Engaged Learning

E2.0 - Collaboration: The strength of Learning 2.0

Jun 22, 2007 Enterprise 2.0, Learning 2.0, collaboration

We all chip in and the world is better for it.  But there are some things that can kill collaboration:

• Silos
• Egos
• Pontificators
• Group Think
• Off topic time wasters
• Diverse levels of understanding
• Deep-seeded tradition
• Lack of leadership

As I said in a previous post, there must be a goal.  Why should we collaborate?  What is the point?  For there to be a community to collaborate in, there must be a leader.  The leader may not have to do much except to spur discussion.  This can be done in many ways, including expressing divergent ideas.

But why would the user want to collaborate? WIIFM?  In essence, they want to ‘align’.   Align to what?  Anything they want.  And that is the point, it is to what they want, not what you or their boss or spouse wants.  It is what they want to align to.  For example, I want to learn more about a certain process.  If I search and it is not there, I might create one and ask others to agree or disagree.  Alignment.  Or I learn a piece of information and want others to know it because it will make my job easier.  So I share - alignment.  It is alignment to the rest of the community, whatever that community is called.

E2.0 - RSS

Jun 21, 2007 Implementation, RSS, Uncategorized

RSS is a huge part of E2.0. One presenter showed the statistics that the average knowledge worker spends 9-10 hours a week searching for knowledge and is only 50% successful. But as I have talked with others about using RSS in an organization, the prevalent comment was that most people won’t want to use it. It is complicated to set up and they have to go back to check to see if there are updates. I could understand their arguments (I had similar concerns) but I didn’t understand RSS then. To be honest, I don’t understand it technically a ton right now, but I understand it better.

The way I know RSS it through 1)Google Reader, and online RSS app and 2) Feedreader, an app I downloaded and used for internal RSS feeds. But I would not hesitate to state that most readers/contributors would use one like this. I learned, however, that RSS can be in other forms.

• It can be a small alert box, much like an IM notification that quickly gets your attention and then quickly disappears. I believe, however, that it is a desktop widget that would need to be installed.
• It can be digest like, sending you information on updated or newly added information to your email.
• It can be fed to a portal page so that any time the user goes there (say a home page for an intranet) it will show the latest and greatest.

Even more, RSS feeds should be shared. Let’s say I have a feed I particularly like. I should be able to send it to someone else with similar likes. The user needs to be in as much control as they want - little or all. And it should be personalized. The user should have the ability to input what information he/she wants to see. The system should also recognize what the person has viewed and has an interest in and then give the user recommended feeds.

Doing this allows employees or customers to pick up on personalized and relevant information quickly and easily AND in the way they want to receive it. It pushes the information to them, rather than the user manually searching and pulling information to them. This is lifelong (or job long) learning - constant, timely, personalized.

E2.0 - Wikinomics

Jun 21, 2007 Enterprise 2.0, Learning 2.0, Wiki, collaboration

Donald Tapscott is the author of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything.  I happen to be in the middle of that book.  I thought it came out about a year ago, but it was only five months ago.

What Learning 2.0 is really about is collaborating.  Give a little, take a little.  I have knowledge, you have knowledge, we share knowledge.  Hording - bad.  Sharing - good.

The economics of knowledge sharing have changed.  It has to do with ‘transactional costs’.  What were the costs?  Look at the Training Department.  I used to run a training department for 650 people.  Zero budget and only one person - me.  It was difficult to give people what they wanted.  For example, the Customer Care team had a lot of knowledge that they wanted to spread within their group and that other departments wanted to tap.  Being the training manager I was to help with that spreading.  But there was only me.  I had to find it, format it and deliver it in one form or another.

The game has changed.  No longer am I bound by high transactional costs.  That is swallowed up in collaboration.  The barrier is rapidly diminishing.  With that rapid decline it begs the question, ‘What can you now create that you could not create before because of the high costs?’

Suddenly, the new person can be an expert in a much shorter time than usual.  Suddenly, the ‘consumers’ of information become the ‘prosumers’.  They create the information that the training department used to create.

What!  What about authenticity?  How do you know that the information is correct if we give the creation to each worker?  For the answer, we turn to Wikipedia.  It has eclipsed Encyclopedia Britannica by a long shot.  And, on top of it, it stays relevant and up to date.  If something is wrong, someone else will correct it.  In fact, it is as correct as Encyclopedia Britannica.

For collaboration to work, there MUST be a goal.  Collaboration to collaborate won’t work.  There must be a good reason and in the learning community we have plenty of them.

E2.0 - How Do You Deploy ‘It’? (Hint: Not ‘I.T.’)

Jun 21, 2007 Enterprise 2.0, Implementation, Learning 2.0

Here are some tips I learned when one wants to deploy a Learning 2.0 solution:

• Don’t deploy it. Let it be viral. Invite a few to beta and don’t even tell the whole company about it. Then, let it grow with the few. Show the results to the others.
• Build as a platform
• Make it searchable across ALL environments.
• Find out what you are already doing and allow them to do what you want within those tools and processes
• Experiment with the culture
• Start with something easy
• Start with something that is factually correct.
• Set some goals. They suggested that one goal of a wiki would be to reduce email by 30%. This is not a goal you want to share with anyone, just have it in the back of your wicked mind.
• Find success stories (outside, but inside the organization is better) that they can’t argue with.
• Find and empower champions.
• Allow anyone to contribute - to create a blog or wiki or vote or…
• Some people will not change. That is OK. Just make sure they are still linked in. Example: Allow RSS updates to be emailed to them.
• Once you create ‘it’, let it go and let the users do the real creating.
• I.T. needs to get out of the way. The ‘lite-weightedness’ of the applications mitigates the I.T. risk.
• It comes down to an issue of Leadership. Who is going to lead this? How will you lead it?

This most often requires a change in the culture. Here are three tips on Change Management:

• Overcommunicate
• Do not tolerate any dissension. If they don’t agree, let them pretend they agree all they want.
• Change Management. No, really. If management won’t change, change them and bring in new ones. Today they sited an example of that exact scenario happening.

E2.0 - Searching: The Key

Jun 21, 2007 Enterprise 2.0, Learning 2.0, Searching

Searching has spawned Google to the ultimate heights of businessdom. They did it by page ranking according to relevancy. If your page is linked to by many others, it will rank high on the results. If no one links to your page, you will see it on the “Gooooooooooooooooooooooooogle’ page. Really, no one will find you. And it is more complicated than that, but let’s pretend.

On the intranet, however, life is different. If I want to find the policy on FMLA, there may not be another document that is linked to this page within the intranet. Using a page ranking by relevancy won’t work. Also, maybe you don’t want everyone finding the minutes of the secret meeting the president of the company just had - except for a few people. How do you limit that?

Searching for knowledge, however, is paramount to the success of an intranet. Think about it: how many times have you looked for something on your intranet, hoping it might be under some folder or navigation, only to give up and email a coworker to find the answer? That’s not any way to find information you need.

The search capability must have these basic ingredients:

• Easy to use
• Find relevant/like (not only exact) results
• Be front and center

Look at VW’s web site. What is the first item? Search. If you can’t find it, it might as not be there. Searching has surpassed navigation (taxonomy) in usefulness. The new term is ‘folksonomy’ where items do not need to be in a tree folder style structure. Instead they are tagged. Search the tags and you have found what you are looking for, no matter where it is kept (see yesterday’s post).

But once it is found, it’s usefulness only begins its journey - but that is out of the scope of searching.

There are a TON of search engines. Today I saw IBM, FAST and ENDECA. I was most impressed with IBM’s. They are impressing me more and more. In an example they gave, instead police officers only finding the words, ‘3 suspects’ when this is searched, it will find phrases like ‘three dark haired men’ or ‘three teens’. Instead of only ’sports car’ it will find ‘Boxter’ or ‘Mercedes CLK’ or ‘Audi TT’.

Think of this in the learning world. I want to learn about FMLA, but can’t remember the acronym or the full act’s name. So I type in ‘family emergency time off’ and it finds what I want right away using, what they call ‘vertical semantic search’. You don’t have to know exactly what you are looking for - just be close and you can find it. A huge step for finding information!

E2.0 - IBM

Jun 20, 2007 Searching

IBM seems to understand and ‘get it’. And, they even have good products - search being one of them. Not surprising given THIS.

E2.0 - How Do We Get Wild Adoption?

Jun 20, 2007 Enterprise 2.0, Learning 2.0, Wiki, blogging

Good question.  One story was told of a CEO saying, “I don’t want to be irrelevant to those who have never used email (because they rely mainly on IM, wikis, blogs, text messaging and other technologies).”  So it can be driven from that.  But how do we help drive adoption?

• The culture has to change.  Not overnight, but it must change.
• The people who horde information should be naturally punished.  This is in and of itself a whole discussion.  It is not hierarchically but culturally imposed.
• The technology must be embedded in our activities.
• Use current tools to transition.  For example, send an email and it will automatically create a wiki page or blog entry.
• Lurkers are people, too.  Treat them as such.  Not everyone needs or wants to contribute.
• Invest and train in these tools.
• Get agreements on what information should be put where and how - not too much strict structure, just enough so everyone is playing the same game.
• Execution.  roll out to a select few, train and prototype.  Then repeat.  This way, when it is rolled out to the masses there is content and it is immediately useful to them.

E2.0 - Tidbits o’ Info

Jun 20, 2007 Enterprise 2.0, Learning 2.0

There is the principle of the ‘long tail’ (coined by Chris Anderson).  Wikipedia says, “Anderson argued that products that are in low demand or have low sales volume can collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters, if the store or distribution channel is large enough.”

Let me put that in Learning terms, “That information which needs to be learned and which is in low demand or has low visibility can collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current learning initiatives, if the distribution mechanism is large enough.”

Does that make sense?  Now we have access to that long tail.  Before it was only out there and very difficult to capture.  That is no longer the case.  It, in my opinion and in context of learning, has superseded in size the  traditional, formal learning in business.  And because of this case it can be more powerful and influential.

If we can make the tools that capture the knowledge lightweight and simple, we can harness the collective knowledge and use it to our advantage.  The sharing then becomes a natural part of how an employee does their job.

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Currently, knowledge is governed by the Economy of Scarcity.  It needs to be governed by the Economy of Abundance.   Learning needs no longer to be limited by the resources of the Training Department, but only by the knowledge and skills of the worker.  This, in reality, is endless because it includes innovation, imagination and creativity.

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I kind of had to laugh a little with the presentation from Microsoft.  In a way, he made a case for wikis and profiles and other collaborative technologies, as if we need the case made to us.  It was almost as if he was saying, “See, Microsoft isn’t out of it.  We can do it too, and you can deploy it in your systems that you already have.  Don’t forget, we can do it too.  Don’t forget.”  When so many topics by others during the day were pointed at quick software development, lite applications, flexibility, he was almost trying to say, “We are still in the game!”

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I asked one presenter, in a smaller forum, if I had it right:  It seemed to me, that after all we talked about, there were two requirements: Individualization or Personalization and Engagement.  He agreed.  The personalization includes everything from profiles to searching to buddy lists. Engagement keeps them coming back - it is a sustainable activity.  He said that the primary motivator is Discovery, not really of things or of places or of people, but of self (individualism).  Not that he wanted to be all lovey-dovey, but they really want to define who they are.

Who we are is made up, in large part, of what we know.  There is the direct link to learning.

E2.0 - Report Card

Jun 20, 2007 Enterprise 2.0, Learning 2.0

I loved listening to Andrew McAfee. Being a professor at the HBS, he gave grades to certain aspects of E2.0.

Awareness = A
He mentioned that a driving force of this socialization in business was from the kids of executives. These executives start learning about what their kids are doing and both start to wonder if there is any relevance in the workplace (you better bet your noodle!). Like David, he talked about freeform authoring. We should not impose structure - get out of the way and allow them to decide form. We don’t know (or have limited knowledge) of whey they do know, what they like and their skills. Let them learn what they need - this is the whole personalization piece.

Technologies = A-
But we need to watch for feature creep and stick to ease of use. Just because it is cool it is not successful. There is the ‘9X’ factor. We tend to overweight the usefulness of the incumbent technology by a factor of 3x. We also tend to underweight the new technology by a factor of 3x. This gives us a 9X gap. For example, e-learning courses is an incumbent technology. We can all look back now and see this exact scenario in WBTs and other e-learnings. Now, there are new ways to look at learning and we have a 9X gap here to overcome the heavyweight incumbent processes and modes of learning.

Communicating Results = C
Oh, so true. He pointed to the lack of case studies. They are there, but there are not a TON of them. He continues to refer back to the same ones he knows and loves. He also talked about the dangers of ROI. In know this is dangerous territory to tread. We, as learning professionals, have always been told that utopia would be an ROI on every project. But give me the ROI on sharing information or the ROI on finding information more quickly or on tagging information for easy retrieval. Some things have only an intrinsic value and not a commoditized value that can be measured by ROI.

E2.0 - Drowning in Information

Jun 20, 2007 Enterprise 2.0, Learning 2.0

David Weinberger, the author of (most notably) The Cluetrain Manifesto and other books wondered why, with all the information we have around us, are we not drowning in information.  With the question came the answer: the antidote to information overload is more information.

We order ’stuff’.  He used laundry as an example.  When folding we first separate it out by person, then body part, then type of clothing on that body part.  This order is meta-data.  We, as a corporation, like trees.  Org charts are the perfect example of trees.  The big difference now is that everything is digital.  Because of this, there isn’t a difference between data and meta-data.

Imagine - you go to Google Books to look for a specific book by Shakespeare because you don’t remember the names of the two families.   You type in “Romeo and Juliet”.  You find the Montagues and Capulets.  While you are in there you notice that the first line of the book reads, “Two households, both alike in dignity.”   What happens when you search for that phrase?  That’s right, you get Romeo and Juliet.  Everything becomes meta-data.  Everything can be searched.

The information we help others learn is the same way.  If they want to learn it all they need to do is search it, or a part of it, or any part of it.  It doesn’t matter.  They can find what they are looking for at any time on anything.

Traditional learning is categorized in a hierarchical structure.  “The new employee will learn about mutual funds under 401Ks, under Benefits, under HR.”  The structure is meta-data.  So we train them on it.  What happens when it comes time for them to use it?  They have forgotten the information.  Oh, that’s right.  What class did I learn that in?  Which ‘folder’ would it be under?

It is difficult to structure knowledge.  Why do it?  We don’t know what each person needs when they need it.  We can’t tell others what they are interested in.  And we don’t have to.  Let them figure out what they need and find it.

New ways to structure (if it can even be called that) allows us to find the answer quickly, without knowing the structure.  Knowledge is now (or can be) at our finger tips at any time we need it, when we need it and only the parts we need.

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There is one part I want to point out that someone else mentioned.  When the web came along people preached the end of the brick and mortar store.  Others said that the web wouldn’t change anything.  Boy were they both wrong.  I agree in the context of learning.  I do not propose that training be abolished, that there isn’t a need for structured learning.  Up until this time almost everything we did was of this sort.  But I do believe that there will be a shift of learning - indeed there already has been a shift.  There is a place, however, for traditional training and learning.  It will never go away.  What I am proposing is that there is a different way, a way in which users will both be engaged and personalize the information to fit themselves.  This, used in the right way, is an expansion of the learning structure.

Enterprise 2.0 Conference Roundup - Tuesday

Jun 20, 2007 Enterprise 2.0, Learning 2.0

A ton of great information came out of today’s conference sessions. I will be splitting it up into a number of posts so you can get only what you want.

Overall, I was somewhat surprised at the evolution of this revolution. Everyone there understood what Enterprise 2.0 is. They may not all understand (or agree) on where it is going, but everyone has a good basic understanding of the philosophy behind it. One presenter showed a statistic which stated that about 50% of corporations use blogs. Hmmm. He was quick to point out that somehow he sees that as way overflated (my new word). The problem I saw is that E2.o is coming out of theory and into practice and a lot of people were stuck there. We had questions on how to implement - how do you get others to see the abilities of this? How much should they jump into it?

I remember sitting on the rail of a bridge, overlooking 30 feet of open space between the water and myself. One friend had already jumped in and said that the jump was exhillerating and the water, after you get used to it, was warm. But still, me and the rest of the groups were not so sure we really wanted to take the jump. Would it be worth it? Would others follow? Was the water really warm? We all hesitated for a long time, but then all of us jumped. Then we climbed up and did it again.

A lot of businesses are in that spot right now. They know that if they don’t jump, and jump soon, they will lose the competitive advantage. But if they do…

So there is a quick thought on the whole thing. Next come individual keynotes and sessions. I will take the ‘Learning 2.0‘ slant with it all.

Enterprise 2.0

Jun 13, 2007 Enterprise 2.0, Learning 2.0

Luis Suarez, author of the Elsua blog, was able to give away two tickets to the Enterprise 2.0 conference for next week. I feel fortunate to have been given one of them and will be attending. This is one conference that I was bummed about because I was not able to go. But with this generous gift I will be there!

During my time I will be blogging what I learn each day with a Learning 2.0 perspective. So make sure you come back next week and check in. For more on Enterprise 2.0 information, read Andrew McAfee and Dion Hinchcliffe. E2.0 is really all about learning.

Last night, my wife asked, “So, what is it really that you are doing?” About 45 minutes later I think she understood - to a degree. In fact, I dread being at a party or some social function and have someone ask “What do you do for a living?” I usually give a one sentence answer that induces a glazed look followed by a head nod followed by a “Ohhhh. OK, sure.” I really must get better at this!

Learning 2.0 Community

Jun 12, 2007 Learning 2.0

I have created a NING community. It is entitled, “Learning 2.0″. It was started mainly for our local Portland chapter of ASTD, but with the “boundrylessness” of the technology, anyone can join and participate. I encourage everyone to do so!

With this we are able to share ideas, resources and work together and keep it in one area to refer to later.

See you there!

The RIGHT type of Collaboration, not just any old…

Jun 8, 2007 collaboration

For one of the projects I am working on we are using Base Camp to manage to-dos, milestones, collaborative documents, messages, etc. So far a good tool for me. But it is supposed to be for the whole project including everyone involved. Some people have caught on (aye, the young’ns) but others have not. It is not in their nature for them to collaborate in such a way. Not that they won’t get used to it, but to continue in the project they will.

I asked one person, as I taught her how to use the system, why other people, in her opinion, were not engaged in the project. She mentioned that within the company’s culture the Management Team likes to make decisions all together. For her to make some of the decisions I was asking her to make was difficult. She knew that if she made them that they would be challenged by the group. That is how the company likes to make decisions - by consensus of everyone.

Boy, if that is not collaboration what is! But, wait - that type of collaboration is counter-productive. What is the difference between collaboration which is productive and that which is not?

Off the top of my head, good collaboration allows individualism. For example, if I have a project and want a number of people to be involved, I might assign them tasks. They complete these and bring them back to make a whole. Then, when all together we might collaborate and discuss and make sure they all fit. Here, there are two parts: 1) your/my part and 2) our part. They must both be used.

Poor collaboration has only part 2: Our part. The part of collaboration that I think is crucial is that everyone works somewhat on their own part to make part of the whole. If they are only suckered into the whole it can be disasterous - and I have seen this many times. Not to mention that it wastes everyone’s time. Ever been in an absolutely boring meeting where you have contributed (collaborated) very little? Ya, me too.

It is the purest form of death by committee. “We all get together, we all make plans, we all decide.” Very little is decided or is accomplished. But if it is broken down into smaller chunks and assigned out to others to accomplish and come back with a completed task, then putting the pieces together is much more manageable.

Collaboration, in learning, is the same. Sure, the training department can get together and figure out what needs certain groups have and then deliver a solution. But I guarantee they will miss some important information. There may be multiple version just to get the training right. It is a long process (or can be).

Collaborate and give the pieces out - let the consumers be the prosumers and produce the content and they will make sure that nothing is missed that is relevant to them. They will make sure that it is not wrong. If it is wrong, they are empowered to change it.

The pieces make the whole.

E-Learning vs. Learning 2.0

Jun 7, 2007 Enterprise 2.0, Learning 2.0

There might be some confusion between E-Learning and Learning 2.0. Hopefully this post will clear some of this up.