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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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 →

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 →

Creating New Leaders for the 21st Century (1)

Creating New Leaders for the 21st Century (2)

Sloan Management Review has a great interview with Andy McAfeeon What Sells CEOs on Social Networking. CEOs excitedly agree with Lew Platt’s old observation about Hewlett-Packard: “If only HP knew what HP knows, we’d be three times more productive.” They understand the power of weak ties in enterprise social networks. They appreciate the incoming generation’s new approach to working without limits. Sure, there are fears of losing control, the fact that hierarchy and social networks are not comfortable bedfellows, and the inevitable paradigm drag. But in the long run, people are eager to express themselves and enterprise collegiality is the path to “knowing what HP knows.”

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I’d planned to begin posting my thoughts about how this Unmanagement/Stoos business impacts the administration and operation of corporate training. My friend Dawn Paulos at Xyleme beat me to the punch.

Today, the expectations of learners are much different than they were only a few years ago. Much of what is currently rolled up monolithic, one-size-fits-all courses must give way to small but relevant content updated and delivered continuously to learners based on their individual profiles or needs. In other words, learning needs to go Agile.

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This morning I revisited the delightful story of how people learn to do their jobs at New Seasons Market, a chain of nine natural food stores in Portland, Oregon.

New Seasons exemplifies taking a non-training alternative to workplace learning.

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Ten days ago I flew to Switzerland for a mountaintop retreat with twenty thought leaders from around the world to ponder better ways to manage organizations.

On the flight over, I watched the film Inside Job, a documentary about the shenanigans that led to the financial meltdown fueled by the subprime mortgage bubble. The movie’s incendiary. There are lots of bad apples out there: self-serving financial engineers, ratings agencies, regulators, bankers, and more. Guilty, guilty, guilty.

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“This is business.” — Vito Corleone, The Godfather

Business is changing, and the learning function must change along with it.

Rigid, industrial-age corporations are not keeping up with the pace of change. Customer Spring, Shareholder Spring, and Worker Spring may break out any day. Everyone’s mad as hell. They won’t take it any more. Read more →

Businesses talk about adapting to change quickly, but they don’t take advantage of it. When a practice is not producing results, it’s time to unlearn it. Organizations that don’t embrace new ways of operating and radically different approaches to corporate learning will not survive for three reasons: Read more →