Month: August 2008

Learning and Performance in Balance

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If you scratch the surface of training and development in any organisation you realize that management doesn’t really care about learning; they want measurable performance. This is understandable and paying lip service to the learning organisation, et al, is a waste of time. At the organisational level, performance should be the only measure. However, there is much that cannot be measured and new work processes and skills are emerging in our digital economy. Management is usually the last to know about these, so they won’t likely be planning learning activities to support emergent processes.

In a complex work environment, where innovation is more important than following established procedures, responsibility for learning should be delegated to the lowest level  – the individual worker. These workers should be encouraged to collaborate in their learning activities, with little or no direction from above. Bottom-up emergent processes are better in a changing environment because those at the coal-face best understand the issues, even if they may not be able to articulate them.

I would suggest that in a knowledge-intensive work environment, where workers already have some degree of autonomy, it would be best to give them complete control over their learning. Just drop the organisational learning function and concentrate on performance. Management must then keep open communications with workers and can develop tools that will support emergent processes as they develop. Management will always be one step behind in this process, but that’s better than being completely out of touch.

It is a better balance to let workers direct their learning and collaborate as they see fit (within limits of privacy, security, etc). The modern organisation should get out of the learning business and into the business of supporting its workers.

My thanks to recent posts on this subject by Tony Karrer, Michele Martin and Clark Quinn.

Seen in passing

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I haven’t been posting much this Summer but I’ve taken some time to catch up on my reading and my social bookmarks are growing. Here are some items that have caught my interest:

Ma.gnolia, a social bookmark service, goes open source

Three ingredients to building your global microbrand

Whatever happened to performance support?

The Lifecycle of Emergence – Networks, CoP’s and systems of influence

Blog Metrics; for those who need to see ROI

The new nature of the firm

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Read/Write Web has taken up the call of Enterprise 2.0 with a new channel on the subject and starts by examining the nature of the firm, how large corporations have amassed huge wealth and control over the past 50 years and the factors contributing to a potential change in this situation:

  • Demographics: Retiring baby boomers and Generation Y’s network-savvy approach to work
  • Technology: How networks subvert hierarchy and force companies to focus on their core business.

The conclusion is that there are opportunities a-plenty.

That is huge opportunity for a lot of start-ups. There has never been a better time to be an entrepreneur. It also a huge challenge for the incumbents. Big companies need to re-define themselves in fundamental ways to find new ways to be big in a meaningful way.

The next post on R/WW is about the specifics of running an enterprise 2.0. It’s nuts and bolts kind of stuff. What is missing here so far, and I know that this is a new channel, is the foundation of enterprise 2.0.

I’ve mentioned this before about work literacy. We need a unifying principle for post-industrial work. Wirearchy is still, in my mind, that principle, as it includes the role of technology but is focused on how we interact in this workplace:

a dynamic two-way flow of power and authority based on information, knowledge, trust and credibility, enabled by interconnected people and technology

For enterprise 2.0 to work, it needs to embrace democracy in the workplace, something that rarely exists in industrial, command and control, organisations – which account for almost all of our businesses. Businesses run as monarchies or oligarchies but very few operate as democracies. We are so accustomed to this structure that most business people would say that it is impossible to run a business as a democracy. We know they are wrong and that there are democratic business models that work today.

I think that enterprise 2.0 will not fulfill its potential unless its foundation is more than just web technologies or networked businesses. We need to integrate this democratic organising principle into our discussions on enterprise 2.0 and I am sure that many captains of industry will loudly disagree. Without an architectural organising principle, the enterprise 2.0 ship will not sail very far.

Photo by S_K_S

LearnNB President calls for Humility

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I’ve been involved in some way with LearnNB since its inception in 2003. For the most part, it’s been very much a maintenance of the status quo kind of professional/industrial association. There have been some interesting conferences but the association has produced few tangible results.

I worked as a paid contractor for LearnNB this Spring, after a long arm’s-length relationship (some of which I explained in Rx for NB Learning). The main reason I took on this contract was because of the integrity of Kathy Watt, President of LearnNB. In her latest message, Kathy addresses some real issues facing those of us in the workplace.

Think about this: professional management was born from the desire to optimize and control, not to lead waves of change. You may be familiar with the names of a couple of fathers of modern management theory, Frederick Taylor and Henry Ford. “Oh, not us,” you may say. “Just last year the whole senior management team spent two brain-numbing days tearing apart the strategic plan with the sole purpose of renewing leadership and thus, heightening innovation within our organization.” Dr. Phil’s now well-worn question is still appropriate, “So, how’s that workin’ for ya?’

Her advice includes this – “... we need to experience some personal and professional humility, and admit that we don’t really know how to solve some of the complex challenges that we are facing.”

This is a very refreshing perspective and I hope that others take up the conversation and see what we can do when we discuss our issues openly and candidly.

Student resources

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For some, public school is already back in session, while others have a couple of weeks left. Both of our boys go back to high school after the labour day weekend. We’ve already purchased our school supplies, which were  fewer than required in previous years.

Over the years I’ve picked up online resources that I think might be useful for our boys and have tagged these as student_resources in Delicious. They are a mix of how-to’s and learning aids for students ranging from elementary school to university. Here are some examples:

Stephen Downes’ post on How to write articles and essays

Understanding logic via The Fallacy Files

The Animated Periodic Table of Elements

How to do research from the Kentucky Virtual Library

So far, there are about 50 resources and I keep adding to the pile whenever I find something of interest. I try not to add too many or they won’t look through them. If you use the same tag, we can share resources. Our guys have the link to these bookmarks in their browsers. It’s a home-made EPSS for students.

Classtell

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Via StartUpNorth is news of a bootstrapped website creation/hosting service for teachers. Classtell reminds me of edublogs but it has some differences. Firstly, it’s Canadian and secondly it is not free. The cost is only $20 per year and that should ensure some cashflow so that the system doesn’t collapse as it grows. It also means no advertising.

You can create an unlimited number of pages on your Classtell website. These pages can used for assignments, calendars, blogs, and more.

You also have 500MB of storage space on your Classtell account to upload and share files, handouts and photos with your class.

Oh, and the most interesting part of this new company? The founder is only 15 years old!

The peerless cloud

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The Accidental Tourist voices his concerns with cloud computing, the web mot du jour (thanks Karyn):

… there is a Gartner report endorsing cloud computing. Then the very next paragraph states that the same organisation published a report warning of the dangers of cloud computing.

The stability of cloud computing was examined by Read/Write Web last week in light of recent GMail service outages. R/WW thinks that peer to peer may eventually subvert the cloud model.

You need $ gazillions to be a Cloud Computing Platform. Those server farms cost a lot. Skimping, or misjudging demand, leads to outages, slow response and other confidence-killers. This is a game for the big boys – Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon, AT&T, Sun.

R/WW describes four P2P platforms, of which I only know Skype, an application that I have been using and liking for several years. Another application they describe is Wuala, which offers P2P online storage. I checked it out but I’m not sure if I want my files stored on other people’s computers. You get 1GB for free and then can purchase more or share some of your space in return for some online storage. Personally, I prefer to use a cheap external hard drive or flash drive.

There is no single way that is best and I like to see new models being tested to usurp the big guys. It keeps everyone on their toes. However, if your data are important, you should know where they reside, as I said in Own Your Data. All of this has implications for training and education, especially as more organisations use Web 2.0 tools for learning.

Unmeeting

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I attended a learning conversation on Unmeetings with Jay Cross and several other very interesting people today.  This will be the first of a series of dialogs on Learnscape Architecture. Jay said initially that, “The conversation will go where it wants to, but we’ll begin by considering how unmeetings can facilitate learning.”

My reflections and notes from the hour-long conversation follow. Unstructured conferences allow people who wouldn’t normally speak up an opportunity to do so. There was a reference to the book Why Work Sucks and the notion that all meetings should be optional. A point was made that the core question around unmeetings was how much structure does it take to create value. More discussion led to the observation that set agendas may not be necessary and may even impinge on learning. An example is the World Cafe, a model where everyone has a voice, not just the official speakers.

A key to good meetings, including unmeetings, is more so in the facilitation, not any set agenda.  A facilitator is someone who can watch the flow. The idea of  flow from one type of tool to another came out. Perhaps we need some paths to enable better work flow, starting with unmeetings/openspace, which can produce artefacts such as visualisations/mind maps. These can then lead to participative structures like blogs/wikis and finally, once the path is clearer, to project management.

You do not own me

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Last year I went through a very long process applying for a job that had the potential to be interesting and challenging. It entailed no move on my part, mostly work from home, some international travel, and the opening of new lines of business, both geographically and in terms of industry sectors. The salary was OK and the benefits reasonable, so I seriously considered the offer.

Then I received the written offer of employment and was shocked by the non-compete clause. I would not be able to work for any company that was deemed by my employer to be a competitor, for two years. Nor could I go back to my own consulting practice and do work for any of these companies. My employer would have the right to determine who these companies were, after the fact. Needless to say, I turned down the job offer.

Charles Green at The Trusted Advisor reports on a recent decision by the California Supreme Court that strikes a major blow against non-compete agreements for employees, basically stating that no employer can deny future employment to a worker. As Green states:

This is simple human dignity; employers do and should have many rights, including various forms of intellectual property protection (trademarks, patents, copyrights)—but those rights have their own distinct protections and can stand on their own. Using employees as chattel to further a former employer’s competitive adventures is unnecessary—and thoroughly out of sync with a modern global business world.

I have often referred to salaried employment as indentured servitude, and practices such as non-compete clauses are examples of this culture. Perhaps with more worker mobility, a growing body of free-agents and less dependence on corporations for work, we may see this culture changing. Let’s hope that the lawyers hear about this soon.

Representing social media

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Ross Dawson shows four representations of the social media tool landscape, with the most recent and colourful Conversation Prism by Brian Solis and Jesse Thomas:

Two of these visualizations have Conversation at the centre and this one includes, “The art of listening, learning and sharing”. Ross Dawson’s own example from last year puts social media along two axes, one being from “Sharing Content” to “Recommending/Filtering”. One the one end,  content is made and shared by everyone and anyone, such as with YouTube videos or millions of blog posts. There are many tools to facilitate this process, as shown in these charts. Now that we too much stuff to easily make sense of, and it keeps on expanding, we need to find patterns.  That is what the other tools at the other end of Dawson’s axis help us do.

These visualizations can be used as a basis for teaching about social media. The prism may be complicated for first use, so I would start with Dawson’s X axis (Sharing to Filtering).  You could begin by looking at the content that is out there and start to filter it, trying different tools. This might be a good approach for people who are not overly comfortable on the Web and are not ready to create their own content. The Prism can be used later to show the variety of tools and categories of tools and then look at content creation.

From listening to sharing, while learning on the way, may be a good first path into the web of social media. It’s something I will consider as I guide more learners and clients.