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Business Social Media Benefits

11 March 2011 by Clark 1 Comment

For the Australasian Talent Conference that will run in Sydney May 24-26 (where I’m speaking), they’ve been drumming up interest with a press release. As a consequence, I’ve been doing some interviews, some live, some via email. For the latter, I was asked to address the question: “what businesses can learn from allowing employees to access social networking sites, and how allowing social networking can benefit businesses?” My answer:

People are no longer just what they know, but also who they know. It’s the network. If you block social media at work, they’ll take the ‘social media cigarette break’ and step outside with their phones (you can’t stop the signal), because they need their network to answer questions, share ideas, and more. When you can get connected to the person you need, get answers to your burning questions, connect to colleagues who can mentor, morally support, and more, you find that doing without is no longer acceptable. Personal story: wanted to know about a piece of software and tweeted it, received an answer from the person who wrote it in 3 hours offering to answer any of my questions!

People might be concerned with what folks share, and there are two answers. First, there are corporate equivalents: for every Facebook and Twitter there’s a behind-the-firewall and/or industrial strength and secure solution. Second, investigations into people misusing social media and making inappropriate comments show rare violations. If you’ve got a company with the right culture where the mission is clear and people are empowered, folks just don’t violate sensible guidelines.

There are important reasons to be using social media in connecting with customers, and at least as much by empowering employees to get their work done. To succeed, you need to do more than just plan, prepare, and execute. There isn’t time. You need your employees to continually innovate, problem-solve, and more. This happens collaboratively and through communication – conversations are the engine of business – and consequently success is going to be predicated on empowering employees to work together to continually improve.

If you’re in the Antipodes, or nearby, it looks like a good event. If you are interested in attending, using my discount code ‘CQ11’, will get you a 10% discount. Hope to see you there!

Clarity needed around Web 3.0

25 February 2011 by Clark 6 Comments

I like ASTD; they offer a valuable service to the industry in education, including reports, webinars, very good conferences (despite occasional hiccups, *cough* learning styles *cough*) that I happily speak at and even have served on a program committee for. They may not be progressive enough for me, but I’m not their target market. When they come out with books like The New Social Learning, they are to be especially lauded. And when they make a conceptual mistake, I feel it’s fair, nay a responsibility, to call them on it. Not to bag them, but to try to achieve a shared understanding and move the industry forward. And I think they’ve made a mistake that is problematic to ignore.

A recent report of theirs, Better, Smarter, Faster: How Web 3.0 will Transform Learning in High-Performing Organizations, makes a mistake in it’s extension of a definition of Web 3.0, and I think it’s important to be clear. Now, I haven’t read the whole report, but they make a point of including their definition in the free Executive Summary (which I *think* you can get too, even if you’re not a member, but I can’t be sure). Their definition:

Web 3.0 represents a range of Internet-based services and technologies that include components such as natural language search, forms of artificial intelligence and machine learning, software agents that make recommendations to users, and the application of context to content.

This I almost completely agree with. The easy examples are Netflix and Amazon recommendations: they don’t know you personally, but they have your purchases or rentals, and they can compare that to a whole bunch of other anonymous folks and create recommendations that can get spookily good. It’s done by massive analytics, there’s no homunculus hiding behind the screen cobbling these recommendations together, it’s all done by rules and statistics.

I’ve presented before my interpretation of Web 3.0, and it is very much about using smart internet services to do, essentially system-generated content (as opposed to 1.0 producer-generated content and 2.0 user-generated content). The application of context to content could be a bit ambiguous, however, and I’d mean that to be dynamic application of context to content, rather than pre-designed solutions (which get back to web 1.0).

As such, their first component of their three parts includes the semantic web. Which, if they’d stopped at, would be fine. However, they bring in two other components. The second:

the Mobile Web, which will allow users to experience the web seamlessly as they move from one device to another, and most interaction will take place on mobile devices.

I don’t see how this follows from the definition. The mobile web is really not fundamentally a shift. Mobile may be a fundamental societal shift, but just being able to access the internet from anywhere isn’t really a paradigmatic shift from webs 1.0 and 2.0. Yes, you can acccess produced content, and user-generated content from wherever/whenever, but it’s not going to change the content you see in any meaningful way.

They go on to the third component:

The third element is the idea of an immersive Internet, in which virtual worlds, augmented reality, and 3-D environments are the norm.

Again, I don’t see how this follows from their definition. Virtual worlds start out as producer-generated content, web 1.0. Sims and games are designed and built a priori. Yes, it’s way cool, technically sophisticated, etc, but it’s not a meaningful change. And, yes, worlds like Second Life let you extend it, turning it into web 2.0, but it’s still not fundamentally new. We took simulations and games out of advanced technology for the conferences several years ago when I served. This isn’t fundamentally new.

Yes, you can do new stuff on top of mobile web and immersive environments that would qualify, like taking your location and, say, goals and programmatically generating specific content for you, or creating a custom world and outcomes based upon your actions in the world from a model not just of the world, but of you, and others, and… whatever. But without that, it’s just web 1.0 or 2.0.

And it’d be easy to slough this off and say it doesn’t matter, but ASTD is a voice with a long reach, and we really do need to hold them to a high standard because of their influence. And we need people to be clear about what’s clever and what’s transformative. This is not to say my definition is the only one, others have interpretations that differ, but I think the convergent view is while it may be more than semantic web, it’s not evolutionary steps. I’m willing to be wrong, so if you disagree, let me know. But I think we have to get this right.

Working Smarter Cracker Barrel

12 December 2010 by Clark Leave a Comment

My Internet Time Alliance colleague Harold Jarche is a clever guy. In preparation for an event, he makes a blog post to organize his thoughts. I like his thinking, so I’ll let him introduce my post:

Next week, at our Working Smarter event hosted by Tulser in Maastricht, NL, we will have a series of short sessions on selected topics. Each Principal of the Internet Time Alliance has three topics of 20 minutes to be discussed in small groups. My topics are listed below and include links to relevant posts as well as a short description of the core ideas behind each topic.

These are mine:

Mobile

Mobile ‘accessorizes‘ your brain. It is about complementing what your brain does well by providing the capabilities that it does not do well (rote computation, distance communication, and exact detail), but wherever and whenever you are. Given that our performers are increasingly mobile, it makes sense to deliver the capabilities where needed, not just at their desk. The 4 C’s of mobile give us a guide to the capabilities we have on tap.

Working smarter is not just mobile capabilities, however, but also combining them to do even more interesting things. The real win is when we capture the current situation, via GPS and clock/calendar, so we know where you are and what you are doing, to do things that are relevant in the context.

Even without that, however, there are big offerings on the table for informal learning, via access to resources and networks.

Social Formal Learning

Social learning is one of the big opportunities we are talking about in ‘working smarter’. Most people tend to think of social learning in terms of the informal opportunities, which are potentially huge. However, there are a couple of reasons to also think about the benefits of social learning from the formal learning perspective.

The first is the processing. When you are asked to engage with others on a topic, and you have designed the topic well, you get tight cycles of negotiating understand, which elaborates the associations to make them persist better and longer. You can have learners reflect and share those reflections, which is one meaningful form of processing, and then you can ask them to extend the relevant concepts by reviewing them in another situation together, asking them to come to a shared response. The best, of course, is when learners work together to discern how the concepts get applied in a particular context, by asking them to solve a problem together.

The additional benefit is the connection between formal and informal. You must use social learning tools, and by doing so you are developing the facility with the environment your performers should use in the workplace. You also have the opportunity to use the formal social learning as a way to introduce the learners into the communities of practice you can and should be building.

Performance Ecosystem (Workscape) Strategy

Looking at the individual components – performance support, formal learning, and informal learning – is valuable, but looking at them together is important as well, to consider the best path from where you are to where you want or need to go. Across a number of engagements, a pattern emerged that I’ve found helpful in thinking about what we term workscapes (what I’ve also called performance ecosystems, PDF) in a systemic way.

You want to end up where you have a seamless performance environment oriented around the tasks that need to be accomplished, and having the necessary layers and components. You don’t want to approach the steps individually, but with the bigger picture in mind, so everything you do is part of the path towards the end game. Realizing, of course, that it will be dynamic, and you’ll want to find ways to empower your performers to take ownership.

Death by reorg

22 November 2010 by Clark 1 Comment

Even if you haven’t experienced it, you’ve heard about it, seen it, and now it’s a epidemic. The familiar reorganization: changing management structures, reporting relationships, moving units around. It can happen infrequently, but in many organizations it seems to be a regular occurrence: every 2 years, every year, or more frequently. The expression ‘drive-by reorgs’ isn’t hard to countenance.

The reasons for reorganizations can be several, both pragmatic and political. I remember reading a screed that suggests it’s inevitable: organizations will have to align to customers for a while, until efficiency falters, then they reorganize along operational lines until customer satisfaction drops. Of course, there are the typical new manager reorganizations as well; it’s easy to hypothesize that they have to be seen to be doing something. Even if, as Petronius Arbiter wrote about reorganization: “. . . a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency,and demoralization“.

However, it occurred to me to think that reorgs may be a symptom of an approach to management that’s seeing it’s last days. My ITA colleagues have been talking about how we need to moving in a new direction, away from hierarchy to Jon Husband’s wirearchy. Reorganizations restructure the top-down approach to guiding performance, where one person thinks for several. The alternative is network approaches, where everyone understands the goals and is empowered to achieve the goals.

Really, if an organization is restructuring regularly, it’s probably a sign that it’s trying to adapt structurally to an environment that is increasingly chaotic. And that approach just isn’t going to work anymore. Organizations have to become more flexible than rigid structures can accommodate, and more flexible management approaches are needed.

Seriously, Death by Reorganization (warning, PDF) is the potential endgame. What is the alternative? Creating a learning culture of trust and responsibility, empowered with resources, with leadership that embodies a clear vision and lives the sharing of learning. Reorganizations could be the sign of failing leadership, rather than innovative leadership. Where are you and your organization?

Higher^2 Education

15 November 2010 by Clark 3 Comments

I have just been at my first WCET conference, which is focused on higher ed distance eLearning. Mostly, it’s focused on those in the trenches, that is those who are charged with making it happen. This is not a bad thing, as these are good folks trying to do good work. What is missing, however, is a way to address the next level, and the one above that, in a systematic and effective way. And, yet, we must.

Let’s start with President Obama’s recent call to raise the level of US higher education. And, frankly, there are more countries that need to heed the call of reforming post-secondary education. I’ve talked before about the needed changes in higher ed, but even the short term changes are hard to see happening.

There were some inspiring talks, including Mark Milliron of the Gates Foundation, and a ‘debate’ between Peter Smith of Kaplan (and author of a new book on the topic of higher education) and David Longanecker of WICHE (WCET’s ‘parent’). What became clear to me is that the goal of seriously raising the number of higher education graduates – whether associate, baccalaureate, or higher degrees – isn’t going to happen through incremental change. The problem is multi-faceted: the degrees available increasingly have little appeal, the pedagogies aren’t aligned to success, and the approaches don’t scale.

While the for-profit schools are providing competition to drive more market-focused courses, the time taken to get a program approved, and an institution accredited, provide barriers to being truly market-driven. That is of course, not the only goal, but things are moving faster than programs can be expected to cope.

I have to admit that I was also somewhat dismayed by a lack of pedagogical focus that mirrors the problems we see in corporate settings. There seemed to be little leeway to challenge faculty members to raise quality levels of learning experience beyond just the traditional content model.

Finally, the resources dispersed across institutions are not well-aligned with a goal of pervasive quality that can be replicated across the curriculum. Most institutions, even the big for-profits, seem to have approaches aligned for efficiency at the sake of effectiveness.

I admit big change is hard, but the stated goals are big, the need is big, and the opportunities are likewise. It would take a massive infusion of resources, however, to make a big change within the system. Which led me, naturally, to think of a big change outside the system.

I started thinking about curricula as a separate thing from the learning activities (content and more), from the products of learning generated, and from the mentoring. In particular, the varied mentoring that would go into vetting the curricula, the choice of learning activities, and the feedback on the products. The quick question is whether these could be disentangled from the academy.

Could we, in fact, either crowd source curricula or support self-definition and approval? Could the choice of resources and activities be scrutinized separately, both for quality and as an opportunity for lessons in becoming a self-capable learner in a discipline? Even system-selected? And could the feedback on products come from an appropriate suite of stakeholders?

That’s a relatively radical proposition, I recognize, but when you need transformative outcomes, you may need transformative approaches…

More prosaically, I remain dismayed by the continuing lack of strategic thinking in higher education, particularly the public sector. Small elements, like recognizing that the overall quality of teaching impacts an institution’s reputation, that devolving responsibility to domains will undermine a unified effort, that a systemic consideration of learning technology provides efficiencies as well as opportunities for effectiveness, etc. remain as missed opportunities.

What’s missing from what I see is a unified quality approach. What if Steve Job’s took on higher education? My take is that we’d see something like:

â€¢ We will deliver a totally killer learning experience

â€¢ We will not only develop your knowledge and skills, but you as a learner and performer

â€¢ We will be a partner in your success

That, to me, is the value proposition that we can, and should, deliver. If we are not aligned with that, we are not really offering the services that an education provider should be shooting for. Or an organization, for that matter.

So, are you aiming high enough? The time is now.

Quip: Quality

4 October 2010 by Clark 5 Comments

I had the (dubious) pleasure of picking up an award for a client at an eLearning awards ceremony a number of years back. There’s been some apt criticism of the whole awards industry thing overall, but it did give me a chance to see what was passing as award-winning content. And I was dismayed. One memorable example had traditional HR policy drill-and-kill tarted up into a ‘country fair’ theme. It was, frankly, quite well produced and visually attractive. And complete dreck, instructionally. Yet, it had won an award!

My client typically fights the good fight when they can (hey, they use me ;), but sometimes they can’t convince the client or know not to bother. In another instance, I actually took on the design for a project, and at the end the client’s manager asked what was so special. After I walked him through it, he was singing the hallelujah chorus, but there’s an important point here. I’ve heard this tale from many of my colleagues as well, and it indicates a problem.

Quality design is hard to distinguish from well-produced but under-designed content.

To the layperson, or even perhaps the ordinary instructional designer, the nuances of good content aren’t obvious. If the learning objective is focused on knowledge, it’s because that’s what the SME told us was important. So what if the emotional engagement is extrinsic, not intrinsic, it’s still engaging, right? We cover the content, show an example, and then ensure they know it. That’s what we do.

SO not. Frankly, if you don’t really understand the underlying important elements that constitute the components of learning, if you can’t distinguish good from ordinary, you’re wasting your time and money. If that were the only consequence,well, shame on the buyer. But if there’s a Great eLearning Garbage Patch, it gets harder to pitch quality. If you don’t care that it ‘sticks’ and leads to meaningful behavior change in the workplace, you shouldn’t even start. If you do care, then you have to do more.

Hey, low production values aren’t what make the learning occur, it’s just to minimize barriers (“ooh, this is so ugly”). Learning is really a probability game (you can’t make a learner learn), and every element you under-design knocks something like 10-50% off the likelihood it’ll lead to change. Several of those combined and you’ve dropped your odds to darn near zero (ending up working only for those who’ll figure it out no matter what you do to them).

And the problem is, your client, your audience, doesn’t know. So you can lose out to someone who shows flashy content but knows bugger all about learning. You see it everywhere.

So, we have to do more. We have to educate our clients, partners, and the audience. It’s not easy, but if we don’t, we’ll continue to be awash in garbage content. We’ll be wasting time and money, and our effort will be unappreciated.

If you’re a designer, get on top of it, and get good at explaining it. If you’re a customer, ask them to explain how their content actually achieves learning outcomes. Or get some independent evaluation. There are still vulnerabilities, but it’s a push in the right direction. We need more better learning!

What’s the right technology for schools?

15 September 2010 by Clark 5 Comments

At the end of a conversation the other day, the topic turned to technologies in schools. I was asked what I thought about the iPad in schools, and as I thought it through, I saw both pluses and minuses.

Let me, of course, make this generic to tablets and PDAs. And not smartphones, as there are problems with phones in schools that I don’t want to get into. Having a wifi PDA (e.g. iPod Touch) is good enough for the issues at hand.

Now, many years ago Elliott Soloway decided that the form-factor of a laptop was not appropriate for kids, and created what ended up being the GoKnow suite of PDA apps. Back then he was working on Palm devices and then Windows PDAs. I think he had that right.

However, now that there are tablets, I think they have advantages for schools too. They’re not too big (by and large), and are better for both content consumption and creation than laptops or even netbooks (though an additional keyboard might be handy).

As I thought more about it, I’d like the tablet in class (and maybe at home), but I’d like a PDA when kids hit the road. Elliot had sensor-equipped PDAs being used to collect river pH measurements. There a host of reasons to get kids out gathering data and working on projects, including problem-based and service-learning type projects. Having the devices available for accessing answers to questions when on field trips or taking notes also makes sense.

You can have these as separate devices, synching them into a common database, but I was reminded of an early proposal for a processor ‘block’ that could plug into a variety of devices, and your files would remain on the ‘block’. You could do it with a U3 system, I suppose, but I really want that processor with it for consistency of OS, etc. For example, running an OS (WebOS, iOS, Android, etc) on a PDA (w/ camera, etc), and then the PDA could be plugged into a tablet and the tablet would take over as the I/O channel. Some may not get it, but I think it’s preferable to having to sync two devices.

This, I think, would provide the portability for field moves with screen real estate for creation and communication. Of course the device would be equipped with a camera, microphone, wifi, bluetooth, etc, and a suite of software, but I really think that one platform isn’t enough, and two is too many, and a PDA is too small for creation and consumption and a tablet too small for fieldwork, so what you want is a hybrid hardware platform. Could there be a happy medium, perhaps, but I’m not sold. What do you think?

Enterprise Thinking, or Thinking Enterprise

14 September 2010 by Clark 1 Comment

I realize, with recent releases like Jane Bozarth’s Social Media for Trainers and Marcia Conner & Tony Bingham’s The New Learning (both recommended, BTW, reviews coming soon, with standard disclaimer that I’m mentioned in both) that the message is finally getting out about new ways to facilitate not just formal learning and execution, but informal learning and innovation. But there’s more needed. It takes new thinking at the top. You need to think about how the enterprise is thinking.

So what do you want for your enterprise thinking? Shows like The Office make us laugh because we identify with it. We know the officious types, the clueless, the apathetic, the malevolent, the greedy, the ones just marking time. They’re definitely not thinking about how to make the organization more successful, they’re thinking more about what will make their life most enjoyable, and there’s little or no alignment. That’s not what you want, I’ll suggest, but is what’s seen, in various degrees, in most places.

Instead, you (should) want folks who know what the goal is, are working towards it individually and collectively. That are continually looking for opportunities to improve the products, processes, and themselves. This is where organizations will derive competitive advantage.

How do you get there? It takes coordinating several things, including the dimensions of the learning organization: leadership, culture, and practices), and the information infrastructure for working well together. You need to have the tools, you need to understand the behaviors required, you need to know that working this way is valued, and you need to be informed as to what the goals are.

We want to be empowering people with the models that help understand the shifts that are happening and how to cope, so they’re part of the movement. They need to understand things like networks and complexity, so that they’re equipped to contribute at the next level.

It’s time to stop thinking patchwork (“we’ll just put in the tools”, or “we’ll move in the direction of more open leadership”), and starting thinking systemically and strategically. Identify and acknowledge where you are now, and figure out a path to get where you need to be. It’s not likely to be easy, but it’s clearly time to get started.

Catching up…

27 July 2010 by Clark Leave a Comment

It’s been quite a while since I’ve blogged, and it’s not that there haven’t been learnings, it’s just that my dance card was too too full. What with conferences, a week of radical fever, the mobile book manuscript coming due, and a week off in the woods, not to mention a full load of client work, it’s just been crazy here around the Quinnstitute. I intend to get more organized, but let me toss off a c0uple of quick thoughts that may get elaborated more soon:

Mobile

The eLearning Guild‘s mLearnCon event was fabulous (as their events always are). It was small and intimate, but with a palpable sense of excitement. As I’ve mentioned before, I really think mobile is poised to be a revolution that will fundamentally affect how we use technology to support organizational performance. The conference reinforced that viewpoint significantly, with capabilities being expanded seemingly daily.

The key affordances mean you have computational power to augment your ability to do wherever and whenever you are, and that’s a big win. Being able to do Personal Knowledge Management at the time of inspiration or need, or even of convenience, is huge. Having your social network on tap on demand really augments your ability to work more effectively.

In short, doing mobile right means you’re more capable than without, and that’s a clear opportunity. How do you make yourself smarter with your mobile device?

Social

The ongoing debates around social media for learning flummox me. How can you not see that social augments formal learning (Jane Bozarth has a whole new book on the topic) as well as provides new opportunities for informal learning and performance support? Maybe you have to be ‘in it’ to get it, but then, get in it.

This is not to say that formal learning needs social learning, but rather that it supports it in many meaningful ways. It’s also not to say it’s the only tool for meaningful performance support, but it’s a powerful one. It’s certainly the necessary backbone for collaboration, inherently, but there’s also the somewhat ephemeral but valuable interpersonal contact, not just the information.

For example, Twitter has been a great source of information through the links people provide to interesting material, and in the ability to get questions answered. However, you can go further, as we have with #lrnchat. There’re people I’ve met there that I’m eager to meet in person now that I know them on twitter, but even prior to that it’s valuable to have got to know them.

If you’re not already using chat (w/ or w/o video, e.g Skype), Twitter or equivalent, Facebook and/or LinkedIn, Google Docs, etc, you really do need to get that experience going to really understand the opportunities.

Business changes

It becomes ever clearer that the old way of doing business, even enlightened versions, are just not going to cut it. The evidence mounts. A compelling article I was pointed to today points out how and why incentives and management are contrary to optimal performance. What the article doesn’t do, of course, is help you figure out how to make the switch.

In talking with my Internet Time Alliance colleagues, we see that you need to provide infrastructure, develop skills, modify culture, and scaffold transition. This isn’t easy, but it’s doable. The article cites a number of examples. However, incrementalism doesn’t cut it, it takes a serious commitment to change.

It’s early days, but I reckon it’s time to get a jump on it. Those companies that have made the switch are seeing benefits, and I reckon that the increasing pressures will make it simply the only viable survival strategy.

Escape

I can speak first hand to the value of time away. There is the conscious reflection, like the thoughts I want to solve that I key up before a shower or a jog, and then there’s just ‘off’ time to let things ferment on their own (I prefer fermentation to percolation or incubation since I like the outcome more). And, if you do it right, there are side benefits.

Serendipitously, after putting the manuscript to bed for the mobile book, we were scheduled with some wilderness time. I’d booked two days of ‘meals only’ at Yosemite’s Glen Aulin High Sierra Camp, and a night at Tuolomne Meadows Lodge two nights before. My intention was to spend one night in the wilderness on the way to the HSC, giving the lad and lass their experience of actually having to pump water and cook your own food in the wilderness. This is part of a strategy to get them into the wilderness experience with a maximum amount of experience and an appropriate amount of effort (previously we’d twice done the 1 mile hike into May Lake HSC for meals-only, with them carrying their clothes and our superlight down bags).

Despite a hiccup that turned serendipitous (we had to take a longer route in, but it turned out to be a much less mosquito-laden trail), we had a great time. The kids had to push through a mental barrier or two each at times, but both succeeded and commented on the view and the experience positively. The Grand Canyon of the Tuolomne is truly a spectacular spot, and Waterwheel Falls turned out as stunning as I had recalled.

The nice thing for me was being completely off the grid for 4 days. While I had my iPhone (used the GPS function a couple of time), I couldn’t get a signal and check email or twitter. I put work essentially out of my mind and focused on family. I came back feeling quite refreshed! Actually, it’s hard to get back into work, but that’s ok too, as I’ll get back in gradually.

The take-home, of course, is to take some time with those significant in your life and get away from work completely. Recharge your batteries, reflect, and have some fun! Here’s hoping you are getting some ‘me’ time this summer.

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