I’m regularly trying to do two things: explore mobile capabilities, and get folks to think more broadly about how we can support performance in the organization.  I was asked to flesh out a proposed title for a stage at the upcoming mLearnCon, and thought about trying to map the 4C’s of mobile to the major categories of mobile work opportunities.  It’s a slightly different take than my previous meta-mobile post where I looked at performance support, formal learning, and meta-learning. Read more →

Increasingly, as I look around, I see folks addressing learning technology tactics; they’ll make a mobile app, they’ll try out a simulation game, they’ll put in a portal.  And there’s nothing wrong with doing each of these as a trial, a test run, some experience under the belt.  However, in the longer term, you want to start doing so strategically. I’ll use social media as an example.

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In a recent post, Harold Jarche talks eloquently about moving into the networked era, and practices of workscaping.  He points to this insightful model by Jane Hart, showing the bigger picture supporting performance in the workplace, or what I like to call Big L learning. Read more →

Flipping learning is big in education. It will be big in corporate learning. Let’s not blow it.

How do you flip learning?
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There are few best practices for the network era workplace, but many next practices yet to be developed. A good place to start is with an integrative performance framework that puts formal training and education where they belong: focused on the appropriate 5%.

Jay Cross calls the new performance environment a workscape:

Workscape: A metaphorical construct where learning is embedded in the work and emerges in “pull” mode. It is a fluid, holistic, process. Learning emerges as a result of working smarter. In this environment learning is natural, social, spontaneous, informal, unbounded, adaptive and fun. It involves conversation as the main ingredient. Read more →

Fixating on the short term is foolish in the long run. The future’s all we’ve got.

Most CLOs I talk with are so busy taking care of today’s business that they spend little time preparing for the future. We all know in our hearts that fixating on the short term is foolish in the long run.

Short-term thinking is good for responding to incremental change, but deciding things one step at a time doesn’t prepare you to thrive in a world of systemic, wholesale change. You can’t leap a chasm in small jumps.

To get beyond immediate concerns, you have to make the future tangible. Examining scenarios — stories about alternative futures — makes the future imaginable and potentially real. Read more →

Imagine if we limited our conversations to only those in the same office.  We would miss out on so many learning opportunities. Well it seems some people are still missing out.  Today, people with larger and more diverse networks have an advantage as professionals and in dealing with change. They are engaged in a constant flow of sense-making through multiple conversations.

Every professional needs to be open to continuous learning and to make much of it transparent in order to cooperate with others. Nothing remains the same, and the only way to remain relevant in the network era is to stay connected. This is life in perpetual Beta. Read more →

Everyone talks about collaboration in the workplace today but what does it really mean? How do you get from here to there? Every snake oil salesman is selling social something: enterprise social; social learning; social CRM; etc. For me it boils down to three principles: narration, transparency & shared power. Read more →

“What Sanofi is doing is reducing its own internal research capacity,” he said. “The days when we locked all of our scientists up in a building and put them on a nice tree-lined campus are done. We will do less of our own research. We’re not going to get out of research. We believe we do certain things well in research but we want to work with more outside companies, startup biotechs, with universities.”

Chris Viehbacher, CEO of pharmaceutical company Sanofi recently stated that ” …  big companies, and not just Big Pharma, big companies I believe, are not any good at doing innovation.” It seems Sanofi is moving to a more networked way of doing business. But to be more innovative, companies must first become open and transparent. Read more →

If you’re not plugged in and running fast at work, you’re falling behind.

Continuous improvement
Business people face more and more novel situations every day. You have to be learning continuously to deal with the onslaught of unfamiliar, complex problems. There’s no longer time to learn things in advance; you have to learn what you need in real time. Leaving work to go learn something is not an option. This is a game changer. Read more →