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 →

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 →

Workforce Collaboration in the Network Era

Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy, and networks subvert standardization.

In the industrial era we saw the rise of specialized departments and specialized jobs. Any job could be generically designed and then filled by the most suitable applicant. People became interchangeable pieces for the mechanistic model of work. As jobs are to departments, roles are to networks. Eric Mcluhan states that in the new [network] era; “jobs disappear under electric conditions and they are replaced by roles. Roles mean audiences and participation.” Read more →

So you’re now a social business?

You are engaging with social media for marketing and customer support. You have also put in place a social intranet, with activity streams for sharing information, collaboration tools for work teams and document management systems that include social tags and easy sharing. Now the hard work begins. However, this usually occurs just after the software vendors have provided the initial training and you are now on your own as an organization. You’re ready to be a social business; everyone is connected, but few know what to do. Read more →

OK, these skills are not actually “new” –  they’ve always been present – but perhaps they have not always been as visible as they should have been, as Oscar Berg explains in The collaboration pyramid (or iceberg). But, as businesses transform into social businesses, the social workplace is going to become more and more reliant on these skills. Read more →

We can learn a lot from open conversations with trusted colleagues who want to improve their professional expertise. My colleagues have these conversations regularly and I have learned a lot over the past two years that we’ve been together.

A professional is anyone who does work that cannot be standardized easily and who continuously welcomes challenges at the cutting edge of his or her expertise. ~ David Shaffer Read more →

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 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 →

Article written for e-Learning Age magazine, November 2011

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”. Read more →