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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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This is the first of three posts adapted from articles I have written for Inside Learning Technologies & Skills magazine. This article appeared in November 2011.  The second and third articles will be posted here a little while after they have been published in the magazine. Read more →

Following my recent post on the case for a non-training approach (NTA) to workplace learning and the launch of my NTA website, I’ve received quite a bit feedback and read a number of blog posts and comments about it. So I thought I would plot all these reactions on the learning technology adoption curve that my Internet Time Alliance colleague, Harold Jarche and I produced last year (which is an adaptation of the one originally produced by Geoffrey Moore).
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The Training Department (aka the L&D dept) has traditionally focused on designing, developing, delivering and managing instruction – in the form of courses, workshops, e-learning and other training events. In fact “a course” in some form or other has now become the de facto solution to any performance problem in an organisation – despite the fact that many of my Internet Time Alliance colleagues (and others) have spoken about its inadequacies in today’s world, and that courses have little impact on performance.
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Jay Cross is a champion of informal learning, working smarter, and systems thinking. His calling is to help business people improve their performance on the job and satisfaction in life. Known as the first person to use the term eLearning on the web, Cross is the former head of the eLearning Forum and currently chairs the Internet Time Alliance, a brain trust of six thought leaders in the fields of social and informal learning, who help companies boost their collective intelligence and profitability through networks.
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Yesterday, in my first posting on this topic, I showed how “social learning” is not just about a new training trend or about adding social media into the “blend” or acquiring the latest Social Learning Management System, but a fundamental change in how we need to view workplace learning. And that in order stay in tune with new ways of working and learning, the L&D function needs to move from a “Command and Control” approach to one that I called “Encourage and Engage”. To highlight the differences between these two approaches I then compared the “Command and Control” response with the new ”Encourage & Engage” response for each of the 8 features of how Smart Workers are working and learning today. But I closed by saying that one of the important questions that people have about this new approach to Workplace Learning, is how they measure employee “learning” as well as L&D’s involvement. So that is the topic of today’s post.
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A few days ago my Internet Time Alliance colleague, Harold Jarche, shared this article, written by Deb Lavoy, with me: Social Business Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Does, Neither Does Enterprise 2.0. The first few paragraphs say it all!
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This post was prompted by a webinar I gave on behalf of Citrix/GoToWebinar on 6^th July 2011 and originally posted as a guest post on the Learning Pool blog. I’ve made a few changes to it here.

Looking Back
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