learning re-imagined

Be The Market Surpise

Much of the conversations we get engaged in with customers often involve discussion of “How did other companies do it?” - discussions around benchmarking processes.  Yet most of the emerging ideas in leadership and talent development we hear from eminent thinkers, researchers and writers warn of benchmarking to mediocrity.  Stuart Hart, author of Capitalism at the Crossroads, has a dynamite quote buried in the middle of his book:

“A smart strategist gravitates toward ill-defined and ambiguous opportunities.  That is because once everything has been defined and reduced to standard operating procedure, there is no money left to be made.” - Stuart Hart

The point he is making, and the same point Jeffrey Pfeffer, Jonas Ridderstrale, Lynda Gratton and others have made in our interviews, is the same - to be the market surprise, instead of be surprised, you need to create unique and original ways of conducting your business.  Lynda Gratton calls this “signature processes.”  Red Hat is a great example.  We were chatting with a senior executive at Red Hat and I explained part of a presentation we could provide which would showcase companies with leading implementation practices and he stopped me and said, “Look I don’t mean to interrupt but I can’t bring that story in here.  At Red Hat we do it the Red Hat Way.”  He went on to say of course they don’t ignore the market landscape or operate in some creative oasis, but that once they make a bet on a product or service, they execute their way.  By doing it the Red Hat Way, they also build great culture and engagement because everyone feels they are part of true creation.

A lifetime ago around 2001, while leading a small start-up we got together our customer research and stories and dreamed up an online system which could aid the learner and leader to use, apply, track, and campaign on our video learning assets.  Then we built the system and when we took it on the road test, people said, “Oh you’ve built an LMS.”  A what?  “You’ve created a a Learning Management System, although it’s got some stuff we haven’t seen before.”  We had indeed built an LMS before we had ever heard of one.  Instead of benchmarking LMS vendors (whom we didn’t know existed), and listening to our customers instead, we created something unique and did it with passion and energy because we believed in our originality and our ability to create a killer app.  The tip coming from emerging leadership is this: pay attention to the market yes, but be bold and original in what - and importantly how - you execute.

By: Shawn Hunter

 

Taking a Different Road

So many of us commute to work each day. We go over bridges, through tunnels, take highways. We seldom think about it, beyond hoping that there isn’t a huge traffic jam that will make us late.

Reading about the closure – and reopening – of the Bay Bridge in California started me thinking about my commute and the roads I take to work every day. What if a road closed? Would I know another way to work? Can I even get there another way?

This is the sort of thing that happens at work every day. I have to solve a problem. I start down one path to do so and realize, at some point, that perhaps the method I’m embarking on will not get me the result I want.  So, I have to re-orient my thinking – take a different road – to get me the result I want.

The trick to being able to do that successfully is having the knowledge of the resources around me that can be used to solve the problem. A project going off the tracks? Perhaps a quick refresher on managing projects would help me get the endeavor back on track.  Can’t create a pivot table in Excel? Reading a few lines of a book on Excel 2007 would walk me through the steps. 

So, in essence, I spend every work day finding the right road – the right path – to get me where I need to go.  In this context – the work context – I am good on my feet. I can toggle between doing my job and finding an answer pretty easily. I know what tools I have – courses, books, videos – and I know how to find them via SkillPort and use them.  Sadly, in my car… well… I have a bad sense of direction.  If someone closed my road to work, I’d sit there until it reopened. Perhaps it’s time to invest in a GPS.

By: Rachel Levine

Epiphany on iTouch

OK, let’s first establish the context – I am a Baby Boomer (well, really, on the very youngest edge of that generational divide).  My peers think that I’m a technology genius since I work in elearning, after all – but really I feel that I’m falling behind every day.  I asked for an iTouch ^TM for my last birthday so that I can read MapQuest on the big screen to find my way around, and because I love the way you can zoom in on photos with that finger-stretch action.  Last night, after a ten hour day of working on my laptop, I shifted from my home office to the living room sofa to transition to “leisure time.”  (There really is a connection to learning coming soon.)

The home page of my iTouch has a YouTube icon.  As a way of getting acquainted with my iTouch, I was systematically  tapping all the icons and menus, including YouTube.  I’ve launched very few YouTube videos, because I’ve not been too interested in the Dancing Babies and other “educational” subjects you hear about on the evening news.  But I eventually tapped the “Most Viewed” icon and what came to the top of the list was a video called “Carl Sagan – A Glorious Dawn” (Cosmos Remixed).  Now this title appealed to my passion for academic inquiry, and so I launched.

The music, the images – captivating.  I mean, a DJ re-re-remix, you know? But within, the pearls of wisdom: “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”  I’m mesmerized by the quality of the image on the screen, the clarity of sound through the ear-buds: “A still more glorious dawn awaits, not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise – a morning filled with four hundred billion suns, the rising of the Milky Way.”  Science, poetry and thought, together in the palm of my hand: “The surface of the earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean; recently we’ve waded in, and the water seems inviting…”

Leisure, learning, recreation, learning, music, learning, imagery, learning…blended til the boundaries are impossible to discern.  (This being my own poetry, almost as mystical as Carl Sagan’s.)  The point, dear reader, is that the immediacy of the learning opportunity is what drew me into my learning moment.  And so we observe the very equal importance of content and delivery.

This is the idea behind SkillSoft learning portlets.  Portlets bring access to learning out of the Learning Management System and into the familiar online sites where employees already spend time.  In the course of day-to-day work, an employee is one click away from problem-solving information or personal enrichment.  With all the priorities competing for the time and attention of today’s knowledge worker, convenient access is as critical as engaging content.

By: Darlene Frederick

Nice to meet you, can't wait to learn from you!

 “If you have lunch with the same people you’ve been having lunch with for five years, you’ll probably have the same conversations you’ve been having for five years.  Have lunch with someone new!  You both might learn something!”  - Tom Peters

Some of the most fascinating and intellectually fun people I know are constantly meeting and interacting with new people.  We once spent an hour with Patrick Dixon as he stood in front of a camera and provided stacks of incredible stories and insights one after another on highly divergent topics and never once repeated himself.  I asked him later where in the world with all of his touring and lecturing did he have time to do research?  He explained his lecturing and traveling was his research.  He gets invited to all varieties of industry meetings and conferences, and as a result shares meals and conversations with players at all levels in banking, in trade, in technology, in politics, in climate change, and much more.  And he doesn’t claim to be an expert in any of these disciplines but approaches each event and conversation with an open and inquiring mind.

He has a marvelous story in which he was attending a financial trade conference and having dinner with some top executives.  Around the table, each was explaining their role in the banking industry and after one gentleman provided a lengthy and complicated explanation of his work in derivatives trading, Patrick asked, “I don’t mean to impolite, but do you understand what you do?”  The gentleman paused and said, “It’s true, what I do has become so complicated even I don’t always understand it.  Sometimes if I take a shower and have a brisk walk and clear my mind, if my boss were to call me at that moment I could clearly explain our derivatives product.”

Patrick used that interaction and story to share in later presentations on the value of trust and compliance.  The tip here is: get out of your comfort zone, have new conversations and don’t be afraid to ask a provocative question or two.  Good luck!

By: Shawn Hunter

Cloudy with a chance of clear skies ahead

Between blog posts by book publisher Tim O’Reilly, and the recent announcement by Google about the pending release of the Google Editions ebook store, there has been a lot of talk recently about “books on the cloud” and the concept of a “cloud library.”  The terms are borrowed from the broader “cloud computing” concept, which encompasses a wide range of managed services, including; software as a service (SaaS), software on demand, and platform as a service (PaaS) technologies. Basically, cloud computing offers new, flexible and generally more affordable ways to build, deliver, and purchase software.   

The truth is that “books on the cloud” are nothing new.  Here at Books24x7, we’ve been doing it for over 10 years.  In the fall of 1999, Books24x7 released its first online, on demand, reference collection.  At launch, ITPro consisted of 200 technical books delivered in a “24x7” web based environment.  In those early days, we didn’t need to do much more than put the content online and offer the solution in a simple subscription-based model to drive huge demand and create raving fans.  As hard as it is to imagine, in 1999 we weren’t all living in a 24x7 on demand web world.  But IT folks and other technical professionals were.  As the early adopters of what are now considered to be rudimentary web technologies -- listservs, text-only email, early HTML websites painfully delivered over dial up networks -- techies the world over were more than ready for a new delivery method for trusted technical content.   Our publisher partners saw the potential, and most jumped at the chance to provide a new means of access  to their readers, while deriving new revenue streams for themselves.

Over the years we have  exponentially grown the number of titles available, as well as the range of Books24x7 topical collections, and enhanced the platform feature set and delivery methods to encompass deep portal integrations, mobile access, and more.   But, from day one, the content has always resided on web servers ready for instant “anytime, anywhere” access.   Today, “books on the cloud” may be the fashionable buzzword; but regardless of terminology, a great idea that puts knowledge in the hands of people who need it most is always in vogue.

By: Pam Boiros