(Continuing a series I have not updated in too long… The “Why’s” of Social Learning.)

WHY #8: Roam & Learn

Another characteristic is that we can choose when to learn – it is not time bound.  There are three aspects to time.  Before now – now / this moment – later.

Email is timeless on two fronts – it satisfies the need of now and later, but not before now. Before email, there isn’t a discussion.  You start at now.

Books are on two fronts as well – before now and now, but not later.  There is not a discussion afterward.  For example, the book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John C. Maxwell was just republished.  Why did he republish it? Because he wanted to update it, something that an author cannot do easily.  Once you write it, it is written and done.

An instructor-led training class is usually just a now.  There isn’t a lot of before, nor is there a lot of later except for the notes you took.

Social learning has a history, as we have pointed out, a now and a future all combined into one.  You learn from what others in the past have made for you and you discuss it further to further expand on it.

What I have casually observed is that because the information is available whenever we want it, employees are more willing to learn on their own time, which is a great PRO when you are talking to executives.  They choose to listen to podcasts when they are going home.  They choose to log in at home and learn something really quickly because they have a question now.

I don’t have to sign up for this learning.   There isn’t a schedule or registration.  It just happens.

Confession:  I am using you. As if it wasn’t obvious, but I am.  Each time I start to send an email I think, “Oh no.  That will be one more way and I have to report it out.  Isn’t there some other way to do this.  A better way?”  So the fear of reporting out a high number to you, of faithful mentor, helps remind me to use another – better – way.

Keeping it low.  1/2 to 1/3 less.  This makes me happy.  Not my lowest, but close.

What am I doing differently?

1. I use Twitter more.
2. I actually pick up the phone or walk to someone’s desk.
3. In order to avoid email I find that I need to complete another couple extra steps – be a little more prepared – and then message someone through a wiki or blog or forum.  This causes me to be on top of things a bit more than I previously would have.
4. I wait and either let it pass (and ignore it) or let it play out before acknowledging it.  This has proven very helpful.  Instead of jumping in on things, I let others try to work them out.  If they go astray I can jump in, but I don’t NEED to.
5. I use IM more (now I might need to get an unlimited IM plan on my phone   )

It isn’t a habit yet. It needs to get to that point where email is not my default mode of conversation.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Email is destroying our productivity, warns Twitter advocate [Journalist Math]
• Twitter: 8 Reasons Why It’s The Blogger’s New Sidekick

Image via Wikipedia

A little explanation: I ran a customer conference last week in Las Vegas.  That was it.  No regular work, no blogging, nothing.  Now that I am recovered (which is relative) I am back to real life.  Because of the conference I had an abnormally small number of emails.  (I have never texted so much in my life, though!)

I really can’t use last week as a real week, so I revert to my first week, the week before, and this week will be #2.

As you can tell, I really worked at it.  Still with only 4 working days during Week 1, I improved a huge amount.

It wasn’t easy, though!  Often I would start an email and then catch myself mid way through it.  Then the hampster in my head had to kick it up a notch: How do I communicate with this person if I can’t do it through email.  I found that I called more, used our internal system more and used Twitter more.  Sometimes I found that it was better if I didn’t contact them at all and just waited.

Oh, and what a difference it made on the # of emails I received!

Two other random thoughts:

1. Since buying my iPhone I find that I spend more time on that than I do on the computer at home.  So nice.
2. DO NOT EVER stay at the Flamingo.  I don’t care what you do!  Don’t give in.  Someone else at our company chose this.  I had never stayed there, nor did I really know anything about it (or I would have objected).  But after the mold, disgustingness, horrible service and ants in the bathroom I will never come close to that place again.  And it wasn’t just me – it was almost every single one of the conference attendees (pretty embarrassing to tell you the truth).  I thought about creating theflamingomustdie.com, but that is not how I want to be famous.  A small book could be created on our experiences – something akin to a bad nightmare.  By the way, Flamingo: Hot pink is out.

Image via Wikipedia

Inspired by Luis Suarez and his “Giving up on email” quest, and the fact that I feel the need to more fully walk the talk, I am doing my part to eliminate the Outlook electrons.

Emails for this practise will only be counted from internal sources – I won’t be counting junk mail, vendor mail or outside non-work email that comes through my normal email (not that I would have any )  But if they come from another employee I will count them.  Those that I send will be counted as well.

Here is the break down (I always want to start beat boxing when I say “break down” for some reason).

I have never analyzed my emails before, but am happy to see that I receive less than I create.  You will notice that last week is not counted.  That is because I was experimenting to see if this would really work.  And I think it will!  Time will tell, but I am optimistic.

The first thing I did this morning was create a blog post and let everyone know what I am doing, and why.  One thing I have added in is that if someone want’s to get my attention with a particular discussion or wiki document, they should add my username to the tags.  My RSS feeds now pick up anything tagged with my username.

Below is a snippet of my post:

PROS:

• I don’t need to keep getting bombarded with emails every time someone replies. I can, if I want, see the culmination after a few people have chimed in. This cuts down on my viewing time and gives me back time I need.
• My days (and the tasks I do during the day) are not driven by my email. Rather, I spend longer times on one task and finish it, rather than being interrupted by many different tasks.
• I might be asking the wrong person a question and the right person (or someone who knows the answer) might see the information and give us the correct answer.
• I go to one place for all the information on the subject, not 10 different emails.
• Discussions / documents focus on one topic. Emails can branch out into other topics not related to the original. With all the emails, one can get lost and not quite find the information they are looking for later on.
• I can go back and actually find the conversation I had with someone else and remember why we decided what we did or the details of it rather than losing the email and guessing.
• If I ask a question, there is a good chance others have, or will have, the same question but now they will find the answer.
• If it is an announcement of some type, this elicits discussion – which is a big pro.
• Often what I do concerns projects. It is good to be able to go back and see what happened, when, what issues were worked through, what questions were asked, etc., for the next time.

CONS:

• I have never done this before. So it will be a change of how I do work. Assuming all goes well, this will turn into a pro.
• Those discussions will be out there. One may argue that it may ‘clog’ up GTSX (the name of our internal environment) with extra information that is not needed. But, again, if I have a question, someone, sometime will have the same question. So, again, it turns into a pro.

Now – why?  We can learn and share information more easily this way.  Natually, much of my offline communication has already gone this way.  In fact, I was commenting to my wife last night that I spend more time on my iPhone than I do our home computer.  A refreshing change!

Here is a SlideShare presentation on eliminating email.