Inside Learning Technologies is an important magazine in the U.K. (Isn’t it odd that while the net spans the globe, learning magazines remain confined to their home countries?)

For the current issue, I wrote an article entitled Making Business Decision: the Hand and the Heart. This is the sequel to last month’s Speaking the Language of Business.

Hats off to Donald Taylor, a big cheese at the Learning Technologies Conference and chair of the Learning & Skills Group. 

Donald excerpted and edited sections of my book-in-progress, What Would Andrew Do?, to create both articles.

The January 2010 Edition of Working Smarter was released today. Subtitled Informal Learning in the Cloud, this edition focuses on social learning and implementing web 2.0 technology.

The hardcopy version of Working Smarter costs $19.98. Believe me, I’m not trying to fool you with trick pricing. My publisher’s algorithm won’t let me charge $20 even. I figured $19.98 was better than $20.01. Buy the 240-page hard copy.

The download version of Working Smarter costs $12.00. I prefer the hard copy myself but your mileage may vary. And of course you can get the soft copy right away. Buy the download.

Here’s a map of the book:

(Click the map)

Contents

Introduction … 3
What can you achieve with this book?…3
Who should read this book?…4
How the book is organized …4
An unbook6
New in 2010 …7
Preface .. 10
Cataclysm …10
Internet Time Alliance…12
Working Smarter … 14
Network Effects …14
Business Results…21
What can we do to improve this informal learning?…23
Techniques and Patterns…24
Rethinking Learning in Organizations…30
Getting Started…35
Informal Learning …36
Genesis of the Informal Learning Poster …37
Cheat-sheet.
Become a Chief Meta-Learning Officer…93
Social media for collaboration…110
Resources on line ….119
The Research Page…119
The Home Page …120
Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies .121
People and their Brains….128
Network Effects…139
Business Results….153
Speak the Language of Business …156
ROI is in the mind of the beholder …162
Perspective ….172
Techniques and Patterns …174
Rethinking learning in organizations …201
Learning is not enough…224
Back Matter….225
Bibliography …225
People…228
About the author..228
Where I’m coming from …229
Maps of Book Content …235
Acknowledgments …238
Index ….238

Two of my colleagues at the Internet Time Alliance, Jane Hart and Charles Jennings just returned from speaking at the Learning Technologies conference in London.

Jane & Charles

The conference program would lead you to assume that the Learning Technologies conference would be a hotbed of social and informal learning.

Jane addressed how L&D is changing. “People naturally learn from each other, and as technology-supported social learning becomes main stream, what effects can we expect it to have on organisational Learning and Development? She argued that social learning offers the L&D function great scope for widening its impact and increasing its effectiveness. But it is also a potential threat: people will use social learning regardless of L&D – so where does this leave the L&D department of the future?”

Charles talked about experiential learning, saying “Most learning takes place outside formal training events. It comes from our daily experiences and from practice. It also comes from conversations and from reflecting on our experiences and on those of others. Smart organisations and managers recognise this, and make space for staff to cultivate these different approaches to developing their capability.”

My friend Mark Oehlert presented, “‘Making social learning work in your organisation”, drawing on his experience establishing a social learning environment at Defense Acquisition University.

BT’s Peter Butler  noted, “Formal learning is costly, takes time to produce and more often than not it takes the employee off the job. BT’s new web 2.0 social learning environment enables more informal learning. The results, according to Peter Butler, are lower costs, improved time to competence and less time ‘off the job’. In this session Peter examined data from 11,000 users of the system showing its popularity and usefulness.”

Thomson Reuters’ Andy Jones described the journey from eLearning to knowledge-sharing, saying “Thomson Reuters Technology Operations has taken business-focused learning to a new level. In the 2,000-strong department, things move so fast that normal courseware production isn’t viable. Instead, learning is built into each project though a unique L&D workshop engagement model: Content is produced by experts on the project  (facilitated by a learning consultant), published on the project SharePoint server, and the delivery medium decided by whether the content is conceptual or skills-focused.”

However, in our debrief yesterday, both Jane and Charles reported that many attendees are only just starting to shift to delivering some eLearning. Social and informal learning are not on their radar.

Lots of training directors have yet to grasp the concepts of learning through collaboration, the power of social networks, and less is more. Bear in mind that people who attend Learning Technologies are the leading edge. If they are just beginning the journey away from the classroom, imagine what things are like for those who don’t attend!

Americans should not feel smug because their brethren in the U.K. don’t get it. “New data on e-learning usage do not signal the death of the classroom. And despite some of the buzz, the direction of e-learning has not shifted much over the past several years,” report Allison Rossett and James Marshall in an article in this month’s T+D magazine.

Opportunities are being left on the table. Today, there is little evidence of collaborative and user-centered approaches in corporate and government settings, though there are suggestions of influence to come in the future. It is the same for mobile devices, ranked last in reported current practice, and jumping closer to the top of the list as practitioners look forward. The virtual classroom and blended learning were also less prevalent in reported practice than anticipated.

Old favorites dominated in our study. E-learning today appears to be mostly about delivering assessments and designs, testing, personalization, scenarios, and tutorials. All these are familiar, and they all have deep roots in the training and development community. Should we lament that the habits identified in this study are not much different in 2009 than they were in 1989 (although, of course, enabled by technology)? Is this good news or bad? And most important, what do you intend to do about it?

Reading between the lines, I suspect that many organizations are accustomed progressing one step at a time. They expect gradual, comfortable change. One step a year seems a break-neck pace.

Incrementalism is the worst enemy of innovation. We’re playing a new game now and it’s fruitless to follow yesteryear’s pathways.

Business is operating to an ever-faster metronome. Cycle times for product design, manufacturing, and deployment are shorter and shorter. The pace of change itself is picking up. The future is unpredictable. Our old models of training can no longer keep up. They’re racing along so fast that the wheels are falling off.

As the environment becomes more complex, linear approaches are giving way to emergent behavior. People take different paths to learn what they need to do. Our task is to prepare them for things we don’t even see coming!

Former IBM visionary Irving Wladawsky-Berger cautions us to expect resistance.

When first launching a project based on a new technology or idea, you really don’t know what lies ahead.  You cannot answer lots of the questions people will have.  Incremental changes are much easier, because you are essentially improving existing products and services while continuing to sell to and support a similar client base.  But, with disruptive changes, the new products and services you will be working on are likely to be quite different from what you have done in the past….

One of the major reasons why breakthrough innovations have been very difficult for large, established companies is that they treat such efforts as they do any other projects.  If the new venture is organized and managed based on typical business metrics, it will be buried within a much larger operational unit.  It is then only a matter of time before the effort is forgotten and eventually terminated.

Disruptive change requires buy-in, something L&D professionals have not traditionally excelled at.

It is thus imperative to reach out to other parts of the company, sit down with their management and technical leaders and see how the new innovation you are leading can help their existing business.  You want to make them feel part of your virtual team if at all possible.  It is hard for another part of the company to support your new efforts if they feel that it will compete with them for funds, senior management attention or customers in the marketplace. 

The fundamental shift toward informal learning is taking place on internet time. Instead of plodding along step by step, Internet Time Alliance is encouraging organizations to leap over the intervening steps and adopt social and informal learning patterns immediately. Our model looks like this:

Our proposal is analogous to implementing telephone service in developing countries. In much of the developing world, fixed telephone infrastructure is poor. In 2008, India had only 3.3 fixed telephone lines per 100 and Nigeria 0.9 lines per 100 inhabitants. Rather than planting telephone poles and stringing copper wire, developing countries are going straight to mobile. Fixed telephone infrastructure is costly to set up, while wireless technology is cheap to deploy.*

Courses, delivered in-person or online, are the phone poles and copper wires of learning technology.

Are you laying land lines or going directly to wireless? Here’s a final note from Irving Wladawsky-Berger:

There are many reasons why disruptive innovations fail.  A surprising number do so not because the company put together a flawed strategy, executed it poorly, or the market was not ready.  They fail because proper attention was not paid to the organizational and cultural changes required so that the institution and its people will embrace the innovation and work hard to make it succeed.  In the end, these human elements of innovation are likely to make the most important difference between success and failure.

What’s Old is New Again, Allison Rossett and James Marshall, T+D Magazine, January 2010

The Informal Learning Page

Disruptive Innovations and Organizational Change, Irving Wladawsky-Berger, January 2010

A friend gave my wife two $50 VISA debit cards from Walmart. Supposedly as good as cash, the cards are actually issued by General Electric Credit.

When we tried to buy $95 worth of electronics at Walmart in Mountain View this afternoon, the cashier said the cards were unreadable. Had we made purchases on them? No, we had not. Well, we couldn’t use them. We asked to her to call the store manager.

A flustered customer service rep arrived. She couldn’t find the manager. In time, she called in the card numbers on her cell and told us each card had a balance of $48.12. (GE charges monthly interest on these cards!) However, our cards were no good; perhaps we should call the bank.

We said we didn’t want to call a bank. Walmart sold the cards. They knew they were worth $96.24. Walmart could call the bank.

She said friends had warned never to buy these cards. The woman behind us in line said the same thing had happened to her but shehad just let it slide.

The customer service rep found a superior who said they could exchange the cards for Walmart Gift Cards. Okay. Twenty minutes later, maybe thirty, we received the gift cards. The superior told us “These Debit cards are a lot of trouble.”

Why, then, does Walmart continue to sell them?

Perhaps to get into the banking business through the back door. In mid-2007, MSNBC reported:

Wal-Mart, furthering a lucrative push to offer financial services to its customers, will sell prepaid Visa debit cards that would allow millions of low-income shoppers who don’t have bank accounts to keep up with an increasingly cashless society.

Wal-Mart is following other retailers who hope to tap into a large pool of consumers who deal mostly in cash, but want the convenience of plastic. As the world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart would be able to reach an enormous number of those consumers.

Three months after dropping a bid for a bank license, the world’s largest retailer said Wednesday it will add hundreds of in-store centers to bundle the financial services it already offers, such as payroll check cashing and money transfers.

On the web, I found these complaints:

“I tried customer service to no avail. I cannot speak to a rep. Where is the $27.34. It says I will get charged if I speak to a real rep. I could not even find a way to do that.”

“Try GE MONEY BANK website and tells me to go to Walmart.com then walmart tells me to go to the company that issued the card. DO NOT BUY THE WAL-MART VISA GIFT CARD EVER.”

“When I checked the balance, it said $0.00.  I was able to view past transactions and pending transactions online, but there were none, so I do not believe that I was given a used gift card.”

If this is representative, I hope these guys never get a banking license.

Internet Freedom

The prepared text of U.S. of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s speech, delivered at the Newseum in Washington, D.C.

JANUARY 21, 2010

When I read this (thx George Siemens for the link), I thought Right On! The Department of State is moving into the 21st Century. I figured we were finally edging toward diplomatic relations with the flat world. Here are a few excerpts; I recommend reading the whole speech.

SYNCING PROGRESS WITH PRINCIPLES

On their own, new technologies do not take sides in the struggle for freedom and progress. But the United States does. We stand for a single internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas. And we recognize that the world’s information infrastructure will become what we and others make of it.

---

The Berlin Wall symbolized a world divided, and it defined an entire era. Today, remnants of that wall sit inside this museum – where they belong. And the new iconic infrastructure of our age is the internet.

Instead of division, it stands for connection. But even as networks spread to nations around the globe, virtual walls are cropping up in place of visible walls.

Some countries have erected electronic barriers that prevent their people from accessing portions of the world’s networks. They have expunged words, names and phrases from search engine results. They have violated the privacy of citizens who engage in non-violent political speech. These actions contravene the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which tells us that all people have the right “to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” With the spread of these restrictive practices, a new information curtain is descending across much of the world. Beyond this partition, viral videos and blog posts are becoming the samizdat of our day.

A connection to global information networks is like an on a ramp to modernity. In the early years of these technologies, many believed they would divide the world between haves and have-nots. That hasn’t happened. There are 4 billion cell phones in use today – many are in the hands of market vendors, rickshaw drivers, and others who’ve historically lacked access to education and opportunity. Information networks have become a great leveler, and we should use them to help lift people out of poverty.

THE FREEDOM TO CONNECT

The final freedom I want to address today flows from the four I’ve already mentioned: the freedom to connect – the idea that governments should not prevent people from connecting to the internet, to websites, or to each other. The freedom to connect is like the freedom of assembly in cyber space. It allows individuals to get online, come together, and hopefully cooperate in the name of progress. Once you’re on the internet, you don’t need to be a tycoon or a rock star to have a huge impact on society.

…That’s why today I’m announcing that over the next year, we will work with partners in industry, academia, and non-governmental organizations to establish a standing effort that will harness the power of connection technologies and apply them to our diplomatic goals. By relying on mobile phones, mapping applications, and other new tools, we can empower citizens and leverage our traditional diplomacy. We can also address deficiencies in the current market for innovation.

Ultimately, this issue isn’t just about information freedom; it’s about what kind of world we’re going to inhabit. It’s about whether we live on a planet with one internet, one global community, and a common body of knowledge that unites and benefits us all. Or a fragmented planet in which access to information and opportunity is dependent on where you live and the whims of censors.

Then I read this rebuttal by Evgeny Morozov. He thinks Hillary is launching a cyber Cold War.

Overall, I was disappointed with the speech — it lacked depth. I didn’t sense any coherent intellectual vision underpinning the State Department’s digital strategy (sorry, I refuse to buy into “21st Century Statecraft” concept — what other model of statecraft are they expected to work with, the one from the 18th century?).

But that aside, what’s the broader strategy here? I didn’t sense one. All the Cold War-era rhetoric makes me think they are clinging to the old view “let’s make information available and see what happens,” which I think is a very passive (and often dangerous) way of going about it.

My gut tells me Morozov is unduly harsh. Maybe I’m cutting Hillary too much slack, but all-in-all, I support what she had to say. It echoes Braveheart: “FREEDOM!”

Here: February 15-19, 2010

Learning in 3D: Adding a New Dimension to Enterprise Learning and Collabora

Promote Your Page Too

It’s really smart to publicize a book like this on the web.

Drop by Internet Time Blog the week of February 15-19 when the book stops here.

Leadership, Intangibles, and Talent Review

“Articles are included from the likes of the Harvard Business Review, Henry Mintzberg, HR Magazine, Jeffrey Pfeffer, MIT Sloan Review, Nokia, SuccessFactors and the Wall Street Journal.” (I am proud to be among such company.)

Retention

By making it easier for people to leave or be appealing to other employers, organisations are likely to benefit from increased retention and motivation. This idea of increased autonomy is supported in an article by Rex Davenport where he highlights a recent interview with Jay Cross in Learning Executives Briefing.

“When learning is pushed on people—people resent it.”

Cross then goes on to make the point about the way outcomes are measured;

“First, the metrics that people have been using for the past 30 years— using accounting measures—are totally ridiculous. In the past 40 years the value of the stock market has gone from 80 percent tangibles to almost the opposite, 80 percent intangibles. If you listen to any (experts) they say that intangibles are unmeasurable, that they are too flaky. The ROI stuff is totally bogus and organizations shouldn’t waste their time on it. The proof is not to look at the learning, but instead to look at the changes in behavior that come about as a result of the learning.”

I took this shot of George Leonard at his home when we talked about informal learning several years ago. George died earlier this month. I went online and asked Google to find a photo to use in a memorial. I found several, none by me and none attributed to me.

One newspaper article stated: “The photograph of George used here was copied from the Web where it stated that there was no clear copyright or other source material provided.” I wrote the author of the piece, who promptly changed the copy to read “It has been brought to my attention that the photograph of George used here was taken by Jay Cross and is copyrighted by him.”

© All rights reserved

This is not a big deal (I’m hardly a professional photographer), but I wonder how common it is.

In yestserday’s New York Times, Gretchen Morgenstern explained one reason Why All Earnings Are Not Equal. Corporate managers have lots of elbow room as to whether an item is an expense or an investment, and some push the limits of discretion.

More puzzling to me is why businesses are not permitted to account for social capital (such as know-how, relationships, and talent) which makes up more than half of their value. Hey, financiers, this emperor has no clothes!

Verna Allee is the only person I’m aware of who has a viable solution for describing and monitoring the role of intangibles in value creation.

Verna sees organizations as value networks. A value network is a web of relationships that generates economic value and other benefits through complex dynamic exchanges between two or more individuals, groups, or organizations. Any organization or group of organizations engaged in both tangible and intangible exchanges can be viewed as a value network, whether private industry, government, or public sector.

Rather than counting accounting’s funny-money, Verna directly tracks the flow of value through the organization’s circuitry. Her Value Network Analysis is the missing link that unites the formal organization, business process modeling, asset management, and social networks.

Let me take another run at what Verna does: She evaluates an entity as a living system. Every living system is a self-renewing network. Its structure is its best description. The focus is on the people, who are the nodes in the network. Verna connects the nodes with arrows (for direction) and labels (describing exchanges of matter, energy, and ideas between the nodes). Each node is linked to a scorecard that tallies the value of its exchanges. She uses the system map to spot bottlenecks and relationships that need improvement; managers need to focus on the white space between the nodes.

Emerge, converge, and know.I captured a few minutes of Verna leading a workshop on Value Networks last fall:

Might Value Networks be the appropriate measurement system for optimizing Wirearchy?

Related links:
Value Networks Library
Value Networks.com
Open Value Networks

Four members of Internet Time Alliance submitted their thoughts to eLearn Magazine’s 2010 Predictions.

Wave Crests
Google Wave is already set to become a very popular tool this year, and I think it represents the way that tools are going to evolve in the near future, that is that the social functionality found in standalone tools is going to merge and become amalgamated into more integrated “learning” tools. Also I think (and hope) we will see learning systems moving away from managing or controlling users and instead providing open learning environments that enable both formal and informal personal and group learning to take place.
—Jane Hart, social learning consultant at Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies

Move It or Lose It
This is the decade of time. Time-to-performance will become the dominant metric for learning. Businesses in 2010 will become faster-paced and more unpredictable. Quick and agile companies will overtake hide-bound traditional organizations. Speedy change requires rapid learning; workers will increasingly set the pace. Mobile, geo-aware, smart phones will provide performance support. We’ll focus more on nurturing learning ecosystems (“learnscapes”) than on finger-in-the-dike point solutions. As Elbert Hubbard warned, “The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can’t be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.”
—Jay Cross, chairman of Internet Time Alliance

Break Out!
I’m hoping this will be the “year of the breakthrough.” Several technologies are poised to cross the chasm: social tools, mobile technologies, and virtual worlds. Each has reached critical mass in being realistically deployable and offers real benefits. And each complements a desired organizational breakthrough, recognizing the broader role of learning not just in execution, but in problem-solving, innovation, and more. I expect to see more inspired uses of technology to break out of the “course” mentality and start facilitating performance more broadly, as organizational structures move learning from “nice to have” to core infrastructure.
—Clark Quinn, executive director of Quinnovation

New Mode for ‘Learning’
The increasing awareness that learning is the result of experiences, practice, conversations, and reflection rather than a demonstration of acquisition of information will mean focus and effort moves away from the development of structured learning content and towards the implementation of new approaches for facilitating interaction and experiences through the workplace. This will challenge training and L&D departments to the limit, who will realize they need to change their modus operandi, get closer to their stakeholders and become more responsive or cease to be relevant. Speed-to-competence will become the key driver.
—Charles Jennings, director of the Internet Time Alliance and Duntroon Associates

Internet Time Alliance Learnstream