Network Skills : eLearning Technology

I personally believe that one of the areas where learning professionals need the most help is how communities and networks impact learning and building individual and facilitation skills around these:

• Knowing how to individually leverage Network Skills and Communities to help with work and learning tasks
• Community and Network Facilitation Skills to help others learn and work using networks and communities

In my post Networks and Learning Communities, I looked a bit at this topic.  But, I by no means consider myself an expert and find that I spend quite a bit of my time building my network skills so I can do this more effectively.  

So I was super excited when I saw that Nancy White, who helps me learn about all things communities and networks, posted a response to the New Skills for Learning Professionals Big Question for July 2009.   When I looked at her first post, I was actually disappointed because it wasn't really about networks and communities.  My disappointment was purely my own making.  But Nancy came through and posted her follow-up pieces and especially Part 3 and the Online Facilitation Wiki that was a great launch point for me to read a bit more.  I also used both the Communities and Networks Connection and Work Literacy to source additional reading.

So, starting with her post I've spent the past few hours going through a lot of material, processing the information and writing this post.

I've come to few realizations from the process.

My Focus is on Networks

There were great definitions of communities, groups, networks, facilitation, management, etc.  I realized during the process that I mostly focus on networks and less on actual communities.

• Community - a group of people with bounded membership who have some shared, congruent interest and interact with each other over time.
• Network - a constellation of individuals associated via fuzzy, unbounded membership and overlapping … not fully congruent … interests

For me a couple of examples:

• LA CTO Forum – definitely a community.  Meet once a month.  Invite only.  Learning and peer support.  Somewhat a classic community or practice.
• Learn Trends – not quite sure this fits Nancy's definition of a community – it looks like one, but my sense is that it's somewhere in between a community and a network

Where I spend most of my time is with the blogging network and various other networks.  In some ways, Learn Trends is just part of this network allowing us to meet at various points and act a bit more community like.  We share our interest of learning.  There's quite a lot of discussion/debate whether blogs act as networks or community.  Probably don't want to kick that hornet's nest.

And I'm not alone in my questioning / focus.  Take a look at: How relevant are communities of practice in a network age?

My Community Facilitation Skills are Hopeless

One thing I started to realize is that good community facilitation takes time, desire, skills and appropriate mentality.  For the LA CTO Forum, I have a couple of cohorts who help to organize things, but there's quite a bit more we could be doing.

For Learn Trends, Jay, George and myself do not spend time on facilitation.  We should.  But we don't.  In fact, this is probably a great opportunity for someone to learn about facilitating an online community. 

Does anyone want to jump in who does have time, desire, skills (or willing to learn) and appropriate mentality to help facilitate the Learn Trends community?

I found this great piece - The Art of Hosting Good Conversations Online – I will go back to refer to this quite a bit to remind me of all the kinds of things I should be thinking about.

But frankly, I will have to grow these skills over time based on specific situations.  It doesn't look good for me to become a really adept, willing community facilitator.

Network Weaving

I don't like the term, Network Weaving, but that's what Nancy calls it – although I don't think she likes it either. 

In the eLearning space there's this very complex network of people, organizations, content that forms this amorphous thing where we all play.  The combination of blogs, sites like LinkedIn, various discussion groups, etc. weave us all together in a weird way.  We still have the core human desire to connect.  Many of us enjoy learning and discussion around these topics.  But we really don't act like a community.  And people vary widely in their connectedness and activity level.

What I found on Network Weaving left me wanting something quite different … I would run into materials that talk about how you analyze and map networks.  Such as the advice:

Improved connectivity starts with a map – knowing the complex human system you are embedded in.

I'm sorry, but I'm simply are not going to try to really map out this incredibly complex network.  Of course, the folks who are writing this are networking mapping folks who come at it from that perspective.  I think it would be a really interesting picture and there's real value in it.  But it's only a starting point if it's relatively easy to do.

Instead, what I'm asking about is:

• What could I do to get more from the network? 
• What can I do to help other people get more from the network?

And when I say "Get more" … I think about the ability to tap a larger network of folks, get to them for help more quickly and easily, learn from them faster, more easily establish conversations, draw them together into ad hoc groups as needed, and ??? a lot of things I don't know even what they are yet ???

In fact, some of the nuggets I found helped me think a bit about this knowledge gap.  In What Networks Do?, they point to filter, amplify, convene among other things.  With Browse My Stuff I should have thought of social filtering a lot sooner. 

I'm sure I'm missing a lot.

And, I'm probably thinking about this more than most.

Which leaves me with …

Where's the help for Network Skills?

Nancy talks about how community facilitation skills sound a lot like network skills.  After reading a lot of the material, I'm not convinced that the mapping is that easy and I certainly don't get the path from one set to specific actions in the other. 

So, I know some of the materials I've produced such as the LinkedIn Guide for Knowledge Workers.  

The ironic thing is that like network themselves – how to kinds of information around network skills seems to be missing.  Most of it is unfortunately more tool centric.

So where's the help for building my / our / their Network Skills?

Learning Performance Business Talent Focus : eLearning Technology

One of the more interesting aspects of the discussions I've had over the past few weeks as I prepare for the free online conference on the future of learning is the perspective on the focus and scope of responsibility of internal learning organizations and external learning/training companies.

Caveat: This is definitely not a new issue. I'm not really claiming any great new insights.  It's a first cut at a developing mental model.  This is only partially formed and I need help to flesh out my thinking.

Please let me know what you think.

• Does this ring true? 
• Does the model work for you? 
• Do you similarly hear these kinds of clues?  And what other clues do you use to identify?
• What are the implications? 

With all that said, I believe that I'm beginning to get a handle on the differences in focus that people bring to bear around their responsibilities.  The following crude diagram captures a bit of it:

I'm finding that learning professionals of all types (IDs, CLOs, VP Learning, C-level at Training Company, etc.) tend to own a different view of their responsibilities in this space.

• Learning – Responsible for ensuring learning objectives are achieved regardless of the delivery mode.
• Talent – Responsible for ensuring that talent is analyzed, selected and developed to meet the needs of the organization. 
• Performance – Responsible for ensuring that behavior change occurs in a way that improves performance.
• Business – Responsible for ensuring that business objectives are met.

Know the "Right Answer"

Let's say that we are interviewing a potential new learning professional.  We pose the question to them:

What do you see as the responsibility of a learning organization?

Many (probably most) learning professionals are smart enough to be able to answer the question such that they focus on creating solutions that are ultimately about all of these.  They would position themselves right in the middle of the diagram.  This is, of course, the right answer although a very adept job seeker will be able to adjust the answer quickly based on the focus on the organization that's doing the interviewing.

If you've done much interviewing in your life, you know that asking this kind of question is most often not effective.  Instead, it's much better to find out by asking about specific examples of projects they've worked on and listen to the focus.  You ask about things like the types of solutions that they've used, what were the objectives, how did they tackle the problems, etc.

Of course, I'm not interviewing people for a job.  Normally, I'm talking to people with the goal of getting help on particular needs, e.g., how is social learning being used in insurance companies or other highly regulated industries, how does this technology work out in practice, what other things should I be looking at to solve this issue.  In this case, I've had a bunch of conversations around the Business of Learning and this model is somewhat falling out from the discussions.  But it's still conversations and I'm coming to fairly quickly recognize some clues that indicate the focus of the individual.

So what are some clues about the focus that you can listen for?

Learning Focus Clues

The person is showing learning focus when you hear:

"… learning objectives … "

"… learners …"

"We have very limited budget and our focus needs to be on building critical, core skills."

"I wish we had the time and money to spend on informal and social learning solutions."

"We want to make sure that our informal learning still ensures that we meet the learning objectives?"

"Our trainers don't have time to get involved with the learners after the training."

Performance Focus Clues

The person is showing performance focus when you hear:

"behavior change"

"performer support"

"toolkits and job aids"

"involve the managers"

"back on the job"

"feedback"

Business Focus Clues

The person is showing business focus when you hear:

"customer satisfaction" (or a host of other business metrics)

"metrics" (and they don't mean Level 1 and 2)

"move the needle"

"we probably don't need much training"

Talent Focus Clues

The person is showing performance focus when you hear:

"fill the talent pipeline"

"talent mix"

"job profiles"

"succession planning"

"competencies"

"recruiting and selection"

"performance review process"

Notes, Questions and Thoughts

Unfair Bias around Learning Focus?

As I wrote down the clues that indicate a learning focus, I felt I was being unfair.  I've talked to a lot of very smart people who clearly have the learning focus.  I respect them, consider them to be valuable contributors, and feel like I'm being unfair when I put down those clues.  I feel I should somehow even this out a bit.  But I wasn't sure how.

Obviously, this is partly personal bias.  All things being equal (which they never are), I'm guessing my focus is more a business and performance focus.  I was a professor for 11 years and still do lots of presentations and workshops where clearly the focus is learning.  Certainly Work Literacy has a learning and performance focus and is a passion of mine.  But day-to-day, my passion and where I probably play best are things like data driven solutions.  Working on eHarmony for its first 4 years with a combined purpose of making money, making better marriages and supporting a rather complex performance was fantastic.  Working with emerging or established companies is fantastic.  Looking at social learning as a performance mechanism is fantastic.  So maybe I have a strong bias towards business, performance, and then learning and that's why it doesn't sound quite right the way I've positioned it.

You will notice I didn't say much about talent focus.  I'm know about it.  I do work in it.  I've actually done data driven solutions in that space.  But it's not my normal focus and I feel a little bit removed from a talent focus.  I definitely struggle the most when talking with people who have a very strong talent focus.

So, I'm really not sure how to level this playing field a bit so that my bias is not coming through.  Thoughts?

Also, I'm sure that most people do flow between these things a bit, but have a more natural home.  I'm not quite sure how that fits into this whole discussion.

Separation of Performance and Business Focus?

I debated on separating performance and business focus.  You may notice that they two overlap more than most of the other sections.  That's intentional.  I believe that there are quite a few people who take a combined business and performance focus.  There are relatively fewer who are dominant on the performance focus – but occasionally I run into people who seem to come at it with that focus.

Talent and Performance Intersection?

When I first did the diagram I intentionally did not have an intersection point right in the middle – and specifically it excluded intersection of Talent and Performance. 

Most people who I talk to who have a talent focus seem to come at this whole picture from a completely different angle.  They describe goals in terms of looking at the overall mix of talent in the organization.  They look at the picture much more holistically.  They are quite often trying to align this with top level goals of the organization, but in many cases they really are not talking about moving the needle.  They care about learning as part of development and to build important competencies in the organization and to fill the talent pipeline.  So, intersection with learning and business – not necessarily focus – is clear.

Intersection between talent and performance seems less common.  Normally the folks who look at the big picture talent issues are far removed from day-to-day behavior and performance.  They would claim that they look at it in terms of skills and competencies.  They need to know about behavior in the form of job profiles, selection, performance reviews, etc.  But the reality is that they are typically not thinking about what it takes to directly help to get the sales people to sell more, or change how retail sales managers get the associates to act in a way that improves customer satisfaction, etc.  They won't be building a job aid anytime soon.  They are likely not talking to the performers or facilitating interactions on the job to get performance to improve.  It's a level indirect from that.

As I said, I initially put these as non-intersecting, and then I thought about people who work directly with sales management that really do take a look across all of these issues.  I'm not saying that all sales management improvement professionals take this approach, but certainly some do.  They look at who the sales people are, how they get selected, the comp packages.  But they also look at the sales support materials, sales meetings.  They get in and get dirty day-to-day.  So, clearly this kind of dual focus exists, especially around specific goals.

Organizational Expectations

When I discussed the "right answer", I pointed out that an adept learning professional seeking a job would quickly adapt to the interviewer and make sure that their answer corresponded to what the person wanted to hear.  You would listen for clues and use the language that fits.  Same as what I just described.

Of course, that happens in organizations as well.  The collection of people in the organization establish what the expectation is around focus.  If they expect you to have a learning focus and deliver formal training solutions and not bother them back on the job when they are doing real work, you will quickly find yourself taking a learning focus in order to fit. 

Meaning and Use of the Model?

I debated on whether this model is useful and meaningful enough to post.  It's pretty much an internal mental model that developed based on many discussions (and really many years).  That doesn't mean it will make sense for anyone else.  Nor does it necessarily suggest that it's useful.

So, can you tell me whether this makes any sense to you?

In terms of use, for a long time – without having thought through this model, I've known that there's incredible friction trying to move someone from a particular focus.  This comes up all the time in practice:

• To convince someone who's primarily learning focused to spend time and effort on solutions that come after training, you need to talk about it in terms of additional learning transfer opportunities.  The learning won't stick unless we get out there after they are back on the job and reinforce it.  We can talk about "office hours" where learners come together to discuss issues they face when they are back on the job.  And you know going in that this all will be a tough sell.
• You need to talk to most talent focused people in talent terms.  If you have a toolkit / set of job aids, you need to talk about it in terms of reducing the time to competence or how it fits with development planning.
• If you are talking to business or performance focused people, prepare to get in and get dirty.  You need to be prepared to be in there working with the people to get the performance to change or the needle to move.  I'd suggest not using the words "learning objective" … they may perceive you as "one of those people" … they'll let you know when they will need some of that kind of thing. 

But this is more than language.  It translates into how they think about tackling problems and the kinds of solutions that they consider. 

 

Again – this is all partially formed and I'm really hoping that you will weigh in with thoughts.

Subscribed to Best of eLearning Learning? : eLearning Technology

I just got through posting the eLearning Learning Best Of for this week:

Knowledge Skills Mentoring Tips - Best of eLearning Learning

There's something that doesn't make sense to me, so I need your help!

Best of eLearning Learning is a Must Subscribe

I could be completely wrong, but I feel like these Best Of posts represent a really valuable contribution to people who don't have the time to read all of the posts from all the great eLearning bloggers and all the other sources that we track and include on eLearning Learning.

In fact, even for me, and I'm on the extreme end of reading blogs, I often miss good items that are surfaced through the Best of eLearning Learning lists.

In my experience doing presentations to learning professionals, polling the audience I find that roughly:

• 10% – use an RSS Reader to monitor blogs as sources of content related to their professional interests
• 90% – do not use an RSS Reader, but do subscribe to various email lists and other sources of content related to their professional interest

The Best of eLearning Learning is really aimed at the 90% audience. It's my belief that if you are interested in eLearning and only could subscribe to a single email (or RSS feed), you should subscribe to the Best Of feed. I also don't know that there's anything close to that available anywhere else. And I also believe that even if you are in the 10% you probably should subscribe (although via RSS) to the Best Of list just to help make sure you didn't miss good stuff during the past week, month or year.

Or to put this another, rather blunt way -

If you had to choose to subscribe to eLearning Technology, this blog, or the the Best of eLearning Learning, you should subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning.

Of course, the right answer is to subscribe to both. ;)

Please Help Me Figure This Out

My expectation is that eLearning Learning with it's higher traffic rates and great content should be acquiring new subscribers at a faster rate than this blog.

But that's not the case. Both are growing. But for the first 5 months of this year eLearning Technology adds about 20 new subscribers per day at a fairly constant rate and eLearning Learning is adding about 10 per day since it started a few weeks ago to offer email subscriptions. Heck, I would think that most of the subscribers here would immediately have subscribed to the Best of eLearning Learning and the numbers would be much higher already.

All of this doesn't make any sense to me:

• Any thoughts on an explanation?
• Have you subscribed to the Best of eLearning Learning? Why or why not?

Part of the issue may be reaching the 90% audience. By definition, the 90% are not subscribed to this blog and are not reading this. So maybe there's an additional question:

• How can bloggers reach the other 90%?

I'd appreciate your help in figuring this out.

Free Online Conference – Future of Learning - Incredible Speakers : eLearning Technology

This is probably the last update on the upcoming online conference. We are finally announcing the speakers and a bit more about what they will be discussing.

You won't want to miss this ... Intuit talks about their move to outsource learning development to their customers and redefining value of learning. Hearing Dave Wilkins talk about selling social learning solutions. Or Gary Wise talking about selling incremental changes to learning designs on the path to richer solutions. Amit Garg discussing where his innovation team is focusing. Or senior leaders from major training companies talk about the challenges and opportunities in the market. This is going to be really great stuff.

Future of the Business of Learning

Free Online Event

July 23

9 AM - 2 PM Pacific Time (Click on times to see Time Zone Conversion)

Brought to you by: Learn Trends, ISA and Training Magazine Network.
Moderated by Tony Karrer.

Register Here

Description:

Corporate training departments and training companies are facing challenging times. It’s clear to thrive they need to focus on business critical issues for the organization, provide solutions provide real value, differentiate their offerings, and look at ways to provide value beyond being a publisher of courses and courseware. However, that’s easier said than done.

This online event will bring together people with a variety of perspectives on what we should be doing today to set ourselves up for success going forward. We will look at questions that include:

• Is this a temporary downturn or changing landscape?
• How will demand change?
• What will internal or external customers pay for that's not traditional training?
• What's already selling today?
• What business models, products, companies should we be watching?
• What should we be doing today to be in position for the future?

Panel #1 - Industry Perspectives

9 AM - 10 AM Pacific Time

This distinguished panel will provide overview of the challenges going on in the industry, major trends that they are seeing, what is selling and what’s not, and where they believe that organizations need to go to be successful going forward. Josh, a long time analyst and source for trends in learning product and market data, trends and expert advice, will provide us with perspectives on what’s going on. Paul, a connector between training companies and other kinds of providers and the marketplace, has some very specific suggestions on where training companies need to focus. Lisa, as President of ISA and a long-time consultant to training companies, understands a lot of the challenges they face.

• Josh Bersin, CEO and President, Bersin and Associates
• Paul Terlemezian, President, iFive Alliances
• Lisa Fagan, President, Amplify Selling

Panel #2 – Internal Training Perspectives

10 AM - 11 AM Pacific Time

This panel consists of senior managers responsible for aspects of corporate learning who will discuss what they are doing today and opportunities they see in the future. Gary will talk about his Prepare-Deploy-Reinforce (PDR) model, how it represents an incremental transition, and how he sells to various audiences. Rob will talk about how he sees his offerings transition in the future. Allessandria from Intuit will discuss how they’ve outsourced parts of their development to their customers and have changed how they view “return” on learning investments.

• Gary Wise, Sr. Director Learning Architecture, Cincinnati Children's Hospital
• Rob Robertson, SVP, Learning Technology and Architecture, Citi
• Allessandria Polizzi, PhD, Group Manager, Accountant Training & Relations, Intuit

Panel #3 – Training Company Perspectives

11 AM - Noon Pacific Time

This panel consists of senior executives at training companies who are looking at how they can create more compelling offerings in the market. They will discuss aspects of how their offerings are evolving and the kinds of new offerings they are trying to sell. Ann, who facilitated a session for ISA with CEOs of Training Companies to look at the future of the business of learning, will start the session with an overview of key take-aways from that session. Jeff, Pete and Ben will all discuss their particular perspectives on what it’s going to take to be successful going forward. Because of their very different kinds of companies and offerings, we’ll likely have a lively discussion.

• Ann Herrmann-Nehdi, CEO Herrmann International
• Jeff Sugerman, President and CEO, Inscape Publishing
• Pete Weaver Senior Vice President of Leadership Solutions and Chief Learning Officer, DDI
• Ben Snyder, CEO, Systemation

Panel #4 – Software and Services Perspectives

Noon – 1 PM Pacific Time

This panel consists of senior executives at software and services companies who are trying to create compelling offerings in the market. They will discuss aspects of how their offerings are evolving and the kinds of new offerings they are trying to sell and the challenges they have selling these offerings. Amit will discuss their interesting innovation team that works closely with training company partners to showcase new offerings that the partners can sell in the marketplace such as mobile, performance support, simulations and games, integrated accountability, and social learning solutions. Dave will discuss the challenges and opportunities around social learning solutions. Holly and Monika will talk about capitalizing on development opportunities that exist in every day work environments.

• Amit Garg, Director, Upside Learning – The Training Company Back Office
• Dave Wilkins, Executive Director of Product Marketing, Learn.com
• Monika Ebert, CEO, DifferentLens
• Holly St. John Peck, CEO, Peck Training Group
  

Panel #5 – Discussion

1 PM – 2 PM Pacific Time

We will transition into a more open discussion around what we heard and what we think are some of the important answers coming from the session. We have several interesting folks joining the discussion that I’m sure will challenge us a bit. Some of these folks include:

• Jay Cross
• Harold Jarche
• Ray Jimenez

Too Much Information or a Skills Gap : eLearning Technology

Wesley Fryer discusses How are you dealing with TMI? (Too Much Information)  (found via Stephen Downes).  Wesley points us to a post by Kevin Washburn “TMI! Information Overload and Learning.” where Kevin points out:

TMI floods the brain with data, preventing comprehension and elaboration, and thus, preventing learning. Jonah Lehrer suggests the danger of too much information is “it can actually interfere with understanding.” Why? Because the brain has a do-it-yourself attitude toward learning.

Wes also asks us to consider:

 current visual list of education applications from the website “All My Favs.” I’m overwhelmed just looking at these choices!

 

This is similar to the list of Web 2.0 tools that I often use in my presentations.

All of these represent potential metacognitive tools and methods.  Life was simple 25 years ago.  We knew how to use the card catalog, journal indices, microfiche readers.  We had quarters in our pocket for the Xerox machine.  We knew how to use Interlibrary Loan.  We knew how to take notes.

It's a lot more complicated these days.

And I think that we need to recognize that it's more than the "Too Much Information" aspect of the issue.  It's really that we need to adapt to new methods and tools.  It's a big skills, knowledge, performance gap – see Work Skills Keeping Up.  And I personally believe that it's a big mistake to Not Prepare Workers for Web 2.0.  It's why I created Work Literacy about a year ago.

Wes has some specific suggestions in his post for how to deal with TMI.

I try to address this through posts such as:

• Tool Set
• LinkedIn Guide for Knowledge Workers
• Top-Down Strategy
• Better Memory
• Information Radar
• Processing Pages with Links
• Networks and Learning Communities
• Collaborate
• Twitter as Personal Work and Learning Tool
• Search

I look forward to collaborating on this very important topic.