My previous comment was poorly phrased, maybe. I am not one of those that share the fear of “loss” of control, I’m merely stating that this is my impression from talking to HR managers and Training departments in various businesses.

Also, in my experience, a difference between various industry. I work with/for heavy industry like paper mills, metal industry(extractive metallurgy) etc, it might be expected that these industries are more traditional in their way of thinking (not always, mind you), than say a tech company like IBM. ‘Top down’ is a common practice, I’m sad to say.

@Jay Thanks for the example of an american business that stated they save large expenses in implementing Yammer as a communication tool on a global scale. That example seem to go down well with companies I talk to. It’s learning “hidden” behind communication and it makes my picth easier to some extent.

@Virginia Being Norwegian, we truly have some of the best potential in the world of making wirearchy a central part of any model. Our management model is as flat as they come
A challenge for many organisations is documenting/identifying skills and competency of employees. I couldn’t agree more, we need a new way of analyzing the core competencies.

Also, being Norwegian, my apologies for any wrongdoing to the english language through my posts

Great debate here and some brilliant replies to a great post. Hope it doesn’t end here.

Frank

The easiest way to do that is through formal training and evaluation tools. This identifies the core competencies of the organization and identifies where there may be knowledge gaps.

However, this is a production model of an organization, upon which most of our organizations have depended for at least a century. The service model that many knowledge organizations should be adopting looks like the wirearchy diagram with a flat management model. What needs to happen is a new way to analyze the core competencies (which is dynamic) along with organizational potential (looking at skills that may not have been identified as a competency but would add to the organization). In other words, we don’t need to formalize informal learning but rather find new ways to measure it and reward workers for it.

From my perspective, I don’t see control as the issue. The Training Department doesn’t control training – the business controls training and workers control the learning.

I think the challenge for the Training Department is trying to influence and support workers that need to make the “shift” or are in the “shift”.

Whichever way you look at it, there’s a chasm to cross; wirearchy is a new technology subject to the Technology Adoption LifeCycle. It’s a non-incremental change.

I think we often, subconsciously perhaps, see this transitional period (and, like you, I see this change as both inevitable and desirable – NB a lethal combination when it comes to rationality and avoiding cognitive bias) as a bit like melting. The command and control structures will ‘unfreeze’ and knowledge, engagement and value will flow.

But it’s far more likely that non-incremental change feels more like detonation than melting. Wirearchy is explosive and ‘disruptive innovation’ is as messy as it sounds.

Counter-intuitively, ‘formalisation’ can help – a CEO can, for example, formalise a new social contract. As a few already have. Explosion then, hopefully, becomes propellant.

As another example, consider Social Media in the enterprise. It’s difficult for this to ‘happen’ without a ‘formalisation’ of the process. The benefits of Social Media occur mainly at scale following Metcalfe’s Law (though this ‘law’ works better as metaphor – Metcalfe’s Metaphor?). So, it’s easier for a leader to announce it as a new direction by ‘ordering’ its adoption than for it to happen.

(I should note here that I’m sounding a little like an evolution-denialist. How could something as complex and useful as a banana evolve? I’m not saying it can’t, but natural evolution has an advantage that business doesn’t – time).

So, as usual, I’m violently agreeing with you. But ‘formalising’ the informal is more of a paradox than an absurdity.

jay

So formalizing the way people learn informally will just force individuals to find new ways of learning informally, outside the regulated channels and therefore this is and endless loop doomed to failure.

Rather than trying to formalize informal learning we should seek to support it by providing time and opportunities to do share and exchange. We should act on the environment, not on the process itself.