The Learning Revolution

2019: A workplace learning odyssey

noreply@blogger.com (Owen Ferguson) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 17:43:00 +0000

This month's Big Question from the Learning Circuits blog asks what workplace learning will look like in ten years time.

Ten years is a long time and you just have to read Slate's excellent description of what the internet was like in 1996 to get a feel for how much the world has changed in a very short space of time. More than that, if it was easy to imagine what paradigm busting technologies will crop up, I'd get out of the workplace learning game altogether and set up as a fund manager.

However, some handy help in that regard recently caused some discussion when Long Zheng over at the istartedsomething blog posted a video of what Microsoft thinks the future might look like.

Industrial differences, leaders and laggards

Of course, there's no one-size-fits-all answer to the question and although models will be drawn up and overarching theories will be put forward, they will ultimately be too high level to paint a picture that's easily applied in practice.

Workplace learning in a manufacturing setting will still be quite different from workplace learning in a software development company. Likewise, workplace learning in a large corporate will be different from that taking place in a small business.

If we look at workplace learning now, it's clear that there are leaders and laggards. I'm often inspired by some of the case studies I read about where organisations have taken a radically different approach to learning (Sun Microsystems, for example). They've recognised that it's not enough to simply offer a catalogue of courses on comminication skills or time management. All too often, however, I see L&D departments that treat their courses with proprietory jealousy and the very idea of making the course material available to everyone in the organisation whether they've attended a course or not is treated as an anathema. Change in these organisations will be slow to come and they are in the majority (at least, they are in the UK).

Predictions and trends

One reason I decided to have a stab at this was because it'll be interesting to look back in three or four years time and see just how wrong I can be. So, here are a few areas where I hope we see some significant change by 2019.

Meta-learning & analytical skills

There's a key problem in today's economy. People are not good at critically appraising information that is given to them. It's been around for a while but there's little excuse for it in an age where finding out whether something is substantive and accurate or not is easy.

Take a few of the modern business myths that still perpetuate despite having been based on misreported, or simply bad, research: 93% of communication is non-verbal, you only use 10% of your brain, there are left brain thinkers and right brain thinkers, some people are creative and others are not, generation Y are radically different from any other generation before them, Honey & Mumford's learning styles ... I could go on but it's too depressing.

The fact is that although people like reductionist, easy answers the reality is often magnificantly more complex. This is where being able to sort the wheat from the chaff is so important, especially in a world where memes spread like wildfire. Giving people the tools to do this will be a critical function of schools and universities but organisations will need to help people hone these skills - perhaps a job for workplace learning professionals.

Emphasis will be placed on learning how to use new tools and critically appraise information and ideas.

Performance support rather than training

There's not much doubt that learning what you need, when you need it is far better than going on a training course cramming information in your head that you won't use for five or six months.

Take Microsoft Excel. I remember going on an Advanced Excel course many moons ago and being rushed through a plethora of its startlingly varied advanced functions. I didn't use half of it and when I need to do some serious spreadsheet data analysis now, I have the slighly clunky help function, a myriad of discussion boards and a network to tap into in order to help me. That is true performance support. I get the information I need, when I need it and it's far more rich and specific to my needs than that course ever was.

It's not just computer skills though. Take tricky management situations that you've not dealt with before. Would a 'first line management' course properly prepare you for all the weird and wonderful challenges that every manager faces from time to time? Not in my experience and I've been on far too many. Again, when a manager faces one of these challenges, there are some great sites out there to get some initial framing information, networks to tap into in order to get advice and, in most organisations, there's some form of HR support to help out.

By 2019, I sincerely hope that we've done away with our linear driven courses for managers and, instead, given them the tools to work out for themselves what the best way forward is. As online support becomes more and more sophisticated, and natural language search tools improve, the need for course on disciplinary and grievance can be massively reduced. What's the point of sending a manager on a course about a disciplinary hearing if they don't have to carry one out for eighteen months? Wouldn't it be better for them to get the support in the form of online tools and some pre-disciplinary coaching?

Performance support will be built into the workflow and take the form of online tools, networks and coaching.

Tapping into networks

I mentioned networks twice when talking about performance support. Although in the consumer space networking tools are booming, in the corporate world there's still a very long way to go. Early adopters are already reaping the benefits of leveraging the likes of LinkedIn and Twitter, but adoption in the mainstream isn't going to happen for a few years yet.

Let me give you an example. My four closest friends all have successful careers in a variety of industries. All of them are knowledge workers and all of them are sophisticated users of technology. I'm the only one who's using Twitter or anything like it. Most of my friends don't see the point and won't even consider it yet. In fact, of the people in my immediate social network (family or those to whom I have close friendships), the only ones who use online networking tools are those who work in the same company as me.

The others are my tie to reality. It's easy to get carried away by the feedback you hear from fellow enthusiasts - the reality is that the majority of the working population has some way to go.

New technologies will make it all far more accessible. Video and voice will become far more important for networking online as bandwidth and memory become less of an obstacle. Improvements in search technologies will mean that video and voice will be searchable, further reducing the ties we have at the moment to text when networking online. Improved mobile technology will realease people even more from their PCs and their keyboards so that networking will be just as easy from anywhere.

By 2019, the lessons of social and professional networking will have been learned and more sophisticaed tools will be available. The key to this will be the ability to cut through the chatter and pull out the key messages, to get to the right people when you need them.

Social and professional networks will be a key source of learning, finally. It'll be about hearing and seeing people and it will be far more mobile.

And as for the training department ...

I think there will always be a need for learning professionals of some sort and, in many organisations, they will still be there in much the same format as they are today in 2019. The sort of radical change that some are suggesting is going to occur won't permeate everywhere for quite some time - there's too much internal politics to content with.

However, I do think many L&D departments will be smaller and their outputs will be far more aligned with performance than they are at the moment. Some will absorbed into HR departments determined to take a more holistic approach to performance improvement, incorporating reward, talent management as well as workplace learning. Many of the learning professionals who focus on delivery will move into the coaching sphere where there will still be a high demand.

There will be closer ties to the IT function who will have finally realised that if they don't help in delivering new social technologies, any influence over them will be taken out of their hands. These closer links will require learning professionals to have a better understanding of the technologies that are available so they can utilise them in driving performance improvement.

The greater emphasis on performance improvement will finally mean that an evidence based approach will settle into the DNA of most workplace learning departments. That approach will enable a greater desire to experiment, coupled with an expedient attitude to cutting initiatives that simply don't work.

Functions dealing with workplace learning will be more performance focussed, more evidence focussed, more holistic and more flexible.

Paradigm busters

It's fun thinking about the future and what possibilities it may bring but if the events of the last 18 months have taught us anything, it's that the world is a far less predictable place than we ever thought it was.

The only prediction I'll make with any confidence is that the biggest game changer in the next ten years hasn't even been thought of yet ...

Contribution vs competence: why we should speak up a bit more

noreply@blogger.com (Owen Ferguson) — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 14:37:00 +0000

Over the last couple of weeks, one study by Anderson and Kilduff has made me think more than most.

Time magazine covered it under the heading Competence: Is Your Boss Faking It?, while the excellent Mind Hacks blog ran a post about it under the heading Leadership can be based on quantity not quality.

The strange, though depressingly familiar, finding is that it's not what a person contributes to a discussion that's important, but how often they contribute and how confidently they assert their opinion. Or, to put it in a more unflattering light, big mouths are seen as being smarter and more competent than they should be.

He who talks loudest ...

What does this all mean?

Well, for a start, it confirms a sneaking suspicion many of us have that a significant proportion of people in senior positions in organisations are there because of unflinching self-confidence in what they 'know', and how well they sell themselves and their ideas.

This combined with the overconfidence effect leads to a situation where an organisation's effectiveness is compromised. People often follow the guidance of the loud and confident, who in turn, often just follow their own lead, rather than listen carefully to those with better knowledge and skills, but less bombast. To cap it off, this unintentional ignorance is lauded and seen as 'leadership' (and a big thank you to the credit crunch for making the case for this statement all to easy).

New learning professionals need to speak out more

I see this happening in HR and L&D departments all the time. Those with more strident opinions seem to get the final say, hence the proliferation of 'communication skills' workshops with little or no follow up and a determined effort to ignore necessary change because it's too difficult to sway the opinion of the loud and confident people who lead the internal political landscape.

Learning 2.0 or elearning 2.0 or however you want to define it, is a movement that promotes a new approach to improving performance. It does this through a combination of improving (human) network connections, taking an enlightened approach to knowledge sharing, using an evidence based approach and utilising new technologies to achieve much of this.

However, the people leading this charge are often the sort that get frustrated with inertia in large organisations and leave to work independantly or for smaller organisations. This often leaves the big mouths unchallenged and the learning 2.0 crowd agreeing with each other from outside (for the record, I see great work being done in a few large organisations, but all too few).

There are many champions of the new learning approach in these large organisations but, because they are thoughtful and sensible and make considered statements rather than overconfident ones, they get drowned out by the self-confident big mouths. The Anderson & Kilduff study tells us that it's time to stand up, talk a lot and be confident with it because it doesn't matter how right you are, it's how much you say it.

Brain training: too good to be true? Of course it is

noreply@blogger.com (Owen Ferguson) — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 18:22:00 +0000

The Times reported that Nintendo's Brain Training programme was no better than simple simple mental exercises using pencil and paper this week. I can't say that I'm surprised.

What's disturbing, though, is the simplistic, black and white, good vs bad, style of reporting that seems to be getting worse all the time.

The claims about 'brain training' using whizzy new technology have always been overblown, aided by research such as the poorly constructed study championed by Learning and Teaching Scotland. Oh, it had plenty going for it - there was some kind of control group - but there were some fundamental flaws, not least of which was the lack of a study group who did the same mental exercises as the 'brain training' group, but using pen and paper instead.

Oh, and as for the group doing 'brain gym', well that's been discredited in so many ways, it's not even worth doing any more.

A slightly more rational view

It seems that the whole debate could do with a little perspective.

Is the Nintendo 'brain training better' than simple mental exercises such as a crossword or soduku? I doubt it.

Is it perhaps a little more fun and likely to engage kids (and adults)? I think you could argue it is, but I'd like to see a study into that - more worthwhile than additional research into ludicrous 'brain gym' nonsense.

Would I want the government to equip all schoolkids with with an expensive Nintendo DS? Definitely not, you can achieve the same level of engagement with games available on the PCs that schools already have.

If it looks too goo to be true ...

Those looking for technology to be the quick fix solution to complex problems like poor numeracy are always going to be heading for dissappointment. If there's a mantra that I'd subscribe to it's that 'I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that'. This is as true for those who tout Nintendo 'brain training' as for those who rubbish it and say that pencil and paper are just as good.

All those studies, every single one, will be subject to the pygmalion effect and the hawthorne effect wonderfully demonstrated by the fact that, in the study reported on in the Times, "children who had no specific training improved 20 per cent" in logic tests.

Last but not least, it does seem a little suspicious that Professor Lieury, who carried out the research that condemned 'brain training', has a book out called Stimulate Your Neurones this month. This isn't to say that his findings aren't valid, just that you should read the paper and decide for yourself (I haven't found it yet, so if you know where it is or have a copy please let me know!).

Who can you trust?

noreply@blogger.com (Owen Ferguson) — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 20:02:00 +0000

Tim Berners-Lee is worried. It seems there is a lot of information out there on the internet that isn't exactly accurate and something definitely needs to be done about it.

Let's be clear, there is a lot of inaccurate information on the internet, but the real question is what do you do about it?

Sir Tim himself apparently wants new systems that would give websites a label for trustworthiness once they had been proved reliable sources. Sounds like a mammoth bureaucratic task, not to mention one that would test the patience of Sisyphus.

And I can just imagine that there are hoards of HR people who, having already banned Facebook and Twitter, are just waiting to pounce on other 'untrustworthy' sites.

However, before we let them jump to that, let's first ask a few questions. For instance, what do you do about a site where the information is normally accurate, is given a rating to say you can trust it, and then gives out bogus information?

You can/can't trust the BBC? (delete as applicable)

Let's look at an example. There's been a lot of stuff written recently about 'Blue Monday', supposedly the most depressing day of the year. The BBC's run number of stories about it, including one just last week.

The problem is that it's total nonsense and has been discredited by a number sources, including the excellent badscience, mindhacks and freakonomics blogs.

So does the BBC lose its 'trustworthiness' rating? I'd rather it didn't since I quite like it, but my preference would be that it didn't have a rating at all.

And what about the whole Wikipedia/Encyclopaedia Britannica 'which-is-more-accurate?' storm in a tea-cup?

The inevitable and slightly boring truth

The internet already has a pretty good system of self-regulation. There are comments on blogs and for every site that claims the MBTI is brilliant, there's another that states that it's useless. Unfortunately, sorting the wheat from the chaff requires two key skills that are difficult to teach: analysis of evidence and critical appraisal.

Instead of worrying about labelling sites or having L&D departments spoon feeding employees with various courses designed by 'experts' (and please do look to find out what David Colquhoun thinks about some of these), we should be trying to improve people's ability to discern good evidence from bad and enabling them to make choices from a position of knowledge.

Where the trust should be placed

By all means edit, distil and give people a starting point - but let's trust them to find out for themselves what's nonsense and what isn't, what works and what doesn't.

The key to all of this though is giving them the tools to be able to do that quickly and accurately: (re)search skills, analytical approaches, a systematic approach to critically appraising evidence.

They sound grand, but finding things on the internet is easy, as is asking yourself 'how do I know that this claim is true'. And, if all else fails, I like to employ the best approach of all: I ask someone I trust.

Learning spaces - breaking down barriers

noreply@blogger.com (Owen Ferguson) — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 20:31:00 +0000

This weekend, I've read two articles about the impact that John Lasseter has been having at Disney since he became their Chief Creative Officer in 2006.

The reason he's back in the spotlight again is the release of the first Disney film since he took over but what I found interesting is his approach to recreating the same levels of creativity at Disney as he did, and still does, at Pixar.

This month's Total Film magazine carries a feature in which the writer describes how "Lasseter's name crops up pretty much every other sentence with everyone you speak to, his presence already sparking a quiet revolution".

Another example of an amazing leader with a secret recipe, impossible to reproduce?

Well, maybe, but there are some interesting actions he's taken resonate with examples that Jay Cross gives in his excellent book Informal Learning.

Facilitating interaction

Some of the main barriers to learning and creativity in organisations are those that prevent people from communicating with one another in a meaningful way.

At Disney, there were:

"a lot of offices, a lot of closed-door discussions and relatively little public collaboration."

What did Lasseter do about it?

"John came in and if there is a well that wasn't holding up the building, it was coming down."
The result is a studio full of open plan floors and positively abuzz with new found energy. Even the bathrooms and the water fountains have been strategically moved into more central locations to encourage staff interaction. Each feature in production now has its own 'hub' where everyone meets to chat, and the hubs are decorated to suit the production.

So let's get this straight, in comes this guy from Pixar to Disney and one of the first things he does is tear down walls and put water fountains in strategic places? It seems that two elements of Lasseter's 'secret recipe' are interaction and collaboration. Sound familiar?

Creativity courses?

Of course, that isn't all Lasseter brings to the table. He's constantly pushing for more from his people, always asking how to make the films better, funnier, more poignant. The focus is constantly on the end process and he's willing to try new things in order to improve.

However, these things that be different from any other industry: aren't we all constantly asking ourselves how to make things better?

There's a lesson to be learned from all of this for learning professionals.

Problems with creativity, like those with learning or performance, are often to do with the environment people work in. Managers will often bemoan the fact that their people 'aren't more creative' and ask for solution: maybe some training courses, maybe some new people. The smart learning/HR professional will start their analysis not with the people, but with the manager and the environment that the people work in. As John Lasseter seems to be showing at Disney, make some changes to that and the creativity that's in people already seems to come out just a little bit more easily.

Oxbridge and the BBC: National institutions evolving

noreply@blogger.com (Owen Ferguson) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 22:28:00 +0000

One of the things that I like about blogging is that it's like a thought capture device for myself. I keep promising that I'll get better at just putting stuff in that I find interesting but never get around to it. Here, however, is a couple of things that have caught my attention recently.

More University learning goodness

Hot on the heals of my last post, the Oxbridge duo have started to produce some of their lectures on iTunes U.

Is is just me, or is Oxford streets ahead in terms of the content and design of their iTunes page?

The Beeb improves its search ... about time

The BBC website has improved its search. I meant to post about how it was the one aspect of the site that I found disappointing a couple of days ago as I was musing over the differences between 'search' vs 'navigating through content' when learning about stuff online. I'll post on that when I've got a bit more time but it looks like even just cleaning up the display of the results has improved things.

Higher Education ahead of the game?

noreply@blogger.com (Owen Ferguson) — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 15:43:00 +0000

Academics get a rough deal from the business community because they're often seen as being somewhat behind the times and out of touch with reality. Often this is because academics aren't afraid to use their sharp minds and ask plenty of questions to critically appraise an idea, proposal or sales pitch. Or, it's because they're quite cautious before making a claim about a new idea or discovery.

However, after years of seeming to be slow to adopt new approaches embraced by corporate learning professionals, the higher education sector seems to be trailing a blaze across the new learning landscape and a range of interesting approaches have taken off.

iTunes U

This isn't that new, but iTunes U now has a huge number of universities signed up to it, including the OU and ULC from the UK (although in coparison to the ~200 american universities this seems a pretty poor take up).

There's a wealth of interesting, advanced material on there for anyone who likes to learn.

Google Apps

A friend recently mentioned to me that the Bloomsbury Colleges consortium are running a project looking into the the use of Google Docs and other online document creation tools for students and university staff alike. They're calling it the APT STAIRS project (which stands for Appropriate and Practical Technologies for Students, Teachers, Administrators and Researchers).

I probably shouldn't be, but I'm pretty impressed that they've used Google Sites for the project site.

Any examples from UK PLC of this happening? I haven't heard of many, and just a few from the US (they all may have other things on their mind at the moment!)

Getting a foothold

noreply@blogger.com (Owen Ferguson) — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 22:17:00 +0000

There's a general reluctance in large organisation to embrace the raft of new technologies that have become popular on the consumer side: social networking, blogs, wikis, micro-blogging, RSS feeds etc. Some of this is understandable; after all, it's not entirely clear whether Twitter is of any use to the majority of the workforce at all (I'm still sitting the fence on this one). However, much of it is down to three main factors:

lack of understanding by those who might be able to make use of it (in particular, learning professionals)
lack of general web know-how in the workforce at large
paranoia on the side of the IT departments

There's some interesting movement in this space, though, by some technology players that might help get web 2.0 into the workplace

Socialtext is a 'business social software' provider and their Socialtext 3.0 release brings together three new features to their already impressive wiki product. Of particular interest is the social netowrking for enterprise feature, which includes a Facebook-like activity stream, and their dashboard, which is an iGoogle-like customisable home page with widgets.

Of course, there are free alternatives out there which are more customisable and flexible, but Socialtext have wrapped these altogether in an secure, easy-to-buy package that's scalable.

The site says it all far better than I ever could and if you only look in one place, I'd recommend the product feature page.

I meant to write about Yammer a while ago, just after it won the top prize at this year's TechCrunch50. It's essentially a Twitter for business, but instead of asking 'what are you doing', Yammer asks 'what are you working on'. The most interesting aspect of about their model is that it caters for a bottom-up, employee driven approach and the network can then be 'claimed' by the organisation if they want to take advantage of the additional features available.

I know one or two small organisations that have been using Twitter to keep in touch when people are working in disparate locations and it seems that Yammer might well prove to be more acceptable in the mainstream for work than Twitter is.

Search better

noreply@blogger.com (Owen Ferguson) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 18:03:00 +0000

I've always considered myself to be pretty clued up when it comes to online technologies but a recent post on Normal Lamont's blog (not that Normal Lamont) showed me that there's always something new you can learn about even the most familiar of online tools.

Using the '+', '-', 'site:', quotation marks and 'OR' operators has become second nature to me but, whether I've ignored them or just haven't been aware of them, there's a whole range of search short cuts that can be used in Google and other search engines that I've somehow missed (I'm particularly pleased to have discovered the tilda(~) and 'links:' functions).

The most useful can be found in Google's Search Help Centre and they've even got a handy cheat sheet for quick reference.

Given that knowledge workers and managers spend so much time pulling in information and using it to their own ends, it never ceases to amaze me that there's not more basic search instruction in organisations. Simply using the tools above can help cut down search time dramatically but most people I know don't even know about the basics.

Short term thinking: It's not just the banks that are at it

noreply@blogger.com (Owen Ferguson) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 16:50:00 +0000

So the credit crunch has really started to bite now. The fall of Lehman brothers, the quick-fire sales of Merrill Lynch and HBOS and the subsequent proposal of a $750 billion lifeline to the banks of the United States has caused a very sober re-evaluation of business models and management approaches in all sectors of the economy. Good.

While the economic difficulty that we're going to experience will be painful for many of us, it's no bad thing that this will push organisations to look more closely at how they operate. Although history teaches a different lesson, the hope must be that organisations will learn from the repeated mistakes of the past and make a change for their own long term benefit and that of the economy as a whole.

Always looking for the easy answer

You're going to hear a lot of people talking about how one of the main reasons for the dramatic fall in banking stocks was short selling. Heather Stuart in the Observer covers this pretty well:

Did short-sellers bring down HBOS?

No. HBOS came under fire because of its reliance on short-term funding, and its heavy exposure to the tottering UK property market. But shorting may have accelerated the bank's downfall, because it can exacerbate sharp swings in prices.

So, there was a fundamental lack of risk control at one of the biggest banks in the UK. Are they alone in this? Obviously not. Although Northern Rock is the most obvious other culprit, the financial system in general is focussed on short term gains to a fantastical degree and this tendency comes from incentive schemes for management starting at the very top and filtering all the way down throughout the hierarchy.

Selling for the short term

Think about it. How different is that to any other organisation? Sales (or business development, if you must) targets are set on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis with no reward mechanism for those sales that result in long term benefits to the company. So, we incentivise sales people to get the business through the door irrespective of the quality of that business.

Let's imagine that an outdoor sports sales-person sells someone a pair of expensive hiking boots that aren't suitable for what they want to do. Why would they do that? Perhaps because selling the most suitable, less expensive pair won't put them over their sales quota. Two things will happen in this situation: firstly, the sales person will be rewarded; secondly, the customer won't come back.

This is essentially what has happened in the financial system. Bankers have taken short cuts and ignored inherent risks in order to make some swift money. Eventually, they've been found out but, unlike the outdoor sports sales-person, they've taken a good chunk of the economy with them.

Is there another way?

Yes. The most successful investors aren't the young turks with their flash words and weak understanding of the basics. Warren Buffet believes that you need to get to know an organisation well, ensure that it has good management before investing in a significant stake for the long term. Given that he's the wealthiest man in the world and he's been consistently successful for over 40 years, I think he's worth taking note of.

What's the lesson for us minions?

Of course the short term must be taken into consideration, but those organisations that succeed take a much longer term view. Lloyds TSB patiently took flack for not getting involved in the new, sexy financial instruments in the late nineties and early part of this century. I'm willing to bet that their investors are much happier than HBOS's right now.

Below the level of the great and mighty there's still lessons to be learned. HR needs to evaluate the rewards systems they have in place and ask if they disproportionately reward for short term performance, encouraging people to take reckless risks to the detriment of long term success.

Likewise, if L&D professionals want to improve long term performance, they'll look more closely at long term solutions rather than outmoded, flash in the pan 'events' that benefit from a brief placebo-like effect but change nothing further down the line. Helping people to learn how to learn; giving them the tools to find information and support more quickly and easily; giving them access to the best learning material available rather than a sub-standard trainer because they're local, available and can come to a 'workshop': these are the things that will create long term benefits.

Honing your bullshit detector

noreply@blogger.com (Owen Ferguson) — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 18:14:00 +0000

Following from my recent post about the excellent series of articles that Michael Blastland is currently writing for the BBC, I read two great books over the weekend: Bad Science by Ben Goldacre and The Tiger That Isn't by the aforementioned Michael Blastland and his co-author Andrew Dilnot.

Both are entertaining, often amusing reads that take the media to task for its dumbing down of statistical information. However, for "the media" you can also read just about any management consultant/salesperson/training facilitator who's ever thrown around 'statistics' or 'research' without any information about where the information has actually come from.

If for no other reason that to improve your critical thinking faculties, I'd recommend reading both of them - after all, it only takes a few hours

Google shakes things up with TWO interesting announcements

noreply@blogger.com (Owen Ferguson) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 09:16:00 +0000

There were rumours, but to be honest not many. So when Google announced that they would be launching their own browser it caused a bit of a stir on the blogosphere. It marks a brand new era in the browser wars with the big 3 tech companies (Apple, Microsoft & Google) all vying for a slice of the action with a plucky outlier (Mozilla with its Firefox browser) offering a serious challenge.

On hearing the news I'm thinking three things:

Competition is inevitably good and it's great to have another open source browser
Oh no, most web developers now have to cater for at least four different browsers: IE6, IE7, firefox 3 and Safari 3 (IE8 can wait since it has its special 'compatibility view')
I'm looking forward to seeing the new javascript engine in action

But the other big new is ...

Somewhat overshadowed by Google Chrome was Google's announcement that they will be adding video to their Google Apps product. Google Apps is a suite of business web applications aimed at businesses, providing email, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, calendars and a flexible intranet system.

Now their enabling business users to upload videos and share them. This could be a great boon for Learning and Development professionals, enabling them to experiment with a different form of delivery in the form of small video modules or screencasts and distribute them quickly and efficiently. Why not use it to record training sessions, tag them up and make them searchable by everybody to give people the information they need when they need it?

It cuts down the cost of this type of service because all the data is stored 'in the cloud' meaning businesses don't have to spend on expensive servers and storage facilities. In fact, it's just about perfect for SMEs.

I could go on, but these videos explain the benefits and how it works far better:

Introduction to Google Video for Business

How businesses use Google Video

Follow the numbers ... if you can

noreply@blogger.com (Owen Ferguson) — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 13:20:00 +0000

Michael Blastland is four articles into an excellent weekly series looking at the use of numbers in the media and politics. The four he's covered so far are surveys, measuring, percentages and averages - so far, so what, I can hear you say. Surely this is primary school stuff?

Alas, no. The vast majority of the UK (and US) public are pretty poor with numbers, blithely taking in a ream of statistics from 'experts' that have no real meaning or evidence to back them up. This is especially true in business where ludicrous claims by 'consultants' (sales people who don't want to be seen as such) are sucked up and regurgitated by managers who don't know what a statistically significant margin is, nor how to critically evaluate a survey's methodology.

Blastland's articles would be an excellent starting point for anyone wanting to get to grips with using and interpreting figures more effectively. That's the good news. The bad news is that to move on from just understanding what the problems are to being able to produce meaningful statistics and evaluate figures critically is not something you can do with a quick fix. Reading a book or completing a 20 minute elearning package isn't enough, it's practical experience that counts the most - working out what to count, how to count it and what to do with the numbers once you've got them is something that sounds so simple, but is often frustratingly complex.

How many times have you heard a manager/learning professional talk about how 'over 90% of communication is non-verbal', use the old classic 'you remember 10% of what you hear, 20% of what you see etc', or say with confidence 'x% of all sickness absence in the UK is fraudulent'? All of these statistics fly in the face of any evidence or critical assessment so why do they spread so fast and so far in business?

Because it's easier; because the purveyors of these statistics are rarely pulled up or asked to provide a reference for their claims; and because not enough people know enough about surveys, statistics or poperly designed studies.

What does this mean for UK plc? Well the focus on basic skills will help in the long run but how many existing managers do you know who'll readily admit that they're not great with numbers and that numbers are hugely important in business?

There is, however, a significant number of people working in business who do have the skills to help mangers understand what figures to use and how to use them. Often they're not the flash, extrovert employees with excellent interpersonal skills. They'll be working in the finance, IT, R&D or engineering departments. The best thing a manager could do if they're unsure of the numbers they're looking at - ask an expert for help.

How external consultants make money

noreply@blogger.com (Owen Ferguson) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 09:23:00 +0000

I'm a big believer in taking a rigorous, evidence based approach to most things, especially in business. I like to run pilots, collect feedback, do surveys, analyse performance metrics. Frequently I'm amazed how external consultants (of both the management and L&D flavours) continue to get regular work from huge organisations by peddling the same old, discredited approaches based on tired, inaccurate theory. Then I read Ben Goldacre's post on the plausibility effect and it all made sense.

All you need to do is 'look distinguished and sound authoritative', polish up your CV and sound like you know what you're talking about and even well educated people will lap it up if they don't have the training to critically evaluate information.

Testing the evidence

Now, the most astute out there will be thinking 'that's all very well to say but where's the evidence for that'. Handily, Goldacre provides the references he uses and I've checked them up - the study was published with all its data in a respected scientific journal, meaning that it was peer reviewed. So, I can say that the evidence is relatively trustworthy.

What's that got to do with L&D? Remember all those times that an external consultant has said something along the lines of 'research has shown that X percent of people do blah'? Next time, ask for the reference and check it out. Most of them won't be able to provide one, of those that can, only a small number will have accurately relayed the information.

Big Question: Where have all the leaders gone?

noreply@blogger.com (Owen Ferguson) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 19:18:00 +0000

This month's Learning Circuits Big Question is essentially "Should learning professionals be leading the charge around new work literacies such as social media and informal learning?" You can read the whole of Tony Karrer's post here.

It's difficult to not agree with everything that's in Tony's post an my short answer would be: yes they should, and the good ones already are.

IT literacy should be a must now

I've often found it strange that some people take pride in the fact that they aren't IT literate. Some of these are just people who are pushing against innevitable change and who would have complained about having to withdraw cash froma hole-in-the-wall where there used to be a bank. Others, however, seem to see it as an irrelevance despite the fact that they are out of touch with the latest thinking in their field let alone the latest thinking on the corporate adoption of social media.

It's not necessary to use all the new online tools that are out there but it is necessary to know about them and understand them if for no other reason than it gives you options, and may improve personal and organisational performance.

But, it's not entirely their fault

And here we come to the nub of the issue. Most learning professionals can only do so much. There's a vacuum of leadership in the adoption of enterprise/web/learning 2.0 tools from learning professionals in senior positions and too many barriers put up by over-zealous HR and IT departments. Over 50% or organisations in the UK are still on Internet Explorer 6 and I've come across some that restrict javascript and all cookie. This makes using something like google docs or pbwiki as an experiment somewhat difficult for the poor, lonely learning professional.

Management needs to change too

All of these new tools, from blogs and wiki's through to social networking and RSS readers, require an enlightened management attitude. One where control gives way to the encouagement of innovation. There's a lot of noise about this new management approach - Gary Hamel and Julien Birkinshaw's Management Lab has made most of the major UK management publications - but I see little evidance of it in large organisations.

What's happened to the IT training?

A (good) while back there was a big push in organisations to make better and more efficient use of the 'new' office applications like Microsoft Word and Excel. These are still taking place but what's not happened is the addition of new courses on the new web 2.0 technologies. No course on how to use a discussion forum, no such thing as advanced social bookmarking, not any internal courses in large corporates on how to use search engines effectvely. I think we're due to see a big push from the grassroots for this kind of course - the problem is learning professionals aren't ready for it yet. Maybe it's best it grows organically. After all, one of the key failings of HR and learning professionals is failing to listen properly to the sharp end of the business while exploring their own pet projects. Mind you, at least training might prevent more events like these: Clive Shepherd: Now I've heard it all

UPDATE

Tony Karrer discussed my post in his response to the Big Question: Learning Professionals Leaders. It made me realise that I may not have been as clear as I could have been so I've posted a clarification below:

When I say a learning professional can only do so much, I'm meaning from the perspective of encouraging organisational uptake. I don't believe that a learning professional could call themselves as such without being aware of all the latest developments in learning methods /approaches. However, helping to develop new work literacies in the workplace requires support from leadership in key areas of the organisation.

Mobile learning gets a boost with the iPhone 3G

noreply@blogger.com (Owen Ferguson) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:57:00 +0000

All the hype at the recent WWDC event this year was about the 3G iPhone but it was some of the the applications coming in the new App Store that were demonstrated that caught my eye (well, that and the price cut).

I've mentioned before that I think the iPhone will lead the way in a new wave of mobile learning solutions and a glimpse of the future was seen when Modality showed off its new application to help medical students learn anatomy. Very simple, but taking an approach that's worked for thousands and giving it a modern twist.

This is just the first of what will be many approaches to mobile learning, especially with the first phones based on Google's Android platform on their way.

Twitter: micro-blogging or time wasting?

noreply@blogger.com (Owen Ferguson) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 13:35:00 +0000

I just about get Twitter. The simple concept, easy interface and the fact that you can get a desktop client for it (called Twhirl) really appeal to me, far more so than Facebook. I think it could be a much more valuable tool for networking and keeping up to date with both work and friends. I'm just not sure how to go about getting started.

The other thing I'm not sure about is whether it'll turn into a distraction from other things. Anyway, I'm going to make a concerted effort to start using it this weekend and see what all the fuss is about.

If anyone knows any good L&D or tech people to 'follow', let me know.

Just spent some time in Learning Town!

noreply@blogger.com (Owen Ferguson) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 13:34:00 +0000

I've only just found out about Learning Town, a social networking site aimed directly at learning professionals hosted by Elliott Masie of The MASIE Center.

The network's already attracted around 3000 people in just 10 days which is pretty impressive. I'm looking forward to having a nose around and finding out if any interesting conversations start

NB It looks like it's been created using Ning, a web based platform that enables you to create your own social network - worth a look if you're interested in setting something up quickly, easily and cheaply (like trialling social networking in an organisation that takes forever to get things done).

Mobile learning picks up traction

noreply@blogger.com (Owen Ferguson) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 12:02:00 +0000

Following from the post I put up yesterday, I came across a couple of related blog posts today.

First here's a BBC Technology blog post about data traffic on 3's 3G mobile network. As you can see from the graph below, the increase is incredible. Although Rory Cellan-Jones puts the increase down to dongles, a chunk of that increase will be down to increased browsing on mobile devices.

Here's a recent post from the excellent Techcrunch blog about the future of social networking. Much of our learning comes from our social & professional networks. The bigger our network, the bigger the resource we can draw upon.

Learning on the move

noreply@blogger.com (Owen Ferguson) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 17:42:00 +0000

I'd be the first one to admit that I'm a bit of a technology geek (as well as a science nerd and Radiohead bore). However, I've never been convinced by the enthusiasm that some people have had for mobile learning, or m-learning as it's inevitably been monikered.

Then came the iPhone. I've heard people ask whether it really is as revolutionary as it's made out to be (it is) and whether it actually does anything that other mobiles can't do (it doesn't but it does some things so much better than other mobile devices that the rule book has been torn up).

Those aren't the real issues though. What the iPhone has done is caught the imagination of the general populace. It's already the most popular mobile browser in the United States, overtaking Windows mobile devices and Symbian devices that have been around for far longer and have a far bigger market penetration. Here's a startling fact: once the iPhone had sold a twentieth of the number of active Windows based smartphones its safari browser generated more page views than the windows browser.

With the recent rumours circling of iPhone competitors and a 3G verion of the iPhone on the way, the potential of web based learning/performance applications will soon be realised on mobile devices as well. This is an extension of the learning 2.0 revolution, not a different revolution.

M-Learning will be:

browser based, meaning it can be run on different devices and operating systems (overcoming one of the main barriers to m-learning
performance focused, rather than pedagogical: people on the move need information there and then, not in a fancy pre-packed, pre-determined, top-down bundle
collaborative: enabling people to communicate more easily
social: extending the growing network enabling potential of the internet
convenient: catch up on the bus, train or wherever else you can find the time

Many of the proponents of m-learning will say "I told you so", but trying to promote something before it was ready is nothing to be proud of. The wisest heads have waited until something worthwhile turned up, and now it has.

The placebo meme

noreply@blogger.com (Owen Ferguson) — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 16:08:00 +0000

One of the great things about the internet is the increasing speed at which ideas spread. A few weeks back I posted about the placebo, hawthorne and pygmalion effects and their use in management and L&D. I've recently read a few articles along the same lines (albeit much more succinctly put than my rambling). Here are just a couple:

Of course, I'm not claiming and credit for this, in fact I'm trying to remember where I got the notion in my head from. But, it is interesting how these ideas or memes come in waves.

NB The Simon Caulkin article mentions how managers can often make the seemingly impossible happen by insisting that something is possible and convincing others that this is the case. It's worth noting that the Heathow Terminal Five fiasco shows that management insisting that something is possible isn't enough on its own.

Blog note and book trends

noreply@blogger.com (Owen Ferguson) — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 15:41:00 +0000

I've noticed that my posts to this blog tend to be on the lengthy side, so I've decided to experiment with a few shorter posts in between. There are two reasons for trying this out:

It will help me keep track of my thoughts
It will stop me from procrastinating so much

With that in mind, I read recently in the Guardian that Gordon Brown's new Director of Strategy has noted on his blog that his favourite book is The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organisations. There's a website about it here.

From just reading the name and the cover blurb, it seems to be in a similar vein to Gary Hamel's The Future of Management. There's a growing trend of thought, a meme if you will, that's championing internet values in organisations.

The Starfish and the Spider goes onto my reading list, just behind Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions.

Crunch Time

noreply@blogger.com (Owen Ferguson) — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 14:02:00 +0000

I've had a number of conversations recently with people about the troubles in the markets and the general world economy. It's amazing how quickly the credit crunch has filtered through to the budgets of both public and private sector organisations and, specifically, the training budgets.

That well worn adage that "training budgets are always the first to get cut" seems to ring true time and time again, but I don't often hear many L&D professionals mention that this is often because during the good times the training budget is the first thing to expand more than it should.

An economic downturn focuses the minds of managers very clearly on the things that matter the most. True, it can sometimes lead to short-sightedness but this is true of management at any time, especially in those organisations that reward their management based solely on quarterly performance targets.

In times of economic turmoil it is more important than ever that L&D professionals are in a true partnership with management. To foster this kind of relationship, we need to understand:

the economic pressures that are being faced by managers
the nature of the competitive environment that they operate in
the skills that are required by their staff in order to keep/move ahead of the competition

The kind of conversations that we should start instigating are less to do with team-building and away days and more about how to increase performance by the 9% gap that currently exists.

Here's something to think about. If you put an employee on a training course for a day it will, by default, reduce their productivity by 5% in the month they are coming out of work. Does the nature of the training course justify that initial drop in productivity over the following couple of months? That's the question that good managers will be asking in tough economic conditions. It's the question that good L&D professionals should be asking anyway.

Incidentally, if you want to improve your economic know-how and general business acumen there are a few excellent blogs and newspaper columns that are well worth subscribing to:

the New York Times hosts the eclectic Freakonomics blog
Tim Harford's The Undercover Economist is always illuminating
the Financial Times' famous Lex column covers the most important market news
and, if you can afford it, The Economist is a subscription you'll never regret

Responsible learning

noreply@blogger.com (Owen Ferguson) — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 12:11:00 +0000

The March 2008 Big Question from the Learning Circuits is "What is the Scope of our Responsibility as Learning Professionals?" Tony Karrer, who also writes the excellent eLearning Technology blog, notes that many Chief Learning Officers and other learning professionals do not consider it their responsibility to support informal learning activities or communities of practice.

I think that a rational way of looking at this question is to strip away all the hype about informal learning and concentrating on what the responsibility of a learning and development department should ultimately be. Essentially, the L&D department should ensure that the organisation's employees are equipped with the skills and knowledge they need to achieve excellent performance. That's the scope.

Sure, recruitment practices ensure that employees have the skills when they come in the door, but hat about 5, 10, 15 years down the road? What those skills and knowledge should be depends entirely upon the employee, the kind of work they do and the business they work in. However, what's becoming increasingly clear is that the future of work is going to involve more rapid change and more use of technology for the majority of employees. Some of the key challenges in the very near future are going to be:

coping with significantly more information
adapting to new technologies that can be deployed rapidly through web based platforms
competing with organisations where collaboration, innovation and experimentation are the norm for everyone, not just a few 'stars'
the cultural clash between highly networked, silo breaking 'digital natives' and the rest of the workforce

In a previous post I talked about the other digital divide, the one that separates those who are comfortable with using new technology to improve their own performance and those who are not. Those organisations that harness the powerful performance enhancements that can be gained through closer collaboration, fluid and open knowledge sharing, quicker and more effective networking will achieve a significant advantage over their competitors. Those that don't are in danger of falling behind and taking a long time to catch up.

So, some Chief Learning Officers don't see it as their responsibility to support informal learning - whose responsibility is it then? OD? HR? Operational managers? It's another classic case of "it's not my job, guv". Some L&D departments in some organisations will see it as their responsibility to ensure that they are as competitive as they possibly can be and they won't be bothered by semantic ponderings of whose job it should be. Those L&D departments will want to create an environment where informal learning, communities of practice and intelligent knowledge management are as easy for their employees to engage in as possible. Those are the oganisations that will thrive in the next 10 years.

The whole question of whether anyone truly be responsble for someone elses learning is a nice philosophical diversion, I'm partial to them myself. But, the truth is that it doesn't matter - from an organisational perspective employee performance is the ultimate measure.

Google Sites: Wiki adoption by the mainstream?

noreply@blogger.com (Owen Ferguson) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 17:58:00 +0000

Sometimes all it takes for something to take off is for a friendly face to promote it.

Google was recently named as the UK's top brand and is seen by many as the friendly face of the internet. They've recently launched a new service/product called Google Sites which is essentially a web-based wiki editing package.

Now, there are quite a few excellent wiki providers out there already, my personal favourite being pbwiki, but there are a few reasons why Google's (re)entry into the market might prove to be a tipping point as far as mainstream adoption is concerned:

The strength of the Google brand. Its high visibility means that this launch will get quite a bit of press attention over the next few weeks
The company's smart move to not mention that Sites is effectively a wiki. Wiki is a term that puts off many people, it conjours up complexity and faddishness. A site, on the other hand, is something that everyone can understand now and adding 'pages' to the site will seem very natural.

Many organisations want to adopt web 2.0 tools but haven't quite taken the final step. A trusted brand entering the market will give many the impetus to take the plunge, especially if there's a buzz generated in the press and there's a push for it from the bottom up.

However, as Jay Cross points out, nine out of ten wikis fail. Here's hoping that employees find a reason for setting up a wiki before setting one up. If they do, then wiki use will increase substantially, if they don't then that statistic will stay very much the same.