“Is this something that helps an external consultant, like yourself and ITA more so than it does those working inside an organization in a traditional ‘learning’ team?”

This is a great question –  as it allows me now to write a post, about how not only do I think Workforce Collaboration Services are going to be vital in the emerging social business, but how that there are other key services that will be required too.

Based on the work I have done analyzing the use of social media in a professional context and working with organizations who are transitioning to become social businesses, I have developed a Workforce Development Services (WDS) Framework that incorporates 4 key services (as shown in the graphic on the left – note full-size version available in PDF, link below). Here is a very brief explanation of each of them.

1 – Training services –  The need for training services – face-to-face workshops, e-learning, etc will of course remain, but will likely include more social approaches.  However, the opportunities to integrate (and embed) formal training into the workflow as much as possible – through the increased use of social (workplace) systems – intranets and collaborative tools –  will also need to be exploited.

2 – Performance Support Services –  These  services would  focus on supporting access to quick and easy resources by individuals to pull-down whenever they need them to do their job.  This might be achieved through the creation of  (internal) job aids as well as by encouraging the use of external resources (content, tools, networks) on the Social Web.

3 – Workforce Collaboration Services – These services would focus on helping people work collaboratively in teams and groups (as well as more widely across the organization) to encourage and support an ongoing approach to continuous learning and improvement in the workflow. Note, these would not be traditional training services, but would involve the development of a range of collaboration and community skills by “modelling” behaviours.

4 – Performance Consulting Service – These services will focus on identifying the root cause of performance problems and proposing an appropriate solution, which might well be training, but is more likely to be a performance support or workforce collaboration solution. This will be a fundamental service in the WDS Framework as it will serve as the main entry point to the department. In other words, instead of managers coming (to training) with requests for courses, they will (need to) come with requests for help with performance problems.

However, there may well be other entry points directly into other service areas. For example,  Compliance and Regulation might work directly with Training Services, and as businesses transition to social business another entry point might be direct to Workforce Collaboration Services.

Although on the graphic above I showed them as separate services, in reality there will be a high level of overlap in the services provided – particularly between Performance Support and Workforce Collaboration services (as shown in the graphic on the right – note full-size version available in PDF, link below). This also means that although some new service areas will require new skills (social media, community management/leadership, business strategy/processes, etc), not everyone will need to have all the new skills, rather there will remain the opportunity for specalization in the different areas (e.g. for instructional design in the training services area)  but at the same there will be the  ability to make use of new skills to expand/extend the value in each of the distinct areas too.

Furthermore, this framework (unlike the 70:20:10 framework) does not recommend the amount of effort that should be spent in each service area. However, with a Performance Consulting Service in place, it is anticipated that the amount of training organised will likely reduce over time, as other services/solutions are shown to be more effective.

But one important point to reiterate is that Performance Support and Workplace Collaboration services are not “training services” but rather “learning support” services. There is a big difference. So these service areas won’t be about creating and delivering training topeople, but helping them extract and value the learning from their daily work activities themselves.

Although some L&D departments are already thinking more about providing “performance support” services, some  might not want to  include Workforce Collaboration services in their repertoire, These will then have to be provided by other parts of the business – IT, or Business Operations, for example. But as there is quite a big overlap with the other areas, it would make sense for them to be included, although, once again, to reiterate, they will require a different approach than training.

Early commentators of the Framework think that it helps to “legitimize” informal learning in the organization, and at the same time shows a way to incorporate new (non-training) approaches into a wider Workforce Development Services Department – where the focus is on helping people to do their jobs – or do them better – and not just on training.

If you want to read more about this Framework, then I’ve updated The Social Learning Revolution article with this new content. I’ve also produced a PDF version of the whole article which includes full-size versions of the two charts on the Appendix (and which is available as one of a series of new Internet Time Alliance whitepapers we are producing).

I’ll also be writing more about Workforce Collaboration Services in blog posts in the future.

I’ve been working with a number of organisations recently as they’ve been making the move “into social”, and one thing was clear, that “helping” their people with this didn’t require old-school training.  Of course, helping them how to use the technology could be partly approached in this way – but even that wasn’t quite the same. And Maria Ogneva agrees in her blog post, This is not your parents’ software training, when she talks about how organisations should approach Yammer “training”.

But as for the new social and collaboration skills that workers require, well you simply can’t train people to be social! What was required was getting down and dirty and helping people understand what it actually meant to work collaboratively in the new social workplace, and the value that this would bring to them.  My Internet Time Alliance colleague, Harold Jarche,  refers to this as modelling, not shaping.

It also involved helping teams understand what it actually meant to set up and sustain a project group or community of practice; and again it wasn’t simply about using the technology, but included offering tips and techniques to encourage and value participation of the members, as well as keep the group or community alive. In other words, when supporting groups with this, it was not about telling them how to do it, but showing them how to do it – modelling, not shaping.

Yesterday, I read an article that offered some lessons for a big rollout of social and collaborative tools for Virgin Media, and their experience was the same.

“One size doesn’t fit all “We couldn’t just deliver a simple technical training course and people would naturally adopt the technology all at the same rate. We had to create a unique and individual set of adoption processes that included everything from one-to-one training to self-help with videos through how-to communities. One of the big successes during the pilot, which I was hoping for but surprised me nonetheless, was the amount of people who started to self-help and help others.”

Helping people to work collaboratively and become a valued member of a community takes skill; and just like the use of social media it’s not something you talk about –  it’s something you have to do yourself.  Are you ready to help “model” these new behaviours in your organisation?

http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/blog/2012/02/14/collaboration-and-community-skills-are-the-new-workplace-skills/

Firstly, just in case it is not clear, this chart plots organizations along the curve in terms of their use of learning technologies but also in terms of how “learning” is perceived and fits in the workplace.  So for the purposes of this adapted chart,  the “chasm” represents the point where organizations move to adopting both new technologies and new mindsets.   So …

1. The Late Majority and Laggards are still focused on meeting their compliance needs. Many of these organizations are in traditional industries.
2. The Early Majority are focused on learning and particularly course delivery. They are comprised in large part of education and training (E&T) intensive organizations, including schools.
3. The Innovators & Early Adopters have shifted to a work focus. Many are in newer industries. Others are in more traditional industries who have seen the urgent need for change. They are focused on supporting social and informal learning and integrating it into the work flow.

Now, to plot the reactions to my non-training approach to workplace learning on this curve — and also to give my own responses to these comments.

Firstly, there were a couple of consultants and vendors who felt that the emphasis should still remain firmly fixed on traditional training approaches in the workplace.

My response: This was not a surprise since these people and organizations are selling (training, e-learning, blended learning, LMSs) products and services into the Learning  and Compliance Focused areas. But they shouldn’t feel too threatened by what I have been saying, since the number of organizations in the green area of the chart (where they operate) is very big and most of these will remain focused on course delivery for a few years to come. But nevertheless they are still well advised to keep up to date with what the Early Adopters are doing (by reading more about their activities on the NTA website, as well as keeping up to date with what my Internet Time Alliance colleagues are talking about), so that they don’t appear out of date to their clients, who may well be doing the same!

Secondly, there were a large number of positive reactions from individuals working in organisations in the Early Majority area. Although these learning professionals personally could see the value of non-training approaches, they felt that their organizations were not yet ready to embrace the culture shift required to support the kind of non-training approaches I was talking about –  still preferring to focus on traditional training events.

My response to these people is that they should continue to monitor what is happening, so that they can feed all this back into their organization.  Many organizations are only willing to make changes, once they see others around them doing it, so helping them understand what other companies, including their competitors are doing, will be a good start. Then once their organization is ready to move forward, they are well placed to help them. So they just need to keep up to date with what is happening on the NTA website as well the thinking of my Internet Time Alliance colleagues;  we all freely offer a lot of advice and support in our blog posts, articles, etc.

Thirdly, I received a surprisingly large number of positive reactions from learning professionals who not only saw the value of non-traditional approaches themselves but their organisations did too.  However, these sub-divided into two groups. The first group were those where the organization was all to happy to tear down the barriers to make this work successfully.  They had clearly “crossed the chasm” and were moving swiftly forward with new thinking and new initiatives.

My response to these people: I really look forward to hearing more about what you are doing in the NTA Community.

The other group comprised individuals from organizations where they were either still finding it a little difficult to visualize what this looked like in practice, or needed help to overcome some of the more persistent cultural barriers –  in order to “cross the chasm”.

My response to these people is that this is exactly where the (free to access) NTA website will provide some support, as I expand it to cover more examples and ways that other organisations are addressing some of the barriers.  (I should also add here the Internet Time Alliance has been working with a number of big organizations over the last 18 months helping them do just this, so if you are looking for some more bespoke advice, we’d be very happy to help).

All in all I’m really pleased that so many people are able to see that these non-training approaches are the way forward and provide new exciting ways to support the workforce, and that they are not seen as  threat but rather as a huge opportunity to evolve their own role in the organisation in order to help people to do their jobs – or do them better.

http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/blog/2011/11/25/reactions/

What is more, although Jay Cross and others have brought to the attention of the learning profession the fact that most learning in the workplace occurs outside any formal learning intervention – informally, in the workflow – the only way that most training departments have been able to deal with this is by trying to “manage” it and build it in to the training blend.  But blend it as much as they like – it won’t change the fact people will still learn informally and continuously – outside of training events – and L&D will never be able to manage it all!

But now, the emergence of social media has given individuals and teams the tools to support their own learning and performance needs much more easily and powerfully themselves. And by doing so many are already circumventing the L&D function – and citing a number of reasons for doing this:

• L&D is too slow to respond to their needs
• courses are not the most appropriate way to solve their problems
• they don’t want to have to leave the workflow for the solution
• e-learning frequently annoys adult learners as it treats them like idiots
• and they don’t want to have Big Brother breathing down their necks monitoring and tracking their every move.

What is needed quite urgently is a new approach to helping those in the workplace do their jobs, or do them better – in more effective, efficient and relevant ways in the modern workplace. An approach that is NOT about designing and delivering courses, but is about working with individuals and teams at the grass roots to both encourage and support continuous learning practices as well as to identify more appropriate solutions to business and performance problems through non-training interventions.

I have written a lot about this in my posts over the last few months. I am therefore going to be spending some time working onThe Non-Training Approach to Workplace Learning – a new resource and community site for resources, ideas and examples of how to support continuous learning and performance improvement in the workflow – using non-training initiatives. If this is something that interests you and you want to get involved, you’ll be very welcome.

http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/blog/2011/11/23/the-non-training-approach/

Workplace Learning is changing!

A number of people, my Internet Time Alliance colleague, Charles Jennings in particular, have highlighted the fact that training that simply involves filling people’s heads with knowledge, is ineffective and inefficient – as most people forget what they have learnt very quickly.  And that online courses, which do pretty much the same, take time, effort and money to develop.

Many are also “over-engineered” solutions – and this often leads to resentment by those who have to spend time to work through courses – when the material could have been provided in a much simpler way. But in fact this whole approach to workplace learning is not sustainable in a world that is moving very fast and where there is need for access to constantly changing information.

On the other hand, although we have now realized – due largely to the work of (my Internet Time Alliance colleague) Jay Cross - that most of an individual’s “real” learning takes place outside formal learning .. continuously … in the workflow … by reading or listening to things, or more significantly in conversations and interactions with other people, L&D have struggled to understand how to harness informal
learning, and perhaps understandably often try to force it into the formal model they feel comfortable with it.

But it is in fact, the emergence of social media, that has really begun to make us think differently about the way work and learning is happening.  For an increasing number of individuals and groups are using these new technologies in the workplace to connect with colleagues both inside and outside the organisation in order to share ideas, resources and experiences – often under the radar of IT and L&D. This use of social media has become a revolution in the sense that these tools are now in the hands of the employees. So the question is what role does L&D play in all this?

One key thing to remember is Learning is not the end goal; but is a means to an end.  It’s about PERFORMANCE; people doing their jobs (better).  In fact it’s all about working smarter.  So what is working smarter?

Jay Cross explains it thus:“Working smarter is the key to sustainability
and continuous improvement.  The accelerating rate of change forces everyone in every organization to make a choice: learn while you work or become obsolete.”

The working smarter approach therefore involves NOT just new tools BUT new thinking. As we have seen we can no longer sustain a model based on creating, delivery and managing courses – we need to think more about enabling and supporting people to work smarter – and the new social media tools lend themselves to this.   So this is far more than just adding on social media to training courses. It’s all about helping people connect across the business (as well as outside of it) so that they can solve business and performance problems faster.

What is more, social media (SoMe) tools are “enabling” technologies – so it is no longer about controlling and managing what people do with these tools,  but encouraging and supporting a self-sufficient approach to smarter worker – and of course providing support to those who need it.Many people are already making significant use of these tools to solve their own learning and performance problems, so the advice is to “let go” and let them get on with it; others will need
help to become self-sufficient and to help solve specific problems – and this is where L&D has a big part to play.

In the next 10 steps I want to look at how you can help your organization work smarter – based on my, and the Internet Time Alliance’s, experience of working with organizations who are doing this right now  – as well as other examples we know about.

Note: although I called them “steps” – they are not linear – they are in fact a set of steps that cover 3 main approaches:

1. Raising awareness to develop self-sufficiency through SoMe
2. Using SoMe within a Performance Consulting approach
3. Embedding SoMe in the organization.

Note these steps are as much about the NEW THINKING that is required as well as the NEW TOOLS.

1 – Raise awareness of the potential of SoMe for working/learning

Even though Social Media might be not be banned in your organization, individuals may still not appreciate that social media tools are not just trivial tools, but are now considered as powerful tools for both professional and organisational use.

So in our work with organizations who are moving into this area, one of the first things we do is to raise awareness of the value of these tools for the workplace.

I use a resource I have built called The Smart Worker’s Guide to using social media – in 30 days. It covers 4 main areas of use

1. Finding and using content
2. Creating and sharing content
3. Joining and building networks and communities
4. Improving productivity.

Clearly everyone won’t need to use ALL these tools in their job, but they usually don’t know which tools they will find valuable until they have taken a look!

The feedback I normally get is that exposure to the new tools has meant people’s eyes have been opened to things that they were previously not even aware of, and they have discovered tools that don’t just help them to automate tasks or activities but help them identify new and improved ways of doing things.

Note:  the resource  is a very simple set of materials that provides quick guidance on these tools, but there is also a strong social element in that it encourages participants to share their own thoughts and experiences – so it is also a good way of demonstrating the valuable use of social media for learning and working itself.

2 – Help with Personal Knowledge Management

Part of the initial exercise in awareness building and developing self-sufficiency also includes a look at the new information skills required for effective use of social media – in terms of one’s own Personal Knowledge Management (or Networked Learning), as my Internet Time Alliance colleague Harold Jarche calls it.

This might include:

- Helping people to deal with information overload – by putting the most appropriate filters in place – that suit them and their way of working

- Helping people locate appropriate and valid resources for their particular job

- Helping people locate useful people to build their Personal Knowledge Network – a network of trusted colleagues – both inside and outside the organisation.

3 – Develop team collaboration skills

A third important area is collaboration skills. Often people say, “we don’t have a collaboration culture”. So how can that issue be addressed?

One way I know that is working well for a number of organizations is to bring a team together and use social tools as part of the process of helping them understand the value of collaboration.

This begins the process of working and learning together and as the team sees the value and purpose in it they continue to do so back in their job – as a Community of Practice.

4 -Help establish and sustain Communities of Practice

Helping to establish Communities of Practice (CoPs) is one of the activities that can begin to establish good collaborative practices and embed social media in the workplace.   CoPs are groups of individuals – in the same team, or diff parts of same organisation  or even different organisations – who come together with a common purpose – to improve their practice. CoPs aren’t a new idea; the term dates back before the emergence of social media tools,  but this is a term that does appeal to managers (rather than social networking)  so we are seeing more and more CoPs being set up in organizations – and using social media tools (particularly group spaces) to support their activities.

But CoPs may well need a helping hand getting going – which is where you can play a part. The role of someone who looks after a community has traditionally been known as a Community Manager – but  it’s not about managing people – but rather enabling conversations but people …

So my Internet Time Alliance colleague, Clark Quinn talks about Community Gardening which involves “seeding, feeding and weeding” the community to encourage discussions and help keep things active.

“Communities don’t want to be managed – they want to be nurtured.”

Guidance abounds on using CoPs so I am not going to go into this further here, but just want to add that the best way to acquire this skill is by participating in online communities and seeing how they are supported.

5 – Use social media within your Performance Consulting services

Let’s now take a look at another stream of approach to help your people work smarter with social media: Performance Consultancy. This provides a significant opportunity for L&D to help individuals and team solve their business or learning problems, and at the same time embed social media into work practices.

Traditionally L&D is asked by a line manager to produce a course to solve a problem.  The manager has in fact already decided on the solution, which, unfortunately, all too often only addresses the symptoms of the problem.  Performance consulting is about understanding the root of the problem and finding the right solution – which probably isn’t training!

In fact my colleague Harold Jarche says “Training should only be done in cases where the other barriers to performance have been addressed“.  He has created this flowchart to help identify when training is REALLY necessary. Don’t worry too much about the detail, just look at the dotted box in the middle. It says “only a lack of skills and knowledge warrants training”.

Let’s take a look at an example – of how a problem was resolved using social media.

This is Pat, she was struggling with a word processing task that  involved her trying to aggregate amendments to a document by 10 individuals onto one master copy.  It was taking up far too much of her time, and her productivity was very poor – her manager thought this meant she needed to go on a Word course.

But when I discussed the problem with her I realised that it was not her ability to use Word, but the process itself that was at fault.  When I suggested using a collaborative document tool like Google Docs which everyone could use to add their amendments onto a master document themselves, her problem was solved.

In this case training would have been an expensive and unnecessary approach to addressing her problem.  Whereas a new collaborative approach to working brought about significant productivity improvements.

6 – Help people design and build their own solutions

The traditional training approach in most cases is to design a solution to a problem and then impose it upon the individuals concerned, whereas Performance consulting involves working with the individuals and teams concerned, discussing the options and involving them in the design and build of their own solutions.  This way they own the solution.  My second example shows this.

The sales team at a large consumer electronics organisation were trained on products only once they were launched.  This meant there was a big time lag before the sales team could talk intelligently with their customers about them, which resulted in weak sales in the first few weeks after launch and poor customer satisfaction ratings due to an uninformed sales force.

The sales director thought their problem could be solved by training courses being developed more quickly after launch. However, when we asked why it had to be a training solution; their answer was simply, because it had always been done that way!

So in a meeting with the two teams involved: R&D and Sales, we asked why Sales couldn’t find out about the product while it was being developed and before it was launched.  We discussed a number of ways this might happen, and eventually it was decided that R&D would write regular blog posts during the development period about what they were doing and the Sales Team could ask post questions.

The result: When the next product was released, the team were knowledgeable about it from the get go. They could talk about it straightaway to their customers, so both sales went up as well as customers satisfaction ratings. It was evident the sales team had “learnt” about the product, because of these performance indicators.

So this was a successful outcome due to a collaborative approach to working – which also meant that the need for costly training was eliminated.  But the key point here is the teams involved helped to design and build a solution that worked for them.

7 –  Help teams build social resources together

Even when there is a defined need for a body of content, this doesn’t have to be created in the form of costly and time-consuming courses, in fact  teams and groups can build and share their own resources.  Here are two examples

The first one is about induction.  In this medium-sized organisation, induction training happened so irregularly that people left before they even went on it, and when they did, it was not perceived to be of value because everyone had already found out what they needed to know about the company.  Poor retention rates and low morale led the line manager of one department to demand an online version of the training so that everyone could access it as soon as they arrived.

However, when we talked to a group of newhires about what they would like to see as a “solution”, they agreed that it was more about accessing resources about their day to day job and the ability to ask questions of their colleagues – rather than training on the history of the organisation.  They also felt that a group space which they could join before they even stepped in the door would be valuable.  They all agreed to be part of a pilot to help share useful resources about how to get up and running in the organization – as well as answer newhire questions.  The result was increased retention rates and more motivated individuals who felt they were part of the organization.

My second example is the well-known BT Dare2share project.  Here BT Engineers were encouraged to share audio and video podcasts on engineering issues with one another; as well as to rate and discuss them.
This was a truly collaborative enterprise, that could not have been achieved in the normal traditional ways of being developed
and delivered top down, and brought substantial cost savings.

8 – Build Communities of  Learning

But even when a formal learning approach is the most appropriate solution, then there are many different ways that you could use social media in your formal course.

One of which is to build a supportive community around some pre-existing course or ideally build into new courses.

But it is important that these types of activities are not just bolted on, otherwise they will not be used; they need to be well integrated into the course or programme.

Also consider that a Learning Community might also consist of others outside the course who can take on the role of coaches or provide additional peer support with the formal learning.

And once you’ve established the Learning Community it can then evolve into a Community of Practice.

9 – Integrate learning into workflow and workflow systems

Which brings us back to the steps of how to embed social media into the workplace.

(1) By helping to maintain and sustain Communities and

(2)  By integrating them into the workflow

Don’t silo learning! This has been its problem up to now – locked away in separate systems. It needs to be as close to the workflow as possible. Learning needs to be integrated in workflow systems, where individuals can make use of the tools they have for working – they don’t need (or want) different tools for learning.

Remember that in most cases too the learning activity doesn’t need to be tracked and monitored – since these activity measures tell you nothing about what people learn – people just need continuous, access to resources and people, in the flow of work. If you need to measure success, then measure it in terms of performance outcomes – as I have showed in the examples above – by asking “did it address the business problems that had been identified?”

Up to now I’ve kept away from showing you social media tools and systems in close up, but below is a mock-up of an example of how a number of organizations are embedding their formal learning into workflow systems. This is an example of an enterprise social platform, called Yammer – a cross between Facebook and Twitter – for private company use. Here people in the company can share resources, ideas or experiences or ask and answer questions – across the company as well as in discrete team or project groups.

A number of these groups are actually course groups or groups that support more formal approaches, e.g. this is a group that supports the learning around the 30 ways programme I mentioned earlier.  When a user is a member of a group like this, then the postings appear in their personal feed alongside with the other postings.  In this way, both working and learning become almost indistinguishable – which for us at the Internet Time Alliance, is the key to learning in the new workplace.

Of course if such a system is not being used routinely, then the next best thing is to take learning to where the learners are – and that may well be somewhere like Facebook.  I know of quite a few instances of using Facebook groups to support enterprise courses.  In fact a week or so ago I was in South Africa, working with Eskom, an energy provider,  who have started in this way, by using a Facebook group to create a Learning Community around a 7 month leadership programme.

For some this route may prove to be the best way to TRANSITION to a new collaborative working and learning environment.

10 Lead by example

But now I want to move onto the last step .  As I said at the outset, it’s NOT just about the new tools but about new thinking about workplace learning, and is as much about building self-sufficiency rather than you trying to solve every problem.

Most of the successful uses of social media within organisations have been led by individuals (sometimes managers) who have inspired others – and by that I mean they have just started small initiatives and got small fires burning – and through their contagious enthusiasm have encouraged others to participate.  (I strongly believe you can’t force or enforce “social” top-down on people!)

So the last step is actually the first. It’s Lead by example! You will need to demonstrate value yourself in using SoMe, before you can convince others to do so. So you will need to raise your own awareness of what SoMe can do for you and your team – and build your own skills first.  You could even build your own Community of Practice to discuss the use of SoMe in your team – as well as how to encourage others.

As I always say “Social media is not something you talk about, it’s something you do!”

So how can I help you further?

Firstly, I’ve put together a lot of my thinking, articles, blog postings etc in a cohesive format as a Social Learning Handbook. Part One considers the emergence of social media, its impact on workplace learning and the difference between social training and social  learning, the range of social technologies available as well as strategies for supporting and encouraging social learning in the business.  All the stuff I’ve mentioned here you’ll find in Part One – as well as lots more things I couldn’t put in this presentation. Part Two comprises the printed version of the 30 ways to use social media for working and learning smarter programme (with links to useful resources and people for L&D professionals).

Secondly,   I  would also like to invite you to another new initiative that I started in early March – a private Community of Practice – the Social Learning Community – for those interested in discussing how social media for smarter working. It’s hosted on Yammer, the private social system I showed you earlier, and is free to join.  It already has over 450 members worldwide.  You can find further details here.

UPDATE:

In November 2011 I also set up another site called The Non-Training Approach to Workplace Learning to consider all this in more detail.

With the emergence of new social media tools, the word “Social” is being prefixed to old words to form new terms like “Social Business” and “Social Media Marketing”, and of course we now see the increasing use of the term “Social Learning”.

Unfortunately, there are a few problems with this term. Firstly, it conflicts with the existing term “social learning” which refers to alllearning that happens socially with others – both social-media-powered and not. Secondly it is often erroneously used to imply that this is a new training trend – that this is something else that needs to be added to the “blend”, and which requires a new set of learning tools and platforms.

But discussion around the meaning of the term is actually missing the more significant fact – that the use of social media in organisations is already bringing about a fundamental shift in the way that people are working and learning.

It is clear that a huge number of people who have been using social media for personal purposes and are now using the very same tools to address their organisational performance problems – usually because enterprise systems just don’t provide them with the functionality they need. Forrester estimated this was around 47% business users in early 2011 and was likely to rise to 60% by then end of the year.

There are two key areas where this is happening and how it is having an impact on organisational learning.

1. Extensive use of public social media sites like YouTube, Slideshare, Blogger, Wikipedia, etc, means that workers are now using these types of tool to support the creation, co-creation and sharing of content within their own work teams.
2. Extensive use of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc means that workers are using these and similar tools to build networks of trusted colleagues (both internally and externally).

Although some organisations have yet to grasp the value of social and collaborative approaches, others are tapping into the growing phenomenon of sharing and the desire for social networking, and are actively encouraging these practices within their organisations, recognising that by doing so they can now support organisational learning in much wider and more relevant ways.

Indeed, many are realising that this user-driven approach is also impacting the traditional view of formal learning; firstly that the desire for quick and easy access to short pieces of content in different formats means that the existing course format is often not the most useful or valid solution to a business or performance problem, and secondly that many people now want to have a more participative role in formal learning, where they can share thoughts, ideas and experiences with other participants.

Although it is clear there are now many social-media-savvy people in organisations,  there are still many others who haven’t yet recognised the value of the new social tools  – whether through lack of exposure or for other reasons like fear of the unknown. So adopting social approaches in organisations needs to be handled very carefully.  It certainly does not sit well with most organisations’ traditional “command and control” mentalities.  In other words it’s not about implementing an internal social platform, forcing people to use it, and monitoring their social activity to ensure they do. Trying to do this will only annoy those who are already gaining huge value from their own social media tools and activities, and those who are not familiar with social approaches will be very uncomfortable and reluctant to be forced to do so, too.

A new approach  will need to build on what is already happening in the organisation, and encouraging those new to these social approaches to become involved, supporting these new activities as they grow, as well as developing the new literacy skills to help them get most out of the experience.

A new approach will also embrace both the use of external social media tools as well as internal collaboration tools, in order to support far wider approaches to learning than has hitherto been the case.  Indeed as learning and working become much more closely integrated, “learning” will not be seen as a separate activity requiring separate, dedicated learning systems or platforms, but will become embedded within normal workflow collaboration systems.

A new approach will also mean that L&D will broaden its role from one that is focused on traditional “training” to one that helps people work and learn smarter in many new and varied ways.

If you’d like to find out more about what all this means for your organisation, visit  www.NewWorkplaceLearning.com

“As business is becoming more social and we are using new social tools to work collaboratively with one another, do we really need another set of social tools specifically for learning?”

In this post I am going to be taking a look at 6 ways organisations are already integrating learning into their workflow systems – so that the same social tools are being used for both working and learning.  But first of all, let me explain the diagram below, which visually summarises this post.

We learn every day, in everything we do whether it is in what we read, watch or listen to (CONTENT/information ), in the conversations and discussions we have with others (PEOPLE/interaction), as well as in formal learning settings  e.g. in a school classroom or training session (INSTRUCTION:CONTENT+PEOPLE).  In the Workplace we learn from both external as well as internalsources.

In recent years the technology that has underpinned all this has included websites (external/information),  intranets (internal/information),  Learning Management Systems (internal/instruction), web conferencing systems (internal instruction/interaction) and email (internal/external interaction)

Use of social media (externally) for the (co)-creation and sharing of CONTENT/information and collaboration, as well as the building of trusted networks of friends and colleagues for PEOPLE/interaction is now impacting the way we both work and learn within organisations, and means that existing internal systems (intranet, LMS and email) are being surpassed by new social and collaboration tools with more appropriate functionality for today’s world.  As a consequence of this we are also seeing the convergence of working and learning.

In terms of the technology, organisations are taking different approaches to supporting the convergence between working and learning.  Here are just 5 examples:

 A – Using public social media tools

Some organisations (mostly small- or medium-sized businesses) are building on the already prolific use of public social media tools in their organisation.  Working with existing users they are identifying the most useful and appropriate social tools that support the collaborative working and learning functionality for their business, eg YouTube, Slideshare, Blogger, Google Sites, Google Docs, Facebook and Google Plus, and encouraging others to use these tools too.  In some cases organisations are opting for premium versions to enable private secure working and learning spaces for the business.  For those organisations who only need light-weight tracking, Google Analytics is proving useful as their LMS. Others are using Facebook for this purpose, perhaps in conjunction with plugins like Udutu Teach and Learn Facebook  to import courses, manage the people that  can take your courses, and track learners’ progress. [For more about how public social media can used for training, read Jane Bozarth's Social Media for Trainers.]

 Using Google Apps for Business as a social intranet 

Many organisations – 4 million to to be exact – are using Google Apps for business to power their social businesses.  This includes the Google applications which most of their workers are extremely familiar,  like Gmail and Google Calendar, and also includes Google Groups for Business and Google Videos for Business, together with collaboration tools like Google Docs, Google Sites.  Google+is now available for Google Apps users. For those who require some sort of course management functionality, Course Director LMS is a useful application that works with Google Apps.  There are a  huge number of applications in the Google Apps marketplace which work seamlessly with Google Apps, and although these tools are technically stand-alone, they are unified through the user’s dashboard, to give a cohesive feel.  [Google Apps is also  recognised as an effective teaching and learning environment by Educause.]

 Using proprietary or open source social media tools

Some organisations prefer to host their own software themselves (either internally or “in the cloud”), and have installed open source software to provide private content creation, sharing and networking  functionality for their workplaces – and hence have created an additional “social layer” in their organisation. This includes tools like WordPress.org for multi-user blogging, MediaWiki for wikis, as well as networking tools like Status.net. These tools can be used for both working and learning, so for example WordPress also functions well as a course site. Some of the open source tools have considerable developer communities that provide 3rd party plugins, which means that these tools can be built out into more significant platforms. (see D below for more on this).

Other organisations have chosen proprietary tools to build their “social layer”, e.g by using Confluence to help teams create, share, manage and discover content, and Yammer or Socialcast for internal networking. This means it is very easy for users to create groups which can be used for collaborative working, for communities of practice or learning communities.  Jane Bozarth explains the value of enterprise networking tools like Yammer within formal learning, here. Although once again these are stand-alone tools, the important fact is that they are being used for both working and learning. However, many of them do have connectors to other popular systems, like Sharepoint, so that they can be more fully integrated to build a social intranet. (see E below for more on this).

 Using open source software with plugin functionality as a social intranet

WordPress.org (WPMU) is more than a blogging platform, it can be extended to become a fully functional social intranet, by adding many of the useful plugins that are now available.  The Buddypress plugin, for instance, adds the essential profiling, activity flow and networking functionality as well as internal messaging, group spaces, event calendaring and live chat.  You can read more about how it can be used as a social intranet here, and this is an example of how Kyle Jones uses WPMU and BuddyPress as a LMS. But there are further 3rd party plugins that provide additional support for more formal learning, e.g. ScholarPress and SCORM Cloud.  [Share&Learn is an example of a social platform/intranet, if you want to take a peek.]

 Extending existing intranet into social intranet

Microsoft Sharepoint is a commonplace intranet in organizations, but is often not used to its full potential. However, it is very possible to extend this platform into a fully functioning social and collaboration intranet for both working and learning. A good exampleof this is the social intranet built at TELUS (the Canadian telecommunicatins company) by Dan Pontefract, Director of Learning & Collaboration, who integrated the existing social technologies (Confluence, MediaWiki, WebLogic, etc) with Sharepoint.  You can see more about this project in this YouTube video.  TELUS is now in the process of integrating its course management functionality within the same platform, so that when you do a search on the site, you will find not just courses, but blog posts, Buzz activity messages and even employees with skills in the topic area.   Dan doesn’t believe there should be separate tools for learning/training; he says “Blow up your LMS. Find a way to integrate it into your collaboration platform.”

Using proprietary social intranet software

Finally, many organisations who are not hamstrung by legacy systems, have chosen to install new enterprise social intranet software like SocialText, ThoughtFarmer or Podio.  Since many of these organisations are thinking very differently about how work and learning happens in their organisations, they are often outsourcing all training, and focusing more on learning support and knowledge sharing, which can easily be powered by these collaboration platforms.

So these are just 6 basic  ways that organisations are integrating learning and working by using the same social tools. But what are some of the success criteria for achieving this successfully? That’ll be the subject of the next post in this series.

http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/blog/2011/10/25/do-you-really-need-separate-social-learning-tools-part-2-6-ways-to-integrate-learning-into-working/

Although we learn every day, in everything we do, whether it is in what we read,  watch or listen to, or in the conversations and discussions we have with other people, at some time or other people started believing that the only important learning happens in a formal setting, e.g. in a school classroom or a university lecture hall.

Hence in the workplace most Training Departments have tended to focus their efforts on creating and delivering formal courses and workshops – and in the process have pretty much disregarded all the other learning that takes place, continuously and informally, as people do their jobs.

Twenty years ago training revolved around offering face-face-workshops or paper-based training guides, but with the advent of the Web, the E-Era began, and with it the emergence of new terms like E-Commerce and E-Business. The term E-Learning was also coined around 2000 and essentially refers to the automation of the development of (primarily) content-based, online courses, and their delivery and management in (so-called) Learning Management System.  For some organisations the social aspect of formal learning all but disappeared, whereas for others this was e-enabled  through the use of webinar tools.

But now with the emergence of social tools, we have moved into the Social Era, and this time the word “Social” is being prefixed to old words to form new terms like Social Business, Social Media Marketing, etc.   The same has of course happened with Learning, and this had led to the increasing use of the term “Social Learning”.  Unfortunately, there are a few problems with this term.  Firstly, it is often used to refer solely to the use of social media within formal courses, but secondly, and more importantly, it also conflicts with the existing term “social learning” which refers to ALL learning that happens socially with others – i.e. not just that in formal learning contexts – both social-media-powered and not.

But the discussion around the use of the term “Social Learning” actually draws attention away from the more significant point that the use of social media in organisations is bringing about a fundamental shift in the way that people are working and learning in organisations.  In other words, the Social Era is much more about innovation than simply adding “social” into the training blend.

It is clear that a huge number of people who have been using social media for their personal use have now recognised their value for professional use, and are also using the very same tools to address their own organisational problems – mainly because enterprise systems just don’t provide them with the functionality they require to do so. Forrester estimated this was around 47% business users in early 2011 and was likely to rise to 60% by then end of the year.

There are two key areas where this is happening and how it is having an impact on organisational learning.

1. Extensive use of public social media sites like YouTube, Scribd, Slideshare, Blogger, WordPress, Wikipedia, and so on, that support the creation, sharing and commenting of content, as well as the co-creation of content, means that workers are now using similar approaches in their organisations to co-create and share their own content within their own work teams.
2. Extensive use of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc where individuals have built a personal network of trusted friends, means that they are using similar approaches to build networks of trusted colleagues (both internally and externally), as well as power team workspaces and internal communities of practice.

Although some organisations (around 20%) still ban use of social media tools internally, others are tapping into this growing phenomenon of sharing as well as the desire for social networking, and are actively encouraging these practices within their organisations, recognising that by doing so they can now support organisational learning in much wider and more relevant ways.

Indeed, many are recognising that this user-driven approach is also impacting the traditional view of formal learning; firstly that the desire for quick and easy access to short pieces of content in different formats means that the existing course format is often not the most useful or valid solution to a business or performance problem, and secondly that many people now want to have a more participative role in their formal learning.  That is, they no longer just want to read (or just comment on) expert-generated content, but they want to be able to co-create content, and make full use of the opportunity to share thoughts, ideas and experiences with other participants.

Although it is clear there are now many social-media-savvy people in organisations – already making significant use of these tools and approaches in their professional lives – there are of course many others who haven’t yet appreciated what social media has to offer them – whether through lack of exposure or lack of understanding of their value, or for other reasons like fear of the unknown.

So adopting social approaches in organisations needs to be handled very carefully.  It certainly does not sit well with most organisations’ traditional “command and control” mentalities.  So it’s not about implementing an internal social platform, forcing people to use it, and measuring their social activity to ensure they do. Trying to do this will only annoy those who are already gaining huge value from their own social media tools and activities, and those who are not familiar with social approaches will be very uncomfortable and reluctant to be forced to do so, too.

So a new approach will focus on engaging individuals and teams in new social practices, by building on what is already happening in the organisation, and encouraging those new to these approaches to become involved, supporting these new activities as they grow, as well as the new skills that many will need to acquire to get the most out of them.

This new approach will embrace both the use of external social media tools as well as internal tools, but what is clear these tools will need to support -  as well as power – far wider approaches to learning, than has hitherto been the case.  In fact as learning and working become much more closely integrated, “learning” will not be seen as a separate activity requiring separate, dedicated learning systems or platforms, but will need to be supported and enabled within the normal workflow collaboration systems.

So what do we call all this if “Social Learning” isn’t the right term?  Since it is clearly more than just about using the tools and technologies, “Social Media for Learning” doesn’t adequately sum it up either.  An appropriate term needs to recognise that it is about helping individuals work and learn as they do their jobs. In the Internet Time Alliance we call this “Working Smarter”.  You can find out more here at how L&D can support this in my evolving book: NEW Workplace Learning: A Guide to helping Employees Work Smarter.

Although in my earlier posting I pointed out some of the features of these two approaches, in this posting I first want to summarize the two approaches again. This time I am going to refer to the first approach as  Traditional Workplace Learning and the second as New Workplace Learning.

Although these two approaches are clearly quite different, what I am hearing is that some are advising (and others are believing) that it is enough for L&D departments to simply add “social” onto their traditional approach to learning – as follows:

This is clearly perpetuating the old model of training.

So what does it take to move the New Workplace Learning model – and new opportunities for all ?

The missing piece is of course a  new mindset.  Until that is in place, it  is just tinkering with the traditional ways of training and L&D, which are simply not “fit for purpose” in this day and age.

Furthermore, as Deb Lavoy explained in her posting:

“Business structures founded on command and control, automation and process are giving way to structures that are less hierarchical and more dynamic, designed to engage people’s hearts and minds to make a difference in the world. ”

Let’s first take a look at managing and measuring employee “learning”.

The traditional approach to measuring learning in the workplace, has been to monitor and track course attendance, or online test and course completions, and report success in quantitative terms – i.e. the number of courses each individual has taken and/or completed.

Some who have begun to introduce social approaches into the organisation, still think it is about measuring quantity; i.e. tracking the number of active participants and posts and comments people are making.

But both of these approaches are just about measuring “activity” and say very little about how individuals are actually “learning”.  In fact it is quite clear that even those who are socially inactive – (aka “lurkers” or “legitimate peripheral participants“) may still be learning.

In summary, as the recent article about social media marketing, The inconvenient truth about social media, puts it

”Quantity is an antiquated way of measuring success”

So how then do we measure learning in the workplace?

Well, although we can track formal learning activity, it is really not possible to track informal learning (where most people’s learning takes place). In many cases this often takes place even without the individual realising it, so how can an organisational system track and manage  that.  The only system that CAN manage or measure an individual’s learning  is their own brain!

So we need to approach measuring success in a very different way.

As mentioned in a previous post, in the workplace, “learning is a means to an end; not the end itself. — the end is performance”.  So we need to focus on the end, the performance.

We need to define performance objectives for individuals and then measure success in terms of how well  they meet those objectives. Some performance objectives might well be determined in terms of quantitative terms, e.g. number of sales, but it will be the qualitative terms that are they most important, as Dick Grote points out in his recent post The Myth of Performance Metrics, and summarises well here.

“Don’t get hung up trying to find quantitative metrics to support every judgment in a performance appraisal. Remember what Albert Einstein said: “Not everything that counts can be counted. And not everything that can be counted counts.”

So in summary , it is about moving from thinking in terms of Quantity to Quality

So how does the L&D fit into this, and how do we measuring their involvement

Once again, the traditional approach to measuring the success of the L&D function, has been in terms of quantitative terms.  How many people have they trained, how many have taken online courses they have produced, etc, etc

But with the new Encourage & Engage approach it is going to be now about the quality of the service they provide; it’s going to be about how well they help individuals achieve their performance objectives.

We have already said that self-reliant individuals may well be able to meet their performance objectives on their own, without any need from L&D, – and that should be seen as a good thing.  Their services shouldn’t be forced upon them.  But others will probably need a lot of help and, and it will be how well L&D responds to the needs of individuals and groups, that needs to be measured.

L&D will need to investigate the root cause of problems, rather than addressing the symptoms of the problems.  Some are referring to this as a “performance consulting” approach (although even that term is being defined differently by different people).  Some workers and some problems may well require formal training interventions; others might be supported through more informal approaches, and others might be helped by changes in work processes (so carrying out workflow audits mentioned earlier, will  be required).  But at the end of the day it will be about providing the right solution for the business/learning problem in hand – not just throwing a training solution at the problem.

Tom Gram’s diagram (reproduced to the left) shows that “most work requires a combination of knowledge work and routine work. These characteristics of jobs and work environments call for different approaches to training and development.” [se  Mapping informal and formal learning strategies to real work], so the work of the L&D department will be very different in different organisations, depending on the type of workers and work done.

As the Learning at Work: Towards More “Expansive” Opportunities, NIACE, 2007 report said

“Every workplace creates its own  unique version of a learning environment”

And as Harold Jarche in Leave the cookie cutter at the bakery puts it:

“There are no cookie-cutter solutions” 

UPDATE: Presentation slides available in the next posting.

http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/blog/2011/09/13/social-learning-doesnt-mean-what-you-think-it-does-part-two/

“Social Business” is not about technology, or about “corporate culture.” It is a socio-political historical shift that is bigger, broader and much more fascinating.

A new perspective is changing how we think about society, politics, interpersonal relationships, science, government and business. New approaches are emerging. Learning and self-expression are exploding. Values are changing. Leadership is changing. The economy is changing. Change itself is changing — it is accelerating and becoming the norm.”

The changes we are seeing in Workplace Learning are of course just one part of the changes we are seeing in businesses as whole. Simply replace the word “business” in the quote above with the word “learning” and it still makes sense. So, for instance the first paragraph would now read:

“Social Learning ” is not about technology, or about “corporate culture”. It is a socio-political historical shift that is bigger, broader and much more fascinating.”

In other words those who think “social learning” is just about a new training trend, or about adding social media into the  ”blend”, or that it is about acquiring the latest Social Learning Management System are missing the big picture.

Harold Jarche makes this point succinctly himself in Social Learning: the freedom to act and cooperate with others

“One current theme in the workplace and education circles is to “blend” social with the formal and structured. But social learning is not a bolted-on component of our formal educational and training programs. It is a sea change. It will disrupt institutions built upon the technology of  the printing press – all communication enterprises, including education. Yes, we have always learned and worked socially, but we have never had the power of ridiculously easy group-forming or almost zero-cost duplication of our words and images.”

So to paraphrase the title of Deb Lavoy’s article – “Social Learning doesn’t mean what you think it does.”

So what is the “big picture”?  Deb puts her finger on it in the third paragraph of her article:

“Business structures founded on command and control, automation and process are giving way to structures that are less hierarchical and more dynamic, designed to engage people’s hearts and minds to make a difference in the world. ”

This is, of course, a fundamental change in how businesses operate – and consequently means a fundamental change in how we need to view workplace learning.  So in order to stay in tune with the new ways of working and learning, how does the L&D function need to change? The clue is in the paragraph above.  It needs to move from a “Command and Control” approach to one that I call “Encourage and Engage”.

So what does this “Encourage and Engage” approach look like?

During the summer I wrote a series of postings highlighting 8 features how Smart Workers are working and learning today.  For each of these features, I’ve now compared the “Command and Control” response with the new  ”Encourage & Engage” response to highlight the different approaches. I’ve summarized them here below, but if you want more detail you can follow the links to the complete articles.

1 - The Smart Worker : recognises that she learns continuously as she does her job

2 - The Smart Worker wants immediate access to solutions to his performance problems

3 – The Smart Worker is happy to share what she knows

4 – The Smart Worker relies on a trusted network of friends and colleagues

5 – The Smart Worker learns best with and from others

6 – The Smart Worker keeps up to date with what is happening in his profession and industry

7  -The Smart Worker: constantly strives to improve her productivity

8 – The Smart Worker thrives on autonomy

Although a number of forward-thinking organisations have already shifted away from a command and control approach, it goes without saying that many others will resist making changes to long-held views of doing things.  But if you and your organisation are ready to make the move, then one way to start  is to work through each of these features, and build a Plan of Action (as I help organisations to do in my Workshop).

Clearly, one of the important questions that people  have about this new approach to Workplace Learning, is how do you measure employee “learning” as well as L&D’s involvement? So I’ll talk about that in my next post.

UPDATE: Presentation slides available in the third posting.

http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/blog/2011/09/12/social-learning-doesnt-mean-what-you-think-it-does/