The Social Learning Revolution
These are my extended notes for a series of presentations I will be giving on the Social Learning Revolution, where I will be lookng at how social media is impacting our working and learning lives, and what this means for the Learning & Development department.
“A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.” (Wikipedia)
How we have traditionally understood “learning” to happen in the workplace
I think you will agree that for a long time now it has been the function of the Training Department to be responsible for “learning” in the workplace.
The prime role of this function (relatively recently renamed as the Learning & Development Department) has been to package-up and organise learning events – both internally or externally – either in the form of face-to-face classes or workshops, or as e-learning courses – or even blended solutions. Training Departments have also had the responsibility of tracking and managing this “learning” – usually with the help of some form of training or learning management system.
And that is how managers and other parts of the business see the function of training too: simply to create and deliver courses to solve perceived learning problems – because that is the way they have been conditioned to think about “learning” as Harold Jarche points out.
“Since the latter half of the 20th century, we have gone through a period where training departments have been directed to control organizational learning. It was part of the Taylorist, industrial model that also compartmentalized work and ensured that only managers were allowed to make decisions. In this context, only training professionals were allowed to talk about learning.”
In most cases this training requires participants to take time out of their daily jobs – often going to a separate place or room. Although more recently learners have been able to sit at their own desks and complete online courses, they have still had to stop what they were working on in order to study the course.
But things are changing …
How we really learn in the workplace
Firstly, it has become clear that most of how we learn to do our jobs happens outside training – in the workplace itself, as we do our jobs. Some studies state this accounts for around 80% of learning that takes place in the workplace, others even higher.
But let us be clear, the way that we learn here is very different from the way we learn in training.
Whereas (most) training content is structured and follows a logical progression through a body of material, learning in the workplace is unstructured, some even call it messy.
For instance, we might learn from reading a document, from viewing a presentation, even from small pieces of random information we overhear, or by observing activities that our colleagues undertake.
We might learn intentionally (ie we set out to find something out) or quite unintentionally. (Here’s a very simple example to explain the difference. So, if I ask someone “how do I unjam this printer?” and watch as they show me how to do it (that is intentional ). But if I just happen to be standing beside the printer when it jams and I look on as someone else unjams it , that is unintentional.)
Sometimes we might not even be aware that we have learned about something or how to do something, until at some later stage we realise we know about or how to do that very thing.
This type of learning (often termed informal learning) might seem trifling – trivial even – but is actually very important. As one academic study points out
“Most people instinctively know that they become competent in their jobs through learning as they perform those jobs … and that through this process they acquire knowledge and skills which are so entwined with the job, that they are referred to as ‘tacit’.”
And whereas explicit or book knowledge can be easily codified into courses, tacit knowledge cannot.
Anyway, this type of informal learning happens individually – as people go about their daily tasks – as well as socially – when we are with others.
Social learning is therefore not a new term or training trend, it is something that has been happening since time immemorial – both inside and outside organisations – as we learn with and from others.
So we might learn from others (intentionally or unintentionally, consciously or unconsciously) by asking questions of our colleagues, through discussions in meetings , or even in casual conversations by the proverbial watercooler. And, it is also in social learning that powerful insights to problems often arise that have been generated by the collective wisdom of employees
Up to fairly recently, training departments have not really been interested in informal learning for many reasons.
- For some, it is irrelevant, since it hasn’t been “delivered” by experts and doesn’t involve studying or memorization.
- For others it’s too intangible, even invisible.
- And for yet others, since it can’t be measured or managed in the traditional training ways, they don’t believe it is within their remit to worry about it.
But, once again things are changing .. informal learning is becoming even more potent in the workplace .. and this of course is where social media comes in.
How we are using social media in the workplace
What we are seeing now is that workers who have used social media in their personal lives now recognise how valuable it can be in their professional lives, as well as within their organisations for working and learning.
They realise they now have the tools to more quickly and more easily solve their own learning and performance problems, without leaving the workflow to do so – since the solution is just one-click away in their browser.
In doing so they are by-passing both IT and L&D departments.
Back in April 2011 Forester estimated that around 47% of business users were doing this and expected the number to rise to 60% in 2011. An article in CLO magazine said that between 1/3 and 2/3 of employees were meeting their needs by working around L&D departments. I haven’t seen up to date figures but this seems to be about right to me.
My own analysis of the situation – looking at the contributions to my Top 100 Tools activity over the list 5 years – also shows this is an increasing trend.
Last summer I took a closer look at how people are using social media tools in the workplace, and I wrote some blog posts to share this information. Here is a summary of what I found.
In general, people are using social media tools – quite autonomously – in 5 main areas
- for continuous personal and professional learning/development
- for professional networking
- for knowledge sharing
- for collaborative working
- for productivity and performance improvement
And here are some specific examples
- People are using Google to search the Social Web for solutions to their problems rather than using the internal LMS to search for courses.
- They prefer to solve their problems by accessing quick and simple resources on sites like YouTube, Slideshare and Wikipedia – in other words using resources that other individuals have created and freely shared – but which can prove to be valuable performance support resources
- They are also happy to share what they know in the same way - using the same social tools
- They rely on a trusted network of colleagues that they are building in public social networking services like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN, Google+ , as well as in private communities. And they interact with these colleagues in different ways, e.g.
-
- to ask and answer questions
- to share and receive ideas, resources and experiences
- to solve problems and brainstorm together
- to keep up to date with what their colleagues are doing and thinking
- to learn from them in many different ways – sometimes even without even realising it!
- They keep themselves up to date with what is happening in their industry or profession thru blog and news feeds as well as aggregated and curated content from their peers.
- And they constantly review their productivity in order to find better ways to do their jobs using new social media tools.
So what has the Training response been to the use of social media?
How the Training Department is responding
Some training departments have begun to incorporate social media into their face-to-face workshops or have included social elements into their online courses. Generally this has been done by “blending” informal approaches with formal approaches, or by trying to embed formal approaches in the workflow – e.g. you go on a course and then you keep up with the course-related discussions in a learning community after the course.
Now, don’t get me wrong, this is all good stuff, but this is not what I would call social learning.
I call this “Training +Social Media” or “Social Training” since it still employs the the traditional, top-down approach to learning – albeit adding social approaches into it. But it doesn’t actually support informal, social learning – as it is happening naturally, continuously and spontaneously in the workplace.
“Social learning”, however, has become the latest buzzword in the training industry, and some product vendors are now using the term to actively market their products. My colleague Jay Cross, visiting an expo in Paris very recently remarked.
“Lots of French vendors are touting social learning although they no more get it than American LMS providers promising systems to manage informal learning. One outfit here claimed to deliver social learning experiences on CD-ROM. Catalog of courses? Social? Huh?”
So I think one word of advice when buying new products is to understand what “social learning” actually means to that vendor, and whether it helps with creating formal social learning experiences (aka “social training”) or whether it can really support the natural, continuous, social learning that takes place in the workplace – which is a very different thing.
Which takes me on to the bigger question of how L&D can actually support social learning in the workflow – because it IS a matter of “supporting” it, rather than “organising” and “managing” it.
But before we get onto that, there’s still a bit more of the story to tell – because now we are seeing the emergence of the “social business”.
How social businesses are emerging
Note: In this slide I’ve taken the Training function out of the equation for the moment –whilst we consider the emergence of the social business, but I’ll come back to it later.
More and more organisations now appreciate the power of social media. Many have seen its value for marketing and promotion of their business to their customers (e.g. using Facebook pages and Twitter accounts), and are now realising it has an important part to play internally for employee collaboration and engagement.
Some of these organisations are now implementing their own internal social and collaboration platforms – either by upgrading their intranets into social intranets, or by adding extra social functionality onto their existing systems, using tools like Yammer, Smartforce, Chatter, Jive and so forth.
As they do this, knowledge sharing and collaborative working are becoming key features of the new social business, and what is more (informal) social learning is becoming its blood stream.
So what effect will this have on the Training function? Well, my colleague, Jay Cross says this:
“As all business becomes social business, L&D professionals face a momentous choice. They can remain Chief Training Officers and instructors who get novices up to speed, deliver events required by compliance, and run in-house schools. These folks will be increasingly out of step with the times.
Or they can become business leaders who shape learning cultures, social networks, collaborative practices, information flows, federated content management, just-in-time performance support, customer feedback mechanisms, and structures for continuous improvement.”
These are tough words, but like Jay I think L&D can have a huge role to play in the emerging social business. But I also believe that the function will need to change in order to do so . In fact, some L&D departments are changing – and by doing so are playing a big part in helping to shape the future of their organisations.
So what changes need to take place?
How to support social learning in the social business
I think L&D will need to provide a much broader range of services – what might be called Workplace Performance Services or even Business Support Services.
This will involve providing both training and non-training services, but furthermore these services will be much more concerned with supporting people as they do their jobs as well as helping them improve their performance in the workflow.
In other words the emphasis will change from designing, managing and measuring learning to supporting and improving performance, where “learning” (in all its forms) will be seen as the means to the end – not the end goal. But more than this, it recognises that “organised training solutions” are just ONE way of solving a business or job performance problem, and that there are many other approaches.
Let’s take a closer look at what some of these new services might look like
Workplace Performance/Business Support Services
One service will obviously be addressing performance problems – as identified by managers. What will be different though, will be that instead of asking for a course (ie a solution), managers will now ask for help to solve a performance problem.
This will involve identifying the real problem (rather than the perceived problem) and deciding how best that problem can be resolved. Costly training will probably be the last recourse not the first!
Solutions will more likely involve helping the teams concerned design and implement their own solutions to the problems, so that they own the solution, rather than having it forced on them top-down. The L&D department will then support them in doing this.
Examples might be
- helping individuals use the Social Web effectively, safely and responsibly to locate useful external informational and instructional resources, as well as how to keep up to date with what is happening in their industry or profession
- helping individuals build a trusted Personal Knowledge Network (PKN) of (internal and external) colleagues who they can call upon for advice and support
- helping teams set up and sustain an internal community of practice – to improve knowledge sharing within their team
- helping teams co-create and share content within their team – to support one another’s learning and performance
Another service might be carrying out workflow audits – sitting down with individuals and teams to locate bottlenecks in processes and/or identifying better ways to accomplish tasks.
A third service might be supporting teams directly who need help with social and collaboration practices.
A fourth service might helping to integrate formal learning into the workflow through use of a common set of tools.
My view, and that of my Internet Time Alliance colleagues, as well as others in the industry is that the hub of social learning in a social business won’t be a training system (like a LMS - social or otherwise) – but the social and collaboration platform that an organisation uses to power the work in the business. It may well be that an LMS will continue to be required for compliance training, but in the longer term we believe it is likely to become a feature, function or even plugin of the organisation’s social intranet.
Clearly all this won’t happen overnight, but I am already seeing changes in the way that L&D are moving forward in the Social Learning Revolution. Indeed some are already well ahead of the game.
Although a first step might well be rebadging the department as a Workplace Performance Services Department in order to send out the right message to the rest of the organisation, it will take more than just a name change to be successful. Since the new department will be offering a range of new services (I’ve only mentioned a couple of them here) and this will require new roles, new practices and new skills of workplace learning professionals
The new role of the Workplace Learning Professional
He or she will need:
- A new mindset: This means understanding it will no longer be just about using traditional “command and control” approaches (that are employed in most training solutions to try and force people to learn), but will be much more about encouraging people to engage in new collaborative activities to support one another as they (learn) to do their jobs – in many cases helping them to “connect and collaborate”. This, of course will be a key feature of building and supporting the collaborative culture of a social business.
- A new set of skills: It will no longer be about just instructional design or LMS administration, but
- performance consulting skills
- business skills
- social media skills
- collaboration skills
- community leadership skills
All in all – it will require a whole new approach to supporting organizational learning.
Social Learning Centre
As L&D prepares for this change, I’m providing a space for workplace learning professionals to start finding out more – through free resources, interest groups, webinars well as through some informal, albeit structured, programmes – and also provide a space to discuss this with their peers. I think it is time we used the same social and collaborative approaches we will be encouraging, to support one another in this revolution which is innovating and transforming businesses as well as the L&D function. I hope you will join me and other practitioners in the Social Learning Centre. We are already hearing about how some learning professionals are supporting the “real” social learning.
Note: in particular the Introduction to social learning in the workplace programme will look at this topic in more depth. But if you’d prefer some bespoke advice, please contact me or any of my Internet Time Alliance colleagues, we’d be happy to help.
(c) Jane Hart, Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies. Please do not reproduce this article without permission.
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So much of what you say, alas, has been said in other ways before. The challenge for the “learning professional” — which has often just been a title that sounded more up-to-date than “training and development specialist” — has for decades been: how do I work more strategically? Am I responsible for instruction, for the structured presentation of certain content, or am I ultimately responsible for helping people achieve better results on the job?
I happen to think that at least some part of getting new people up to speed (or getting an existing group competent in the basics of something new) can in fact benefit from planning and structure–but I don’t equate that with “holding face-to-face classes.”
But even if my (individual) job is, say, to help new hire bank branch managers to use the bank’s financial systems, my real goal is to help them serve the customers well. This is why, in a 2008 interview, Geary Rummler (coauthor of the classic Improving Performance), said that the training and development profession is…
…a solution in search of a problem. People have developed all this wonderful stuff around learning and development, and it’s become a thing in and of itself rather than something that exists to help people be more effective in their jobs.
Bad management makes it worse because managers read the magazines, see the fads, and call the training people to say, “I want us to try this.” There’s no corrective force in that relationship. In fact, training has become in many ways the enabler for bad management because now the default solution is to fix the people.
I tend to agree with Mr. Ferguson.
It has been a long time since I have worked in a department with enough of a budget to have full time training personnel. In fact, I think it has always been part of someone’s job, but never a full-time job for anyone in my division. Nowadays when we hire someone new, we dust off old material and update it and get the people most able to present it to do so.
In the larger caverns of this fortune-500 company, there are training professionals. Some of them have a time-honored and long-standing job of teaching some important basics that every programmer we hire needs. That training is indeed needed, and those persons are just like teachers who teach the same class year in and out.
But then there’s the cadre of professional trainers who come to town like the circus to teach us (egad) Malcolm Baldridge, ISO-9000, Briggs-Meyers, etc. These were fun diversions of the sort that Mr. Ferguson alludes to with his quote from Geary Rummler. They didn’t really help any of us do our job.
Social Media requires a little bit of training and introduction and then let it go. It’s always been around to some extent (wikis? I used to keep a handy-how-to file on a network drive that people could update whenever…facebook-like feeds? we used to have bulletin boards and fora to discuss topics and get answers), it’s just that the speed, ease-of-use and technology involved (I can post a picture with that?) are much improved. Social media training might be a little overkill. You need people to champion it and spread it, just like other tooling but like anything else the use of it is what teaches it.
So I don’t put it up there with the latest fad, but I certainly don’t think it requires a lot of training to use. It should require less and less as user interfaces and tooling improved.
If an organization has enough money to keep people as trainers – either as part of their job or all of it – they should concentrate on making the training be as task-specific as possible. Give them an overview and get them doing basic tasks in their real job as soon as possible.
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long story but i agree some of it. but now the new social revolution has change with new social media both virtual or real. thank for such interesting post
elliebellynet
It’s a long story becauses it is the extended notes for some presentations I am giving – and the purpose was to explain all the areas that most people misunderstand.
It’s a long story becauses it is the extended notes for some presentations I am giving – and the purpose was to explain all the areas that most people misunderstand.
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I certainly agree with you here Jane, I know my own learning has increased tremendously after I commenced following specialists in learning and teaching on Twitter and Facebook.
At first I didn’t understand Twitter and I am still learning to use it effectively, however, once I realized the power of narrowing down who you follow to source specialists in your field I saw its full value. I just found this article on my Facebook so as I sit here with my breakfast on a Saturday morning I’m learning and loving it!
@RMITPaulineP