There's quite a bit in the book that really resonates with me:
We can't help it: We value atoms more than bits.
Bits want to be free.
A common theme throughout the book is that people naturally understand the differences between bits and atoms. We somewhat intuitively understand that near-zero marginal cost is true for bits. Thus, they treat content delivered as bits as having less value than the equivalent atoms version.
Chris tells us:
It's time to stop treating bits like atoms and assuming the same limitations hold.
There's definitely a lot of questions raised by the book that will undoubtedly add to my thoughts around New Learning Solutions:
What are the versions of offerings that can have different prices?
Because of downward price pressure on anything that is bits and relatively undifferentiated, what are the ways that offerings can include other differentiating aspects?
Where can users add value back into the system?
What are network effects that we can leverage for greater value?
Where do network effects outside a single organization instance help drive value?
As I do presentations where I discuss Tools and Methods for Knowledge Work, I find myself wondering about adoption levels of these tools, and the following pendulum definitely describes how my feelings swing back and forth:
Social Software Deployment Levels
Over the past few years, there's definitely been greater deployment of social software in the Enterprise. Dion Hinchcliffe declared 2009 - The year of the shift to Enterprise 2.0. Reported numbers vary widely …
98% of those surveyed are using Enterprise 2.0 technologies for internal communication and collaboration within their company. The most popular technologies used are instant messaging (74%), wikis and team workspaces (67%), and blogs (51%).
And my personal experience is that it's pretty rare to run into an organization that is not at least planning on adopting some social software solutions. And I'm certainly seeing a lot of SharePoint.
Deployment vs. Adoption
But it's important to keep in mind that deployment of social software does not mean adoption / use. A new report by web usability guru Jakob Nielsen tells us:
A main finding from our study's interviews is that most companies are not very far along in a wholesale adoption of Web 2.0 technologies.
But the same report tells us:
Social software is not a trend that can be ignored. It's affecting fundamental change in how people expect to communicate, both with each other and the companies they do business with.
Email Comparison
Often people cite the adoption of email as a technology adoption cycle with the claim that social software will follow a similar path. Certainly, email went through a bit of a similar early pattern where there was sporadic adoption, lots of debate, executives that had their secretaries (they were not administrative assistants at the time) print their email and put it in their inbox (and I mean an actual inbox).
Eventual adoption of email was a certainty. Once enough people in the organization adopted email, it was very hard for any individual to avoid adopting it. It would just be too inefficient not to adopt it. You were somewhat forced into learning the skills required. Typing, basic computer use, email etiquette. Of course, this was over the course of several years.
Distributed Content Editing
In thinking about various social software, I'm not so sure that I believe that adoption is nearly so neat. Some technologies seem like they will reach tipping points in organizations where resistance will become hard. There will be enough people using the technology that it will reach a tipping point where you pretty much have to adopt it. An example of that is the adoption of Distributed Content Editing via an agreed to technology such as Wiki, Shared SharePoint Documents, Google Docs, etc.
Once a work team agrees that will be how they collaborate on a given piece of content, it becomes very inefficient for an individual within the team to not adopt the same technology. Sending a Word document in an email when there's a collaboratively editable version of the content somewhere else causes enough pain that the group forces the use of the new technology through peer pressure. Once enough people in the organization adopt that as the approach, it becomes hard for other forms to exist.
I personally expect that the days of emailing around documents will be long forgotten. Instead, the model shown by Google Docs with an email that alerts you to a shared document being the norm and successive alerts coming via email or RSS about changes. You won't think of things like the location of the document (local, email attachment, network drive, SharePoint) or multiple versions in files at all.
Oh, and real-time editing with multiple authors will be standard.
Discussion Group Software Comparison
While I believe that adoption of tools for distributed content editing is a sure thing, in looking at other tools, I suspect that adoption patterns are going to be quite different. Many of the tools that we include in the list of social software are things that may be more like discussion group software. This software has been around for many years. There is a network effect with the adoption of discussion groups. If enough people in a group adopt it's use, then it becomes more valuable and progressively harder to remain a part of the group and not adopt the use of the software.
Adoption of discussion group software certainly has followed a very different path than email.
It's pretty rare where work teams and certainly not organizations have made it the norm to adopt the software. Instead, it's most often left up to the individual to make a personal choice about adoption and adoption level. Lurking is considered legitimate peripheral participation. Not reading everything is often okay. The adoption pattern is quite different than adoption of email or collaborative content editing.
I'm wondering if there aren't quite a few of the tools that we discuss as social software that will follow this kind of adoption. A prime example are blogs. Blogging is somewhat a personal/network version of discussion groups. I would guess that it will have limited adoption – but that's not to say that even with limited adoption it doesn't bring value. In fact, part of the comparison is that discussion groups and blogging both bring value with limited adoption.
Social Networks
With this slightly different lens, I'm wondering what this means for the adoption of social networks as a means of expertise location. If you look at what I've said above, I'm asking:
What's the pressure from others in the organization or work team to adopt?
What happens if you don't or partially adopt?
In the case of email and collaborative content editing, pressure is high and partial adoption doesn't work.
In the case of discussion groups and blogs, pressure is generally low and partial adoption is generally okay.
With social networks there will be some level of pressure to participate. If you want to be seen as an expert in the organization, you really need to play along. However, you can likely get away with only partial adoption. You may not really use it as a means of finding expertise yourself. So, while I feel there's tremendous value in social networks as a means of expertise location, I'm currently thinking that adoption is going to be a bit like adoption of LinkedIn. Widely varying levels of participation, even for those who are registered.
Social Bookmarking
Social Bookmarking has a stronger pressure level when it's adopted by a work team. If you are tasked with research, and you don't share what you find via a social bookmarking system, the team likely will put pressure on you to do so. The perceived utility (PU) of social bookmarking is not that high, it's perceived ease of use (PEOU) is high and with the network effect, it would seem that social bookmarking should be something that gains widespread adoption.
However, that's not what I'm seeing out there. Awareness of these tools is lower than other forms of social software. IT organizations are adopting these more slowly.
This seems like a long-term winner. Am I missing something?
Questions
In previous looks at this, I've relied more on the traditional TAM model looking at things like Perceive Utility and Perceived Ease of Use. What I'm talking about in this post is that we need to take into account work team and organization network effects that bring pressure as an important factor in adoption. We also need to recognize what adoption might look like (partial).
All that said, a bit of this is crystal ball gazing.
What will social software use look like inside organizations in 3-5 years?
Where tools should IT be providing and organizations be facilitating and support?
Should organizations encourage adoption?
I can't say that I'm not going to swing back and forth on the pendulum a bunch more times. I certainly am curious what people think around this.
I'm looking to find lots of examples of where informal or social learning has been used successfully in the workplace and where it was led by the L&D organization. This can either be already written up, or it can be the name of a person and organization where it was done.
Can you provide me pointers?
If you would be more comfortable, feel free to send me information via an email: akarrer@techempower.com.
In the T+D article Learning Gets Social, Tony Bingham paraphrases something I said:
In the May issue of T+D, Tony Karrer, an e-learning technologist and CEO of TechEmpower, encouraged companies to start adapting to the current trend in informal learning because otherwise, they will find themselves marginalized in the business.
I thought it would be good for me to put some context around what I meant by this. Especially given that there's been some push-back on the term "marginalized."
In the Business of Learning, I pointed out that there were some pretty significant questions facing the training industry. Budgets have been hammered this year, and there's a question as to what spending levels will look like going forward. During the Free Online Conference – Future of Learning we heard different perspectives.
Skill Building Still in Demand. There was definitely the belief that there are continued need for skills development. If anything, there is increased need.
Catalogs / Courses Commoditization. At the same time, the business of selling a catalog of courses is seen as being tough going forward. Unless you do something to differentiate yourself in a real way, you will be more and more of a commodity.
Many Ways to Differentiate. We heard several people talking about focus on performance. We heard about use of assessments. There was discussion about a lot of the things that need to happen outside the training event.
While there are great content vendors out there, I really didn't hear anyone who was claiming that being a content vendor was a great business right now. Instead, they talked about other kinds of things that would differentiate them in the marketplace.
I believe the same thing is true for internal learning and development organizations. If you are seen as being the place you go for training / content production, there will still be need for your work, but it will be under greater pressure, just like external training suppliers.
There are some other big picture trends going on that have impact on this:
Job fragmentation – fewer people in any single job role
Shorter job tenure
These pressures suggest that there are greatly increased learning needs within organizations. However, less of these learning needs will be successfully met by traditional methods. If you look at what makes a good situation for formal learning:
Large Audience
Similar Level / Needs
Known, Stable Content
Few Out of Bounds Cases
Of course, these are almost the opposite of the trends I mentioned. So, while formal learning solutions will make a portion of how learning will occur, the increased demand for learning will be met through other forms.
This leaves us with the questions:
What the role of learning and development relative to all of this?
If L&D leadership chooses to focus primarily on traditional methods and less so on informal learning opportunities, will they be marginalized in the business.
During a recent presentation and workshop to eLearning leaders from across a large organization, it dawned on me that we were making Getting Started with eLearning 2.0 a lot harder than it really needed to be.
This organization was not unlike many other large organizations. It was clear that there was significant opportunity in this organization for getting started with a broader mix of learning solutions. Their situation sounded incredibly similar to what I have heard in many different organizations. Some of the specifics that made me think they could make progress:
Significant IT support for SharePoint
Innovators in Knowledge Management and IT who would be great allies
Support of senior L&D leaders
Some early adopters of social learning solutions within particular regional learning and development departments
Because I was talking to people with widely varying levels of experience, interest and comfort around web 2.0 tools, it was clear that many of the people would leave the room and not do anything different. I am hopeful that a few will take on a self-directed learning task around some of the things I talked about in Tool Set to develop their own knowledge and proficiency, but certainly they would not be spearheading any broader learning mix initiatives anytime soon.
Barrier at the Individual Level
Why is that? Well, it was expressed pretty well by one of the participants and I think it captures the challenge pretty well that individual L&D practitioners face (paraphrased):
Tony, while I'd like to use some of these approaches, this represents a whole host of new challenges for me in terms of getting agreement within the organization to use this approach (internal clients, L&D leadership, IT, etc.). I'm already way too busy trying to get my stuff done. Even if I think this makes a lot of sense, I don't need the headaches.
That's a really great point. The organization was making it hard and not really supporting individual change agents who wanted to make this stuff happen.
Role of Senior L&D Leaders
When I say "the organization" was making this hard on individuals - really this rests back on the senior L&D leadership. They are lucky enough to have some change agents: early adopters who are willing to work to help move this forward. Their job is to help identify those change agents, identify opportunities, and give support needed to make sure those early adopters can be successful in their project.
I've been finding my advice to L&D leaders almost always turns into the same basic message:
Choose a few places where it makes sense
Use existing tools as much as possible
Give it the support it needs
Allow for experimentation (and possible "failure")
Is this really that hard? It takes work, but I don't believe it's hard.
While I'm claiming this isn't hard, there are a few common traps that seems to bog down organizations.
Trap 1 - Leading with Strategy
Even though the title of the post Learning 2.0 Strategy makes it seem like there will be a big picture social learning strategy, the reality is that the strategy is a bottom up strategy.
You do need to look across the organization to see the kinds of business, performance and learning needs where learning 2.0 will apply. But, trying to jump too far along Dion Hinchcliffe's adoption curve is a problem.
Plus, jumping too far leads you right into the next challenge.
Trap 2 - Language
While I use the terms "eLearning 2.0", "social learning", etc. and it's fine to use that amongst ourselves, don't use it in mixed company. Consider the same message with:
We are going to use eLearning 2.0.
- or -
We are going to set up ways for people to exchange ideas and experiences.
I wouldn't really say the second thing, without a lot more context. The point is that the terms blog, wiki, social network, etc. will likely raise barriers that are not needed.
Bottom Line
The bottom line here is that I believe we often make these things much harder than they need to be.
Yes, there are all sorts of barriers that you have to work through. And there's work to be done to get through those barriers. But, I believe the bottom line is that most organizations should be well into the experimentation / ad hoc use of social apps phase.
