My sentiments exactly. And I’ve watched training being marginalised for 20 years – almost to extinction during that time. What’s coming back in is so-called ‘PD’ which is often workplace training that’s been marginalised – it’s NOT Professional Development. It’s not even decent training (sigh!).

Ka kite
from Middle-earth

That’s what culture shifts are all about, largely unconscious empowerment of a fundamentally anonymous group of people discovering an interest in doing things differently and having the means to achieve it. The deeper and more complex it is, the longer it takes for the principles of efficiency to emerge. But they do emerge and continue to evolve.

For me, there is no doubt that it’s happening. The natural reflex is to say, “if I can see it coming, I can control it”, but the millions who witnessed or succumbed to the tsunami three years back can tell you that just ain’t the case. Even an expert surfer knows he can’t conquer the wave that propels him to momentary glory, but only share the effect of its energy for a very brief spell.

This is a revolution of opportunity, not rebellion (as in 1789 or even 1776). It’s happening, nobody’s controlling it, but it can be harnessed for art’s sake (the art of surfing or of learning, according to one’s interests) or alternatively submitted to as a violent unwanted force of nature. Didn’t Hamlet warn us against the folly of taking arms against the turbulent waves?

As for the flip-flop, yes indeed. Now that politics, the economy and nearly everything else we have built and believed in as a rational self-perpetuating system appear to standing on clay feet, we should heed Othello’s words (“chaos is come again”) and, referring to the kind of chaos theory Shakespeare couldn’t have read about, realize that something like Self-Organized Criticality is probably at work. That isn’t an everyday phenomenon and generally fits into a longer term pattern of “punctuated equilibria”. Which is simply to say that this has very little to do with self-appointed rabble-rousers.

Vive la révolution ! (la vraie !)

It strikes me as the greatest thing since the industrial revolution and urbanization. The Kuhn quote grabs it: “What were ducks in the scientist’s world before the revolution are rabbits afterward.” And if, as I believe, we are in a phase change, what can history teach us about this one?

I nod when people tell me humanity has gone through this before. Yes, we have. And then I think of your city in 1789 with ankle-deep blood flowing in the streets and the opposition’s heads on pikes on those beautiful bridges over the Seine. I’d like to avoid that part.

I conducted training sessions for two groups of managers at Goodyear Luxembourg last week. The theme was managing across generations. One group (the plant managers) denied that collaboration had any meaning and summed things up with the slogan “fit in or leave” (“shape up or ship out” would be a more idiomatic version). That certainly has the merit of simplifying the problem. The other group – essentially global HR and R&D – is dealing permanently with innovation, the evolution of corporate culture. In the session, which was a halfway effort between training and coaching, when I suggested that one of the areas to focus on for improvement was encouraging collaboration, I learned that there are ongoing projects to develop collaborative networking. They asked me how you “get people to collaborate” because the ones they tried to push in that direction didn’t seem to respond. I told them that the beauty of the situation is that they’re not the ones who will have to do it. I reminded them that for the first time in history people are learning to do things without having to rely on the enterprise to set them up and tell them how to do it. I suggested that they have to help it happen instead of thinking they can make it happen. The social web is doing half their job… getting it going, turning it into a major cultural shift. But the result isn’t automatic and the effects aren’t uniform. It’s all about accompanying the movement, not forcing it. But that means understanding it… accepting the paradigm shift oneself. Not an easy lesson for “learning professionals” who are often obsessed by showing what their own efforts have achieved!