Letter to a Colleague on Learning Trends

Jay,

I have to think that the trend towards more the active encouragement of informal learning (vs. structured or formal learning) has to be at the top of my list. While we all recognize the importance of good formal learning for times such as onboarding, leadership development, and “high potential” development programs, there is a movement towards active encouragement of informal learning opportunities that utilize the use of Web 2.0 tools like wiki’s, blogs, video, social networking, group chat, and mobile technologies. While the use of the tools is significant, how they are used is even more significant. Over 80% of learning that occurs in a company is informal, occurring many times in the hallway or around the coffee machine. What are you doing to encourage these opportunities and maximize their value? Are new opportunities like mixers, co-working and social networking encouraged? Incentivized? Are they captured on blogs and wikis?

This more than anything is where I believe that training, organizational dev, h-performance improvement, and hr can make a difference in the Enterprise because our job is to develop people + culture + process.

That’s my 2 cents,

Mark

Using 2.0 for “insert business”

I have been thinking a lot recently about the ways that many businesses could benefit from a web/enterprise 2.0 approach to using technology. There are the obvious wins that a business can achieve in terms of productivity and revenue increases and there are the less obvious wins of changing the fundamental structure of the business.

For instance recruiters have been on the leading edge of the Web 2.0 movement. They realized early on that using tools like LinkedIn, Facebook and Plaxo extend their reach in terms of building relationships, making connections and quickly qualifying prospects to increase their revenues. Over the long term, however, I think many recruiting firms will begin to use Web 2.0 technology as a way to build a community that brings together prospects and clients in an interactive way that adds value for both parties. This would include the use of social networks, wikis, blogs and video. Kevin Wheeler on ERE Blog Central makes the case for these types of uses.

In the same way that the Ladders uses the $100k barrier to filter and initially qualify it’s prospects and clients, a smaller boutique recruiter could use linkedIn to encourage conversations and build a network of people who fit their market niche. They could then invite qualified prospects to participate in a an open or even private social network to build closer relationships over the long term and through that, become the recruiter of choice for both the prospect and the recruiting client. They could also allow hiring companies to engage in conversations directly with prospects in ways that facilitate the hiring process.

I haven’t yet experienced this, but I believe it would radically alter the perception of the hiring process from the perspective of the prospect and the hiring entity. This sort of fundamental business process redesign would ultimately restructure the nature of the recruiting business and redefine the way prospects and hiring clients approach the task of managing talent.

Open and Free

We are all aware of the proliferation of new web 2.0 tools and open source software of virtually every description that is now available.  You can actually do any job using open source as opposed to licensed software except for the most high end specialized enterprise systems like ERP and ETRM software. I have had several conversations with colleagues recently who have stressed to me that free software is not the same as “almost” free software or really cheap software.

I personally think that really cheap software can sometimes be better than free software but that probably depends on how well it’s supported and how responsive the developer community is.  Moodle has such a good support community that it’s almost as good as licensed software from the support perspective.

Getting back to topic, I see Enterprise software and Enterprise 2.0 systems converging in that they are both trending towards free (or really cheap) and open. I think the convergence will help to fuel the way that work gets done in many organizations.  I have several examples just in my own sphere.

1. A Non profit that uses a Web 2.0 oriented CMS to automate much of it’s business processes integrated with Google Apps, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

2. A revenue driven training department that uses open source learning CMS (Moodle) and enterprise wiki Atlassian Confluence.

None of the functionality and business processes for either of these two examples could have been enabled without access to both free and open software.

So what do you think?  Are you into using free, open or cheap software? What kind?

Operating systems?

Productivity?

Social Tools?

Project Management?

Workflow?

Learning?

Collaboration?

Sales and marketing?

Content management?

Media?

Finance?
 

Event Strategies for Non Profit Member Organizations

As an up and coming non-profit professional organization, we want growth, growth and more growth and in a downward spiraling economy at that.  And how does a non profit member organization accomplish that small miracle?  By adding value to each and every member and by creating great experiences for them to participate in.  We are competing for attention in the age of “communitainment” where people can network and be entertained all from the comfort of their home without getting hit up by five sales people and eating rubber chicken/fish.

It’s not enough to operate based on last years reliable, stable model of 10 monthly meetings and one annual conference to provide value.  We must branch out with regional micro groups where members can network and collaborate more effectively.

We also have to aggressively recruit new volunteers and provide them opportunities to grow and participate in the success of the organizations.  We have started doing this through volunteer summits that allow new people to get involved in the areas that they want to participate.

We also need to promote these events agressively by word of mouth and social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook and microblogs like Twitter as well as widgets play a key part in that strategy.

Technology Strategy for Non Profits - Social Networks

Many of the challenges faced by non profit organizations (NPOs) make them prime candidates for leveraging social network tools successfully. The fact that social network tools are free for the most part, volunteer driven, give everyone a chance to participate in the mission and that they are excellent for communication to a dispersed audience make them ideal for use in the non profit sector.

NPO’s in my experience also either tap into a younger demographic volunteer force or they will need to to stay relevant in their mission. The trend towards “communitainment” and social networking means that people are more discriminating about how they network and how they spend they’re non “working” hours. More and more people meet online and then network face to face as opposed to the opposite as a norm.

Currently the most popular social networking platforms are:

Source: Nielsen Online

Each social network offers different audiences and benefits to the NPO. Twitter is the fastest growing social network by far although it doesn’t yet approach Facebook in terms of sheer numbers. ASTDHouston (@astdhouston) has adopted a social networking strategy that utilizes Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Twitter provides the ability to both listen and broadcast tweets to those who are involved with the mission of the organization. It also provides a voice in the local community that represent the training and development point of view. Tweets can be displayed at meetings and during conference events via a twitter fountain to promote the twitter community.

LinkedIn provides the ability to connect the NPO members in ways and during times that might not ordinarily by accessible to an organization that only has a monthly meeting. Using LinkedIn provides members the ability to leverage the NPO connections they make in the real world and vice versa. It also provides members to real time access to promote awareness of important events and access to expertise that would be difficult to communicate during normal business hours. The group functionality is very complimentary to the needs of connecting groups of like minded people.

Facebook is currently the last piece of the social network platform and although currently the least utilized, has the most potential from a demographic perspective because of the sheer numbers of people on the platform. There are over 100 million people using Facebook and as more audiences open up globally that number has a lot of headroom to grow. It’s also attractive to organizations that need to tap into the energy of a younger and more energetic audience. Facebookers are doer’s and passionate about causes in my opinion.

For a more complete listing of social networks go here or here.

Work Literacy and what I plan to do about it

Dr. Tony Karrer whose work I admire greatly has encouraged me to blog about a new project called Work Literacy.  What is work literacy? From the Work Literacy blog:

Work Literacy is based on the beliefs that:

With the growth of new technologies, explosion of new information, and accessibility of experts around the world, there’s a growing gap between the work practices and skills that most knowledge workers possess and the resources available to them.

As knowledge workers we need practical skills, methods and tools that will improve our effectiveness and help us stay on top of our game.

This is an issue that’s evolving quickly and we need a way to start discussing the implications, sharing ideas and learning how to better manage our work and learning.

Tony and Michele Martin are spearheading this project along with some very talented people. This project addresses a need that I’m passionate about as I see friends and colleagues who either are or will be affected by the growing digital divide.

I have recently begun speaking in various forums such as ASTD Houston chapter and other organizations on Social Networking which is certainly related to future work literacy but I think Tony and Michele are hitting the nail on the head.

I understand how easy it is to get comfortable in a job or career path that seems stable and then suddenly find that everything has changed seemingly overnight.  It happened to me several years ago and I vowed not to let it happen again.  As a result I have focused much of my time helping and encouraging others to take baby steps across the digital divide and now I’m in a position to scale the effort up significantly.

And what do I plan to do?

• Speak on this and related topics to help people understand that this is just another set of skill to be learned
• Work to remove the stigma (with individuals and IT departments) associated with online networking and Web 2.0 tools in the Enterprise
• Use professional organizations as a platform to address Work Literacy issues in a way that they find fun and interesting
• Work to help people understand the value proposition of using technology as leverage to overcome the compression of time and space that is occurring as a result of the web
• Be an example of a person who uses the best practices of Work Literacy skills to be more effective in all of my roles as Director, Board Member, Husband, Dad, Speaker, and Colleague.

Look for more information here on what’s happening with work literacy, especially in Houston.