tools is always interesting.

Diagram!

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One of the things that I feel is a really useful tool in my ongoing learning, in my ‘making sense of the world’ is diagramming.  I find diagrams to be  a really powerful way to understand not just elements, but relationships.  And yet it doesn’t feel like diagramming gets enough respect.  So I want to make a  case for the diagram.

Language is good. Our brains have evolved to use it. But it has trouble communicating complex relationships.  For an example, once I wrote this:

They found that while subjects would rate the analogies, from best to worst, as literally similar, true analogy, mere appearance, and false analogy, their recall for stories, from best to worst, was literally similar, mere appearance, true analogy, and false analogy.

Try discerning the important difference!  My PhD advisor kindly pointed out that actually parsing this was hard, and recommended a diagram instead. Here’s a rendition of what resulted:

structure task outcomes diagram

In this case it’s much easier to see how the two differed.  (If you want to find out what’s important  in the diagram, I’m happy to talk about analogical reasoning for as long as you can stand it! ;)

The point I’m making is that there are times when diagrams are very useful for communicating.  And, if you’ve followed this blog for a fair amount of time, you’ve seen I use diagrams a lot. I use them to think ‘out loud’, and I think it’s important.  As Larkin & Simon argued in their Cognitive Science article, Why a Diagram is (Sometimes) Worth Ten  Thousand Words,  diagrams let us map conceptual relationships to spatial ones. And so if I want to understand the conceptual relationships, I start laying out spatially, and adjust until they make sense to me.

And my concern is that we aren’t using this powerful visual tool enough.  Sketchnotes are really nice ways to capture presentations, and depending on the skill of the noter, they may communicate it all, or help recall if you’ve seen it. Similarly, my mindmaps of keynotes capture the flow of the discussion and the relationships (at least as I parsed it), but may only make sense if you heard the talk.

But representing things with diagrams is not only a personal thinking tool, it can be a powerful way to communicate concepts, and that’s an important component of a good learning experience design, providing a conceptual model to guide performance.

So I’m surprised we don’t talk about diagrams more. It may seem hard (certainly trying to create an infographic is harder than it seems, from my experience ;), but there’s some systematicity to it. There are principles, and types of diagrams, and more to explore.  And tools that make it easier (though even Powerpoint or Keynote can be used to make diagrams).  Diagrams aren’t the only visuals that help (c.f. graphs and tables), but they’re an important tool in your thinking toolbox.  I encourage you, as part of your meta-learning toolkit, to play around and get your mind around diagrams. Your thinking, and your learning design, can be better as a consequence.

Culture or Cultures?

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A twitter pointer led me to an HBR article arguing that We’re Thinking about Organizational Culture all Wrong.  In it, the author argues that it’s fallacious to think that there’s just one organizational culture, , and that all people buy into it.  I agree, and yet where the author leads us is, I think, misleading, or at least not as helpful as it could be.

The argument includes two major thrusts. The first is that the cultural values may be interpreted differently.  What you mean by ‘free’ and what I mean may differ.  Take, for instance, the  difference between ‘free beer’ and ‘free speech’ (a classic example).  And this certainly can be the case.  The second is that people may comply with the culture even if they don’t agree with it. There are multiple reasons, such as job security, that could support this.

The result, according to the article, is that corporate ‘culture’ isn’t a set of shared values, it’s a “web of power relationships”.  That’s quite a leap, but the point is apt: these relationships can facilitate,  or hinder, individual goals.  However, one statement near the end rings wrong for me:

“Reliance on culture as a way to create unity can mislead those in positions of power into thinking that the core values expressed by the organization are actually uncritically accepted by employees.”.

I agree, but I think it’s simplistic.  No one in power should  be naive enough to believe that anyone uncritically accepts any values.  Instead, the view should be to recognize what core values facilitate the most effective outcomes for the organization, and then  follow some well-tested rules about change:

  • sell the vision
  • make it a choice
  • support
  • know how to address the expected problems
  • be prepared to address the unexpected
  • evangelize
  • reward
  • test and tweak
  • persist

It may make sense to start small and spread virally rather than make it an overall change initiative.  Still, I think it’s a worthwhile goal.

There is a clear value proposition about having a culture that supports innovation, and identifiable components.  Abandoning the effort because culture is complex seems a missed opportunity.  The benefits are big. Cultures are developed and do change. Doing so systematically, and systemically, seem to me to be the path to competitive success.  What am I missing?

Top 10 Tools for Learning 2016

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It’s that time again: Jane Hart is running her 2016 (and 10th!) Top 100 Tools for Learning poll. It’s a valuable service, and points out some interesting things and it’s interesting to see the changes over time.  It’s also a way to see what others are using and maybe find some new ideas.  She’s now asking that you categorize them as Education, Training & Performance Support, and/or Personal Learning & Productivity.  All  of mine fall in the latter category, because my performance support tools are productivity tools!  So here’re my votes, FWIW:

Google Search is, of course, still my top tool. I’m looking up things several if not many times a day. It’s often a gateway to Wikipedia, which I heavily rely on, but a number of times I find other sources that are equally valuable, such as research or practice sites that have some quality inputs.

Books are still a major way I learn. Yes, I check out books from the library and read them.  I also acquire and read them on my iPad, such as Jane’s great  Modern Workplace Learning.  In my queue is Jane Bozarth’s  Show Your Work.  

Twitter is a  go-to. I am pointed to many serendipitously interesting things, and of course I point to things as well. The learning chats I participate in are another way twitter helps.  Tweetdeck is my twitter tool; columns are a must.

Skype  is a tool I use for communicating with folks to get things done, but also to have conversations (e.g. with my ITA colleagues), whether chat or voice.

Facebook  is also a way I stay in touch with friends and colleagues (those colleagues that I also consider friends; Facebook is more a personal learning tool than  a business tool for me).

LinkedIn  is a way to stay in touch with people, and in particular the  L&D Revolution group is where I want to keep the dialog alive about the opportunity. The articles in LinkedIn  are occasionally of interest too, and it’s always an education to see who wants to link ;).

WordPress is my blogging tool (where you’re at right now), and it’s a way I think ‘out loud’ and the feedback I get is a wonderful way to learn.  Things that eventually appear in presentations and writing typically appear here first, and some of the work I do for others manifests here (typically anonymized).

Word  is my go-to writing tool, and while I use Pages at times too (e.g. if I’m traveling with my iPad), Word is my industrial strength tool.  Writing forces me to get concrete about my thinking.

Omnigraffle  is as always  my diagramming tool, and it’s definitely a way I express and refine my thinking.  Obviously, you’ll see my diagrams here, but also in presentations and articles/chapters/books. And, of course, my mindmaps.

Keynote  is my presentation creating tool. I sometimes  have to export to PowerPoint, but Keynote is where I work natively.  It helps me turn my ideas from diagrams and/or writing into a story to tell with visual support.

So those are my ‘learning’ tools, for now. Some are ‘content’, some are social media, some are personal representational tools, but reading and talking with others and representing my own thinking are  major learning activities for me.

 

The new shape of organizations?

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As I read more about how to create organizations that are resilient and adaptable, there’s an interesting emergent characteristic. What I’m seeing is a particular pattern of structure that has arisen out of totally disparate areas, yet keeps repeating.  While I haven’t had a chance to think about it at scale, like how it would manifest in a large organization, it certainly bears some strengths.

ConnectedCompanyDave Grey, in his recent book The Connected Company  that I reviewed, has argued for a ‘podular’ structure, where small groups of people are connected in larger aggregations, but work largely independently.  He argues that each pod is a small business within the larger business, which gives flexibility and adaptiveness. Innovation, which tends to get stifled in a hierarchical structure, can flourish in this more flexible structure.

OrganizeForComplexityMore recently, on Harold Jarche‘s recommendation, I read Niels Pflaeging’s  Organize for Complexity, a book also on how to create organizations that are high performance.  While I think the argument was a bit sketchy  (to be fair, it’s deliberately graphic and lean), I was sold on the outcomes, and one of them is ‘cells’ composed of a small group of diverse individuals accomplishing a business outcome.  He makes clear that this is not departments in a hierarchy, but  flat communication between cross-functional teams.

And, finally, Stan McChrystal has a book out called Team of Teams,  that builds upon the concepts he presented as a keynote I mindmapped previously. This emerged from  how the military had to learn to cope with rapid changes in tactics.  Here again, the same concept of small groups working with a clear mission and freedom to pursue emerges.

This also aligns  well with the results implied by Dan Pink’s Drive, where he suggests that the three critical elements for performance are to provide people with important goals, the freedom to pursue them, and support to succeed. Small teams fit well within what’s known about the best in getting the best ideas and solutions out of people, such as brainstorming.

These are nuances on top of Jon Husband’s Wirearchy, where we have some proposed structure around the connections.  It’s clear that to become adaptive, we need to strengthen connections and decrease structure (interestingly, this also reflects the organizational equivalents of nature’s extremophiles).  It’s about trust and purpose and collaboration and more.  And, of course, to create a culture where learning is truly welcomed.

Interesting that out of responding to societal changes, organizational work, and military needs, we see a repeated pattern.  As such, I think it’s worth taking notice.   And there are clear L&D implications, I reckon. What say you?

#itashare

Tech travails

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Today I attended David Pogue’s #DevLearn Keynote.  And, as a DevLearn ‘official blogger’, I was expected to mindmap it (as I regularly do). So, I turn on my iPad and have had a steady series of problems. The perils of living in a high tech world.

First, when I opened my diagramming software, OmniGraffle, it doesn’t work. I find out they’ve stopped supporting this edition! So, $50 later (yes, it’s almost unconscionably dear) and sweating out the download (“will it finish in time”), I start prepping the mindmap. 

Except the way it does things are different. How do I add break points to an arrow?!?  Well, I can’t find a setting, but I finally explore other interface icons and find a way. The defaults are different, but manage to create a fairly typical mindmap.  Phew.

So, I export to Photos and open WordPress. After typing in my usual insipid prose, I go to add the image. And it starts, and fails.  I try again, and it’s reliably failing. I reexport, and try again. Nope. I get the image over to my iPhone to try it there, to no avail.

I’ve posted the image to the conference app, but it’s not going to appear here until I get back to my room and my laptop.  Grr. 

Oh well, that’s life in this modern world, eh?

  

    
  

Learning Problem-solving

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While I loved his presentation, his advocacy for science, and his style, I had a problem with one thing Neil deGrasse Tyson said during his talk. Now, he’s working on getting deeper into learning, but this wasn’t off the cuff, this was his presentation (and he says he doesn’t say things publicly until he’s ready). So while it may be that he skipped the details, I can’t. (He’s an astrophysicist, I’m the cognitive engineer ;)

His statement, as I recall and mapped,  said that math wires brains to solve problems. And yes,  with two caveats.  There’s an old canard that they used to teach Latin because it taught you how to think, and it actually didn’t work that way. The ability to learn Latin taught you Latin, but not how to think or learn, unless something else happened.   Having Latin isn’t a bad thing, but it’s not obviously a part of a modern curriculum.

Similarly, doing math problems isn’t necessarily going to teach you how to do more general problem-solving.  Particularly doing the type of abstract math problems that are the basis of No Child Left Untested, er Behind.  What you’ll learn is how to do abstract math problems, which isn’t part of most job descriptions these days.  Now, if you want to learn to solve meaningful math problems, you have to be given meaningful math problems, as the late David Jonassen told us.  And the feedback has to include the problem-solving process, not just the math!

Moreover, if you want to generalize to other problem-solving, like science or engineering, you need explicit scaffolding to reflect on the process and the generality across domains.  So you  need  some problem-solving in other domains to abstract and generalize across.  Otherwise, you’ll get good at solving real world math problems, which is necessary but not sufficient.  I remember my child’s 2nd grade teacher who was talking about the process they emphasized for writing  –  draft, get feedback, review, refine – and I pointed out that was good for other domains as well: math, drawing, etc.  I saw the light go on.  And that’s the point, generalizing is valuable  in learning, and facilitating that generalization is valuable in teaching.

I laud the efforts to help folks understand why math and science are important, but you can’t let people go away thinking that doing abstract math problems is a valuable activity.  Let’s get the details right, and really accelerate our outcomes.

Taking note

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A colleague pointed me to this  article that posited the benefits of digital note-taking.  While I agree, I want to take it further.  There are some non-0bvious factors in note taking.

As the article points out, there are numerous benefits possible by taking notes digitally.  They can be saved and reviewed, have text and/or sketches and/or images (even video too), be shared, revised, elaborated with audio both to add to notes and to read back the prose, and more.  Auto-correct is also valuable.  And I absolutely believe all this is valuable.  But there’s more.

One thing the article touched on is the value of structure.  Whether outlining, where indents capture relationships, or networks similarly, capturing that structure means valuable processing by the note-taker. Interestingly, graphical frameworks can support cycles or cross references in the structure better than outlines can (I once was called out that there was no additional value to mindmaps over outlines, and this is one area where they are superior).

However, as the article noted, research has shown that taking verbatim notes doesn’t help. You have to actively reprocess the information, extracting structure through outlines or networks, and paraphrasing what you hear instead of parroting it. This is the real value of note taking.  You need to be actively engaged.

Note-taking  also helps keep that engagement. The mindmaps that I frequently post started as a way for me to listen better.   My brain can be somewhat lateral (an understatement; a benefit for Quinnovating, but a problem for listening to presentations), and if someone says something interesting, by the time I’ve explored the thought and returned, I’ve lost the plot. Mindmapping was a way to occupy enough extra cognitive overhead to keep my mind from sparking off.  It just so happens that  when I posted one, it drew significant interest (read: hits), and so I’ve continued it for me, the audience, and the events.

Interestingly, the benefit of the note taking can persist even if the notes aren’t reviewed; the act of note-taking with the extra processing in paraphrasing is valuable in itself.  I once asked an audience how many took notes, and many hands went up. I then asked how many read the notes afterwards, and the result was significantly less.  Yet that’s not a bad thing!

So, take notes that reprocess the information presented.  Then, review them if useful.  But give yourself the benefit of the processing, if nothing else.

#DevLearn 14 Reflections

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This past week I was at the always great DevLearn conference, the biggest and arguably best yet.  There were some hiccups in my attendance, as  several blocks of time were taken up with various commitments both work and personal, so for instance I didn’t really get a chance to peruse the expo at all.  Yet I attended keynotes and sessions, as well as presenting, and hobnobbed with folks both familiar and new.

The keynotes were arguably even better than before, and a high bar had already been set.

Neil deGrasse Tyson was eloquent and passionate about the need for science and the lack of match between school and life.    I had a quibble about his statement that doing math teaches problem-solving, as it takes the right type of problems (and Common Core is a step in the right direction)  and  it takes explicit scaffolding.  Still, his message was powerful and well-communicated. He also made an unexpected connection between Women’s Liberation and the decline of school quality that I hadn’t considered.

Beau Lotto also spoke, linking how our past experience alters our perception to necessary changes in learning.  While I was familiar with the beginning point of perception (a fundamental part of cognitive science, my doctoral field), he took it in very interesting and useful direction in an engaging and inspiring way.  His take-home message: teach not how to see but how to look, was succinct and apt.

Finally, Belinda Parmar took on the challenge of women in technology, and documented how  small changes can  make a big difference. Given the madness of #gamergate, the discussion was a useful reminder of inequity in many fields and for many.  She left lots of time to have a meaningful discussion about the issues, a nice touch.

Owing to the commitments both personal and speaking, I didn’t get to see many sessions. I had the usual situation of  good ones, and a not-so-good one (though I admit my criteria is kind of high).  I like that the Guild balances known speakers and topics with taking some chances on both.  I also note that most of the known speakers are those folks I respect that continue to think ahead and bring new perspectives, even if in a track representing their work.  As a consequence, the overall quality is always very high.

And the associated events continue to improve.  The DemoFest was almost too big this year, so many examples that it’s hard to start looking at them as you want to be fair and see all but it’s just too monumental. Of course, the Guild had a guide that grouped them, so you could drill down into the ones you wanted to see.  The expo reception was a success as well, and the various snack breaks suited the opportunity to mingle.  I kept missing the ice cream, but perhaps that’s for the best.

I was pleased to have the biggest turnout yet for a workshop, and take the interest in elearning strategy as an indicator that the revolution is taking hold.  The attendees were faced with the breadth of things to consider across advanced ID, performance support, eCommunity, backend integration, decoupled delivery, and then were led through the process of identifying elements and steps in the strategy.  The informal feedback was that, while daunted by the scope, they were excited by the potential and recognizing the need to begin.  The fact that the Guild is holding the Learning Ecosystem conference and their release of a new and quite good white paper by Marc Rosenberg and Steve Foreman are further evidence that awareness is growing.   Marc and Steve carve up the world a little differently than I do, but we say similar things about what’s important.

I am also pleased that  Mobile  interest continues to grow, as evidenced by the large audience at our mobile panel, where I was joined by other mLearnCon advisory board members Robert Gadd, Sarah Gilbert, and Chad Udell.  They provide nicely differing  viewpoints, with Sarah representing the irreverent designer, Robert the pragmatic systems perspective, and Chad the advanced technology view, to complement my more  conceptual approach.  We largely agree, but represent different ways of communicating and thinking about the topic. (Sarah and I will be joined by Nick Floro for ATD’s mLearnNow event in New Orleans next week).

I also talked about trying to change the pedagogy of elearning in the Wadhwani Foundation, the approach we’re taking and the challenges we face.  The goal I’m involved in is job skilling, and consequently there’s a real need and a real opportunity.  What I’m fighting for is to make meaningful practice as a way to achieve real outcomes.  We have some positive steps and some missteps, but I think we have the chance  to have a real impact. It’s a work in progress, and fingers crossed.

So what did I learn?  The good news is that the audience is getting smarter, wanting more depth in their approaches and breadth in what they address. The bad news appears to be that the view of ‘information dump & knowledge test = learning’ is still all too prevalent. We’re making progress, but too slowly (ok, so perhaps patience isn’t my strong suit ;).  If you haven’t, please do check out the Serious eLearning Manifesto to get some guidance about what I’m talking about (with my colleagues Michael Allen, Julie Dirksen, and Will Thalheimer).  And now there’s an app for that!

If you want to get your mind around the forefront of learning technology, at least in the organizational space, DevLearn is the place to be.