I have noticed two overarching thoughts in those that ask for E2.0 in their organization / community:

1) They know what they want, but are not exactly sure WHY they want it.   They say “we want a blog” but when asked why, they can’t quite articulate that.  Sure, they may say  that “we want to get information out” but they are not clear on to whom this information will go, or what the information will be or who will write it or how it is different than the purpose of an email.

2) They want to use different tools but not change the way they do things.  This is like doing dishes by hand, buying a dishwasher and then still doing them by hand before putting them in the dishwasher.

There WILL be trade offs.  One of the major trade offs is that E2.0 is participatory.  This leaves the option to participate in their hands, not yours.  Organizations too often try to force participation (or in a certain way) and what do they get? Either half-hearted participation or the illusion of participation.

Instead, allow them to participate where and when they feel it will be of most benefit.  They will feel empowered and trusted and will be MUCH more effective.

The response from my AH-HA! moment in the last post was amazing. I hope others benefited from it.

In the comments, ‘Wilson’ had some insights:

“…I don’t think this will help convince (nor should it, IMHO) a CxO or mid-level manager to embrace a social network platform. I still see the chasm of understanding re “enterprise 2.0″ tools very much represented in managerial statements such as “Of course we value and encourage collaboration and knowledge share, but that Facebook kind of stuff isn’t the way to do it.”

I agree with you 100%.  It will take much more than this.  And what will convince them to embrace it? DON’T TALK ABOUT THE PLATFORM – or the tools or the shiny new toys, or compare it to Facebook or Twitter or anything else.  Talk to them about the pain they are seeing now and how it can be overcome.  Tell them the story.  Get them to buy in emotionally and intellectually.  Buying in logistically will happen naturally as an effect.

EXAMPLE:

1) A CxO knows that the regular reports created every week are not read by most people, including those it targets.  It is a waste of time and effort, yet tradition and the culture says that the reports must be created – and so they are.  But clearly, some information in the report is worthy to some people.  Show this CxO that by opening up the communication, we can let people target the information they need.  And, if there is any question about the information, they can go directly to the person and ask for clarification.  The ‘report’ becomes a gateway to more understanding through interaction with the people instead of the end product itself.

2) In a recent “Social Media / Networking 101″ class I did recently, I told them that I asked a question on Twitter and received back a quick response.  Some didn’t understand why I used Twitter to ask a question instead of using Google.  “It would have been faster”, they claimed.  “For some things, I am sure,” I answered.  “But the question I had was about something so new that the answer would never have been found online.  It would only have been found in people’s heads.”  For them, there was a big Ah-Ha! there.  I could see in their eyes the lights turn on.  In fact, I received an email the next day from someone who attended with his own Ah-Ha!:

When I do a regular internet search, I’m either added or doomed by my choice of words for the very rule-based machine search that ensues.  In Twitter, I benefit from the interpretive skills of fellow human brains that read and interpret my need and thus are able to better design a relevant response.

Bingo.  What sold him was NOT Twitter, but what can be accomplished with it and how it can help him now.

That should be our focus: the WHYs and the HOWs (as I have written before).  The WHATs come later, naturally.

(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.

Image by DavidErickson via Flickr

WHY #5: Liberating Knowledge

There are reasons, but for the most part, why stick perfectly good information in email?  No one else can learn from what you just learned when it is in email.   Here is a simple example.  I know one person who was looking for a corporate template.  He was about to email the marketing department and knew it might take a couple days and a few routed emails before he saw it.  Instead, he did a quick search and found that someone had shared it with everyone.  Problem solved.

What if we could do that with other knowledge?  As a general rule, I use email only when it needs to be 1:1 or is sensitive. Other than that I try to use anything but email.

Next time, instead of asking a question in email, ask a question using a forum, or a blog, for exameple.  When you do, the question doesn’t go to just one person, it goes to potentially thousands of people.  Anyone can answer it.  And the beauty of this is that everyone has a different perspective.  Sure, there may be one basic answer to a question, but we all have our own view.  My view of it may not match yours – it may be just a bit off.  But someone else may share your view and give you the exact answer you are looking for.  Also, if the answer can be debated, you get a wealth of knowledge in the exchange of ideas.

Make it your quest – make it easy to for others to find information and learn – the easier the better.  If the process is difficult others will either 1) not use it or 2) put up with it and grumble the whole time.

Social Learning liberates knowledge.

Related Posts:

Why #5: Adapting to a New Learning Structure

Why #4: Distributing Ownership (Cont’)

Why #3: Discovering Experts

Why #2: Personalizing Learning

Why #1: Focusing on People (Part 1) (Part 2)

WHY #5: Adapting to a New Learning Structure

Wow.  We haven’t figured this out yet.  When we work, we learn. As I have looked into this, I have been surprised at how we just don’t get it.  We are constantly learning as we work, but we don’t think of it as learning.  We think of it as working and we separate the two.

Have you seen the show “Hole In The Wall“?  If the contestants don’t fit into the holes cut out in the wall (which is coming at them) they are knocked into a pool of water.  Not surprisingly, these guys made it in the pool.

Within traditional organization learning, you have presenters, instructional designers, researchers, eLearning specialists and more.  And then you have models like ADDIE or the such to help you start at the beginning and end at the end and then loop around.  But (I was about to say ‘new’ but it isn’t new) this structure of learning doesn’t have a beginning or an end.  It is always.  For example, when you get up in the morning, when do you start breathing?  There isn’t that beginning to your day.  It is always happening.

Again, going back to the water cooler example, how would you organize the water cooler talks?  That is absurd.   You wouldn’t.    Not that there isn’t organization, because there is.  You let those who are in the conversation organize it, not try to impose one.

This learning organizational structure is created by the learner. Every person organizes it differently according to their own construct.  Yet so much of information is rigidly organized in a hierarchical form that may or may not make sense to each individual person.

QUESTION: What pros/cons do you see in this type of self-organization?

Related Posts:

Why #4: Distributing Ownership (Cont’)

Why #3: Discovering Experts

Why #2: Personalizing Learning

Why #1: Focusing on People (Part 1) (Part 2)

Image via Flickr.com:tymesynk

WHY #4: Social Learning Distributes Ownership.

Think of a water cooler discussion you have had lately.  Or maybe an email you sent out where there was a string of responses.  Who owns those conversations?  That is actually a silly question to ask because we all know that no one owns the conversations – they just are and we all might be participants in them.  This is different from training and traditional organizational learning where someone or organization or department owns the learning and its delivery and content.  Here, in the social world, no one owns them.  There are exceptions, but for the most part they are not owned.

It is in our nature to own content – information.  If you create a document or PowerPoint or Excel spreadsheet, you own it.  If someone wants to change it you email it to them, they change it, email it back and you approve the changes.  That is a traditional model of content ownership.  If another comes along and changes it without the owner’s knowledge – well watch out!  I have seen too many people get upset about that.

But with social learning, if I put out information and it is changed by someone, I should only be thankful and not get upset.  I relenquish control and ownership to everyone. S ure, I may be very interested in the information and may be the most active one in the document, but It is not mine.  The more who are willing to contribute, the better.  More views/perspectives and the more we can all learn.

If we combine this principle with the “Focus on People” principle, you can see how we would look at content differently.

Oddly enough, this is a difficult point for many to overcome.  In my research I found that people still have a file mentality.  They created a file and it is theirs.  If someone wants to change it or add to it, they have to ask permission.  It isn’t the same here.

After I implemented my first social learning environment I did some ethnographic research on how it was being used. I wasn’t expecting it, but I found that people would still put information in a wiki and expect that the information was theirs. They didn’t want others changing it nor did they want to change others’ without their permission.  Over time this has disappeared, but it a ‘gotcha’ we all need to be aware of.

Spread the idea that it is GREAT to add to or change information.  This may catch people off guard, but be ethusiastic about this point.

In the end, we all own it.  Again, like BarCamp, no one person owns it.  They may have someone driving it, but they don’t own the conversations or organization.

The UK government did some research and found:

Pupils feel a sense of ownership and engagement when they publish their work online and this can encourage attention to detail and an overall improved quality of work. Some teachers reported using publication of work to encourage peer assessment.

Dawn Foster mentions:

The community “owns” the community, and the employees of an organization or other people hosting the community are an integral part of that community. If you think of yourselves as an equal member of the community, it might be more natural to have conversations about negative criticism and work to resolve them together. Maybe this is just semantics, but I think it can help people think about the community in a way that facilitates collaboration and cooperation.

Why is this important?  Because the more that anyone can add or clarify, the more information you have and the more accurate it becomes.  The ownership isn’t an exclusive ownership, it is an inclusive ownership. Everyone owns the community, thus everyone owns the content.

What does “Distributes Ownership” mean to you?

How have you seen this principle work?

Related articles

• Musing on Community Ownership
• UK Government Research on Web 2.0
• Ten Aspects of Web 2.0 Strategy That Every CTO and CIO Should Know
• Who “Owns” the Community?

WHY #3: Social Learning Discovers the Expterts.

Social learning also discovers the experts instead of experts being appointed.  Some authority doesn’t come down and say “Hey you there, you are going to teach a class in PeopleSoft and you need to be an expert at it.”  This just doesn’t happen because there are already the experts out there that most people didn’t know about.  If they see a need for someone to learn, they can help out, for example, in a forum by answering a question.

We are all experts at something.  Now we can let that expertness out and let others take advantage of it.

Again, back to the BarCamp example, experts automagically emerge from the croud.  This happens online as well.  Those who know often speak up.  Those who don’t listen and ask questions and start great conversations.  But no one is dictated an expert.  They just are. It is like being a leader.  If you have to say you are a leader for other people to understand that, chances are that you’re not a leader.  Here, no one appoints an expert or SME –they just are and are socially recognized as such.

Traditional training can – not always, but often does – drown out the experts so they are not discovered on a larger scale.  They may be know very locally, not on that larger scale.

What is the benefit from this?  Your company is already paying these people.  You don’t have to hire more to help others learn.  And even better is that they will automatically help each other – often times without prompting from you or another higher power.

Example: Our Customer Support doesn’t know all the answers – they already admit that.  But what was happening before is that the customer voices were not heard on a larger scale.  As soon as we gave them a way to interact, they started answering each other’s questions!  Our customers are some of the best experts.  They use our product every day in ways we may not realize.  We learned from them, they learn from us, they learn from each other. Experts are discovered.

Related articles

• 5 Ways to Sell Social Media to your Boss

Image via Wikipedia

WHY #2: Social Learning Personalizes Learning.

The next verb of Social Learning is that it will personalize your learning.  I don’t know how many training classes I have been to that I was told what I was going to learn instead of learning what I felt I needed to learn to do my job.  Some of the instruction I definitely needed – other instruction I didn’t.  But in the end I may not have received the answers to my questions.

Learner distraction often is high in training classes because their mind is on their work, yet they are being pulled away to learn something that is not relevant to them at that moment.  No wonder they only take away and use 10% of it! (or so)

So we need to ask ourselves, who’s agenda is it that a person learns a particular subject or information.  If the answer is not ‘the learner’ then it is not social learning. Instead of forcing someone to learn a subject, it is discovered by the learner.

Like BarCamp, social learning is personalizes the learning to the individual, not to the training class or even to the company as a whole, but to the individual.  I want to know something – that topic now becomes my quest for information instead of it being spoonfed.  And I want it in the amount I want it, not through some large training class.  Training classes have their place, but I learn MUCH more outside of them than I ever do inside.

Experience:

My clothes washer was leaking.  In order to skirt the Maytag repairman coming out, I went online and found a forum.  It not only let me to the problem, but let me to the solution.  I followed the steps and solved the problem.  In the steps it said that one task would take two people.  I figured out how to do it in one.  That is something that I can give back.

This experience we very personal to me. I didn’t have to take a class on repairing washers.  The learning happened how I needed it, when and in the amount I needed it.  No more, no less, perfectly personalized for me.

Have you had similar experiences in a professional setting?

This video is about schools, but at the heart it is about learning.  Chris Lehmann has created a spectacular Ignite presentation.  My key take -aways:

• Learning can be much more immersive
• Live in a “Life Long Kindergarten”
• “We teach kids, not subjects”
• Student centered learning
• “It’s about what they can do – about what they can make”
• Give them a project (or let them come up with their own
• “Technology needs to be like oxygen”

It really is about focusing on the learner.