learning re-imagined

Are you a cross-pollinating sequential learner?

“Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, recognized the role of conceptual output as early as 1997 in a speech at the University of Connecticut when he said “The growth of the conceptual component of output has brought with it accelerating demands for workers who are equipped not simply with technical know-how, but with the ability to create, analyze, and transform information and to interact effectively with others.” By 2004, he had developed his views on the topic, referring to reductions in manufacturing in the United States, outsourcing to India and China, excess of supply and the global marketplace, all leading to the increasing conceptualization of economic output.”

Taking a page straight from Dan Pink and Gary Hamel, knowledge and even expertise are common, expected, cheap (sometimes free) to source, and no longer represent lasting competitive advantage. We have moved from the knowledge age to the conceptual age where creative, symphonic thinking - the ability to harness sometimes seemingly disparate pieces of information and ideas and mash them into wholly new iterations that can be applied effectively to solutions and results - are in fact the individual and organization’s competitive advantage.

Whatever field you work in, your expertise is expected, but your initiative and creativity to bring unique and signature solutions to solve unexpected problems is your brand, and increasingly also your company’s brand and identity. If this is true (and you better believe it), the future of learning is to provide more conceptual and powerful learning opportunities in which the expected learning outcomes are by nature, unexpected. Sometimes called chaotic or unstable by design, this construct suggests building learning opportunities which offer insight, ideas and parables intended for inference and application by the learner.

This calls for balancing the spoon-fed, outcome-anticipated, specific-competence results-oriented learning environments with more conceptual learning environments which treat learners as ready and able to distill ideas presented into their own signature integrated solutions applicable for their line of work and customers, whether they be internal or external.

Tom Kelley, CEO of IDEO, a premier product and services innovation company, has been a long advocate of this approach. In his book, The Ten Faces of Innovation, he describes a particular persona called the “Cross-Pollinator.” Cross-Pollinators are those types who are inquisitive beyond their particular domain expertise and explore ideas from industries outside their immediate purview, come to understand the technology, device or methods employed elsewhere and figure out how to incorporate these ideas into their own work.

How might this look like in learning environments?  To compete with the wild web, these learning environments will provide media and socially rich environments which aid learners to deduct applications from disparate sources.  The conceptual age learning environment will offer a deep portfolio of ideas and solutions garnered from varieties of domains. For example, a sales learning environment will not only offer presentation tips and niche industry knowledge but perhaps also ways in which organizations well outside their own have leveraged technology to gain their customer attention. For example, Sugarloaf Ski resort has been admired for their ability to use social media to update the faithful.

Foremost, emerging learning environments will understand that people have their own intrinsic motivators, often contrary to what their company or manager thinks is their primary motivator (drop the carrots and sticks paradigm).  When really what motivates the learner is passion, purpose and curiosity.  Learning opportunities will only resonate when they intersect with someone’s current passion, fulfills their sense of purpose and giving, and peaks their curiosity.

Learning opportunities are plentiful and the expectations are rising, and to be compelling whatever you are offering must be beautiful, unique and meaningful.

By: Shawn Hunter

What Matters Now

I suspect (hope) by the time you read this, you have already checked out What Matters Now - assembled by the editorial talents of Seth Godin, a compendium of thought-leadership from all reaches weighing in on, well... What Matters Now.

Dan Roam, author of Back of the Napkin, urges that there is no such thing as boring information - the sublime can be found everywhere - but only boring presentations and boring attempts at transferring knowledge.

On ignoring the skeptics, Aimee Johnson, VP of Strategy for Starbucks, echoes Paul Hawken who recently said, " Don't be put off by off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are finished."

Even Tom Peters! makes a guest appearance offering the 19 Es! of Excellence! and although his emphatic punctuation is an easy target to poke at, he is right after all.  If not excellence, then what?  Reminds me of a great quote from an interview we did with Gareth Jones, "When it's your turn to clean the grill, do it with excellence."  Because on the road to significance, everyone has a turn to dig ditches.

Dan Pink also drops by with notes on his emerging ideas about what drives us to give that discretionary 20% effort to our work, and it's not about better 'management.'  It's about encouraging autonomy around what we do, with what tools and ideas, and with whom we collaborate.  And it's certainly not driven by an edict from Management.

But dear friends, it's Elizabeth Gilbert (page 11) yet again who had me laughing out loud.  Gilbert entreats us all to give ourselves to ease.  To pause, exhale, and just for one lonely moment in this always-on go-go twitterific maelstrom, to check out and gaze at a blue sky.  Or admire your children play, or even take a nap.

If you irresistibly respond to your email alerts - those insistent lower right apparitions right? - it might be time to exhale.  'Tis the season after all for reflection, sharing, connecting, and rejoicing.  The world will still need saving tomorrow and if you take an interval for renewal, you might be all the wiser for it.  And if you haven't seen her TED Talk yet on what it means to be called a genius, you must check it out.

By: Shawn Hunter

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

So many emails, so little time: Read the ones that matter

We all get so much email these days; we have a work email address, a home email address, and other varied and sundry accounts to manage such as FaceBook and Twitter.  Although spam filters help with some of the true junk mail, I know that I still get a lot of things I barely read. 

Once in a while, a great summary update comes along and I just LOVE it when it shows up in my inbox.  If you do not subscribe to the alert email in Books24X7 titled “Books24x7 New Title Notification” it is the one email I absolutely love to get.  It feels like a virtual trip to the neighborhood book store.  The email originates as a Books24x7 subscriber, checking the boxes for topics that are important to the individual.  I personally love only getting titles that matter to me.  It shows little icons of the newly released titles that are on Books24X7.  Running through it takes all of 45 seconds to see what is new in my area of interest.  It helps me stay current on things happening in areas that matter to me.

One day recently, I was scrolling through the titles I saw the photo of a colleague of mine who recently recorded a “Quick Talk” for the Leadership Development Channel series.  Pamela Meyer is an author and business owner who also teaches at DePaul University, which is where I met her.  It gave me a great reason to connect with her and catch up.  It was also great to see what she had to say.  I also find books I want to dive more deeply into for my personal and professional needs, all in a short time frame.  If you do not get this email weekly, be sure you go to your Books24x7 profile (Click the “Settings” tab then click “Email Options”) and set one up.  It is a great “coffee break”!

By: Lori Neblung

Many training organizations I speak with are intrigued by Enterprise 2.0 technologies and their promises for creating a viral collaborative community within the organization.  At last count, there were more than 400 companies out there touting ‘e2.0 technologies’ … everything from wiki and blog products, to products that promise a safe Facebook-like or Twitter-like platform that can be rolled out behind your firewall.

Admittedly, some of these products are quite impressive, but they all share one common thread.  They are all enabling technologies. Just software.

Early efforts with these products are mixed at best.  Many early adopters or experimenters with these technologies report a lack of success in creating a sustainable collaborative environment. 

McKinsey, in a white paper entitled Six Ways to Make Web 2.0 Work,published in February 2009, observed the same phenomenon and described it this way:

“Perhaps because of the novelty of Web 2.0 initiatives, they’re often considered separate from mainstream work…Thus, using Web 2.0 and participating in online work communities often becomes just another “to do” on an already crowded list of tasks.”

Does this mean that social environments can’t work in the enterprise? Emphatically no.

But I am suggesting that there is a better way. 

There are three ingredients to creating a sustainable collaborative environment:  1) enabling technology; 2) abundance of content; and 3) enthusiastic community. When brought together, these three ingredients can produce a delicious collaborative result.

So the call to action for those learning professionals seeking to leverage collaboration to drive new levels of learning is simple.  Think about starting not with the enabling technology, but with your existing content and your existing active community of users who are already coming to your learning destination.  For instance, if you are currently using a product like Books24x7 from SkillSoft, why not think about the millions of pages of professional reference content that you already license as “seeds of discussion” for a thriving collaborative environment.  

Social collaboration offers great potential to help informal and formal learning, but the most effective path to accomplishing this will be to leverage what’s already working.

By: John Ambrose

What a Birdy Told Me

I have already acknowledged an addiction to Twitter. And, I am happy to write that I have found yet another reason to love the site. Twitter allows me access to events that I cannot attend.

The # sign is a powerful thing in Twitter-ville. It creates a dynamic page with whatever word(s) follow it, allowing people to virtually gather and weigh in on a topic. #sscafe09 gave the world access to SkillSoft’s Cafe held in Orlando in September. By following that event on Twitter (via searching for that ‘phrase,’) I was able to keep up with the news – SkillSoft is poised to launch the SkillSoft Leadership Advantage and showed a sneak peak of upcoming inGenius – and get a feel for what people were discussing: the power of Web 2.0, the value of social networking in a learning environment and the power that collaboration can have on learning.

I was also able to keep up with the CLO Symposium. Imagine that. I’m sitting at my desk in Nashua, NH, and simply typing #CLOsymposium allowed me to be a ‘bird’ on the wall (sorry, I had to) at the event in Colorado.

The best use of this tool is when multiple people at an event tweet about it together – all using the powerful # sign to allow other people to view their collective wisdom about an event or a topic within the event. It might take a while for people to catch on to this – but it’s a great way to bring an event home to your co-workers in real time. Let’s all meet virtually at the next event and give each other a chance to read what a little birdy said.

By: Rachel Levine

Fall CLO Symposium

 

I’ve just spent three great days in Colorado Springs attending CLO’s 2009 Fall Symposium on Peak Performance: Pushing Your Enterprise to the Top. It was a great chance to spend time with top training and development professionals from around the country and hear their thoughts on the issues and concerns that are foremost in their minds. I thought I’d take this opportunity to share some thoughts that I took away from the event.

1. If you’ve never been to Colorado Springs, it’s beautiful. It’s hard to really grasp the beauty of the Rockies till you’ve seen them up close.
2. When it comes to training solutions, one size doesn’t fit all. It can be tempting some times to look for one solution that you can use with all of your learners to meet all of their needs. While there are many great solutions available to choose from - and many can serve multiple purposes - you definitely still need to match the solution with your audience and their specific learning styles and goals.
3. Leadership fundamentals haven’t changed all that much. While some competencies are becoming more important – flexibility, communication – in response to today’s dynamic and more multi-generational and cultural work place, the core leadership skills remain the same. Leaders still need to provide vision, direction, and motivation.
4. As more companies recognize that a robust leadership pipeline is fundamental to long term success, they are looking at new ways to make leadership training available to more people (to build the pipeline) and with greater frequency (to maximize impact). While the competencies haven’t changed all that much, people are looking for new ways to teach those core leadership competencies and are turning to technology-based solutions as an economical solution to reach more people.
5. What are your thoughts on the future of leadership development? Or, if you were lucky enough to attend, what did you take away from CLO’s great recent event?

By: Tim Hildreth

Is your LMS Saasy?

Hi, my name is Stephanie Pyle and I’m a SkillPort-aholic.  Obviously I’m a little bit biased, but recently as we have rolled out a brand new user interface  I’m starting to really love this ‘little LMS that could’. 

I completely understand why some companies need to go with much larger systems and we count most of those big players in the LMS space as key partners of ours when it comes to delivering content.  But more and more, I’m talking to people who are looking for something easier to deploy, easier to run and easier for their learners to use.  At our annual Café event last week I ran a breakout session to discuss the future of SkillPort.  Although there were several areas that we want to continue to build out and work on, the feedback from our customers was overwhelmingly positive and those that had already moved to the new SkillPort 7 version loved it.   

One thing that makes me such a huge fan is the Software-as-a-Service or SaaS model for SkillPort.  This takes the burden of managing the system off of our customers and allows them to really focus on the things that make the most impact in their organization.  Josh Bersin recently posted a blog on this topic called “How SaasY is your HR Software Vendor?  What does SaaS mean to you?” where he explains what defines a SaaS vendor.  At SkillSoft, we have been using this model for over 10 years which I think makes us old-pros in an area that may consider new. 

One of the many benefits of our SaaS model is the getting new content loaded into SkillPort.  As a customer gets new content, it is automatically updated on the system which eliminates the need for someone to have to manage and load it.  And at SkillSoft, our model allows customer to always get new versions of the platforms when they want them.  Each version release is made available to all of our customers, but they get to choose the best time for their upgrade. 

Over the next few weeks, I plan to discuss other key areas that make me such a SkillPort fan.  With a philosophy that you shouldn’t have to train people on how to use their training system, SkillPort is usually worth a look and often fits the bill. 

By: Stephanie Pyle

Innovation - Look into the Future!

One of the reasons why I love Twitter is how fast I can get information. (I admit it, I’m a Twitter addict!) I don’t have to search the Web and read through a lot of data when what I really want is a nugget – a baseball score, a status update, a quick bit of information about a news story. But, then there are times when I want more data; when I want to understand something and get a full, rounded view of a subject. That’s when I look for an expert – someone who can talk to me about something, explain something and give it meaning. And, even more value is added when I can hear from other people who are interested in the same subject as me. What are other people saying? What are they thinking? What do they care about?

That’s one thing that I love about my job. I am able to facilitate an environment – through SkillSoft events – where I can invite people to join in a conversation about corporate learning. It’s like the ultimate large scale search, where people can learn, listen and understand in an environment where they’re with their peers, people who face the same challenges.

These days, I hear our customers talking about a few immerging trends in learning. How does mobile learning impact corporate training? How do you gain leverage from leadership training? How will social networking impact learning, today and in the future? These are not the kinds of questions that you can Google. The subjects are broad; they’re big; they’re multifaceted. But, they’re important and need to be talked about, noodled, addressed.

SkillSoft’s upcoming three part Innovation Webinar Series with Training Magazine is a great place to join the conversation. These are important, timely topics that are being discussed in conference rooms around the world. And, personally, I’m excited to join the conversation. We have to discuss what’s next for corporate learning so we can get there together.  As Brad Paisley’s new song says, “Welcome to the future!”

By Rachel Levine