Watch this video. Take the time, let it run in the background as you work.  But keep your ear on it.

Is KM Dead?

This might become a semantics battle, but he points out some specific things that are dead:

• One size fits all.
• Documents and repositories = Knowledge
• Knowledge resides outside of people
• ROI of knowledge
• The central repository that is controlled by a central department is good for an organization.

Do you think he is right?

(Here are some links to more discussions on the topic.)

Here are some initial thoughts.  A learning facilitator will:

• Connect people together
• Encourage discussion and conversation, while at the same time monitor to make sure that the conversations are appropriate
• Listen to what the community of learners is saying in discussions
• Listen to their suggestions and then adjust accordingly
• Monitor discussions and flag the bad apples to keep it appropriate
• Measure and report out on activity
• Be an internal champion
• Be an advocate for the learner as well as a consult to management
• Have a strong understanding of the language and be able to express him/herself very will in written form - an experienced communicator
• Understand and have a good grasp on the technology used
• Be forward thinking and strategic to recognize other ways to increase the conversation and learning - technically and the good old fashioned way
• Be a fresh perspective from their unique position of ‘listening’ to many different conversations
• Be trusted and continue to build that trust
• Help shape and create ground rules by using the learners
• Be able to create goals and have a clear understanding of what they are and why
• Be a Simplicity Maker - too often things like this can get too technical too fast.  This person will have to keep their mind on the end user and keep things simple
• Engage and personalize
• Have a personality and use it
• Help everyone learn how to use the new technology, why they might (and in some cases should) use it
• Not give up
• Face opposition, take a smack in the face, and keep trucking (later they will come back and kiss you)
• Understand motivation and how people work and why they make decisions
• Know the world of the company or customer, how they work and how to best suite the environment and opportunities to allow for maximum ease of use and adoption

Just some stuff off the top of my head, from experience and gleaning information from other sources (here, here, here).  These part ways with the traditional training role, yet many are very similar.

Can you add to this list?  Which are more important than others, do you think?

UPDATE: This does not need to be just one person.  After thinking about it I think I made this out to be more of one job - which it could be.  This could certainly be many people, however, focused part time on this for a specific learning context.

Yesterday I wrote about being a Learning Facilitator - not getting in the way, but connection people to other people to learn - On or offline.  Then I stumbled upon TEACHSTREET.com.  They help anyone find courses on anything.  Photography in Portland, OR?  Done.  There were a number of courses for all levels.

This is about connecting those who want knowledge with those who have it.

Gather, control, teach and require has turned into aggregate, open, facilitate and house.

What can this teach us about what we might do in our organizations?

What do we do when content is generated by the users? Ray suggests we become trainer-facilitator-network weavers. Is our role shifting to be more of a guide? Creating rich resource pools which learners can dip into as needed?

I’m beginning to understand more why Ray is agonizing over social learning. Not only are we being asked to help others make fundamental changes in how they interact with technology, we need to do it first in order to be able to guide others.

Is our role shifting?  I would say YES and NO.  Social learning is a companion to formal learning.  They coexist and compliment each other.  In some cases social learning can take the place of formal learning, but from what I have seen it is not too often.  There will always be those who will focus on formal training and not need to really change much.   Their focus and strength is on, for example, creating e-learning content or facilitating an ILT.

There are others, however, who will need to change - and I would venture to say that this is more of us than the former group.  The reason is because of something that Christine said above, “Not only are we being asked to help others make fundamental changes in how they interact with technology…”  Usually this is an I.T. function (using new technology).  Social learning bleeds over into other departments’ functions.  In fact, I have seen much of social learning bleed not only there, but also into HR, strategic development, marketing, sales, legal, customer support…  Where should this originate from?  There have been those from other departments who have wondered if I am not stepping on their toes when I implement social learning.   Where does it end?  The short of it is that we need to expand beyond the formal learning roots.

We need to become Learning Facilitators in this role.  We help others learn from each other.  We don’t get in the way.  We help connect people.  We help facilitate the interaction and learning.  We don’t filter it, force it, ignore it or heavily moderate it.  Taking this role on is something we are not used to and can be down-right uncomfortable.

When I did presentation to a group of trainers and introduced this idea, they were taken aback because they didn’t want to lose control.  So far, all the information flows through the training department - how can we let that go?

Well, that thinking is a facade.  We trick ourselves into thinking that we have control of the information.  We may have control of some information but I guarantee you that more information and learning is going around the training deparment than through it.

And, yes, we need to be the first to go through it.  (Not that we don’t have enough to do!)  Then we can lead others through.

OR…

Here’s a radical idea.  Let them lead us through it.  There are those in our organizations who understand Web 2.0 much better than the training deparment do. They are individuals who have been using this type of learning (without calling it that) for a few years.  Use them.  Let them help you.  They can be a huge asset.  Then, apply it to learning and the end business goals.

1. A week on the Oregon coast - It doesn’t get much better than that!
2. A week camping with the Boy Scouts: Canoeing, white water rafting, hiking into and from a lake (3400′ increase in elevation in 10.5 miles one way - ohhhh my blistered feet!), mountain biking and rock climbing.  Phew!
3. Launching our company’s external social network.

It is this last one that has kept me in the office way later than I would have liked for far too many nights, but it was worth it!

After a year and a half after conception, we have launched a social network to our customers.  Last December we launched one internally and it has been a huge success.  Going externally was the next step.  It has been an uphill battle but one that has been a lot of fun - and the fun is not even close to being over.

Not all social networks can fall under the Social Learning banner, but some can.  In fact, most company’s social networks are failing.  For the large majority, it is because their focus and goals are in the wrong place.  Most of the failing ones are not focused on learning and sharing.  They are focused around a product or a brand.  These types are very difficult to maintain in a social networking world.  Not impossible, but more difficult.  As that blog post puts it:

Looking at all this, the answer seems pretty obvious: many of the companies in the study did not provide a compelling incentive for customers to get involved with their communities. Many of these communities are set up with the idea that people want to come hang out in a community just to chat about a brand.

For me, when I am involved I am learning.  It doesn’t matter what I am doing - even if I am teaching.  We all want to learn.  Get others engaged and personalize it for them and you will have a group who is learning and sharing - a Social Learning Network.

At the beginning stages of this project I held a kickoff meeting to explain what we were going to do.  It turned into the most venemous, toxic meeting I have ever been in.  The backlash was astonishing.  I thought this might happen, so before hand I met with each member, gave them an overview and elicited their support - of which I received from each of them.  It didn’t help.

A day after the meeting, the director of IT (who was in the meeting and went over the top), brought to me a fotune cookie.  It reads: “In great attempts it is glorious to fail.”  Basically he was saying that it was a worthy goal, but ‘good try.’  This had the opposite effect on me as I believe he would have liked at the time.  Instead, it made me work harder for this. I became more focused.

Fast forward to the day before the launch of our external site.  I pulled in essentially the same people - those who were the heavy players in creating it.  I wasn’t expecting the same because we had all come so far, but I was expecting some push back: “That page doesn’t work for me,” or “This process won’t work,” or “I don’t like the layout, ” or “We don’t have enough content,” or something.  Instead, there was talk about how we could help other companies do the same thing we had created.  I fully expected (and almost wanted) some discord.  But it wasn’t there.  Everyone understood the value and was 100% behind it!  What a contrast from a year and a half ago!

I have been asked many times, “Are you excited that you are launching?”  Yes and no.  ‘YES’ because we have come this far and this is a great milestone.  ‘NO’ because it is only a milestone.  The goal is much further down the road.  And we have a lot more to do to make this successful.

Because the company wanted to keep costs down, we did everything in-house.  They didn’t give me any official resources, but I was able to pull some cycles from a number of different departments.  What they couldn’t provide I had to do myself.  I created the layout, structure, stole the colors (since I am color blind - thankfully colors can be translated to numbers!), used other’s icons (legally), set up backend processes, changed an internal culture (most importantly), educated the employees on social networks, and adjusted as necessary.  Having done all that, I wish I was a better web designer.  There are a number of things I would like to do differently with that, but I am not sure I can put my finger on it.  Oh well…

We still have to implement a number of features that will engage the customer even more.  For example, we have strucutred it so that we will have at least 1500 self-registered members by the beginning of September, guaranteed.  But for a start I am very happy with the result.  This has been the most rewarding ‘work’ project I have lead.  I put ‘work’ in quotes because although it is for pay, it has felt like play - it has been a lot of fun as well.

And still, I have the fortune cookie as a reminder…

Answer: These people have not been convinced yet. They need to see real value. To do this, start using it yourself. Get others to use it. It will spread. Before you know it, those who make the decisions will see that it is beneficial. They will see the value. That’s all they wanted in the first place.

That concludes the 15 Objections to using Social Learning. Below is a list of them all:

• Objection #14: Prove It!
• Objection #13: How Do You Measure ROI?
• Objection #12: How Will You Measure That It Is Working?
• Objection #11: Too Much Info
• Objection #10: Wasting Time
• Objection #9: They Aren’t Technical
• Objection #8: Out of Date Information
• Objection #7: The Information is Wrong!
• Objection #6: Mixing Things Up
• Objection #5: How Do You Know it’s Accurate?
• Objection #4: Posting Anything, Including Bonobos
• Objection #3: Control of Information
• Objection #2: What Does This Have To Do With Training?
• Objection #1: Socialize!

Answer: First of all we need to realize that this is new.  The number of case studies cannot rival the number of case studies on Webinars or e-Learning, for example.  But they are out there.  Some have hard ROI numbers, some are success stories.  These should give you enough to read.

• CustomerVision has a couple: CDS and School Loans Corporation
• Although more geared toward the enterprise, Cases 2.0 is a wiki where anyone can upload their case studies.
• Some more
  

I really need to write up my case studies as well.  Someday when I get to it I will post it here…

Christine Martell pointed this out in her comment from yesterday when she said,

“Not so sure about this being a new way. Seems like your list is looking at the activity rather than the result. Aren’t we looking for behavior change at the level of contribution to the business? Things like are they doing their jobs more effectively?”

She is so right. We do want to want this to change behavior. But now even the behavior question is in question. What behavior? With traditional learning we expect certain behaviors to result and we try to measure that. With social learning we are looking for different behaviors, but the same end results. Let’s look at both of these.

The first is more cultural. It is adopting and changing more than just what they learn, but also how they learn. They are the ones in charge of their learning and teaching each other. Instead of being forced to go to training (something we can have control over the format and measurement), they are being allowed and encouraged to learn on their own. For many, this is a new concept. Not necessarily a new practice, but in a way it is a new permission that we let them learn from each other. This involves trust. It involves the expectation that they are accountable to their own learning. Here are some more ideas to measure.

The second is more of the traditional ROI. How do you know that it is producing bottom line results? So many people say, “You can’t measure this. There is no traditional ROI model that will work for this.” I agree but disagree. There should be an adaptation, but we can still see bottom-line results. And, honestly, the numbers are not always the best ROI. Because the ROI is then used to make decisions. The results that come out of these environments may not have a hard and fast ROI at first, or may be very difficult to calculate.  The subjective results, however, can be very powerful for those who make the decisions.  From them they may be more than on board - they back it 100%.  All this, but they may never have looked at a formal ROI on it.

This isn’t always the case. But my point is that we can’t overlook the stories, the experiences that are so powerful - and then sharing them - in our quest for an ROI.

Rachel Happe suggested some measurements of ROI. A lot of them are for environments that face the customer, but some are for internal. Among those were:

# Number of new product ideas
# Idea to development initiation cycle time
# Retention/Employee turn over
# Time to hire
# Prospect identification cost
# Prospect to hire conversion rate
# Hiring cost
# Training cost
# Time to acclimation for new employees

Remember, we are looking at the final outcome, not necessarily “did they learn”. Because, honestly, we don’t care if they learn if they don’t use it for the benefit of the company. So the benefit is what we measure.  Other’s measurements might be:

# How large one’s network is
# Number of meetings taking place (or, more intuitively, are NOT taking place)
# Number of travel arrangements made (or, again, NOT made).

This is certainly not an exhaustive list. What others are you thinking of?

Answer: It is true that you will not be able to see who has taken which courses or that they have passed a test or that they really liked a class (Level 1 evals - which is what most organizations do anyway).  We cannot measure something new using the old methods.  We can, however, measure using other methods not native to training or learning.  The methods used are web analytics.

• When millions of people search on Google, what are they trying to do?  They are trying to learn.  You can measure the number of times employees perform a search.  They want to learn something from every search.
• Then, look at what they are searching for.  That will give you a great insight.
• What information are they sharing?
• What are they commenting on?
• How many wiki pages were created?
• What were they created for?
• How many blog postings were created?
• When was the last time someone logged in? (if logging in is part of the process)
• How many forum questions were asked?
• How many answers were given?
• What are the most viewed pages?
• Define ‘active’ and measure how many people are active.
• How many people have become active in the last _______?
• You can analyze not only where people are going, but how they get there, how long they stay and what they do when they are there.

This may seem odd for some.  But we also need to remember that much of what they learn we cannot account for.  It happens, but we have no way to measure it.  Although this does not verify the transfer of knowledge or skills, it is a pretty good indication.  It is a new way of measuring learning.

Answer: It is true that information is increasing at an increasing rate. But does that mean that we let go trying to manage it and just let it happen? No, we have to help it. One of the organizational things I have watched is the switch from taxonomy to folksonomy. From a file/folder structure to a combined file/folder and tagging structure.  In the corporate environment it is a difficult switch because it is a cultural switch.

Watch this video. It will explain how we have so much information that it cannot be effectively managed using the old way we manage.

We have to change how we manage information. For this to be effective, we have to do two things. The first is to, obviously, start organizing the massive amounts of our information in a way that will allow us to find it when we need it. The second is to help others use the new method to find the information. It is the switch in our minds that becomes the most difficult.

If we are going to allow everyone to learn from each other, this is a MUST.